Amazon.com Review
"I wanted to find the living core of [the Christian] tradition," the editor of this collection has said. As publisher of the excellent Buddhist periodical
Tricycle, and as editor and publisher of
Parabola magazine, Kisly has had her hand in shaping two of the most informative (and formative) spiritual journals of recent times, which should make her well qualified for the journey. And here she has indeed assembled a rich and challenging collection of Christian texts, with a particularly strong representation from Eastern Orthodoxy. We get not only the expected writers (Merton, Augustine, Wesley, Newman, C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Julian of Norwich), but also Paul Evdokimov, Anthony Bloom, Nicholas Berdyaev, and Theophan the Recluse, along with passages from the great medieval mystics of the Western church: Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Theophan the Recluse, and Catherine of Siena, among many others.
Arranged in 10 "cycles," the brief selections (ranging from a paragraph to a few pages) move from an emphasis on the natural world through discussions of loving one's neighbor and the nature of sin to concluding cycles on "Holy Fire"--the dwelling of divine in us--and the paradox of "Having Nothing, Possessing All Things." What we discover throughout is that the "ordinary graces" of the title are in fact available to all, and are indeed ordinary, even though they demand everything from us. Surrender is the book's underlying message, not a new one for a Christian audience, but one rarely expressed with such passion and depth as in the writings represented here. Readers already familiar with Kathleen Norris' The Cloister Walk and the anthologies of Stephen Mitchell, such as The Enlightened Heart, will find rich--if challenging--rewards here as well. --Doug Thorpe
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
This quirky collection, drawn from two millennia of Christian writings, deserves to become one of those nightstand favorites that readers will discover multiple times, drawing comfort from the wisdom of shared experience and being spiritually challenged by its more didactic passages. Kisly, a former publisher of Tricycle and Parabola, wants to provide readers with "ordinary graces" that can bless their lives. The 10 chapters are loosely arranged around topics such as taking joy in creation, bearing one another's annoying faults, sacrificing self-will and cultivating a spirit of contemplation. Kisly's italicized introductions are almost astonishingly sparse, leaving the reader to enjoy the fruitful spiritual work of making sense of the passages she has chosen. Each chapter takes an intricate journey from the surface to the depths, spiraling ever downward into more challenging and, at first glance abstruse, passages. The book offers some of the usual suspects of Christian spirituality (Catherine of Siena, John Donne, Augustine, Kierkegaard and the Desert Fathers), but also some relatively obscure Christian sages such as "Simeon the New Theologian" (949-1022), and other aesthetes Kisly is clearly fond of, including T.S. Eliot and Vincent Van Gogh. (Eliot's poem on desiring nothing reflects perfectly the ironic tension of Kisly's chapter on "Having Nothing, Possessing All Things.") This is a book to be savored slowly, marked up thoroughly, and made one's own. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
