Customer Reviews

A Listening Heart: The Spirituality of Sacred Senuousness

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

this book is packed with truths on how to live a life of great joy; just reading it brings meditative joy; deep reading, take slow and enjoy;not for the self helpers, unless spiritual

A Listening Heart is subtitled The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness. This subtitle really gives the meat of the book. Brother David helps us to understand the sacredness of sensual experienes - taste, sight, hearing, touch and smell. He carefully makes his case that we can come in touch with the the divine by becoming more fully aware of our reaction to sensual stimuli. The book is very well and clearly written.

I gave it four stars because of the chapter entitled Mirror of the Heart. I found this chapter rather obtuse - maybe because I am not a great fan of poetry. However, the book would have been better without this chapter. That's my two cents worth.

By far one of the most enlightening books I have ever read. Br. Steind-Rast is truly a "mystic" in its most honorable term!

Too bad there isn't a way to give it zero stars. This quote is just one of the reasons:
"What makes it sacred is not WHAT but HOW we read. What matters is a quiet, unencumbered mind that allows blessing to arise from the page and in fact, this kind of reading is not restricted to books. With the same attitude a monk will 'read' the grain of wood in a piece of lumber and release the flow of blessing as he guides the plane." Steindl-Rast, Benedictine monk, on the "why-Sacred-Scripture-is-no-longer-sacred-and-you-can-stay-home-and-read-cereal-boxes-instead-of-going-to Mass-on-Sunday." school of philosophy.
So you're laughing, guffawing out loud, even. You have visions of some comedian doing a sketch of a mad monk, (Christopher Lee as Saruman would be ideal casting, in a workshop. As he planes away he's oblivious to the unrest of the tools and lumber around him. Don't be fooled by the peaceful, although slightly vacant look on the poor man's face. That bit of drool at the corner of his mouth is a sign that all is not well with the, ahem, furnishings of the upper floor. Things are about to get seriously un-peaceful. Two pieces of wood, irritated at being gouged instead of planed, arises from a shadowy corner behind his back. Encouraged by a chorus of complaints from fellow planks and sundry tools and furniture, they float into the air, forming themselves into a cross. As they approach they declare, "Blessings are for the just, but a rod for the back of the fool." Prov 10:6 Tapping his foot and humming some Haugen-Haas ditty (Hat tip to the Curt Jester!) his earplugs render him dead to the world of sound and sense. We wince as the wood comes down upon his back. With every blow, a voice arising from the cross demands he cease annoying them with his half-baked blather. Shrieking in terror and pain, callling for sanctuary, but unwilling or unable to remove the darn plugs, he flees the workshop and finds himself in the monastery's labyrinth. All the racket attracts the attention of his fellow monks. One of them has the presence of mind to wrestle him to the ground and remove the earplugs. The cross hovers over the group, awaiting the result of the huddle. After a few minutes of un-edifying debate (Ghostbusters? Has anyone seen Ancient Aliens? Does the exorcism thing work?) during which Br. David, oddly, keeps begging everyone, "Have a heart, people, listen, why don't you, have a heart, for heaven's sake!" the decision is made. Ignore the sanctuary idea - too medieval! Pass the problem on to the prior! Two monks practically lift him off his feet in their haste to get him indoors. Nervous about that hovering cross and well-catechized with repeated showings of Disney and Harry Potter films, they know how much danger they're all in. Blessed with common sense,and a keen awareness of the absurdity of calling the exorcist in., especially during a Taste and See weekend, for Pete's sake! Of all the... He demands that everyone drop to their knees for an accurate Apostles Creed, reverent Our Father, a sincere Hail Mary, and a heartfelt Glory Be. At the final "Amen!" the answer blessedly comes to them. Get him to confession. All file out towards the chapel. Watching monks walk is boring so we cut to the next scene outside the confessional. At the moment of absolution we see the cross return to being two pieces of wood and drop loudly outside the door. It's long, it's arduous - the poor man has forgotten the meaning of sin. This could be an amusing scene, and instructional, but not a very charitable one. As his penance he abjures his heresies and cancels his subscription to any rag which publishes Matthew Fox. He agrees to write to write a book dedicated to the Holy Father pointing out his errors and accepts spiritual direction from Fr. John McCloskey.
Yes, the entire book is absurd. This little book has it so wrong in so many ways that space - and this reviewer's attention span cum patience don't allow for any analysis. A sense of humor makes it all too easy to come up with plenty of sketch ideas for The Colbert Show but this is a book review. It's supposed to be a serious, thoughtful critique of why the book should never have been written and why no one should buy it. National Lampoon-type comedy isn't respectful but it sure is tempting. Sorry. Really. Will the straight facts do? You're getting a few anyway. Promise.
