A short but richly pragmatic approach to prayer.
Rowlett (Praying Together, 2002, etc.), a retired Methodist minister and author of four previous books about Christian devotion, offers a helpful, concise guide to prayer.
This book is written not only for readers who want to include prayer in the fabric of their lives, but also for study groups, and as such, it can provide a useful prayer framework. The author distinguishes between “primitive” concepts that locate the divine “out there somewhere” and her concept of a Christian God who knows the secrets of the human heart. “The heart has been described as the location of God’s presence,” Rowlett writes. “Perhaps because it has been thought of as the source of life, the core of a person’s being.” In a simple, clear and straightforward style, this brief book sets out precise prayer methodologies that can be used for many different circumstances and challenges in life. Each chapter focuses on a different type of prayer, and the author explores these approaches in some depth, enriching her discussion of prayer’s practical uses. The book then provides a series of prayer prompts that readers may use according to their own personal needs. Rowlett develops a careful methodology—a Benedictine way of using reading, reflection, response and contemplation to develop an active, engaged prayer practice. Although the author often provides examples of prayers from her Methodist background, she also draws from other sources, including the late German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Rick Warren, the conservative pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. She also continually reflects on the challenges that contemporary Christian practitioners face in developing and nurturing prayer. “Careful listening is a challenge in the twenty-first century,” Rowlett writes, and she underscores the necessity of paying close attention to one’s inner counsel when establishing a regular prayer practice.
A short but richly pragmatic approach to prayer.Pub Date: June 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1449795153
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
