by Bill Belknap ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 30, 2015
A cheerful reflection on a life of Christian observance, and a tender remembrance of loved ones lost.
A debut book offers a brief meditation on love, family, and religious devotion.
Belknap has never tried his hand at writing before, but after a long life for which he’s brimming with gratitude, he felt inspired to put pen to paper. An engineer by training, he traveled the world working for oil companies, visiting Colombia, Iran, and England. He eventually married Carolyn, his first wife, but after a series of debilitating illnesses, she finally died. Belknap also tragically lost a daughter to a car accident, and his second wife, Donna, died as well. But no matter what hardships befell him, Belknap found solace and encouragement in his Christian faith. More specifically, an unconditional love of Jesus served as ballast during stormy seas. This is a very short book—the author more than once refers to it as an “essay”—and can be read in one relatively short sitting. Part self-help book, part memoir, the volume is also an homage to Donna—Belknap even provides a chapter-length poem that memorializes his love for her and includes these lines: “She truly loved me too, and often told me so. / She frequently told me that she loved me more every day, / and I often told her I loved her more every day too.” The author’s prose is unadorned and lucid, and consistently suffused with an unpretentiously avuncular charm. Occasionally, there are some excesses: for example, after a life filled with the blessings of family, it seems implausible when the author claims that writing this book “has been the most rewarding experience of my life.” Furthermore, his perspective is unabashedly Christian, so the message is unlikely to resonate with the unconverted. But it should appeal even to those who are already deeply committed to Christianity, because the book emphasizes not just accepting God, but being open to the myriad ways he communicates to his flock: “One time, a long time ago, in reviewing my life with God, I recall a time when God may have been talking to me and I was not listening, did not want to hear, or most likely had not learned to listen.” The readers who will get the most out of the work will surely be those who know the author, but Christians looking for a quick source of encouragement should be satisfied.
A cheerful reflection on a life of Christian observance, and a tender remembrance of loved ones lost.Pub Date: June 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4908-8495-0
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2016
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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