A cleareyed look at how the faithful may transform their lives.
A guide to spiritual development and personal change in the modern era.
Trammell (Outrageous Loving!, 2015, etc.) maintains that every human being on Earth “has the divine potential to consciously experience a life of fulfillment and completeness,” and she likens every life to a transformation. This idea is the keystone of this slim debut: “We are each and every one on a journey,” she writes, “or in process.” In the course of 12 short chapters ranging over many discipline, including history to philosophy and quantum science, Trammell inquires into the ongoing process of personal change. “If we don’t evolve we stagnate and eventually die,” she claims, citing the human ego as the main stumbling block to progress. She references the “New Thought” philosophy and its stance toward organized religion, which views Jesus as foremost a moral teacher, “the great example, rather than the great exception.” However, the beliefs here align quite well with standard post–Vatican II Christianity, in which, as she puts it, “God has given us the ultimate gift of free will. God doesn't judge; God accepts what I believe without prejudice.” She also notes that “we are all made in the image and likeness of God.” For fellow Christians, her energetic and accessible prose will be very inviting, as will her refreshing call to broaden faith into a lifestyle: “A TRUE prayer is how we live our lives,” she insists. “So ask yourself HOW, and then look at the results: what is your life experience? THAT is your prayer!” Her ruminations on the connection of personal self to a greater spiritual oneness become, in the end, a short but tremendously engaging spiritual autobiography. Overall, Trammell convincingly presents herself as a seeker trying to help other seekers, and her theme of ongoing, personal alchemy will appeal to a broad range of modern-day believers.
A cleareyed look at how the faithful may transform their lives.Pub Date: April 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4960-3375-8
Page Count: 104
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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