An enlightening though unpolished take on a universal subject, which could prove useful for pastors and worship leaders...
Landon’s debut Christian devotional book goes where relatively few such books have gone by examining how grief can influence Christian worship.
Landon states several times in his book that he has observed a correlation between grief and a bereaved person’s interaction with the rest of the world, including their church participation. As a pastor of several different churches and a former hospice chaplain, Landon wrote this book to combat this troubling link. After describing the grieving process, he offers ways to invite the notion of grief into worship services. He presents complete worship services for a variety of occasions, from All Saints Day to Ash Wednesday to run-of-the-mill Sundays that may fall near the anniversary of the death of an important church member. In his services, he includes hymns, litanies, special poems and readings, and even full texts of sermons. Although he acknowledges that every church will pick and choose elements from these services to match their own styles, seeing a complete service helps convey the tone and intent behind the offering. Landon also discusses the importance of rituals in the grieving process, in both personal and communal worship. Rituals can be as complex as a full funeral service or as simple as lighting candles. One particular ritual that receives in-depth examination is walking a labyrinth—an ancient, revered Christian tradition that’s tied to the theme of grieving through worship—but with an entire chapter devoted to the practice, it seems out of place. It’s obviously a passion of Landon’s, although it’s not quite clear why walking a labyrinth has been singled out here. Also, a distracting number of grammatical errors detract from the thought-provoking premise.
An enlightening though unpolished take on a universal subject, which could prove useful for pastors and worship leaders trying to reach their own grieving members.Pub Date: May 29, 2012
ISBN: 978-1468563580
Page Count: 336
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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