A Friend of All Faiths [Paperback]

Michael H. Cohen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 6, 2006

A Friend of All Faiths describes an education in spirit and shadow through encounters with the numinous- moving with great force through the heart as pulsations of love; touching religious myth, ritual, dream and vision; and revealing intuitive aspects of personal transformation.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing (July 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1412008549
• ISBN-13: 978-1412008549
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,890,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, again, October 13, 2010

By 

A Roman (Albuquerque, New Mexico) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Friend of All Faiths (Paperback)

I enjoyed reading "A Friend of all Faiths." In the part about Iowa, I loved the descriptions of the tall, lanky, alcoholic instructor and his "writer-meets-reader" opening instruction. Throughout this book, the details are terrific and characters are quickly and accurately revealed by the things they say: choice dialogue.

This book is comprehensively autobiographic; I do not know if it was written before or after the other book, "A Question of Time." It feels like "A Question of Time" came after this one, because "A Question of Time" feels more advanced as a structured storyline. Now that I've read both, I must ask how this writing will evolve. I feel like the writer is still practicing -- producing wonderful achievements, yes -- but still practicing. Now that he has demonstrated his ability, with stories rooted in the details of external and internal experiences, can he fly? Can he take the next leap into imagination? It is a question of time, indeed, when this writer will take flight. He is ahead of his time; by how much, I do not know. One hundred years? After his death, hundreds of years from now, will he have left a literary achievement that is alive to future generations? The answer will be yes, it is highly possible and probably so. But what will that be called -- what is that title?

Note: The answer came to me later, as I realized the theme of these books. It is as if the writer has been a prisoner, in many ways, and he has found countless ways to break free. He will never be contained. His writer's voice has been, to a great extent, a "prisoner" of the legal training and practice that he loves, because it has been hard for him to be versed in more emotional writing, until now.

He has been a prisoner of his own brilliance, almost "too smart for his own good" - as I'm sure someone has said that to him before. He was trapped in his many prestigious degrees and expectations of success, and has only broken free with these two recent books, the true voice crying out in first person. Bravo. He also has not let religion cage him; steeped in traditional Judaism from the early years, he underwent a radical opening of his mind to the larger universal truths shared by all religions.

There is a marvelous poet-writer here: he has known poets and great minds in passing and has certainly taken note of them with some curiosity to understand the difference between himself and them. It has taken him time to develop. It seems as if he is comfortable with who he is and has redefined what is truly important in this life. (He talks about compassion but I suspect is still a vibrant rebel at heart.) Indeed, his choice of someone like Elaine could only have been possible after undergoing the years of transformation, evolution and patient growth. (Bob helped.)

Now, I think he is ready to write. So, a possible title for the masterpiece that is forthcoming could be "A Prisoner of the Mind" or "Trapped Genius" or "Uncontained" or "Soaring Forth" or "The Open Cage" or "Waking from the Earthen Cage" or something related to that theme of the prison/freedom duality. Perhaps that has already been written with "A Friend of all Faiths," though. Other ideas that came to mind: "Contract with Divinity," "Contract with the Divine." Another idea is to write an "owner's manual" for the soul. A human owner's manual . . . If you think about it, we do not have an owner's manual to make sense of our mind and our soul . Michael has just done the work making sense of the mind and soul, so why not write "An Owner's Manual for the Human Species" or "An Owner's Manual for Homo Sapiens" or "An Owner's Manual for Mankind." (I like the last one.)
Peace,
-- a Roman

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Small Correction, January 14, 2008

By 

Irina (St. Petersburg, Russia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Friend of All Faiths (Paperback)

The reference in the book to St. Irene finding the True Cross is incorrect. In Natasha's Russian Orthodox tradition the finder of the True Cross is identified as St. Helen, the mother of St. Constantine the Great. The reference to St. Irene was perhaps a Freudian slip on the part of the author.