Through a skillful, balanced blend of sympathetic insights into the human condition and wise observations gleaned from the...
A faith-based guide to finding freedom from the crippling effects of fear.
In this sensitive book, Episcopal priest and cultural anthropologist Golliher (A Deeper Faith: A Journey into Spirituality, 2008) offers helpful advice, in the form of personal recollections and stories, to individuals seeking to overcome fear, “one of the greatest obstacles in life.” The author begins by defining this devastating negative emotion and discussing the five insights he sees as necessary for a successful journey through it. Golliher systematically examines what he calls the “seven spiritual instincts”—awe, love, intent, conscience, community, rest and faith—and the relationship each has to fear. Through richly detailed anecdotes, he shows what these instincts are (as well as what they are not) and outlines methods or “spiritual practices” readers can use to cultivate them in their daily lives. He argues that by strengthening and refining these instincts, individuals can move through and beyond fear to experience “the joy that the great body of life” bestows on those who live in the “real world,” rather than the false and needlessly painful one fear can create. While the book is rooted in Christian spirituality, the author never loses sight of his ultimate mission to help all readers regardless of their religious backgrounds.
Through a skillful, balanced blend of sympathetic insights into the human condition and wise observations gleaned from the Bible, Golliher creates satisfying reading for a general—rather than strictly faith-based—audience that neither preaches nor attempts to proselytize.Pub Date: March 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58542-838-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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