Lory
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
I read this book many years ago as a teenager or in my twenties, because I had loved MacDonald's books as a child. But Lilith was something else again, and I think it must have put me off with its mostly dark and inscrutable images, and philosophical talk about death being the only way to true life. I don't have a strong memory of my response at the time; interested but puzzled, I think.
Since then I've read and learned more about esoteric Christianity, spiritual development, and paths of initiation, and gone through a kind of death-rebirth process of my own through an extreme personal crisis at midlife. Now, picking this book up is like reading a textbook written in fairy-tale images about such a process of initiation. Extraordinary, and marred only by the twee sayings of the “Little Ones” who are far too cutesy (but that is a nineteenth century literary disease), and the sometimes murky prose. I will be reading it again, I'm sure, and there are lots of passages I want to copy and ponder at length.
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
A better understanding and appreciation of the figure of Mary Magdalene can “help us quit being afraid of human intimacy and start learning how to handle it better,” claims Cynthia Bourgeault – and what is more needed in the world today, both secular and religious? Her challenging, some would say heretical thesis is that Mary Magdalene has been denied her true role in the Christian story, as not only an intimate disciple and apostle, but the human beloved of Jesus. Bourgeault's treatment of this hot topic is subtle, thoroughly researched and argued, leading to a complex understanding of the principle of kenosis, or sacrificial, self-giving love, which can exist equally in celibate and non-celibate forms, neither of which is superior to the other – but which is absolutely necessary to our continued human evolution, and central to the teaching and life of Jesus Christ.
Bourgeault is far from the simple-mindedness and ignorance of Da Vinci Code-style hype, which has only served to obscure and delegitimize an important area for modern spiritual questing. I'm not sure I agree with every one of her claims, but I do think she is on to something here. I certainly agree that we need a new frame of reference to permit “a genuine reconciliation of Christianity with human sexuality [that will] free both celibacy and conjugal love to be the transformative pathways that they truly are.” If this is not found, I can hardly see any way forward for Christianity, whose death knell has long been rung by our sex-obsessed secular society; but with these new perspectives, some unforeseen possibilities start to open up. Exciting.
One caveat – I am not sure enough caution is advised in regard to mixing sexual and spiritual transformation. Both are areas where human beings are extremely vulnerable to unscrupulous and unprincipled influences. Maybe traditional religious celibacy originates not so much from a fear of sexuality per se, but a fear of the damage that can be done to people through invading their vulnerable places – and that has to be taken seriously.
The writer Charles Williams, for example, whom Bourgeault cites as a model philospher of substitutional love, engaged in highly questionable behavior with young women who fell under his spiritual spell, having emotional (if not physical) affairs with them in which he released sexual energy through sadomasochistic behaviors like spanking. He was described in a recent biography as having an unhappy and unfulfilled life, not at all a good advertisement for the form of “love” that he practiced.
That said, I still think this is an important topic that needs to be opened up for investigation. But for all her research, perhaps Bourgeault still has some blind spots.
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
This was interesting but not as compelling as I have found some of Renault's other books. The shoehorning in of information about ancient theater and about various famous figures (most notably Plato) did not feel entirely natural. The idea seemed to be to follow how Plato's ideas about the good ruler were worked out in a real life context, through the story of a ruler who tried to overcome the tyranny in Syracuse, first through philosophy and then through force. This did not have a happy ending.
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
I wanted to read this because I'm personally interested in the theme of the wounded healer. I've been severely burnt by the attitudes and practices of people in positions of leadership and authority, who have not addressed their own wounds and become hurtful rather than helpful. They may want to be healers, or believe they are, but they just make things worse, or most often cover up and mask the underlying issues while failing to take any responsibility for the results. I definitely don't want to do this myself, so I need guidance about how to avoid that trap.
I found Nouwen's perspective helpful, especially the last chapter. He points out that it's a false goal to promise wholeness and immortality. What the wounded healer can offer is “hospitality,” a safe space for the other to unfold his or her own soul, and to share the suffering that is the common ground of our human condition. When suffering is shared in this way, recognized and held in a compassionate consciousness, it becomes a path to liberation.