How about the fact that the book is an embarrassing compendium of the author's factual, philosophical, and theological ignorance and errors? Telling you it's a bore is my opinion - yet another reason to dislike the book. It's bore because he's said exactly the same thing, in umpteen books, over the last 20 years. Find a new catch phrase, a new angle, new cover art and bingo, it's recycling at it's most tedious. facts can author and reviewer agree on? The faith tradition and historical achievements of his reigious order could be a starting point. Why he chooses to deny them has to be the topic of the only book by the author that would be worth reading - post-confession, of course.
The fact that he packs in enough error and distortion of doctrine to amaze and astound any member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith? Imagine them meeting and reading portions of the book out load and cracking up. But, butt should it matter that Steindl-Rast is manifestly unfamiliar, or inattentive to the spirituality and doctrine of the Catholic Church? Not if you're say, Unitarian or belong to the USS. Yes, it does if you claim to be Carholic. Lost, apparently, in a vague "spirit" of Vatican II, is the idea of actually reading the actual documents. i.e. Nostra aetate, Lumen gentium, Dignitatis humanae, Christus Dominus (Christ the Lord) For the faithful who have been misled by dissidents such as Steindl-Rast. Catholic Church teaching is available online in the at the Vatican and on EWTN.
In addition to the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Have a dictionary? Know an educated Catholic without a dictionary and a Catechism?) Helpful explanations of Catholicism/Theology are: The Spirit of Catholicism by Karl Adams, Spirit and Forms of Protestantism by Louis Bouyer, Christianity for Modern Pagans by Peter Kreeft, The Lord by Romano Guardini, Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine by Cardinal Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons by Cardinal Newman, End of the Modern World by Romano Guardini, Rome Sweet Home by Scott and Kimberley Hahn, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Ludwig Ott, and the Four Cardinal Virtues by Josef Pieper. Think of it as replacing Steindl-Rast's private opinions with the truth. It's another way to defend the faith.
In the spirit of first things first (there's a great Website by the name that this reviewer has no connection to), the truth is that science tells us that your brain is going through some 400+ operations in order to make sense of what you're reading. A functionally illiterate or a mentally handicapped person may not be able to decode (read) this "page" well enough to understand it but be able to see and understand the significance of the grain of a wood.
The truth is, what you read does matter. Need proof? Two simple words should suffice: child pornography. Could this be a new defense for perverts caught with the goods? What about the state of mind of the children who were exploited and abused to make the product? Their physical well-being? Oops - never thought of that. This is a Ph.D. in psychology talking? Oy ve, call Fr. Benedict Groeschel,C.F.R., Ph.D. for Catholic Christian psychology. According to Steindl-Rast's spirituality - which doesn't sound so very spiritual - ANY behavior could be excused, even sanctified. Banality of evil? No, this descends to inanity.
Sorry, fellas, moral relativism has been a no-no since, like, forever. Leo XIII described and condemned it in Testem Benevolentiae Nostra in 1899 as THE chief menace of modernism. Steindl-Rast is part of a long line of "thinkers" who've devoted endless amounts of time to rephrasing and repacking the same philosophy. This go round they're labeling it as "contemporary spirituality". Dressing this wolf up as Grandma still doesn't disguise the vulpine menace. Don't swallow any of it.
Serious Catholic Christians will be reminded of Is 44:13 - "The carpenter stretches a line, he marks it out with a pencil; he fashions it with planes, and marks it with a compass; he shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house." It isn't charitable to call anyone a blockhead, although the expression comes from Is 44:19a "Shall I then make an abomination out of rust, or worship a block of wood?" Aren't the heads of ventriloquists' dummies made out of blocks of woods. Anyone get the point of Pinocchio? What happens if a monk uses a saw of a hammer on lumber? Curses?
Christ, a carpenter, pronounced a blessing before he distributed the loaves and the fishes. He pronounced THE blessing before he broke bread and gave it to his disciples at the Last Supper. There aren't many mentions of blessings in the Old Testament but, and here is what is so peculiar coming from a Catholic monk: none of them arise from anything wooden. Ps 133:3b "For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore." Therein lies the sacrilege, divininzing a piece of wood - replacing the Son of God, who died on a wooden Cross with the "spirituality" of Birnam wood. Miracles have been ascribed to pieces of the True Cross but it's who and why he died on those two pieces of wood that create the blessings. Right?
