The Soul of the World: A Modern Book of Hours [Paperback]

Phil Cousineau (Author, Editor), Eric Lawton (Editor, Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1993

Like the celebrated "Illuminations" and "Earth Prayers", this modern Book of Hours serves as a "pocket cathedral", inspiring reflection and renewal any time, any place. A collaboration between a writer-poet and a photographer, this book speaks to people's yearning for connection and celebration by contemporizing the medieval Book of Hours - a classical device for "making holy the hours". Tracing the natural rhythms of the day and week, each day is divided into eight periods of guided meditation designed to replenish the reader with beauty, a reminder of the divine presence and reconnect people's souls with the soul of the world.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"But anywhere is the center of the world." -- -- Black Elk

"Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down, and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at down fast over the mountains split." -- -- Annie Dillard

"If the soul could have known God without the world, the world would never have been created." -- -- Meister Eckhart

"The soul is where the inner and outer world meet." -- -- Novalis

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Harper San Francisco; 1st edition (March 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062510045
• ISBN-13: 978-0062510044
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #268,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars inspirational things come in small packages, February 12, 2003

By 

audrey (white mtns) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Soul of the World: A Modern Book of Hours (Paperback)

This is a beautiful little book, lightweight and about 6 inches square, 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, usually of a person, with the location identified.

This book is very similar to The Soul Aflame by the same collaborators and published in 2000. This volume is a little smaller, and though the setup is the same, the quotes are different and the pictures here tend to feature natural settings rather than people .

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, mortgages, totalitarian governments and all the rest.

Find some peace. Find this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Soul of the World World: needs this NOW more than ever., November 5, 2001

By 

LizGraphix "lizgraphix" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Soul of the World: A Modern Book of Hours (Paperback)

Please, reprint this book without changing a thing! It was beautiful and simple and somthing I wish I had the opportunity to give each of my friends. Please give me that opportunity again. I have found nothing that compare - intense and stunning photos and passages chosen to match.

Here is what I wrote about it 11/1997:
Saturday... 6AM Prime... "What is going on inside me I cannot tell. In the sky a thousand stars are magnetized, and I am glued by the swing of the planet to the sand... My dreams are more real than those dunes, than that moon, than those presences..." Antoine de Saint-Exupery The words faced a page picturing California's Death Valley, photographed in such a way that you could have entrusted your soul to that place for that moment and lingered in it's powerful and drawing stillness. This book took me for one week, in three hour intervals, through an adventure of the soul. For those who might have found themselves too lost in the daily grind, this book will assuredly take you back to that central part of yourself. Your focus will be turned to a much larger world and a deeper vision of an attainable, tangeable human spirit that might have gotten lost along the way. Presentation-wise, this book is graphically clean; both in typography and photography. It is the first book of all I own, that comes to mind when I think of a gift for someone with whom a share a special bond.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Please Re-Print this Title ! ! !, December 7, 2000

By 

Autodidact Andy "IndiAndy" (Golden State California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Soul of the World: A Modern Book of Hours (Paperback)

I just wanted to say that this book is THE VERY BEST compilation of wisdom and contemplation that I have ever read outside of the Bible itself. The photographs which accompany the text send your mind to dream-like places, however they really exist on this world! Unfortunately for me, but fortunate for my good friend, I gave my only copy as a gift of love... I am going to get my eager hands (and my mind) on another copy right away! Do yourself a favor & get this book. You will not regret it :-)