I think this is an extremely important and profound point. Any relationship, any faith, or any political regime or movement, that promises to remove all our pain and make everything great again, should be suspect. Nouwen believes that the loneliness which is our deepest human wound is also, viewed from a true Christian perspective, our greatest gift. The paradoxical mystery of the Christian path is to share this loneliness and make it into a way forward, rather than a dead stop.
I know already of many places in my own life where I can try to practice this, and see for myself whether it does indeed lead forward into paths of liberation. Thanks to Nouwen for pointing the way.
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
A review of the new biography of Louise Fitzhugh inspired me to hunt this one out again. I'd read it a long time ago and remembered being impressed, but no details. It was not one of the two I reread over and over again in my childhood, Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret.
So this was almost like a first read for me. And I was startled by the punch that Fitzhugh packs in this little story. As in the books centered around Harriet and Beth Ellen, the strength is in the main characters, Emma and Willie – they leap off the page (literally in the case of Willie, the dancer). In intimate details of their inner and outer behavior and thinking, their idiosyncrasies and flaws, they become real to us, we become invested in their dreams and identify with their plight. The adults are more distant and caricatured, almost just props to bring out the theme of the book, which is the powerlessness of abused children and the fight for their rights.
What is most unusual here is that the children themselves are the ones who are fighting. And Emma, in particular, has to go through a difficult process of finding her true goals and her hidden strength, and rejecting “help” that would reduce her power and agency. The story ends just where I rather wish Fitzhugh would have gone on to write a second half. It would have been so interesting to see what developed once Emma made connections with other girls who wanted to create change in their lives. But maybe she couldn't write that part because the history hadn't happened yet. I think it's happening now.
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
After Bourgeault's Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, this was another very thoughtful and thorough exploration of the simple, yet profound practice of Centering Prayer. The book brings together three different types of presentation, from an introductory workshop to an in-depth analysis of the foundational medieval text The Cloud of Unknowing, but all are clearly related to the central theme.
After several decades of this practice developing as a recovery of the contemplative tradition for the Western Christian world, it is time to take stock and consider how to bring it further into the future. The author has some strong opinions and some reservations about some points of view that muddle or weaken the practice, and she does a good job of conveying these in an objective way.
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
This was a stunning observation of the self-deception we practice when denying a disability. What Kuusisto suffered and learned can benefit everyone, as we struggle to permit ourselves to be needy and to find the community that alone can make us whole. His vivid verbal images, full of surprising discoveries, make the prose a joy to read.
The dog pictured on the cover only makes her appearance in the last two chapters, but one knows from the outset that it's her companionship which makes Kuusisto's creative life possible. The human-dog teamwork is a powerful example of the human need to have trust in the kind of guidance that empowers us and facilitates our autonomy.
A wonderful book that I'll surely read again and recommend to many.
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
I read this alongside the more standard Stephen Mitchell translation and they are very different. At the end a note on translations revealed that Le Guin didn't care for Mitchell's; I'd like to read some of the ones that she does recommend.
At any rate, this was the first time I read this foundational spiritual text in any form, and it was a revelation. The “Tao of” everything is so trendy nowadays, but what does that actually mean? There is so much to ponder, a profound spiritual and practical guide to life. I'll be returning to this book in some form or other, I'm sure.
Le Guin's notes on her choices as a translator and what resonates with her personally are interesting. I would tend to disagree with some of her decisions, i.e. that a passage was an interpolation to be dismissed, or that her interpretation is necessarily the right one. With a text of this depth and mysteriousness, I think we have to be cautious in approaching it out of our cynical modern consciousness. However, Le Guin does not claim that her version is definitive, and her commentary gives fascinating clues into the source which eludes precise understanding. I would love to have had more of it.
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
J'ai lu plusieurs livres de Laurain en anglais, et je voulais essayer cet écrivain en français. Je l'ai trouvé facile à lire, mais avec assez belle langage - parfait pour moi comme étudiante de français. L'histoire était assez simple, et le fin pas du tout surprenant. Le plaisir était dans les déscriptions, les objets et les scènes avec lesquels les personnages étaient occupés. J'imagine que ce livre ferait un excellent film.
