Category: christianity

Perennial Wisdom
Open Secrets: The Letters of Reb Yerachmiel ben Yisrael by Rami M. Shapiro. Monkfish. 128 pp. $13.36 ***** Rabbi Rami Shapiro is one of the great reconcilers of spiritual traditions in the world today. In books like Judaism Without Tribalism, Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent, and Minyan: Ten Principles for Living a Life of Integrity, ...
Read more
The Future of American Zen
Zen in America: Five Teachers and the Search for an American Buddhism by Helen Tworkov. Kodansha International. 271 pp. **** Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America by Helen Tworkov. St. Martin’s Essentials. 336 pp. $19.71 **** Helen Tworkov is such a good writer that one can wish she hadn’t spent all those ...
Read more
Trump’s Fist
That Ubiquitous Gesture You would think that a bullet whistling by your head so closely that it nicked your ear might be a wake-up call, the kind of thing that could turn you around permanently, as if to say, Whoa, I dodged a bullet that time (so to speak). Maybe I might want to reassess. Ramp ...
Read more
Wounded Healer
James Dykes (1950-2024) Hanging in the waiting room of Jim Dykes’ office—a large homey building that had been a famous hippie house in the Sixties, when I was in college—was a mammoth painting of Jesus. That seemed characteristic of the man. He seemed to be saying that Jesus was the ultimate healer—I think he felt that ...
Read more
Yes You Can Go Home Again
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff. Penguin Books. 460 pp. **** The Monsters of Templeton is Lauren Groff’s tribute to her hometown, Cooperstown, New York. Apparently it was founded by the father of James Fenimore Cooper, it’s most famous citizen (but not, at this point, its finest novelist; Groff has far surpassed him), and includes ...
Read more
The Nothing of God
She was scorned, kicked around, physically abused, sexually abused, told that she doesn’t count, that she barely even exists. Somehow it is these very things that give her the resources to undertake this adventure.
Read more
Embodied Mystic
This author deeply understands mystical spirituality, true religion, in a way that few people do.
Read more
What Is Sex?
Lauren Groff seems to be gently suggesting that sex is a human energy that doesn’t necessarily interfere with a religious life. They can co-exist. They should co-exist.
Read more
Two Gay Men
Good Grief a film by Dan Levy. With Dan Levy, Ruth Nessa, Himesh Patel, Luke Evans. Streaming on Netflix ** Rustin a film by George C. Wolfe. With Colman Domingo, Ami Ameen, Glynn Turman, Chris Rock. Streaming on Netflix ***1/2 Good Grief tells the story of a man whose husband dies. Marc (Dan Levy) is living an ...
Read more
No Full Stop
Septology a novel by Jon Fosse. Transit Books. 667 pp. $22.95 ***** Often when I finish a long novel I have a feeling of accomplishment, or relief; “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over,” as the woman says in The Wasteland (about another subject). But in the case of Septology, I feel bereft. It’s ...
Read more
Quotations from my Reading (cont.)
From Septology by Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse, a Catholic convert. “it’s in the darkness that God lives, yes, God is darkness, and that darkness, God’s darkness, that nothingness, yes, it shines, yes, it’s from God’s darkness that the light comes, the invisible light . . . “I don’t understand why it’s at night, in the darkness, ...
Read more
Enough Already
The Bell a novel by Iris Murdoch. Penguin Classics. 296 pp. $16.00. **** Iris Murdoch. I can’t live with her and can’t live without her. Years ago, when my mentor Wallace Fowlie had retired, he wasn’t interested in much modernist fiction, but loved Iris Murdoch, so he always had plenty to read. My favorite New York ...
Read more
The Spirit Behind the Story
The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to his White Mother by James McBride. Riverhead Books. 295 pp. ***** I was so overwhelmed by The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store that I decided to reread James McBride’s memoir of life with his mother, The Color of Water. I knew his own situation influenced the novel, ...
Read more
Utopian Realist
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store a novel by James McBride. Riverhead Books. 385 pp. ***** James McBride has written award-winning and bestselling novels in the past—The Good Lord Bird and Deacon King Kong—also a highly acclaimed memoir, The Color of Water, but The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store—is a different kind of book altogether, beyond ...
Read more
The True Temple
Beyond the Abbey Gates (formerly The Age of Miracles) a novel by Catherine MacCoun. Trumpeter. 337 pp. $15.95. ***** I defy anyone to read this novel and decide what the author thinks is sacred and what profane; religious, irreligious; the right way to live, the wrong way. It turns every preconception you have on its head. ...
Read more
Base Metal into Gold
Start Here Now: An Open-Hearted Guide to the Path and Practice of Meditation by Susan Piver. Shambhala Publications. 193 pp. $14.95 The Buddhist Enneagram: Nine Paths to Warriorship by Susan Piver. Lionheart Press. 270 pp. $18.95. On Becoming an Alchemist: A Guide for the Modern Magician by Catherine MacCoun. Trumpeter. 272 pp. $24.95 “The wind of the buddha’s ...
Read more
The Quick and the Dead
Ironweed a novel by William Kennedy. Penguin. 227 pp. $18.00 ***** Despite my huge admiration for the first two novels in the Albany cycle, I can see why Ironweed was the prize winner. Kennedy’s writing reaches an apotheosis in this book, perhaps from the subject matter, perhaps just because he was growing in confidence. In 1983, ...
Read more
Man of Principle
Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game a novel by William Kennedy. Penguin Books. 282 pp. $14.00 ***** To get the suspense over with immediately, since it’s the first incident in the novel: Billy’s greatest game was when he bowled 299 in a match against a man named Scotty Streck. They were competing for the best three game total, ...
Read more
Cherchez la Femme
Under the Glacier a novel by Haldor Laxness. With an introduction by Susan Sontag (thank God). Vintage. 240 pp. $17.00 ***1/2 I have to admit that Susan Sontag made more sense of this novel than I did. I actually finished the book with no idea what the hell was going on. Fortunately I had the Sontag introduction, ...
Read more
What Strikes Fear into Every Man’s Heart?
Women Talking a film by Sarah Polley. With Rooney Mara, Judith Ivey, Emily Mitchell, Kate Hallett. Streaming on Apple TV. ***** Reflections on a Movie In Women Talking, a group of women finally gets together to talk about the things nobody has been saying. It is based on a novel about Miriam Toews, and borrows its premise ...
Read more