Spiritual Living

Boteach has been the rabbi of Oxford University for 11 years and is broadly considered the most famous rabbi in America, thanks in part to his TLC show, Shalom in the Home, a kind of rabbinical family-counseling hour. Here, he focuses his homespun wisdom on the American male, whom he believes is obsessed with the appearance of success and money rather than the richer rewards of a happy family life and the self-respect that comes from the esteem of those who love him. We certainly need a writer who is willing to tell us that Donald Trump and Barry Bonds are among America's most broken men, but not all readers will endorse the author's traditional gender role—bound solutions. For most collections.

Suitably modest in length and scale, this book exemplifies the mindful enrichment of everyday life that we think of as Japanese and exhibits precisely those elements of Asian awareness and attentiveness to detail that appeal most strongly to the West. Carter (emeritus, Trent Univ., Canada; Encounter with Enlightenment: A Study in Japanese Ethics) discusses Aikido, gardening, tea, flowers, and pottery with learned lucidity, showing the reader how these disciplines contribute to self-transformation. For most collections.

Christian publishers have exerted unusual restraint and tact in 2007: there were as many books as ever that seem intended for a spot under a hapless evergreen somewhere, but the "Christmas books" were a tasteful trickle. Most tasteful and savory of the lot was this lavishly illustrated book edited by Pennoyer (cofounder, Ctr. for Cultural Renewal, Canada) and Wolfe (director, graduate creative writing program, Seattle Pacific Univ.). Not quite a lectionary or breviary or book of days, this is a reader for the Advent season from notable contemporary Christian writers (Scott Cairns, Emilie Griffin, Richard John Neuhaus, Kathleen Norris, Eugene Peterson, and Luci Shaw). Their elegant reflections for each day, keyed to Scripture readings, are wonderfully supplemented by beautiful color plates. Far from the obvious choices, we see the likes of Niccolo Cannicci, Emile Salome, and Richard Oelze—a feast for the eye as much as the mind. Highly recommended.

Despite the provocative title, journalist and author Hallundbaek's book would not bring a blush to the cheek of even the most devout readers. Her subject is several pairs of male and female saints—Clare and Francis, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, Catherine of Siena and Pope Gregory XI, Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal (most scholars refer to her as Jeanne de Chantal, but let it pass)—and what their relationships can do for our relationships. Hallundbaek is unwilling to engage the tough questions behind her premise—how great was the temptation to convert a spiritual affinity into love or marriage? How did they cope with or sublimate their desire?—and so limits the utility of her book, which makes it unclear whether her subject is sex, romance, or friendship. Her work is also compromised by some grotesque copyright-free illustrations that distract from her saints' lives. For larger collections.

Few periodicals in the study and practice of religion are more prestigious than Parabola, whose thematic organization ("Masks," "Attention," and so forth) has always favored an interfaith understanding of religion. This addition to a series that also covers views from the Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Gurdjieff traditions collects some of the most striking pieces, but from faith-tradition perspectives; this latest on Judaism does not disappoint. Essays include pieces by Martin Buber, Abraham Heschel, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Highly recommended.

Iyer is one of the most praised travel writers working and a remarkably effective nonfiction writer and literary journalist, author of, among other titles, Video Night in Kathmandu and The Lady and the Monk. His latest is an ambitious attempt to offer an innovative, multifaceted portrait of the Dalai Lama. Neither a work of history nor a biography, a work of Buddhist theology, or an apologia for Tibetan politics, Iyer's book is organized by the various faces the Dalai Lama seems to wear (e.g., "The Conundrum," "The Mystery," "The Monk," "The Politician"). Most readers, however, would have benefited from a clear, nonworshipful, more conventionally structured work: Iyer's result feels chaotic, since his structure prevents him from showing development and change of the world or the Dalai Lama over time. Despite Iyer's best intentions, it leaves the impression of a scattering of postcards about Iyer's friendship with this important leader rather than a searching study of the leader himself. Nevertheless, the popularity of the Dalai Lama recommends this for most collections, especially where Iyer's books have a following. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/07.]