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
This was a really helpful introduction to the practice of centering prayer, a contemplative practice that is aimed at becoming awake to the constant presence of God rather than working with discursive thoughts and emotions. It includes a brief but lucid explanation of why contemplative prayer was lost to the Western tradition, a strange episode in our spiritual life that is thankfully now over, and of how Centering Prayer came to be developed. It also touches on some of the author's reservations or differences of opinion/emphasis with her mentor, Fr. Thomas Keating, which I appreciated, as it is important to appreciate and honor great teachers without necessarily agreeing with every single thing they say. I'll be reading more on Centering Prayer and more of Bourgeault's work.
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
This was an interesting but ultimately unsatisfying approach to understanding a complex woman. Many of the writers spoke little about L'Engle or were only very tangentially involved with her. Large chunks of important experiences/allegations were gingerly glanced at, while trivialities and repetitive padding got plenty of space. I hope she will get a proper biography at some point, by a writer who can be both sympathetic and objective, and can assemble confusing and conflicting material in a coherent way.
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
I was never interested in Orsinia when I read Le Guin as a kid. I bought Orsinian Tales thinking it would be more Earthsea or The Wind's Twelve Quarters and put it aside, baffled and bored by the lack of magic or spaceships. But now it strikes me as one of her most impressive works, utterly immersive and not at all fantastic, except in being about an imaginary country. The characters live, within their vividly described setting, the language is beautiful, subtle and oblique, the thoughts about love and freedom as as relevant now as in the 1825 of the story. So glad I finally read this and I'll definitely be reading the Tales as well.
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
A dual-strand narrative with a difference – some may find the ending too cutesy-weird, but it was of a piece with the rest. Dark and involving, ultimately a narrative of liberation that brings to the fore the creative role of the reader as well as the writer. When ARE we going to get to read Jiko's life story? That's what I'd really like to know.
It's a fine idea to focus on Anne Sullivan Macy, the brilliant, damaged woman who has always been in the shadow of her famous student, but due to the loss or absence of primary material, Nielsen has to step in with much speculation, much “perhaps” and “could have been.” Some of this is inevitable when writing biography, but here it begins to seem like padding. And I object to the frequent “must have beens” which assume feeling and thoughts which may or may not have been the case.
I ended up feeling it would have been more interesting and revelatory to read the original source material, the letters and autobiographical manuscripts from Macy that do exist, with linking notes and commentary, rather than subjecting her to so much external interpretation.
This was a lovely book! Jane is not the quirkiest or most memorable Montgomery heroine, but her release from an oppressive Toronto household into the beauty and freedom of Prince Edward Island makes for wonderful comfort reading. If the denouement reuniting her estranged parents (not a spoiler, it was obviously always going to end that way) had been arranged with more complexity and less narrative haste, it would have been truly excellent.
A family saga that tells of the struggle, displacement and violence experienced by Vietnam's last few generations. The story swept me along but by the end it felt a bit rushed, with so many dramatic events and characters to pack in. I had the same issue with Pachinko. The writing style was not especially memorable either. But an important and very moving and humanly impressive story, for sure.
See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. You might think that a book subtitled “a personal history of Habsburg Europe” would be quite distant from our current preoccupations, would be dusty, nostalgic and quaint, irrelevant to the challenges we face today. You would be wrong.
This is a chronicle of the last few hundred years of the eastern part of the ancient Holy Roman Empire, which was ruled by the Habsburg family, generally located along the Danube river, and morphed into Austria-Hungary before its demise in the twentieth century. Over the entire length of that long period now hangs the shadow of the train wreck that was the Great War of 1914-1919. What happened there? How can we understand it, and how prevent it from happening again?
Those questions are not distant or irrelevant. They are ever more pressing, as the powers of division and conflict rise again, as tyrants and oppressed people struggle once more. As I read, I was repeatedly struck by the way things have not really changed all that much at all, and at the same time how hard it seems to be for us to process the way things really have changed fundamentally. Will we ever learn?
Winder writes in a jokey, conversational style that could cause one to dismiss him as lightweight and not serious enough for such a big topic. Whether you find it engaging or irritating is probably a matter of personal taste. This is not an academic study, nor does it claim to be. It is a personal rambling through some personal pleasures and preoccupations, and should be judged as such. I would not take it as my only source of information, but as a starting point and an occasional source of laughter or jolt of recognition, it's not bad.
