Heartbreakingly beautiful

If you've ever struggled to incorporate love into your life gracefully, without sacrificing integrity, not for the sake of improving life's circumstances (although that's a great side effect) but for the sake of love, this is the perfect book for you. Often we have so much love and understanding in our hearts, much more than our histories would warrant, and sometimes it's a love so tremendous we ourselves don't fully understand it, and yet we're afraid to show it. We're afraid of being taken advantage of, of losing ourselves, of encouraging destructive behavior in ourselves and others. It'll always be a challenge, but this book shows that it can be done - with patience, perseverance, playful curiosity, a lot of forgiveness, an appreciation of the beauty of interpersonal relationships and understanding for the fact that we're in one world and yet in two. We have access to a miniscule portion of reality, our thoughts, emotions and actions naturally revolve around this portion, and yet we're innately capable of experiencing the entire thing. Not only that, we're capable of operating in it, unfetteted. Often we don't know what to do with that. Perhaps those who've had an NDE will relate more to this, but I think many people have the sense that there is more to reality than we're experiencing with our 5 senses used in the normal way.

This book is also for those who see a lot of value in core Christian teachings and yet are repulsed by the history and institution of the Christian churches. Some people have been severely traumatized by the church. David Maginley is a Lutheran minister, and while honoring that rich tradition, he rejects the intolerance, institutional inertia and lack of vision so often found among the clergy. Returning to the story of the Christ as embodied in Jesus, keeping only the beautiful core of the Christian teaching, he finds parallells in other spiritual traditions and displays a profound understanding of their meanings. He also talks about the latest science on the phenomenon of consciousness: what it might be for, how it seems to manifest itself, what its properties seem to be. This is a Christian minister who loves science and psychology. He also has a background in philosophy, so he uses his core terms carefully, although this might not be apparent because of the nature of the content. As someone keenly interested in the philosophy of mind and neurotheology, I greatly appeciate his attempt to incorporate science, psychology and philosophy into an intelligent discussion about God and consciousness.

The writing is infused with warmth, gentleness, thoughtfulness and a fine sense of humor. But behind all of that, there is a lot of toughness, discipline, groundedness and perseverance, which might rub off on those who are fighting a serious illness or are in some other crisis and are reading this book to gain insight and inspiration. Perhaps without intention, it's the type of writing which, even though it might be balm for the soul, ultimately bolsters the reader's determination to give life his or her all. We all end up in heaven no matter what we do. Why not spend the short time we have here loving this place? These people, broken as they are? It's easy to love an angel. Why not try to love a living human being?

The narration was enjoyable. Beautiful baritone voice, enchanting lisp. Read naturally, with liveliness, variety of tone and a talent for verbal story telling.

Easily one of the best books I've ever read/listened to.

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