Something about MacLaine beggars intelligent response, whether it is the provocative and perhaps illegal things her body did in Sweet Charity or the improbable and certainly entertaining things her soul has been doing for the last several thousand years. Beloved dancer and actress and the author of ten best-selling "memoirs," she concedes that she is now occasionally confused. She admits only to confusion about her car keys, but the rest of us, while glad of her company, wish she would clarify our confusion about whether she is talking about Ocean's Eleven, Star Beings, Stephen Hawking, or Atlantis, all of which she discusses with eager rapidity. In this fine roller-coaster ride of memory, speculation, and prognostication, MacLaine has a mighty good time, and many readers will be happy to ride with her. P.S. Just hang on until December 12, 2012, and tell them Shirley sent you. For most collections. [See Prepub Alert, 7/07.]

It is too seldom that the Spiritual Living section of LJ has an opportunity to read and review a real love story, but this is such a book, the affecting and eloquent account of a man and a chocolate-colored donkey named Gribouille. Merrifield, author of important biocritical studies of Henri Lefebvre and Guy Debord, as well as Metromarxism: A Marxist Tale of the City, tells the tale of his wander through the Haute-Avergne in southern France, learning the ways of his patient, strong, and stubborn donkey companion, who gradually shows him that "real happiness comes in unforeseen places, through surprising twists and turns, through honesty." Highly recommended.

The last ten years have seen unusual gestures toward rapprochement between traditional adversaries within the Christian tradition—namely, evangelicals and Roman Catholics. More and more conservative Christians concede that they have something to learn from the Pope's church; in this brief but striking book, theology professor Okholm (Azusa Pacific Univ.) finds and celebrates the values of humility, hospitality, stability, and balance. Most of all, perhaps, and most instructive for Catholics as well as his primary evangelical audience, he sees the power of monasticism, even now, to transform the world, "to function as a 'caution' sign…to guide our relationship with today's culture." For most collections.

Atheism's stock is high right now, as is Hitchens's, whose recent book, God Is Not Great, has given rise to much discussion and controversy. It is no surprise that Hitchens and a willing publisher might be intrigued by the possibility of cashing in on his recent success. The Portable Atheist, however, is a rather messy ragout of widely disparate readings—all provocative and entertaining but hardly a coherent statement. Lucretius, Thomas Jefferson, Emma Goldman, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, and many writers and thinkers as impressive as these all gave voice to their doubts, but as Hitchens does not seem to understand, they believed and disbelieved rather different things and argue from and for very different premises. The perceptive reader will feel much sorrow for the thousandfold human follies perpetrated in the name of religion and condemned here, but no case against God does The Portable Atheist make. Still, valuable for most collections.

The modern Catholic church has no more careful observer than Sipe (www.richardsipe.com), author of Sex, Priests, and Power and Celibacy in Crisis. This book continues to deepen Sipe's thoughtful and at times angry engagement with the Catholic church's policy on clerical celibacy, this time dwelling principally on writers—Andrew Greeley, Graham Greene, and J.F. Powers, to name a few. Sipe's book moves somewhat uneasily between life (the dubious examples of Coughlin and Sheen) and literature (the fictions of Joyce, Silone, and the others), and his writing is inelegant in the academic matter. However, his work as a kind of prophet for a revised, renovated understanding of celibacy is important. For most collections

Williamson is unarguably one of the most visible and influential writers in spirituality and almost as puzzling as the book that was her inspiration and the foundation of her early fame, A Course in Miracles. Raised in a Jewish household, Williamson, after a string of personal mishaps entirely typical of American life, found her way to the Course, a book dictated by, so its "medium" Helen Schucman claimed, the voice of Jesus. Williamson's book-length exposition of Schucman's curious post-Christian mysticism, Return to Love (1992), became a best seller. Williamson's later work has distanced itself from the Course, and The Age of Miracles is hardly an exception to this later practice—it is a grab bag of anecdote, precepts, and bland advice on middle age (Williamson herself is in her middle fifties). Its publication, although it scarcely mentions the Course, will coincide (or perhaps the better word is converge) with Williamson's new lectures on the Course on Oprah Winfrey's radio channel, XM 156. The force of Oprah's approbation is so great as to render review almost irrelevant, but we will say that The Age of Miracles is more of the same for the persuaded and will not damage innocent minds. For most collections.