Customer Reviews

Crafting the Soul: Creating Your Life as a Work of Art

In the Jewish mystical tradition, there is a concept that each of us has a divine spark within our soul and it is just waiting to be ignited. Byron Sherwin takes this concept and through the image of a sculptor who takes raw materials and moulds them into something of beauty and meaning, presents a process which he calls Soulcrafting.

While it would be hard to argue that this book is unique, it does bring an intellectual rigour to a filed which many see as "alternate" at best. Sherwin is Professor of Jewish Thought and Mysticism at Spertus College in Chicago. This book brings together some of the greatest thinkers of the past and what they had to say about the meaning of life. Sherwin looks at many facets of contemporary life and discusses many of the issues which block the development of a healthy spiritual life. Other scholars have recently gone so far as to create an additional scale of wellness called the Spiritual Quotient.

This book reminds me of the story about a group of rabbis who were planning a retreat about meditation. As part of the process they had found a guide and mentor from another faith to help them begin. In the planning stage, one rabbi asked for a bibliography on meditation. Another thought it a good idea to have some lectures on meditation. After some time they turned to the mentor and asked what he thought. Without flinching, the response came back, "why not just try it?" This book reflects this story. There are too many words about the process and it is only in the latter part of the book that it moves beyond the `talking about' to the `doing.'

Sherwin recounts a story about the Rabbi of Lublin (p 189) where he says: "Souls also accumulate rust. Like the wheelbarrow, if they acquire too much rust, they cannot do what they are made for. While I have been watching you, I have been trying to figure out how I can repair rusty souls."

Sherwin's book helps us to identify the sources of rust, perhaps even identify the oils which could lubricate the rusted wheelbarrow. I do not feel that he has helped us to repair the rust in our souls.

Dr. Sherwin is a Distinguished Service Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Mysticism and an internationally acclaimed ethicist. He says that "both medical science and psychotherapy are beginning to realize that a spiritual crises often lies at the root of a psychological or physical malady," adding that "people with little meaning in their lives or in their work are primary candidates for 'premature death' from a variety of diseases."

He starts with a description of how we got to where we are now, explaining how traditional wisdom was superseded by scientific thought. We've been turned into a "therapeutic society," assuming that we're flawed beings in need of fixing. Dr. Sherwin maintains that "know-why" is more important than know-how, saying that "while technological skill can aid immeasurably in helping to get things done, it never was meant either to address or to replace the deeper problems of human existence."

The questions that need to be answered are ones such as "Who are we?" and "Where are we?" His writing is designed to stimulate and challenge readers to answer these questions for themselves, by bringing things like personal history, cultural assumptions, and presuppositions into their awareness.

Dr. Sherwin describes crafting the soul as making "explicit the implicit intrinsic meaning of human existence." He says there are nine components to this: hard and constant work; studying the work of past masters; cultivating wisdom (knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing); exercising the imagination; practicing humility; deciding to do one thing rather than another (and thereby taking a risk of being wrong): focusing on what is truly meaningful; striving to meet reasonable goals; and cultivating moral values.

Dr. Sherwin says that "the ideal reader of this book is someone who is curious about the meaning of life, who is suspect of simplistic and doctrinaire claims to have found it, who is prepared to set out on an intellectual and spiritual adventure to locate it, and who is willing to enact an action plan to express it." Readers who fit that definition will find Crafting The Soul to be an ideal book for guiding them in creating the meaningful lives they desire.