Customer Reviews

Sacred Roads: Adventures from the Pilgrimage Trail

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I read this book as someone who has struggled with Christianity for many years and have finally and recently come to terms with it in the Orthodox Church. I can relate quite personally to Mr. Shrady's struggles with his faith, and read with great interest his impressions of Medjugorje: what makes this place sacred - the "visions" of the Blessed Virgin or just that the place evokes such faithfulness?

I was saddened to read that in the land of Christianity's birth, its followers are leaving, and soon there will be none left. Mr. Shrady writes honestly but sensitively about why this is so and this, I think, is a major contribution of this book. More authors, more Christians should become aware of this deeply troubling situation.

Mr. Shrady has the blessing of an open mind, and describes all he sees with genuine respect. Practices that are alien to him, temples, all of it are beautifully and I am sure, accurately, described. I have also been booted unceremoniously from a few Hindu temples in India, so I know whereof he speaks.

Only two small niggling details. First,in the section on the Hindu pilgrimage, he writes of the Brahman religion, and the Brahman caste; it should actually be Brah-MIN, Brahman being the Absolute One, or the God-head.

Second, it might have been interesting to read why Mr. Shrady made these pilgrimages - was he "shopping" for a religion? Trying to escape something or find something?

Otherwise, this is a fabulous book that I heartily recommend.

Nicholas Shrady allows us to join him on an arduous quest for the spirit which suffuses the world's great religions. For those of us who are no longer young and cannot physically traverse the Sacred Roads he allows us to join him in spirit. The descriptions of the "Holy Places" from Medjugorje, through the rivertrip down the Ganges, the trek across Northern India into Nepal in pursuit of the Buddha's footsteps, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Palestine and eventually Anatolia are most vivid and so are the encounters with others of God's children on the road. His experiences in the "Promised Land" struck an especially responsive chord since I had undergone similar tribulations by El Al personnel, although I was spared a rectal examination. Finally I am grateful to Dr. Shrady for having introduced me to Rumi whom I had not yet counted among my acquaintances. Having said all this let me warn readers that this book is an honest account and as such may not be viewed with favor by some whose religion demands adherence to dogma rather than an inner feeling of God in all His manifold works.

I thought the writing was good and you can't fault Nicholas Shrady's knowledge. I did learn from the book but I did not enjoy it as time and again the author's arrogance got in the way. When ever he meets another foreign traveller the sarcasm that creeps into his writing is subtle but unmistakable. This starts with Chandika - who he can't even bring himself to call by her chosen name and is later repeated with the Germans who are worried having lost a companion (though not worried enough apparently). His contempt for these people is barely disguised. Maybe they are not as holy as Mr. Shrady, but who is he to judge? At Varansi he refers to a 'horror struck audience of foreigners who didn't understand the ritual and likely never would' (p73)

I found it highly arrogant to dismiss people in this way. This behaviour unfortunately extends to his hosts who Mr. Shrady continually defeats in arguments which demonstrate his knowledge and broadmindedness while they are made to appear narrow-minded and ignorant. Maybe they are. But Mr. Shrady's self-satisfaction is embarrassing. Every prayer, every donation is described in case we don't infer it for ourselves. Amongst meditating Buddhists he decides he's not worthy (though 'I had, it's true, steeped myself in the sacred texts') and decides instead: '... Better to be overcome with humility.....than to be greedy for enlightenment' (p87). Leading me to think he doesn't a) understand the concept of enlightenment and b) know what the word 'humility' actually means.

Thee were many examples of arrogance and dismissive judgmental beahaviour in this book. However I suspect Nicholas Shrady is quite young (?) maybe when he's older he'll be more objective and less out for the reader's good opinion of him. I hope so because his writing style is basically good and I feel sorry I did not enjoy this book as much as I would have liked. I ask myself did he actually learn anything from these trips or did he set out simply to give us the benefit of his knowledge? It would be a better book if Mr Shrady had been open to learn from people rather than trying to make them learn from him.

Nicholas Shrady has attempted an heroic task: authentic pilgrimage to some of the world's most revered sites of religious worship--authentic to himself (and his own inner questioning), heedful to the customs and spirit of the destinations themselves, and true to the disorder of modern life. In his accounting of these journeys, he has woven contemporary concerns with sacred history, providing a living context for understanding Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Sufism. I only wished that he lingered longer at pivotal points, allowing himself to be touched more deeply and the reader to more fully appreciate, through him, the significance of moments of tribulation, generosity, or revelation before moving on to the next chain of mundanities that link all such stations on life's path. At its best, "Sacred Roads" is a tale of adventure and a introduction to world religions and, at its dullest, a cooly removed reporting of a string of facts, which leave the reader as spiritually lost as the writer seems to be. It offers glimpses into the drive of the human spirit and an unromanticized depiction of the sometimes unseemliness of human nature and serves an important addition to any collection of pilgrimage literature, if only to show, by omission, that humility, longing, and imagination are necessary to transform wandering into pilgrimage.

...a bit estranged from our traditional religious upbringing without wanting to abandon it totally, open-minded to other possibilities. I found him candid. It's much more believable (and interesting) to portray religious devotees as real people with human shortcomings. Yea, he's sometimes judgmental and arrogant; I allowed him that under his circumstances. Though Shrady has, admirably, immersed himself in the local culture and history, I found some of the historical explanation lengthy and tedious.