An examination of worship and biblical ideas that sometimes gets lost in arcane language.
A writer’s vision leads her to explore the tabernacles of the Bible.
The founder of the Bride Song Ministries, the author focuses her religious efforts on worship and “restoring the Glory to the priesthood and to the church.” Parkin’s (Unlocking Worship Entering His Presence, 2014) latest book begins with a vision she received in 2004 when her ministry was taking over a new building. She discovered that God had plans for a small room the size of a walk-in closet—an “unfolding revelation....a teaching room” that had “many lessons inherent in its design.” The book includes pictures of the finished product, with gold walls accented with crimson to represent the glory and the blood. But most important was the “pattern” she received from God of how to construct and arrange the room: “He assured me this is how he led both Moses and David.” The connection of the room’s pattern to these two major figures leads the author to explore the tabernacles of Moses and David at length as both physical and spiritual spaces. Using King James concordances and a brief review of certain translations, Parkin deftly argues that Jesus himself was the vessel or tabernacle for the modern church, connecting Christian worship with ancient Jewish lore. In line with this driving thesis, there is something intriguing and almost anachronistic about the author’s prose. Her phrasing and terminology are more in line with a hymnal scribe than a contemporary Christian author, returning often to the imagery and metaphors of the “bridegroom.” At times, the effect manages to elevate something ordinary to the mystical and sacred, such as a closet being described as “a place where the Love song of the Bride would move the heart of her King, a place of romance and the Dance.” But overall, the effect is one of distance—rather than making esoteric and ancient ideas more accessible for readers, Parkin’s language only renders them more cryptic.
An examination of worship and biblical ideas that sometimes gets lost in arcane language.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64151-148-3
Page Count: 154
Publisher: LitFire Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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