Customer Reviews

The Soul Aflame: A Modern Book of Hours

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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

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.

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.

A beautiful photographic essay of people all over the world. I highly recommend it.