More Than Merely Eyes Can See weaves together the stories of a small church—mostly comprised of middle-class suburban members—and its inner-city neighbors. It begins with the congregation confronting itsisolation in the community.

A predominantly negative image had taken root in the congregation’s imagination and festered in the absence of meaningful relationships with neighbors. Rebuilding those relationships began with listening.

In 2011, the congregation launched the Friday Gathering and invited members and neighbors to dine together each week. More than forty diners shared stories about their lives with grace, humor, and occasionally brutal honesty.

They challenge the stereotypes spawned by census data and headlines and dignify the resiliency of the soul and thedeep-seated need to belong. Many organizations, not just churches, want to be perceived as warm andwelcoming.

But hospitality and charity often come with strings attached. Our norms and expectations about giving and receiving can be barriers to building trust, which is essential to building relationships.

More Than MerelyEyes Can See offers readers diverse perspectives on racial identity, the shortcomings of charity, opportunities to repair inequitable systems, and the power of relationships. There is risk that a story will change us, that we cannot go back to who we were, when it transforms how we see ourselves and others.

ReviewsWritten with the belief that listening to the stories of others is a powerful tool for building empathy. .

. Susan Carey’s humane community memoir More Than Merely Eyes Can See celebrates the power of shared storytelling.

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Arguing that storytelling and listening are acts of discovery and empathy, this is a text that celebrates individuality and that eschews labels and judgment. .

. [H]istorical data and references to the work of experts are used to reinforce such notions of empathy building as crucial to healthy communities.

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A hope-filled, community-centered memoir that suggests that authentic service to others can have a positive impact on one’s own relationships, More Than Merely Eyes Can See allows one church’s dinner guests to tell their stories in their own voices. - Clarion Foreward Reviews (May 16, 2024), starred reviewMore than Merely Eyes Can See portrays the stark, real, and often heartbreaking humanity present in the unseen lives around us, lives that are small yet somehow bigger than we can ever imagine.

The individual portraits presented show the world as it is and lives that are undeniably beautiful, frustrating, tragic, and, at times, funny. They open the mind and the heart to the simple idea that a meal, a conversation, and a radical acceptance of a human being, with all their individual strengths and flaws, can build community in ways more powerful than politics or slogans.

More than Merely Eyes Can See, and the individual stories therein, is a reminder that fiction is often a poor facsimile for real life. - Marc Fitch, novelist and investigative reporter for CT Inside Investigator.