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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Soul-food for the journey., 11 Sep 2005
Picked this up in Waterstones before a quiet weekend to get my act together. Leafing through, it identified links between daily life, chunks of the Bible, struggles with meditation, national politics and global economics. So I bought it to try to see God in more things.48 hours later, it's read and heavily annotated. Some highlights are: Jesus gets locked up in a cupboard after His 'little talk' at your local church. Churches as static, high-walled garrisons with troops drilled in ineffective, defensive and out-of-date parades. Simple and surprisingly effective exercises. Hughes says they're the most important part of the book. In one, be still and just imagine Jesus arriving at your door. A revelation for me. While writing as a spiritual director and author, Hughes' views on church unity, religiosity and militarism are more characteristic of a modern prophet. And yet, there's a compassion here for people as finite pilgrims stretched by the vagaries of life - external and internal. In one chapter, Hughes uses simple metaphors - a sheepdog, a well - as a vehicle to apply this thinking in our own lives. Again, the exercises are constructive. As a corporate employee, I have questions about earthing some of his ideas 9-5 - but his points are valid. As a mature psychology student, the book touches on attention, motivation, mindfulness, consciousness and existential existence - useful material with which to query the assumptions of the more acidly secular social psychologists. A good read - one of those rare books that can change the way we perceive existence and our journeying through life.
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