Customer Reviews

The Wisdom of Memoir: Reading and Writing Life's Sacred Texts

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All a person has to do is look at the best seller list, walk into a bookstore, or see the current crop of books offered by Amazon.com too see that memoirs are very popular. Though many would technically be in the category of autobiography, this is not always the best fit because in many cases these books focus on a few specific memories rather than an entire life, and often offer a lesson learned from the experience, that I suppose could put many of these books in a self help category as well.

For people who are reading these memoirs from a spiritual point of view, Peter Gilmour's THE WISDOM OF MEMOIR is very helpful. The book helps a reader see God at work in people's lives. While some of the memoirs Gilmour highlights are religious or spiritual in nature, others are not. Gilmour gives many of these works an added dimension by looking at them from a religious point of view. By looking at these spiritual aspects of religious and non-religious biography and memoir, we can apply and see these things in our won lives. While the book does not specifically talk about writing a memoir the way a writing book may, it does offer advice for people who keep journals as a spiritual practice.

from Praying, no.81, p. 31: "Peter Gilmour has written an important book. As we near the end of the twentieth century we look around us, and everywhere we see shattered institutions, families, communities and individual souls. Only contact with the sacred and holy can motivate us to go out into our neighborhoods, our society and our world and begin the necessary repairs and healing. When we find the holy breath and spirit of God in our own daily life and living then there is real hope for dynamism and transcendence."