An uplifting reassurance that sound Christian faith can be patiently molded.
An examination of Christianity that features a pottery theme.
In this slim nonfiction work, Romero takes the millennia-old analogy comparing Christianity with pottery and expands on it through personal and faith-based avenues. The analogy extends all the way back to the book of Jeremiah. Throughout his own work, the author returns regularly to the concept of believers shaping and being shaped as their faith grows and develops. This idea feeds naturally into the comparison of God to a potter: an artist who has firmly in mind the lovely shape of a piece of work even though the finished product isn’t even remotely guessable from the raw materials. Romero naturally links this to the process of faith and salvation. “Only by faith and through the blood of Jesus can we grow into our full potential, into salvation,” he writes. “He builds His purpose into us to contain and demonstrate His image and talented glory.” In the course of his volume, the author shares black-and-white photographs of his own pottery in order to illustrate the various applications of his analogy: the raw clay, the work in progress, the broken piece that’s waiting to be lovingly restored. Along the way, the technical details of pottery are woven seamlessly with Romero’s observations about the nature of the Christian faith. “As the potter’s hands cannot work with the clay without water,” he writes at one point, “in the same manner, God cannot work on us directly without Jesus, the bearer of His grace and mercy.” The author wisely keeps his book’s page count low and manageable—this analogy can only be stretched so far, after all—and although his own personal explications of Christian salvation are standard fare, they’re very effectively enlivened by the metaphor structure he’s chosen. His Christian readers will find this latest elaboration on Jeremiah’s pottery metaphor calming and thought-provoking whether or not they’ve ever seen a potter’s wheel.
An uplifting reassurance that sound Christian faith can be patiently molded.Pub Date: April 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-973687-58-0
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
In this highly learned yet accessible book, Robinson offers believers fresh insight into a well-studied text.
A deeply thoughtful exploration of the first book of the Bible.
In this illuminating work of biblical analysis, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Robinson, whose Gilead series contains a variety of Christian themes, takes readers on a dedicated layperson’s journey through the Book of Genesis. The author meanders delightfully through the text, ruminating on one tale after another while searching for themes and mining for universal truths. Robinson approaches Genesis with a reverence and level of faith uncommon to modern mainstream writers, yet she’s also equipped with the appropriate tools for cogent criticism. Throughout this luminous exegesis, which will appeal to all practicing Christians, the author discusses overarching themes in Genesis. First is the benevolence of God. Robinson points out that “to say that God is the good creator of a good creation” sets the God of Genesis in opposition to the gods of other ancient creation stories, who range from indifferent to evil. This goodness carries through the entirety of Genesis, demonstrated through grace. “Grace tempers judgment,” writes the author, noting that despite well-deserved instances of wrath or punishment, God relents time after time. Another overarching theme is the interplay between God’s providence and humanity’s independence. Across the Book of Genesis, otherwise ordinary people make decisions that will affect the future in significant ways, yet events are consistently steered by God’s omnipotence. For instance, Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers, and that action has reverberated throughout the history of all Jewish people. Robinson indirectly asks readers to consider where the line is between the actions of God and the actions of creation. “He chose to let us be,” she concludes, “to let time yield what it will—within the vast latitude granted by providence.”
In this highly learned yet accessible book, Robinson offers believers fresh insight into a well-studied text.Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780374299408
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
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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