Spiritual Living

By Graham Christian -- Library Journal, 7/15/2008

"High summer holds the earth," as James Agee said, along with blockbusters, sequels, comedies, Oscar hopefuls, and reruns. Our spiritual blockbusters this season include a sort of novel by Deepak Chopra, a dialog with the Dalai Lama, and from-the-hip Bible readings with Mother Angelica. Richard Schmidt has followed up his edited anthology of Anglican writers with a sequel of global outlook in God Seekers, while Richard Smoley continues the success of Inner Christianity with Conscious Love. James McConnachie's The Book of Love and Dianne Durante's Everyday Symbols for Joyful Living brighten up the scene with glimpses at exotic sexuality and the beauty of the everyday, while Liebert's excellent The Way of Discernment elevates the tone, and Sharon Janis reruns her popular Spirituality for Dummies in a second edition.

Any day that the strange and austere spirits of François Fénelon, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Louisa May Alcott can be invoked is a good one as far as this reviewer goes. Best-selling spiritual guide and self-help author Chopra has turned to the didactic novel used to such notable effect by the aforementioned writers in this story of Mickey Fellows, a comedian working in Los Angeles who gradually learns the lessons imparted by "Francisco" about the nature of reality and illusion, moving toward a more generous and outward-focused life. While Chopra's book is exceedingly thin as a novel, his message is as benign as ever. The book includes an introduction by comedian Mike Meyers ("Mickey"?). For most collections.

Dalbey is one of the more prominent figures in the Christian men's movement; some readers may know him already from Healing the Masculine Soul, Fight Like a Man, or Father and Son: The Wound, the Healing, the Call to Manhood. Here, Dalbey moves into new and more dangerous territories: memoir and demon possession. Self-important memoirs by little ministers fly through LJ's offices without cease. Dalbey redeems the impulse to talk about himself by focusing on the true peril: demons. He views demons as real and literal, both in Scripture and modern life, but he also sees that they mirror weaknesses in the self. Some readers may be dismayed by his literalism, as well as his reliance on dubious armchair psychology (did you know that lesbians hate women because of their cold mothers?), but Dalbey has a strong readership.

Durante, "a lifetime educator and family therapist," or so her publicists assure us, has written a book that ought not to succeed on any terms and ends by charming and instructing. Her premise is that some of the humblest and most ordinary items in our lives—a penny, an elastic band, a candle—have immense symbolic value and can be used, once that value is seen, as tools for meditation and further personal growth. The penny, for instance, can remind us to listen ("A penny for your thoughts…"), to see two sides, or to pay attention to our relationship with money. Each section includes activities and a recap of the symbol's meanings.

British Indian journalist Fernandes (Holy Warriors) has a knack for locating little-known but intriguing subjects but doesn't always seem certain what to do with the result. This book sheds light on the near-invisible and tragically divided communities of "White" and "Black" Jews of Kerala in southwestern India. Their story, characterized by the bitterness unique to family quarrels, is one of racism and petty squabbling over primacy that extended through their years of impressive prosperity to their current dismal situation, as they have dwindled to a single synagogue and fewer than 50 souls, "White" and "Black" together. While fascinating, the book is less a history than an uneasy mixture of reportage, thin research, interviews, and impressions.

Another title from, or more properly, created around, the beloved Dalai Lama, this book represents a kind of convergence of differing but not perhaps inherently contradictory worlds: that of Tibetan Buddhism and that of the science of the observation of human emotions, as represented by Ekman (Emotions Revealed), an expert on Charles Darwin's still-underrated work on the expressions of the emotions in humans and animals. Their conversations touch on questions of emotional balance, anger, and the range and limits of compassion, but a brief review can hardly do justice to the range and depth of this fine book, which ought to draw not only the Dalai Lama's considerable readership but also those attracted to scientific approaches to Buddhistic thought.

The inevitable has occurred: we are "dummies" again. Like most of the books in the "Dummies" series, this second edition is attractively laid out, divided into brief chapters, and punctuated with icons ("Tip," "Try This," "Words of Wisdom"), but the sections Janis devotes to dharma and karma should be a clue that, despite the author's intention to reach all faiths, her spirituality of affirmation, balance, and awareness is likely to make more sense to non-Western seekers than to Jews, Muslims, or Christians. Still, this is by no means the only "Dummies" book for the spiritual reader; others include Christianity for Dummies, Catholicism for Dummies, and Islam for Dummies, to name a few. The book includes a CD of inspirational music.

Liebert (Changing Life Patterns) here offers multum in parvo with this brief but excellent book on "discernment," the process of attempting to make decisions that are in tune both with the self and with God's will. Liebert approaches her subject with subtletly and intelligence and writes with unfussed clarity; better yet, her brief chapters feature clearly described actions or exercises that illustrate her points and advance the sorts of discernment she recommends.

