by Vincent C. Grote ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 2, 2013
A casual, humorous boost for day-to-day spirituality.
A relaxed, affirming daily devotional for today’s Christian readers.
Grote, a youth pastor and men’s ministry leader, started writing down his thoughts on various Bible verses to share with his family members, and he’s now assembled that collection here as a yearlong devotional for a wider audience. Each week, he introduces a short verse from the Bible, and then, for each day of that week, he expands on his interpretation and its applications to modern-day life. Grote’s main objective in each day is to stress an image of a personable, caring God. “Your Daddy God loves you and wants you to enjoy the here and now,” he writes, often mixing in slang and unusual spellings to assert his vision of a less formal relationship with God. The relaxed style helps distance himself from more traditional or judgmental religious writings. “I have no idea what smoting is,” he says of the punishments from the Old Testament, “but I don’t want any part of it.” Grote uses each verse to compel readers to put their faith in God to solve any problems they may face. He uses examples from his own life, ranging from real estate to serious family problems, always emphasizing that “Super-crazy, extreme abundance in every area of your life—that is what your Daddy God wants for you.” There are some brief historical contexts for the verses, paying particular attention to different translations of the Bible, i.e., “I shall not want” versus “I lack nothing” and “I have all that I need.” But these insights are mostly stray observations that Grote loosely links together. The days lack a specific topic or theme, and the use of only one verse for every week leads to repetition and a limited amount of Scripture. In his introduction, Grote encourages the reader “not to disregard something because it goes against what you have been taught or due to my very grammatically incorrect writing style,” yet readers looking for a focused, in-depth study of the Bible may still want to look elsewhere.
A casual, humorous boost for day-to-day spirituality.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490809922
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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
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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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