A thoughtful, deeply personal reflection on a controversial institution.
In Nelson’s debut memoir, a committed Catholic comes to terms with the fact that his son’s gay.
Expanding on his award-winning 2005 article for Notre Dame Magazine, “God Gave Me A Gay Son,” Nelson explores his son’s sexual orientation as well as his own growing awareness about life, family and the church. During a 2004 sermon that pushed for a measure on Michigan’s ballot to ban gay marriage, the author stood up, expressed his disgust and walked out of his church. How did a devout, unquestioning Catholic become an outspoken critic of the church’s homophobic policies and a fierce supporter of his son and the LBGT community? To answer this, Nelson delves into his own story, covering his strict Catholic upbringing, the rigors of raising six children, the revelation that his son was gay, his yearlong separation from his wife of 30 years, his emerging activism in the gay community and his struggles to cope with his wife’s death. Nelson’s memoir is a thorough study of a man coming to terms with his faith and his family. But the narrative does diverge on several tangents, including a large section on boating in the Great Lakes. But the story is consistently poignant and meaningful, buoyed by the author’s earnestness, his love for his family and his readiness to look at his own faults. Even when his writing wanders, Nelson’s work has heart; his insistence throughout the story that the experiences in his life have been a part of his continuing education feels authentic. Nelson frames himself as a layperson with important questions for his church, and his courage and curiosity should be appreciated by other adherents—not simply written off as the complaints of a disgruntled parishioner. His concerns are real, and the Church would be wise to listen.
A thoughtful, deeply personal reflection on a controversial institution.Pub Date: May 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475016741
Page Count: 312
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 8, 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
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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