1 of 1 members found this review helpful.
“This book presented itself to me when I was deep into a project and just needed some factual answers. It’s only 94 pages. I thought I could read it very quickly.
Ha.
It did give me answers, but it wasn’t a quick read. It was the kind of book that had me reading a page, then pacing the floor, waiting for the million thoughts it excited to settle down so I could read the next. This went on for a week. And then I read it again, and read it out loud to friends. The cheap copy I bought is already wearing out.
What’s it about? Simply, it’s about the ancient practices of the Desert Fathers, of solitude, silence and prayer, how and why they came about, why they are needed now, and how they can be made to work in our crowded, noisy, distinctly non-contemplative lives.
The thing that first got my attention, was Nouwen’s description of the problem of worldliness in the church, our tendency to think the way everybody else thinks. Worldliness, not simply in the way we’ve all come to see it, drinking and carousing, that sort of thing. He talks about the sneakier form, the kind that creeps in without our noticing, that has us convinced that what makes us valuable, what makes us worthwhile, is what we own, what we have accomplished, and what people think of us. Take those away and we have no reason to exist.
Think what that does to us. Think how it drives our choices, how it colors our view of others.
That’s what began to get my attention – but I knew the book would be precious to me when I read the story of St. Anthony, who after some twenty years of practicing the disciplines of solitude, silence and prayer was finally able to pray genuinely – talking to God as himself, not the person he thought or wished or hoped to be. When he rejoined humanity, his very presence was healing to people because at last he could look at them with clean eyes, he could really see them as they were, not as accessories to his own self esteem.
Can you imagine how that way of being would change everything?
Buy this book. If you can, get a good strong copy. It’s going to have to hold up to much reading. ”
KathleenPopa wrote this review Thursday, February 21 2008.
(
reply |
permalink )
