My New Finds I like real bookstores just as much as cyber bookstores. Days off are often spent in one or more bookstores both on the Net and off the Net. Here are some recent "FINDS" that I want to share with you. I have included reviews from Amazon.com. Seven
Story Mountain - Amazon.com Dennis' Notes: Happily encountered this book in 1964 and was fascinated by every detail of why and how a sophisticated New York writer and teacher made the decision to enter a Trappist monastery. Picked up the book 30 years later and am still a lover of Merton's first of many books about his interior life. I own a paperback copy of an earlier printing of this book, but I plan to buy the Anniversary Edition soon... and from Amazon.com, of course. Get More
Information from Amazon.com or Powerful Prayers Amazon.com Get more
Information from Amazon.com or Kaddish Amazon.com Also Found and Going Back for a 2nd Look The Zen
of Oz: Ten Spiritual Lessons from over the Rainbow
Healing
and the Mind
I missed the PBS series that spawned the book, but am anxious to read the book that was released during the series. I am a big fan of Bill Moyers. Conversations
with God: |
become one of the most influential
writers of this century. Talk about losing your life in order to find it. Thomas Merton's
first book, The Seven Storey Mountain, describes his early doubts, his conversion
to a Catholic faith of extreme certainty, and his decision to take life vows as a
Trappist. Although his conversionary piety sometimes falls into sticky-sweet abstractions,
Merton's autobiographical reflections are mostly wise, humble, and concrete. The best
reason to read The Seven Storey Mountain, however, may be the one Merton provided
in his introduction to its Japanese translation: "I seek to speak to you, in some
way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may mean? I myself do not know, but if you
listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book. And this will be
due not to me but to the One who lives and speaks in both." --Michael Joseph Gross
Powerful Prayers, I found out
that everybody's praying. Leave it up to Larry to pry it out of them. Actors Elliott Gould
and Steven Seagal, writers Tom Robbins and Anthony Robbins, world leaders Gerald Ford and
Margaret Thatcher. We don't normally look to these people for religious advice, but Larry
King is obsessed with knowing what prayer is and why people pray. Speaking in his own
voice, King, a secular hedonist, blunders through the sage advice of coauthor Rabbi Irwin
Katsof, never happy until he hears personal stories of the significance of prayer in daily
life. We hear from religious figures as well: Jerry Falwell, Deepak Chopra, the Dalai
Lama, and Robert Schuller. But when Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, or billionaire
investor John Templeton say that they pray on a daily basis, you sit up and take notice.
King learns that prayer has a personal significance unique to each person's own
experience. Reading about this variety of opinions on prayer and following along on King's
mission, makes Powerful Prayers one powerful experience. --Brian Bruya
all of these genres into a narrative of Wieseltier's
grief during the year following his father's death. Wieseltier, the literary editor of The
New Republic, is a mostly unobservant Jew whose grief compelled him to observe his
religion's rituals of mourning, daily attending synagogue to recite the Kaddish (the
traditional Jewish prayers of mourning). He also delved deeply into a vast range of texts
describing the history and spiritual significance of these prayers. And he wrote
incessantly, describing with force and clarity the process of bringing his mind and heart
to bear on the grief that consumed him. Perhaps the best way of describing this moving,
illuminating, hopeful, awe-filled book is to quote a stray line from the first page of the
book's first chapter: "Out of tears, thoughts." --Michael Joseph Gross 
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