For example, here is Winder's description of Franz Ferdinand (whose assassination set off the Great War):
Of course we will never know if he would have been a “good” Emperor. It may well be that he had just waited too long and that whatever qualities he might have possessed had long curdled, lost in a maze of ritual, uniforms, masses, and – above all – hunting. His shooting skills made him legendary, belonging to that disgusting and depressing era when even the aristocratic hunting expedition became married to modern military technology, unbalancing the entire relationship of hunter and hunted, so that shooting partridges became like a proto-version of playing Space Invaders.
Academic it may not be, but it is vivid and memorable. Along with a vaguely chronological overview of the Habsburg rulers, who were a largely unattractive lot with occasional amusing eccentricities, we get interpolated commentary about Winder's obsessions with things such as zoo architecture, folkloric villages, the music of Haydn, and much more. It's like rambling through a historical museum with a talkative, witty, and easily distractible friend.
I did not ever really understand what happened in the time leading up to the war. It was such a tangle of nationalisms and bad diplomacy that I could not wrap my head around it, at least without a few repeated rereads. But I did get this: nationalism is a dead end. Although Habsburg rule may have been terrible, the empire at least provided some room to move and interact and create to its diverse population, while after the empire fell, people were imprisoned in the narrow, dirty cells of their new nations. And of course, with a lot of people and entire ethnic/religious groups exiled, killed, or soon to be killed. We have to find a better way than this.
This is the kind of book I don't like to read as an e-book (which is what I did). I would rather have the whole book before me so I can refer to former sections, look at maps and lists of rulers with confusingly similar names, and mark favorite passages. So if you do read it, I recommend paper.
I might be reading it again at one point, and I'd definitely like to read Winder's earlier book, Germania. Have you read anything by Simon Winder? Would you like to?
This reminded me of a grown-up version of The Westing Game, with its quirky mystery, interlocking backstories, red herrings, and fragmented storytelling style that ultimately came together with a focus on relationships and human warmth. My first Backman book but I'm curious to read some others by him now. Thanks to Netgalley for providing a copy from the publisher for review consideration.
This is an inspiring and humbling book – five stories of people who came through childhood neglect and abuse, repairing a damaged sense of self and bravely reconnecting to the world and other people. If I get upset about anything that happens to me, I just have to think of what they endured, and try to emulate their strength and courage.
Written by a therapist, this gives an interesting glimpse into the therapeutic process, including failures and setbacks along the way, and the path to recovery and renewal. While this can be extremely valuable for those going through similar issues, it also made me a little uncomfortable at times. There is a voyeuristic element in looking through the private window into someone's life, witnessing such horrible things. We are meant to empathize with them, but there is also a sense of distance that can be disturbing. How can we truly understand another person's suffering, how can we possibly treat it with enough reverence and respect? This includes the author's own abusive upbringing, which she reveals at the end in an oddly naive way, not seeming to fully realize how much it mirrors her own patients' inability to recognize what they have been subjected to. It made me wonder if she herself needed therapy more than she realized.
That said, this is a fascinating, compulsively readable book which gives a glimpse of true heroism, of the noble side of humanity that lurks in the darkest places. We need such images today. I am grateful to the subjects for making their stories available and to the author for sharing them with us.
Nye, an accomplished poet who is the daughter of a Palestinian father and American mother, drew on her own adolescent experiences for this novel about a girl whose family moves to Israel. Liyana's adjustment to her new life and culture and her first experiences of friendship-turning-to-love with a Jewish boy are sensitively and poetically portrayed.
A historically inspired drama that moves back and forth between the famine-ridden Ireland and a ship taking emigrants away to America. To learn about the tragic history of that era was fascinating (though horrifying), but I was less impressed by the sometimes contrived and pretentious “literary” trappings. The “document collection” premise did not work so well as in O'Connor's Shadowplay, which I loved; it was too unbelievable, which distracted and annoyed me rather than being a playful enhancement.
I've no idea what connection British author Rose Tremain may have with Switzerland, or why she chose it as a setting for her novel, but from my foreigner's point of view I think she did a good job at capturing some of the character of the Swiss, their strength and their vulnerability, and the conflicting realities behind the surface image that they like to present.