The burning passion of the creative soul is explored in an inspirational blend of brilliant color photographs with the wisdom of the ages in this 'pocket cathedral' of meditative writings from around the world.
Phil Cousineau and Eric Lawton have once again paired up to bring readers a book of hours, divided into eight periods of guided meditation that trace the natural rhythms of the day, with photographs from around the world, and from passages by diverse thinkers, including William Wordsworth, Hildegard von Bingen, Marcus Aurelius, Mevlana Rumi, James Hillman, Gautama Siddhartha Buddha, Aretha Franklin, and many more.
PHIL COUSINEAU is an award-winning writer and filmmaker, teacher and editor, world-wide lecturer, storyteller and TV host. His fascination with the art, literature, and history of culture has taken him from Michigan to Marrakesh, Iceland to the Amazon, in a worldwide search for what the ancients called the "soul of the world." With more than 25 books and 15 scriptwriting credits to his name, the "omnipresent influence of myth in modern life" is a thread that runs through all of his work.
BOOKS: Cousineau's books include STOKING THE CREATIVE FIRES, ONCE AND FUTURE MYTHS, THE ART OF PILGRIMAGE, THE HERO'S JOURNEY: JOSEPH CAMPBELL ON HIS LIFE AND WORK, SOUL: AN ARCHAEOLOGY, and most recently, WORDCATCHER. A new book of essays and reflections on healing, restitution and atonement, titled BEYOND FORGIVENESS, will publish in 2011. His books have been translated into nine languages, and he is a contributor to more than 30 other books.
TALKS & TRAVELS: Cousineau lectures frequently on a wide spectrum of topics that reflect his mythic and scholarly journeys, including mythology, movies, writing, mentorship, beauty, language, travel, sports, language, and creativity. He has been the keynote speaker at major conferences as diverse as the Ansel Adams Centennial Celebration in Yosemite National Park, and The European Unitarian Universalists' Retreat in the Netherlands. He has been invited to lecture at distinguished venues around the world and has collaborated and appeared with some of the great thinkers and philosophers of our time, including mentors Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith. He enjoys collaborating with musicians and artists. An expert in pilgrimage, Cousineau occasionally leads small group journeys to sacred and culturally rich places; in 2011 he will take groups to Ireland and Paris.
FILMS: Phil Cousineau's screenwriting credits in documentary films have won more than 25 international awards and include: A SEAT AT THE TABLE, ECOLOGICAL DESIGN, WAYFINDERS, THE PEYOTE ROAD, WIPING THE TEARS OF SEVEN GENERATIONS, THE HERO'S JOURNEY; and the Academy Award-nominated FOREVER ACTIVISTS.
TV & APPEARANCES: He is currently the co-writer and host of GLOBAL SPIRIT, Link TV's "internal travel" television series soon broadcasting on PBS stations. Cousineau has also appeared on CNN, The Discovery Channel, and Fox News, and been featured on Voice of America, PRI's The World, CBC's Tapestry, Deepak Chopra's Wellness Radio, and Public Radio's At Issue with Ben Merens. He has been interviewed for stories in TIME and NEWSWEEK as well as the NEW YORK TIMES. He has been a judge for the Emmys, San Francisco Film Festival, and the PEN-WEST literary awards. Look for his expert commentary and mythic take on film among the special features on several Warner Brothers DVDs--from THE NATURAL and CONSTANTINE to BATMAN and SUPERMAN.
CONSULTING: An expert on mythology and film and the "hero journey" structure of screenplays, Cousineau consults on all types of writing projects.
Cousineau lives with his family in North Beach in San Francisco, California, where he is currently writing a book on beauty. Learn more at http://www.philcousineau.net.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 starsA book created with great care, August 29, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: The Soul Aflame: A Modern Book of Hours (Paperback)
A high quality book, the kind of book that feels good just to hold. Inside are dozens of inspirational poems, quotes and passages and an equal number of beautiful color photos from around the world. The author begins with the wisdom of Buddha, Sarah Vaughan and Emerson, and expands from there. Books of inspirational quotes are not new, and books of inspirational photos are not new. This book matches the best of both. Opening the book at random: "It's not the earthquake/That controls the advent of a different life/But storms of generosity/And visions of incandescent souls" -- Boris Pasternak
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This is a beautiful lightweight little book, divided into seven days, Sunday through Saturday. Each day has a two-page spread for the traditional hours of prayer/meditation: midnight/matins, sunrise/lauds, 6 am/prime, 9 am/terce, noon/sext, 3 pm/none, sunset/vespers and 9 pm/compline. Each spread features, on the left page, one or two quotations or poems about the soul, our relationship to nature, etc. These inspirational thoughts come from philosophers, poets, novelists and many others, and the name, nationality and dates of birth and death are given. The right page contains a small picture with the location identified.
This book is very similar to The Soul of the World by the same collaborators and published in 1993. This volume is a little bigger, being about 7 inches square. Though the setup is the same, the quotes are different and the pictures here tend to feature people rather than natural settings.
This book is lovely for yourself or as a gift to someone who is troubled or in need of solace or inspiration. It's a way to reconnect with those ideas and thoughts that you used to have but so often get pushed aside when one begins to worry about career, mortgage, totalitarian governments and all the rest.
Find some peace. Find this book.
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This review is from: The Soul Aflame: A Modern Book of Hours (Paperback)
This is an amazing collection of thoughts, poems that really touch the soul, spirit and look deeply at questions like What are we, why are we here? Sources for the poems/prose include Wordsworth, Einstein, Yeats, Ellie Wiesel, Buddah, Longfellow, Aretha Franklin, Martin Luther King Jr. and more from across the world. From the poems and narration tucked away in the introduction to the individual passages running through the hours Sunday through Saturday, there are wonderful words to ponder and amazing photographs that accompany each moment.
At the very end of the book is an afterward of sorts entitle Becoming the Circle where the author concludes the book with : "What is life? What do we leave behind, that can't be worn down by wind, or time, or fire? It is the trace we leave on memory."
What an amazing book.
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