by Nancy Wilson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1995
Wilson, senior pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) of Los Angeles, takes the Bible back from fundamentalists and the Christian right and gives her own interpretation of the text that embraces queer believers. A self-described ecu-terrorist, Wilson is on a mission to invite gay, lesbian, and bisexual people into a church that affirms their sexuality. The MCC was born out of a desperate need to provide its members with a safe place to worship; it serves a diverse congregation from all denominations and lifestylesan inclusive community in terms of sexual preference, race, and class. (Wilson is particularly savvy about race and class and calls comparisons of oppression ``odious.'') She identifies herself as a ``queer millennialist'' who won't accept the promise of heaven as a substitute for justice on earthand reassures others of ``gays goin' to heaven.'' As she once told Jerry Falwell: ``Jerry, the only reason I would want to die before you is that I want to be on heaven's welcome wagon and see the look on your face when you get there.'' Wilson feels it part of her ministry to try heal others of the pain that can come from being closeted and rejected by mainstream biblical interpretations. She urges others to read the Bible through their own lens; here she examines how she believes the Bible has been misused to oppress the gay community. ``Expanding'' the silence found in the Bible, Wilson proposes that Jesus was bisexual; Lazarus was his ``beloved disciple''; and the tales of Jonathan and David and Ruth and Naomi are heterosexually coopted homoerotic texts. Often funny and irreverent, Wilson makes theology personal and readable while bravely pushing the limits of religion and sexuality.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-069396-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
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by Ann Wilson ; Nancy Wilson with Charles R. Cross
by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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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by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien
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by Albert Camus translated by Arthur Goldhammer edited by Alice Kaplan
by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
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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