“Something big is going on in contemporary spirituality.”

That’s how Douglas Todd introduces his book, Brave Souls: Writers and Artists Wrestle with God, Love, Death, and the Things That Matter. He and Teri Degler, author of The Fiery Muse: Creativity and the Spiritual Quest, take a look at that “something big” in entirely different ways, although both rely on an array of artists to illustrate emerging trends.

Brave Souls is a compilation of interviews with 28 writers and artists, which Todd, the Vancouver Sun’s religion and ethics writer, put together over several years. Four sections, “The Atheists,” “The Doubters,” “The New Ancients,” and “The Emerging Mystics,” contain candid conversations with a diverse group of creative people, all of whom bared their souls to Todd.

There is much substance to this original collection of viewpoints, and one cannot help but admire Todd for his ability to get to the heart of some sensitive issues. He remarks in his introduction that it was intimidating to ask his subjects such pointed questions about something as personal as religion. Many of them, namely Timothy Findley, John Irving, W.P. Kinsella, Evelyn Lau, Farley Mowat, and Peter C. Newman, were often poignant and sometimes brutally direct.

A powerful writer, Todd nevertheless commits one major flaw. Most of his interviews come from a similar recipe. It is true that Todd wrote the book over a long period, but that is all the more reason to be certain the flavour of the interviews doesn’t become stale. The concept of Brave Souls is an interesting one, though perhaps one of the byproducts is that these people wind up on pedestals – a small irony, given that the book examines worship in a variety of forms.

Toronto author Teri Degler’s The Fiery Muse takes an entirely different approach to the relationship between the creative process and spirituality. This relationship is explored in a historical sense, in that Degler surveys the lives of various mystics and artists, and also interviews many other people who have had mind-opening spiritual experiences. A work of non-fiction, The Fiery Muse also crosses the line into the self-help category: at the end of each chapter, Degler includes exercises to help the reader understand how the creative process can be or has been influenced by the spiritual.

While Todd’s book concentrates almost solely on religious issues, Degler’s focus is on the mystical. She examines the spiritual effects of yoga, the Taoist concept of chi, and Buddhist and Hindu rites and traditions, among others. Her goal is to guide readers in their quest for a “deeply spiritual transformation” that includes such concepts as divine oneness or kundalini, near-death experiences, divine love, invoking the muse, tapping into the spiritual dimension, and the idea that creativity leads people closer to God.

Degler’s undertaking is difficult to assess, for although thoroughly researched, well written, and convincingly argued, it still borders on the flaky. Nevertheless, it is hard to put down, as Degler’s anecdotes about her subjects, be they historical figures or everyday ones, are arresting.

The exercises Degler invites her readers to complete at the end of each chapter involve a variety of activities, including drawing, painting, colouring, playing a musical instrument, or meditating in wide open spaces. Each one coaxes the participant to look inward, and make spiritual contact with the inner self. While Degler’s thesis that the creative and the spiritual are linked is strong, it is debatable whether these exercises were necessary to prove her point.