A Sense of the Sacred: Finding Our Spiritual Lives Through Ceremony [Hardcover]

Adele Getty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1997

Sacredness and religion are not always synonymous. Using historical occurrences, myths, and anecdotes, the author guides readers through the fundamentals of the sacrosanct, looking at how we as a society have lost the sacred and why it is so urgently needed in today's world. Both traditional and nontraditional readers will learn how to apply sacred ceremony to make events in their lives more meaningful.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Getty's book could be easily overlooked in the current swarm of books on spiritual topics, but it is no mere how-to for the budding ceremonialist. A distinguished scholar of comparative religions, Getty offers a series of profound meditations on the power of ritual. In a world in which ceremonies that bond society together are lacking or shallow, Getty argues, we must begin the task of forging new ceremonies sufficient to express our deepening understanding of human connection to the cosmos. She offers suggested rituals for events such as the blessing of children and the establishment of partnerships. More important, she offers a framework for understanding how to build ritual into everyday life. Moving accounts of the importance of ceremony in her own life make this book something of a treasure. Patricia Monaghan

Product Details

• Hardcover: 210 pages
• Publisher: Taylor Pub; First Edition edition (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0878339469
• ISBN-13: 978-0878339464
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,520,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Sense of the Sacred: Getty has it., February 5, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Sense of the Sacred: Finding Our Spiritual Lives Through Ceremony (Hardcover)

A few years ago, I attended the outdoor wedding of some friends in the American Southwest. At one point, an attractive woman stepped to the front and spoke a kind of benediction for the ceremony that is a marriage. She spoke in a strikingly mood altering manner: calm, unhurried, sincere, with matter of factual intensity and grace; and she spoke of the deeper experience and meaning of this moment which we all shared in. Usually uncomfortable in the presence of sermons and ceremony, I found myself thinking that this woman was a new kind of priestess, one that could help us reintegrate our spirits with our lives on this planet in a natural and honest way. The speaker was Adele Getty, and we are fortunate that she has published here what amounts to a manual for the revitalisation of "The Sense of the Sacred" which she understands and embodies so well. Ms Getty speaks movingly and with insight on the meaning of the sense of the sacred in earlier societies and it's subsequent loss, and of revitalisation movements, particularly the current and recent New Age, before moving into the reawakening of the sacred in our lives. Here the reader especially benefits from Getty's particular gifts and experience, for she has a natural sixth sense for the personal as well as social processes involved here. She speaks of the use of creating meaningful ceremony, as part of the process of investing our experiences with the full dimensions of their meaning for us; of birth and dying, of troubled teens disconnected, of the women's and men's movements, and of the male-female partnership, and our lives in our communities. Sense of the Sacred is an engaging and insightful personal manual for the revitalisation of this resonant dimension in our lives. I heartily recommend it.-Stephen Miller, Mkzdk.