Highly literate treatment of a vital element in the Christian tradition.
Thoughtful overview of the seminal Christian prayer.
Parini, a noted author of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, offers a brief but densely packed reflection that views the Lord’s Prayer with the eyes of both a believer and a scholar. His approach is deeply personal yet informed throughout by the thoughts of others. Dividing the prayer into 11 parts, he thoroughly examines each line in turn. Noting early on that “This prayer stands in the juncture of Jewish and Christian traditions,” he makes an effort to tie the Christian prayer to its original roots in a Jewish milieu. In his chapter on the phrase, “And forgive us our trespasses,” for example, he notes, “Our prayer for pardon presupposes that we need to repair the world,” tying the phrase to the similar Jewish concept of tikkun olam. More broadly, he aims to provide an intellectually informed framework for understanding and appreciating the believer’s relationship to God through prayer as a whole. In so doing, he draws on an impressive array of writers: Whitman, Shakespeare, Tillich, Buber, Pagels, Barth, Augustine, Aquinas—the list goes on. Bob Dylan even makes a cameo appearance in Parini’s cavalcade of thinkers. Though open to modern critical readings of scripture, his work is relatively traditionalist in tone, and the author is clearly interested in the text as a spiritual tool rather than as a subject for academic inquiry. Written by a mature, erudite believer, it speaks best to a similar audience of readers. At least a passing familiarity with both early and modern theologians, Jewish traditions, and the interplay between religion and literature is required for full engagement with this brief but contemplative work.
Highly literate treatment of a vital element in the Christian tradition.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9798898950071
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Morehouse Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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