Four Reviews Coming in Publishers Weekly on Monday, February 12
-- Publishers Weekly, 2/7/2007
The Shape of Love: Discovering Who We Are, Where We Came From, and Where We're Going
Masaru Emoto. Doubleday, $18.95 (196p) ISBN 978-0-385-51837-6
As author of several spirituality-cum-science titles including The Hidden Messages in Water, Emoto introduced the world to his claim that a sample of water is capable of responding to human words. Using a high-powered microscope camera, he demonstrated that water reacts to positive language by the formation of beautiful, snowflake-like crystals and to negative terms by forming ugly or distorted shapes. This breakthrough was featured in the hit underground film, What the Bleep Do We Know? While Emoto's earlier works were generally focused on health and healing, his new book attempts to extrapolate a religious narrative of the origins of life on Earth. The hypothesis—which includes the assertion that the water on Earth was delivered by God in comets sent from somewhere near the Big Dipper, as well as the claim that humans were "sent to the earth in the form of water crystals"—is mostly incoherent and unsatisfying. Worse, it strays from the simplicity of his powerful earlier work with the water samples. Still, newcomers will be pleased that Emoto rehearses much of his earlier material, and serious fans will doubtless find his flights of fancy intriguing. 40 color photos, not seen by RBL. (Apr. 17)
Digging In: Tending to Life in Your Own Backyard
Robert Benson. WaterBrook, $12.99 paper (208p) ISBN 978-1-4000-7173-9
Benson, well known for his books on prayer and meditation, turns his heart toward home in this lovely book about putting down roots. When he and his wife, whom he calls the "master planner," moved to a Victorian cottage in a city neighborhood, its yard, sloped and nearly bare of grass, became their canvas. Fencing, rose garden, fountain, pool and studio were all added, vicarious treats for readers as Benson transplants into words the spiritual truths he unearthed during each project. He's a gentle guide through the ups and downs of lawn care, fence painting, fountain placement and pool installation. Throughout, he combs his memories, encouraging readers to do the same. He laughs at himself as he takes the small, quotidian details of creating a home and life and nurtures them into the larger spiritual meaning of how to live in "this place where we have dug ourselves in." Benson's words soothe and lull, but just as often burst into a glorious bloom of epiphanies that will dazzle readers, gardeners or not. "If we are to have any roots at all, we must find them in the places where we are now, on this day," he writes. (Apr. 17)
Contemplating Reality: A Practitioner's Guide to the View in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism
Andy Karr. Shambhala, $16.95 paper (240p) ISBN 978-1-59030-429-7
Buddhism emphasizes direct experience and devalues conceptual thinking, but that doesn't mean it is devoid of philosophical reasoning and inquiry. This book by Karr, a teacher and investment banker, is formidably philosophical. "We need to use thought to get beyond thought," he writes, in laying the groundwork for a step-by-step presentation of various schools of Buddhist analytical meditation. In that practice, Buddhists contemplate ultimate reality by asking themselves questions or by reflecting on short and profound teachings. Various schools have different emphases, and Karr patiently explains and singles out these varied analytic methods. He is a friendly teacher of difficult material: exercises offer ways of helping students reach conclusions; demanding chapters of philosophical explication are relieved by quirky "interludes" of poetry and comedy; and appendixes contain helpful biographies of historical Buddhist teachers and a chart of philosophical systems. Missing, however, is a glossary that could help with Sanskrit and Tibetan terms. Both practice and study are needed for Buddhist understanding, and this volume advances study for Western practitioners. It will challenge the advanced student of Buddhism interested in the historical and intellectual richness of this wisdom tradition. (Apr. 10)
The Godfile: Ten Approaches to Personalizing Prayer
Aryeh Ben David. Devora [Ingram and Baker & Taylor, dist.], $16.95 (136p) ISBN 978-1-932687-93-4; $12.95 paper ISBN 978-1-932687-94-1
Rabbi Ben David's goal—to encourage readers to develop a relationship with God—unfolds in computer jargon in this guide to Jewish prayer. "Click on the mouse of life," he writes, "[and] bring up the Godfile." To do so, he suggests transcribing moments of joy and despair, dialogue and its absence onto an imaginary computer file, and deepening the relationship through spiritual retreats and regular "check-ups." His self-created terminology gets in the way of otherwise valuable practical advice instead of elucidating it, but the book really shines in his description of 10 paradigms for prayer, each based on the views of various Jewish thinkers and suited to different personalities. He guides readers to experiment with prayer as an opportunity for self-reflection, for listening to the "voice of your soul," for expressing anger or experiencing the anguish of the world. Now a rabbi involved in Jewish spiritual education in the U.S. and Israel, Ben David shares his own experiences as a secular Jew who rediscovered traditional Judaism but never delved into what he really believed. Though Ben David addresses those of all faiths, Jewish readers will be most likely to benefit from his thoughtful attempt to revitalize the meaning and process of prayer. (Apr.)
A Starred Review Coming in PW on Monday, February 12:
The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World
Edited By Bob Abernethy And William Bole. Seven Stories, $29.95 (352p) ISBN 978-1-58322-758-9
Faith and doubt stand in loving tension in this splendid collection edited by Bole, a religion writer, and Abernethy, founder and host of the PBS program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. The book draws from the extensive interviews the series has conducted with religious luminaries and writers, some of whom appear more than once. The interviews are loosely arranged into themes of prayer; suffering and the problem of evil; encountering religious pluralism; preparing for death and the afterlife; and the varieties of religious practice. Not all of the contributors describe themselves as religious ("You know what an agnostic is?" asks the agnostic near-centenarian Studs Terkel. "A cowardly atheist"). Most of those profiled, however, have walked a long path of religious devotion, including Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Anne Lamott, William Sloane Coffin, Martin Marty, Frederica Mathewes-Green and Phyllis Tickle (PW's former contributing editor in religion). With such an amazing cast of characters, it's practically impossible to go wrong, and this collection doesn't miss a step. The section on suffering is particularly perceptive ("I know that where there is no suffering, nothing happens," novelist Madeleine L'Engle says). This is a rich feast of accumulated wisdom. (Apr. 3)
An Original RBL Review
Nothing: Something to Believe In
Nica Lalli. Prometheus, $17 paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-59102-529-0
Books on atheism are red-hot this year, and Lalli's adds something fresh to the mix: rather than being an angry apologetic, it's an engaging personal account of non-belief. Raised in Chicago and New York to free-thinking parents who seem to have provided little supervision, Lalli had sporadic encounters with religion at her friends' churches and synagogues as a child. A disastrous high school ski trip turned her off completely when religious students tried to convert her with manipulative tactics. In college, she fell in love with a fellow agnostic, whom she married after a brief stint of what she calls "living in sin." Although Lalli got along well with her Christian mother-in-law, her self-righteous sister- and brother-in-law were a different story, and much of the memoir's second half explores serious family tensions. "I got the feeling that I had to respect them for their religion but they were not going to return the favor," Lalli writes. Although Lalli doesn't come across as being quite as open-minded as she claims to be, she does see herself as an equal-opportunity agnostic, as skeptical about a tarot reading as she is about Christian platitudes. This memoir is well-written and often acerbically funny, an edgy quest for meaning outside the boundaries of organized religion. (Mar.)
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