Customer Reviews

Entering the Ghost River

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"One person can not teach another person how to heal," says Metzger, "but we can tell stories." In these `meditations,' she tells her heart. Stories of initiation, healing, the interdependency of community. Stories about story telling. Stories about other September 11's - in Chile, in Africa. Fairy tales of the Goose Girl alongside a telling of the Los Angeles riots. Tales of meeting an elephant, dreams of a soul emerging from a mouth, chronicles of friendships -- with Anais Nin, an African medicine man, a woman dying of cancer.

And this is why the book works to reshape us. Its form is relational, offering within its structure a way out of the impinging dualism screaming from every newspaper and radio and television. This memoir sets stories next to each other, without describing how we ought to feel, without explaining the links that might be made. There is no dreaded compare and contrast rhetoric suffered in schools; no need to see the truth as black and white. Or rather, there is no requirement to see healing as dosage, individual, without reciprocity. The form is one of connectivity, a web that creates its own logic through providing wide gaps through which new consciousness may emerge. Like the work of the Zen master and peace activist Thich Nhat Han, the construction of Metzger's book, its chosen language, alters the reader as much as its content.

Metzger says, "To be a healer in this country is an underground activity. The healer must act secretly and develop subterfuges in order to extend her love to the world and do her work." Entering The Ghost River is Metzger's wisest subterfuge to date. It works on us, drawing us closer to our questions, helping us step into our own stories so we might live them fully.

Entering the Ghost River is a rare find. Part journal, part wise instruction, part interrogation, Metzger's work challenges the reader to enter the waters of healing and being healed. It is beautifully crafted in every way, and is both personal and global in its scope. Our illnesses mirror those of our society and the earth itself. We are all connected, and only our honesty, courage and love can save this planet. Entering the Ghost River takes the reader on a journey to Africa, to the ancestors, and at the same time, on a journey to the heart.

Deena Metzger's book is a wonderful entree into indigenous mind; a framework of non-Western, non-linear thinking. It explores the mind of a healer and writer through her life experiences and the power of story. Metzger's travels take her from her beginnings in a New York Jewish family to California, Israel, Africa and South America. The people, creatures and landscapes she describes honor the magical weavings of spirit. These stories certainly touched my life. I especially appreciated the reverence with which she tells the story of the Ambassador, an encounter with an elephant in Africa, touching upon the sacredness inherent in all beings on this planet. Reading Metzger's book enables one to see how spirit connects all beings on this planet without preaching about this as a gospel for life.

In ENTERING THE GHOST River, Deena Metzger uses the form of the book as well as language itself to teach us that the essential nature of story is not linear. We follow as the narration twines through North America, Africa, the 1970's in Chile and Los Angeles, and September 11, 2001... and we see how the profound moments of a life cohere into story and meaning. We see, too, how an extraordinary healer has been called forth -- with exquisite openess and no attempt to hide self-doubt or moments of confusion, along with a rigorous exploration of her own motives and heart. Deena Metzger offers us this gift: that our heartache can provide the way through, that Story is the container that can teach us who we are and thus how to act in the world, that a connection beyond the human into the spirit realms, the animal realms, the nature of other worlds, is possible. She shows us that monotheistic minds - such as she calls her own and that of western thought - can reach out into indigenous mind, and in this intersection it is possible to marry into the actual circular nature of life itself. I read with growing intensity as the book cohered in and around Deena's relationship with the African Shona healer Augustine Kandemwa, and the spiritual work they and others were undertaking in Africa as the planes hit on September 11. Deena draws out the possibility that a different story based on healing and connections across boundaries can lead us into the future. An important book of hope and beauty.

This is the book I've been waiting for. This is a book that that moves me and and reaches me at my core. It is an important and powerful work, inspiring and complex at a time when we cannot afford shallow answers and yet it is accessable. It is deeply intelligent and truly represents Deena Metzger's unique vision, of story, healing, and caring for the world. It offers a series of teaching stories. I just finished the story of about the meeting with the Elephant in Africa. I read it with tears streaming down. I am thrilled and grateful that this book is finally out

Reading Entering the Ghost River, I often contemplated Poe's questioning of "whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence." This being said, I also realize that my Western trained mind cannot fully grasp concepts that appear quite alien to it. Despite my questioning whether some of the things reported bordered on madness, (e.g., taking coincidences as meaningful signs, or returning a skull of an elephant to the elephants), the book was intriguing and definitely kept me reading on. Written in a non-linear fashion, with stories and memories interweaved against a particular historical background, the book invites a nonlinear response. I often felt peaceful and comforted as I read. There are also interesting and inspiring views on healing and on the artificial boundaries that we put on this enterprise that make this book worthwhile. Though remaining skeptical about some the healing methods presented, I found this book interesting and thoughtprovoking.

This is the book I've been waiting for. This is a book that that moves me and and reaches me at my core. It is an important and powerful work, inspiring and complex at a time when we cannot afford shallow answers and yet it is accessable. It is deeply intelligent and truly represents Deena Metzger's unique vision, of story, healing, and caring for the world. It offers a series of teaching stories. I just finished the story of about the meeting with the Elephant in Africa. I read it with tears streaming down. I am thrilled and grateful that this book is finally out

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