An account that effectively touts the basic promises of Christian salvation.
A debut Christian memoir aims to impart hope in hopeless times.
“No one ever promised that life would be fair,” Lemaster writes in his approachable book. “We live in a fallen world; should we expect anything different?” The dark realities of that world are never far from the author’s ruminations on the life of the Christian faithful, but his account is nevertheless charged with hope and optimism that derive in large part from the promises he sees in Christian Scripture. Lemaster first came to receive Jesus as his savior as a teenager at his family’s Baptist church in the mountains of eastern Kentucky and has felt himself called and recalled over the following years, a rough spiritual relationship that the author describes with affecting honesty and directness. The most active part of that rocky relationship is Lemaster’s lifelong struggle with depression, which was “a constant companion” and often disrupted his walk of faith and filled him with sorrowful questions that should resonate with many of his readers: “Why did God make me the way I am? My pain and despair drove me to question: If God was real, why didn’t he hear me? Why didn’t he answer my prayers? Why didn’t he care?” Inner grappling like this could make the book a bleak and dispiriting slog, but even when he’s writing bluntly about the trials and heartaches facing his fellow Christians, he’s an unfailingly upbeat and optimistic companion who’s focused on the redemptive potential of his faith. “I wish I could give each of us three Bible verses and a prayer to overcome whatever failures have plagued us in the past,” he asserts, pointing out that life offers no quick fixes but then adding: “Whatever our moral failures may be, God desires to change us.” This positive strand running through the volume is based on very straightforward principles (as Lemaster writes at one point, it all boils down to “praise God!”). The combination of that simplicity and the conversational tone adopted throughout should appeal to a broad Christian audience.
An account that effectively touts the basic promises of Christian salvation.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-973600-32-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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