A deep-running meditation on reaching for the sublime despite obstacles.
Environmental advocate and nature writer Williams (Environmental Humanities/Univ. of Utah; The Open Space of Democracy, 2004, etc.) celebrates the “beauty of being brought together.”
Tesserae, the cut stone and glass and enamel used in making mosaics, usher in her leitmotif: that it is elemental to human nature and a measure of our compassion to recompose a unity that has been shattered. “I believe in the beauty of all things broken,” she writes, and mosaics provide a clear-cut example as she describes her apprenticeship in a mosaic workshop in Ravenna, Italy, where she found that “a spiritual history of evolving pagan and Christian perspectives can be read in a dazzling narrative of cut stones and glass.” Her other two instances of something broken are more oblique: the threatened prairie dog and violence in Rwanda. Prairie dogs are not charismatic animals like whales or wolves, especially not to golf-course managers and housing developers, and thus they test the range of human awareness and our remove from the basic rights of existence and commonwealth. Observing a prairie-dog clan, she immersed herself in their community. Her sentences are short, staccato, often incantatory, and arranged just so on the page (a mosaic of words). Williams stumbles a bit when trying to apply to humans her contention that “there is a perfection in imperfection,” as she witnessed in mosaics. It certainly doesn’t apply to those who committed genocide in Rwanda, where the author ventured as a scribe for a team building a memorial to the victims. Knitting together the Hutus and Tutsis will take a long time, she acknowledges, but she now shares beauty and community with her adopted Rwandan son.
A deep-running meditation on reaching for the sublime despite obstacles.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-375-42078-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
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
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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