by Irene Weinberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 10, 2001
A compassionate, creative and well-intentioned memoir.
A memoir and treatise on faith, love, and life after death.
Weinberg (Love’s Eternal Marriage, 2012) presents a new edition of her book, first published in 2001, exploring the ramifications of her husband Saul’s tragic death in an automobile accident, which she survived. Shortly after the tragedy, Weinberg received a strong spiritual message telling her that she should “be loving and kind to everyone.” As she physically recovered and grappled with her grief, she encountered several mediums and spiritual healers who hinted that Saul might still be with her in spirit. She eventually found her way to a healer who claimed to have direct messages from Saul. In his messages, Weinberg says, Saul explained life beyond the grave, the nature of Heaven, and human beings’ true purpose on Earth: “Your soul purpose is the gift you came here to share with the human race, no matter how simple or grand it may seem,” he said. “It also involves the personal relationship lessons you came here to learn this time around.” For Saul and Irene, he said, this lesson took the form of multiple lives spent as soul mates, spanning major events of world history and the specific history of the Jewish people. These stories add narrative drama to a book that mainly serves to explain Weinberg’s ideas on how people can come to grips with the concept of life after death, and how they can live better lives on Earth. The prose is straightforward, with little literary or aesthetic embellishment, but it makes the ideas easy to understand. However, the author gives little attention to her own personal, emotional experiences, aside from the details necessary to set the scenes, and this somewhat obscures the story of her emotional journey. That said, this is a big-hearted, earnest memoir that shows Weinberg’s clear desire to help readers. Believers in spiritualism and life after death will find plenty of food for thought.
A compassionate, creative and well-intentioned memoir.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2001
ISBN: 978-1493618668
Page Count: 160
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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by Kerry Egan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 25, 2016
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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