Thoughtful and instructive, but Tickle makes the faith she practices seem awfully easy, and in her depiction reality is...
Citing encounters with seminal individuals, transforming experiences, and enlightening epiphanies, noted religious authority Tickle (God-Talk in America, 1997) relates how she came to live a life shaped by prayer and spirituality.
As much a primer on how to pray as an autobiographical account of the journey Tickle took from her original Presbyterianism to Episcopalianism, the book opens in Johnson City, Tennessee, where she was raised. Tickle was an only child of intelligent and loving parents. Her father, who taught at the local university, encouraged her to read widely. Mother set her alarm early so she could pray before rising, and each afternoon she would spend time alone in the living room devoted to the same purpose. This solitary, uninterrupted ritual taught Tickle from early childhood “the first two basic principles of prayer: It requires a disciplined routine and is . . . best practiced by a composed mind and spirit.” At college, a mentor introduced her to the Book of Common Prayer; in Memphis in 1955, newly married to medical student Sam Tickle, she found that reading T.S Eliot rescued her from “the cultural mindset of Christianized theism” and revealed “the highly personal role of a confessing Christian.” Her faith was further transformed by teaching high school, a summer job at the local Jewish Community Center, and a near-death experience after one of the many miscarriages she endured before bearing seven children. In the South Carolina mill town where Sam was the local doctor, an encounter with a retired missionary who spoke of the mysterious workings of the spirit completed Tickle’s road map for the life she would lead. She ends her account back home in Memphis in the mid-1960s.
Thoughtful and instructive, but Tickle makes the faith she practices seem awfully easy, and in her depiction reality is almost uniformly sunny and inspiring.Pub Date: April 17, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-49755-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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
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