From Publishers Weekly
Church is probably one heck of a preacher: learned, thoughtful and gifted at reshaping famous phrases to confer new meaning while retaining their hallowed echoes ("We are the religious animal"). In this book-pulpit, the senior minister of New York's All Souls Unitarian Church is also a proponent of the gospel of second chances. He refers often enough to his own all-too-human errors a failed first marriage, an enduring affair with alcohol but autobiographical passages, including glimpses of his famous father, the late Idaho senator Frank Church, only leaven the book. The author or editor of 18 other books has here crafted a series of meditative essays, unified by the leitmotif of home. They constitute a spiritual travel guide through centuries of human wandering toward spiritual home and human wondering about the persistent questions that are the diet of the religious animal: where do we come from, whither do we go? The personal essay is a time-honored Western literary form, and Church fills this mold with artillery drawn from the canon: this poet, that saint, still another thinker or painter. At times the range of reference seems a little too wide, too illusive, to follow the tracks of the author's thought. But the minister eventually leads his reader to the point, to a sense of what Buddhists would call equanimity and what this Unitarian thinker calls home. As a pastoral Virgil, Church leads the way.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Publishers are responding to an increased demand for books that can help people lead more meditative lives, and these inventive essay collections will please progressive Christian and New Age readers alike. In The Soul's Religion, Moore's companion volume to his 1992 best seller, Care of the Soul, brief essays by the famed therapist and former monk offer perspectives on the soul-deepening potential of coping with failed relationships, natural disaster, and the fools and saints around us. Moore uses a variety of spiritual traditions, including Zen, Taoism, and Christianity, to show readers how they can enhance their spiritual development. In Bringing God Home, a Unitarian minister and son of former senator Frank Church has crafted a poetic autobiography in the form of brief meditations. Lay people will savor Church's originality as well as his insights from childhood with a famous father, and English teachers will find inspiration for their classrooms in his thoughts on the pilgrimage literature of John Bunyan, Thomas Wolfe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Teasdale's A Monk in the World gives practical tips for enhancing spirituality and promoting social justice. A Hindu monk with a Catholic upbringing, Teasdale teaches at three colleges in the Chicago area. His gentle reflections are punctuated by reminiscences of personal ordeals as well as poignant character sketches of street people. Teasdale's more ambitious The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions has been popular, and his new work should be, too. All three books can be added to larger public libraries, but those that can afford just one should consider purchasing Moore's, which will be in demand owing to the author's widespread popularity. Joyce Smothers, Student, Princeton Theological Seminary, NJ
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
