|
|
|
|
|
|
![[ Bob Hostetler ]](http://www.bobhostetler.com/images/2003/logo2003.jpg){kind=logo}
Book ReviewsA Comfortable YearningA friend, Jeremy Bishop,
asked me just last night what I was reading currently, and I showed him Tony
Jones’s book, The Sacred Way,
which I had almost finished. He asked if it was “challenging.” I
answered, immediately, no. And then I had to think why…and how I would
describe it instead. Jones’s book is
an eminently readable treatment of “spiritual practices for everyday
life” (the subtitle). He describes and prescribes seventeen spiritual
disciplines (in two sections, Via Contemplativa
(contemplative approaches to spirituality) and Via Activa
(bodily approaches to spirituality). His book is so readable and
enjoyable—and I identified strongly with it—that I couldn’t
describe it as challenging. I settled into it like
a reader sinking into an overstuffed chair, especially because my spiritual
journey in recent years has been much like Jones’s, delving deeper and
deeper into prayer and contemplation (though I struggled with jealousy as the
author described pilgrimages to Taize, the Reading
Boiler Room, and Assisi). The Sacred
Way renewed my yearning to discover more pathways into the throne room of
God. But therein, I think,
is the book’s only weakness. I frequently wondered how the book would
speak to a person who has not walked a similar path into contemplative
practices. I wondered if it adequately emphasized—for the
“uninitiated,” for lack of a better term—why such (some
on-the-surface strange) practices would be attempted, and what they would add
to a prayerful life. To put it another way, would someone whose heart
doesn’t (yet) beat with a contemplative rhythm yearn for these
practices? I’m not sure. But, then, I tell myself, that person might
not pick up Jones’s book in the first place, so maybe it’s no
weakness at all. In any case, I
recommend The Sacred Way to anyone
who is interested in discovering the kind of prayer life that animated such
men and women after God’s heart as Thomas Merton, Thomas a Kempis, Henri Nouwen, Julian of
Norwich, and John of Damascus (all of whom are quoted in the book). It’s a book I
can wish I had written. |
|
||||||
|
Copyright © 2005, Bob Hostetler |