Another fact: "Ora et Labora" is the motto of the Benedictines. Since the 6th century A.D., they've been known for the hospitality ("All guests who come here will be received as though they were Christ.") that was and is an essential part of their spitituality. Unattractive work, such as the draining of swamps, was sought after as a channel for grace and opportunities for the mortification of the flesh. In the Middle Ages, monasteries served as agricultural colleges. Love champagne? Raise a glass to Dom Perignon, a Benedicine. Think, thank, and pray for the Benedictines when you grate some Parmesan, for it was they who developed it. Irrigation in Lombardy? The water supply and drainage under Paris, France? Benedictines again! The corn trade in Sweden? Salmon fisheries in Ireland? Be grateful to Benedictines!
Benedictine monasteries all over Europe preserved and transmitted ancient texts. Monte Cassino, founded by St. Benedict, preserved thirty-odd lines of Juvenal's sixth satire - not found anywhere else. Learned abbots, and popes, quoted Aristotle, Cicero, Lucan, Pliny, Statius, Trogus Pompeius, and Virgil. Alcuin cited Ovid, Horace, and Terence. Future Pope Victor II oversaw the transcription of Horace, Seneca Cicero, and Ovid. The libraries at Cluny (burned in 1562), Rispoll (ditto), Bobbio, and Monte Cassino, among others, held thousands of volumes. All were hand copied by monks. Thanks to them, unlike the Greek Dark Ages, learning was preserved and culture was transmittedd.
Monalembert and Gimbert have thoroughly documented the technological achievements of the Cistericians, the reform-minded Benedictines. In contrast to the ancient world, the medieval world adopted mechanization on a grand scale. Waterpower was used for crushing wheat, sieving flower, fulling cloth, and tanning. From the mid-thirteenth century through the seventeenth those monks were the leading iron producers in Champagne. Efficient environmentalists, they used slag as fertilizers. Imagine 741 other monasteries all over Europe doing the same thing and teaching the local peasants their know-how. Monks at Rievaulx, according to an archeometallurgist, had developed a furnace to extract iron from ore, in the 1530s - with slag as low in iron as the slag produced by a modern blast furnace.
There is a reason the classical world abandoned the kind of superstition Steindl-Rast is promoting in this book. Ignorant of anatomy -that would have to wait until Eustachio invented it in the 15th century - they thought the heart was the brain. No, it doesn't evenwork as a metaphor for 1st graders. It's hackneyed for anyone neo, neo Paganism, and Eastern spiritualities is a compendium of every bit of post-conciliar wackiness every soi-disant Catholic "teacher" has come up with.
The Church Fathers saw Christ as True God and True Man and pointed this out unhesitatingly to their pagan audiences. Christ replaced the myth of Apollo and his oracle at Delphi: "O Phoebus, from your throne of truth, From your dwelling place in the heart of the world You speak to men By Zeus' decree no lie comes there, no shadow to guard the word of truth. Zeus sealed by an everlasting right Apollo's honor, that all may trust with unshaken faith when he speaks." Well, not exactly, there are a few tales that show the idol's unpleasant side. The real mystery is why the superstitions of Apollo worship (guaranteed as true by Zeus!)or wood worship, for that matter, are "truths" but Steindl-Rast has "issues" with the pope? Who'd pick Zeus over the Pope?
What sold the pagans was that they were familiar with the logic and reasoning of Aristotle and Plato. In the person of Christ, Christianity gave them a way to apply that philosophy and reason. Christianity gave birth to the possibility of a society capable of, eventuallly, scientific experimentation. By fits and starts, what became Western civilization developed, one which no longer based its thoughts and actions on the reading of bird entrails, the rustling of oak leaves, or the meaning of the noises made from vapors arising from rocks. Ask yourself why anyone who's professed a belief in Christ, would be preaching superstition instead? What we think of as science didn't exist; neither did their philosophy nor their religion. They were helpless before the question only one creature even asks: who created me? For them, the gods mysteriously appeared out of chaos. Modern physics, in the person of an Augustinian monk, had the answer: the Big Bang, Gen 1:3: Let there be Light! Christ was the true Light, Apollo the mere foreshadowing of the one who in truth could do all that pagans hoped for in worshiping the False. Contemporary physics gives us even more proof. Look it up!
Ja 1:16-18: Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers: For all good giving and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures."
We're back to the pagans as dummies theme: 1 Cor 12:1-3 : "Now concerning the spirtitual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were heathen, you were led astray to dumb idols, however, you may have been moved. Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says 'Jesus be cursed!' and no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit."
In 1905, writing in Heretics, GK Chesterton made a prediction. "But if we do revive and pursue the pagan ideal of simple and rational self-completion we shall end - where Paganism ended. I do not mean that we shall end in destruction. I mean that we shall end in Christianity."