Surprisingly frank and moving.
Memoir of a spiritual writer and poet who discovered relevance to her life and work in the longforgotten and difficult-to-define concept of acedia.
When Norris (The Virgin of Bennington, 2001, etc.) first encountered the word “acedia” in the writings of a fourth-century monk, Evagrius Ponticus, she instantly recognized it as an apt description of her spiritual malaise. Here she struggles to pin down the meaning, naming its components as apathy, boredom, enervating despair, restlessness and the absence of caring. She also attempts, not entirely satisfactorily, to distinguish this spiritual state from the psychological state of depression, which her husband, fellow poet David Dwyer, experienced. She explores acedia’s etymology and her personal history with it, sharing stories from her childhood, adolescence and long, crisis-plagued marriage. As a teenager, she responded by keeping busy, reading Kierkegaard’s thoughts on despair and writing prodigiously. As a young adult, having lost the religious moorings of her upbringing, she found that John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress awakened in her a renewed sense of conscience. Years later, as she became her husband’s full-time caregiver, acedia, which had never been totally absent from her spiritual life, renewed its grip on her, and with it, a temptation to doubt. Her attraction to monastic prayer and her strong interest in the monastic life—examined in her books Dakota (1993) and The Cloister Walk (1996)—is evident here in the numerous references to the writings of early monks and to conversations with Benedictines at the monastery near her home, where she is an oblate. In the final chapter, “Acedia: A Commonplace Book,” Norris presents dozens of quotations on the subject, demonstrating convincingly that soul weariness has been a persistent and troubling phenomenon throughout recorded history.
Surprisingly frank and moving.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59448-996-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A crisp and spirited argument for the near-total separation of church and state, by a former New York federal judge (Partisan Justice, 1980). Though Frankel seems defensive about the pamphletlike length of this book, its considerable charm is due in no small part to its brevity. It is a ``thumbnail history'' of the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses of the First Amendment, plus a ``sketch'' of recent church/state cases decided by the Supreme Court. The author has a sharp viewpoint and a precise and often witty pen. He begins by debunking the myth that American democracy was founded on the colonists' Christianity, noting surprisingly that they were ``relative[ly] indifferen[t] toward religion.'' According to Frankel, America was conceived as a secular nation, and for the most part, the modern Supreme Court has fortified the wall between church and state, forbidding nonsectarian silent prayers in public schools, striking down Florida ordinances outlawing Santer°a's animal sacrifices, and refusing to permit a group of Satmar Hasidic Jews to carve out a school district within their religious community in order to receive public funds for special education. But Frankel also criticizes the Court for permitting the city of Pawtucket, R.I., to display a cräche on public property, and the city of Pittsburgh a menorah; he prefers a simple, absolute rule forbidding even the most benign endorsement of religion by government. He blasts the Court's implication that it might endorse intentionally vague ``moment of silence'' laws in public schools, and he deplores the Court's upholding of the conviction of Rev. Sun Myung Moon for filing false tax returns (whether a bank account belonged to him or to his tax-exempt church was a close question that, like all close questions, ``should be decided for freedom''). Ultimately, this is a case for tolerance for all religions, even those unrepresented by majoritarian government—and for irreligion, too. A rare work that successfully distills a whole philosophical debate into a few accessible pages.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8090-4377-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
An eloquent social history of first-century Palestine by Horsley (Religion/Univ. of Massachusetts) and Silberman (The Hidden Scrolls, 1994). As the authors often reiterate, they are historians, not theologians; their goal is not to bolster or debunk the claims of the New Testament, but to contextualize them. They accomplish this by setting the stage of Christian beginnings in the first century, an era of profound social changes, such as escalating tenancy, spiraling indebtedness, and overtaxation by the burgeoning Roman bureaucracy. In Galilee, an obscure outpost of the empire, it became increasingly difficult for Jews to make a decent living (even fishing was transformed in this period from a seasonal, family occupation to a year-round export business, as enthusiasts in Rome developed a taste for the piquant). The region was ripe for social protest, and the authors claim this is how Christianity, ``a movement that boldly challenged the heartlessness and arrogance of a vast governmental bureaucracy,'' began. Jesus, the heart of this movement, constantly challenged Roman rule as illegitimate; the authors persuasively argue that even the ``render unto Caesar'' remark was Jesus' cryptic way of saying that everything belonged to God. The tenor of the movement changed markedly after Jesus' death, becoming more an urban than a rural phenomenon, but even under Paul it remained a social protest. Paul's remarkable missionary success was expedited by audiences' continued discontent with the Roman government, which made the promised immediate demise of all worldly principalities an attractive option. Paul displayed his protest by insisting on equality among persons; he took collections for the poor and even advocated the immediate abolition of the Roman institution of slavery. Paul's ideology was wildly popular, but not with the Roman authorities, who imprisoned him several times and eventually beheaded him for sedition. Stylishly written and rich in memorable detail, this is a rare find that actually offers fresh insight into the overstudied New Testament. (2 maps)
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-399-14194-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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