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WALKING A SACRED PATH

REDISCOVERING THE LABYRINTH AS A SPIRITUAL TOOL

An enthusiastic account of how the 12th-century labyrinth in Chartres' cathedral has become a tool for rediscovering the feminine in San Francisco. According to Artress, a therapist and the first woman canon of San Francisco's Episcopalian Grace Cathedral, the tyranny of the Age of Reason is losing its grip. Consequently, the Christian Church is faced with the challenge of people who are concerned more with spirituality, ``the inner growth that happens in each of us,'' than with the more outward forms of worship and doctrine. Artress suggests that the medieval labyrinth can give us the kind of integration of reason and imagination that we need today. Thousands of visitors at Grace Cathedral have walked a canvas reproduction of the Chartres labyrinth, and Artress quotes some of their testimonies to deep emotional and psychological healing. She tells us that, unlike a maze, which has many paths and calls on masculine powers of logic to choose the right one, a labyrinth offers only one profound choice and thus gives scope to our intuitive, feminine powers. She explains the effects in Jungian terms: integration of the Shadow and healing of the split between thought and feeling as we rediscover the need for ritual. Although Artress is eloquent in describing the spiritual impasse of many people today, she spoils her case for the labyrinth by basing it partly on a poorly researched view of the Middle Ages. She makes no real attempt to integrate her insights into the Church's tradition, which she caricatures as a kind of patriarchal Deism. Indeed, her credentials as a Christian theologian are undermined by her assertion that intercessory prayer to Mary only came with the 12th-century Cistercians and by equating Mary with the Holy Spirit or the ``feminine aspect of God.'' Sensitive in describing personal experiences but lacking in historical and theological depth—an illustration of how theology can become the handmaid of therapy.

Pub Date: May 1, 1995

ISBN: 1-57322-007-8

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

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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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

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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