McConnachie's writing experience comes principally, it seems, from his role as author or coauthor of more than a dozen "Rough Guides," and while it might be a slight exaggeration to call this a "rough guide" to a smooth text and its strange progress through Indian and Western culture, it would not be altogether off the mark. It is the story of the Kamasutra, a long poem describing and celebrating the lives of sophisticates in ancient India, including but by no means limited to advice on amorous conquest and sexual positions. McConnachie's brief book hardly allows him to treat the full range of issues here, from ancient sex to modern mores. Interested readers may want to look at Dane Kennedy's biography of Richard Burton, The Highly Civilized Man, or Wendy Doniger's recent translation of the Kamasutra for more of the fascinating story.

Much-published poet McDowell's new book attempts two difficult tasks: to speak sincerely of spirituality and to create a kind of primer for writing poetry. Many books have attempted each of these separately, of course, but very few together, and it is inevitable that McDowell would give short shrift to each in a book of under 300 pages. McDowell begins with poetry as an entry into spirituality before moving toward the technical aspects of poetry itself (rhyme, meter, form, genre). The book includes many richly rewarding poems (more than a few by McDowell himself) and, if necessarily tentative, is a truly innovative contribution to spiritual reading.

Mother Angelica, born Rita Rizzo in 1923 and founder of the Eternal Word Television Network as well as the Poor Clare Convent of Our Lady of the Angels in Alabama, could be the nun sent down by the Central Casting Office: strict, folksy, and wary of high talk and big ideas. Through her long-popular TV broadcasts (still to be seen in repeat on her program) and her many publications, Mother Angelica has exerted a powerful influence in the United States and across the world as a voice of conventional and conservative Catholicism. After Mother Angelica suffered a series of strokes in the early 2000s, Arroyo began to assemble and edit some of her unpublished writings. Her interest in Scripture is unusual for a Poor Clare (not one of the "learned" orders), but she would doubtless be proud to concede that her readings and her spirituality alike are unsophisticated. This companion volume to Arroyo's Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons is likely to appeal to the same broad audience. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/08.]

Russell (Hunger and Songs of the Fluteplayer) has produced an oblique memoir that is also an apology—in the old, theological sense—for pantheism, the sense that the universe is God and that God is nothing apart from the universe. She finds support for her views in the writings and examples of the likes of Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Walt Whitman, Marcus Aurelius, and D.H. Lawrence. If Russell's prose does not always sing with the fervor she evidently feels for the writers and the landscapes she loves, her book still fills a gap since few contemporary spiritual writings bear witness to an experience of pantheism. For most collections.

A successor of sorts to Schmidt's Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality, this is yet more ambitious, reaching much farther back into Christian history and across languages and cultures to celebrate the richness and diversity of the many Christian approaches to God and a holy life. Schmidt's selections are catholic, to say the least, embracing Origen, Benedict, Luther, Ignatius, and Thérèse of Lisieux as well as lesser-known or more surprising choices like Jean-Pierre de Caussade (The Sacrament of the Present Moment), R.A. Torrey (a pioneer fundamentalist), and novelist Madeleine L'Engle. Schmidt's thoughtful introduction asks readers to be mindful of the rich polarities in the Christian tradition, and his brief prefaces and questions for reflection intelligently contextualize the excerpts from each writer. Highly recommended.

Smoley, former editor of the journal Gnosis and author of Inner Christianity and Forbidden Faith, is adept at unknotting the paradoxes of spiritual traditions and making new connections across centuries and languages. In his newest book, he tackles the vexed question of love, which he avers has a unique place at the center of Christian spirituality yet eludes precise classification—as most know, there are at least four words translated as "love" in New Testament Greek alone. Smoley has written that rare book that should exert a strong appeal for Christian and non-Christian readers alike. Highly recommended.

At the heart of Swenson's book on the foods of the ancient Near East is the unstated but fascinating assumption that a literal closeness to the experience of life as it was lived in Jesus's time is crucial to Christian experience today—that inner experience and metaphorical understandings won't quite do it. That said, Swenson's book is a visually delicious and curiosity-delighting book, stuffed with history, recipes, growing advice, services, children's activities, a quiz, lists of Bible gardens, gardening resources on the web, and colorful photographs. A rich and varied resource for its modest price; highly recommended.

Now—perhaps more than ever, in the years after 9/11, in a kind of instance of graveside humor—we jest about calamity with books like The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook or the Lemony Snicket series. The Book of Calamities is no jesting matter. Trachtenberg, an award-winning writer of essays and short stories and himself a recovering drug and alcohol abuser, pulls no punches in his depictions of mass murder, suicidal despair, martyrdom, disease, and the effects of natural catastrophe; he offers no easy answers. To Trachtenberg, the "true meaning" of such suffering is "not so much found as made, maybe the same way God is supposed to have made Adam, from breath and earth and spit" and that the creation of such meaning itself may ease the pain of suffering. Recommended for most collections.

West, the director of worship arts at the Woodmen Valley Chapel in Colorado Springs, has written a jazzy, upbeat defense and explanation of the place of the arts in Christian worship. Her book is addressed with equal fervor to artists who might hesitate in their own quest and to congregations, ministers, and committee members who can enrich the worship experience by their understanding support of artists of all kinds in the context of worship. Despite West's troubling tendency to use words and phrases such as impactful and list out, her accessible approach may open a number of minds. For larger collections.