bookshelf

THE HEAVENLY WORSHIP ROOM

Name: THE HEAVENLY WORSHIP ROOM
Author: Raelynn Parkin
ISBN: 978-1-64151-148-3

by Raelynn Parkin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 2018

An examination of worship and biblical ideas that sometimes gets lost in arcane language.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

bookshelf

A BETTER WORLD FOR OUR CHILDREN

REBUILDING AMERICAN FAMILY VALUES

by Benjamin Spock ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 19, 1994

bookshelf

At 91, Spock (Dr. Spock on Parenting, 1988, etc.) offers his twilight thoughts on American society—and they're not happy ones. Although Spock's jabs come from the political left, his diagnosis is not unlike that of social conservatives like William Bennett. Among his points: The unraveling of family cohesiveness is a major cause of the country's social ills; there is a ``progressive coarsening of the society's attitude toward love and sexuality, which is further cheapened and exploited by television, films and popular music.'' But Spock also argues for better day-care facilities so that single motherhood needn't sentence both parent and child to poverty. He also discusses racial and gender discrimination. At heart, the old doctor is battling against a bottom-line, instrumental valuation of human life, an obsession with material riches rather than an appreciation of emotional richness.

Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1994

ISBN: 1-882605-12-8

Page Count: 224

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

bookshelf

ONCE UPON A TELEPHONE

AN ILLUSTRATED SOCIAL HISTORY

by Ellen Stern & illustrated by Emily Gwathmey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1994

bookshelf

Among the more amusing facts in this cultural history of the telephone is that, back in the old days, women were called upon to be telephone operators because boys, who initially had the jobs, ``were ill-suited to the delicate work of telephony. Rowdy and restless, they took pleasure in insulting callers, pulling pranks, and crossing wires.'' Filled with movie stills and posters, ads, and text from all kinds of sources, this lively documentary is less concerned with the evolving technology of the telephone than with the way it has been used and represented. Maxwell Smart's shoe phone is here, as is an excerpt from Nicholson Baker's Vox, as Stern (Best Bets, not reviewed) and Gwathmey (Wholly Cow!, not reviewed) rush happily from Alexander Graham Bell to the age of the fax-modem. Still, there's probably a good argument to be made that the pranks of punk kids were preferable to the icy contempt of voice mail.