An engaging and valuable book about living a more loving and purposeful life.
Schroeder (On Social Justice: St. Basil the Great, 2009) offers a guide to a spiritually vibrant existence.
The author draws on his own past as a former Greek Orthodox priest in this enlightening instructional volume. Six spiritual practices form the bedrock of his teachings: “Compassionate Seeing,” “Heartfelt Listening,” “Intentional Welcoming,” “Joyful Sharing,” “Grateful Receiving,” and “Cooperative Building.” Regarding the first practice, he urges readers to be more curious about others: “Compassionate Seeing allows us to view the world in sharp definition, without the distorted lenses of our judgments.” To develop heartfelt listening, Schroeder recommends using the phrase, “Please tell me more.” Acknowledging people’s feelings, he says, is another form of heartfelt listening. He introduces the Greek term “acedia,” defined as “numbness, a state of unfeeling, disconnection from our deepest self.” This condition can be dangerous, he says, as some people will do anything, even if it’s self-destructive, to feel alive. Tuning in to one’s emotions, he asserts, can allow one to find more peace and joy. In the section on intentional welcoming, Schroeder demonstrates healthy boundary-setting and saying “yes” only to things that matter most. To share joyfully, he says, one must give gifts of time, energy, and attention without obligation. He advocates focusing on intentions rather than expectations and on accepting failure as part of the process. The final section about cooperative building focuses on community: “Strength…is inviting others to help us improve on our ideas,” he writes. Schroeder’s writing is clear, tight, and comprehensive. He illustrates each principle with parables and examples, though many of the scenarios involve parenting (“Say, for instance, I have a young son who is playing on a softball team, but is afraid of being hit by the ball”) or take place in office environments, which may not resonate with all readers. His simple, effective mantras, however, allow readers to immediately apply the book’s principles to their lives (such as “I accept everything I see” or “I receive the gift that is offered”). He recognizes the challenges of change but he effectively reminds his audience that this book contains ongoing practices—not pinnacles to be reached.
An engaging and valuable book about living a more loving and purposeful life.Pub Date: June 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-83087-1
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Hexad Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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