A sincere, practical guide for adding flags to faith.
A primer on the spiritual side of flags.
Harris writes in a simple, straightforward style about her experience bringing song, dance and flags into communal and individual worship. She discusses the presence of flags in the Bible as a means of gathering people together, indicating allegiance and heralding events, with textual support from biblical quotes and linguistic examinations into the roots of words like “standard” and “banner.” Her use of flags is firmly situated in a severe view of prayer as spiritual warfare against evil, which can sometimes seem incongruous with her opinions of flags as tools and representations of love and healing. However, this belief is well supported and stirring, if potentially challenging to some who may see prayer and worship in a gentler light. Harris explains how to construct a flag—even suggesting colors and what they could represent—and provides a helpful chapter with explanations and diagrams of certain flag movements to help beginning flag-wavers get started. Besides these basics, Harris also brings in her own experiences with the Holy Spirit, which often seem to involve God taking things—be they steering wheels or flags—out of her hands. Physically losing control takes on spiritual meanings in light of the full-body worship style she describes. With that in mind, Harris provides a context for the use of flags in worship, which may be an unfamiliar practice to many readers. Chapters connect well to each other, though some rearranging would make the overall flow of the book more fluid. Nevertheless, Harris writes earnestly and unpretentiously from a place of deep faith and motivation. A list of references and a section for notes make the book a helpful jumping-off point for those looking to bring more movement and flair into their religion.
A sincere, practical guide for adding flags to faith.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-1449727666
Page Count: 108
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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