by Ngoni Cash Daniels ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2017
A faith handbook whose main message of hope through a close working relationship with God will appeal to a broad spectrum of...
A conversational manual of Christian uplift.
In his nonfiction debut, Daniels stresses a concept of modern Christianity that centers on the pivotal nature of the present and underscores that change is happening now among millennial believers: “A time has come for this generation to rise up and shine,” Daniels writes, “destroying every evil foundation and bringing God back into our nations.” The book compensates for its relatively slender length by being heavily seeded with Scripture. Indeed, Daniels’ structure of quotation and commentary provides the backbone of his book and gives it a great deal of its strength; his Christian readers will often find his readings challenging or thought-provoking. The underlying theological outlook of this scriptural callback is correspondingly interactive: consistently, Daniels points out that belief in the Christian God is a partnership as much as it is a master-servant dynamic: “God invites us to reason with Him, no matter how bad our pasts are,” he writes. “He forgives and gives you the grace to fix your past mistakes.” Once the believer is on the road to fixing those errors, greater fulfillment—in both life and faith—is not only possible, with God’s help, but also encouraged, Daniels says. The book occasionally hits notes that are discordant with the modern world, as when it briefly discusses the role of women in society: “Women, being a strong support system (neck), try to lead without the proper faculty of sight,” he writes in one particularly unfortunate passage. “Imagine the neck telling the head where to go!” But generally, Daniels’ message of optimism shines through such impediments.
A faith handbook whose main message of hope through a close working relationship with God will appeal to a broad spectrum of believers.Pub Date: May 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-8498-5
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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 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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