literature

Dr. Wilkinson has a nice manner for speaking to teenagers. He recalls his own thoughts and hopes during the teenage years. He also relates stories of how teenagers have made an enormous difference for God in assisting adults and other teens. Suddenly, you will feel like someone is talking to you who cares about you, as God does.

"This little book starts with everything we put in the original, bestselling The Prayer of Jabez . . . ." " . . . [T]hen we ask the question: If God wanted to change the world with a teenager like you, how would He want you to pray?"

The challenge also goes out in this form: "Are you ready to do one thing that could change the rest of your life?"

As much as the Bible teaches me, I find that I learn even more by hearing about the interpretations that others make of the Bible. Those interpretations are most beneficial when they include witnessing one's own experiences. Dr. Wilkinson has provided us with many soulful insights from 30 years of reciting a little-noticed Old Testament prayer in this inspiring book.

One reason that it is nice to hear what others say about the Bible is that some of them read Hebrew, which I do not. Knowing what the original text said should provide more clues to its precise meaning. Dr. Wilkinson has provided insights from the Hebrew texts to help us understand what the translations mean.

The Prayer of Jabez is found in 1 Chronicles 4:10 following a brief introduction of Jabez in 1 Chronicles 4:9. This text is in the middle of a long list of about 500 Hebrew names beginning with Adam in providing a geneology. The casual Bible reader might never notice this material.

Since there is so little text, the plain meaning of what is found here can certainly be confusing. "Jabez" means "pain" in Hebrew. Jabez was named this by his mother "Because I bore him in pain." Since almost all babies bring pain to their mothers, it is hard to know exactly what was different about Jabez, if anything.

In this book, there is a nice emphasis on the special problems a teenager would have if his name was Pain.

Jabez is remembered for having his prayer answered. The prayer was: "Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!"

Dr. Wilkinson provides several perspectives on this prayer that added much to my understanding of the Scripture. First, Mr. Wilkinson interprets this as meaning that the person praying is asking to play a bigger role in achieving God's purposes. That was a new thought for me. I tend to feel that each of us is kept pretty busy trying to do God's will in whatever roles we already have. How can we do more? Obviously, only with God's help. By taking on even larger roles, we probably move closer to a state of humility by knowing that we cannot possibly succeed without Divine guidance and assistance. So what seems like a prideful thing actually turns out to be the opposite. What is your reaction to that?

Second, I was startled a few years ago to hear a group of rabbis and ministers talk about how the traditional concept of the moral life was to never be tempted. I feel tempted all of the time, and overcome temptations only after sincere struggles. Dr. Wilkinson points out that the best way to avoid evil is not to be tempted in the first place. "Without temptation, we will not sin." So this text encouraged me to ask even more for being kept away from evil. Naturally, the Lord's Prayer does that, but this important point had been partially lost on me until I read this book.

Beyond those Biblical insights, I also learned from Mr. Wilkinson's experiences. He takes on big tasks, uses the Jabez prayer, and keeps track of how things work out. I, too, believe in the power of prayer. It had never occurred to me to keep a journal about my experiences with prayer. I am sure that there is much to be learned.

My own interpretation of the book and the prayer is that it is just another example of God's listening to and answering our prayers. So I felt encouraged to pray, rather than to use only this specific prayer. I did find myself revising some prayers that I am fond of to incorporate elements of the Jabez prayer.

There is a good section that points out that today we can also call on Jesus and the Holy Spirit, which were not available to Jabez.

Dr. Wilkinson also sets a good example that I intend to follow. He walks up to strangers and says, "How can I help you?" Now, I do that with people who call me on the telephone and people I work with. It had never occurred to me to do so with strangers, but it is probably more helpful with strangers. I look forward to the experiences I will have as a result.

If you are like me, it will be hard to tell where Biblical interpretation ends and witnessing begins in this book. I'm not sure it's all that important to draw a line between them. The key thing is to feel closer to God and God's wisdom and love. I certainly did after reading The Prayer of Jabez for Teens.

The book ends with a fine study guide that contains the big ideas of each chapter and some questions for bringing the lessons home to each reader.

I pray that you and your family will too! What else can you pray for that may serve God's purposes in more ways that you have not considered before?

That's this books strong point. It is written clearly for teenagers, dealing with the issues they need to know about. It covers nutrition and the likes wonderfly, in a way that can be easily understood, but also deals with uniquely teenage concerns such as how to discuss this with your parents and how to deal with going out with friends, school meals, etc. In addition, it covers the basic reasons for become a vegetarian, and the different types of vegetarians there are. It's a great resource for any teenage considering vegetarianism.

I became a vegetarian while I was still living at my parents' house (where every meal revolved around meat) They initially dismissed my new vegetarianism as a "phase". I was so happy to prove them wrong! This book really helped me gain confidence, and gave me the will-power and drive to stick with the vegetarian lifestyle.

She also states that his times (i.e. the sequence of events as he relates them) are wrong. In fact, if you read a bibliography of his works, you will find that both "Zorba" and "The Odyssey, a Modern Sequel." were written much earlier in his life than one would infer from what Kazantzakis has written in this book.

Whatever it is, REPORT TO GRECO is not an autobiography. If this is the case, what then, is it? I believe it to be the story of one man's lifelong search for his own raison d'etre. For many years he didn't seem to be consciously aware of his own motivation.

His quest led him first to the Christian Saints and Christ; then to his teacher, the French philosopher Henri Bergson; then to the philosophic teachings of Nietzsche; then to Buddha and Lenin; and finally to the Odysseus within himself. Dominating all of these was his own Cretan soul. Each time he moved from one philosophy or set of teachings to the next, he thought that the new one was the answer he sought, and that he was discarding the old. What he finally came to realize was that, all along, he had been building, not rejecting. The culmination of this search came with his sequel to Homer's "Odyssey."

Kazantzakis was a child of Crete, and it was to Crete that he always returned for rejuvenation. It was also the spirit of Crete and his Cretan forebears that infused all his works. According to him, his works went through a sort of internal germination period, and only when THEY were ready to be written could he begin to write. This was particularly so when he wrote "Zorba, the Greek." Zorba was a real person who, in the three months that Kazantzakis and Zorba spent together, had taught Kazantzakis "how to live and how to love life." Kazantzakis says that after he heard that Zorba had died,it took months before the story of Zorba allowed itself to be written,

I would love to have been able to experience Crete with the eyes and soul of Kazantzakis. Whin I visited the site of Knossos, I saw archeological ruins and reconstructions, mosaics and frescoes, pots and statuary, ancient cart roads, what may or may not have been part of the famous labyrinth, and the religiously symbolic double axe. I'm afraid, though, that I only saw them as objects. When Kazantzakis would visit Knossos, which he frequently did throughout his life, he would feel its mystery. As an example, in a fresco of a flying fish (dolphin?), he sensed both the evolutionary urge inherent in lower animal orders, and a possible source of man's desire to always ascend. Had I read REPORT TO GRECO before my visit to Crete, perhaps I, too, might have been prepared to see and feel that which lay beneath the surface. Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps one must be a true son of Crete to share this sort of experience with Kazantzakis.

From the many conclusions that Kazantzakis was able to draw from his life-long search, I'd like to quote just a few.

On death: "It is true that we cannot conquer death. We can however conquer the fear of death."

On freedom: ". . . . The man who either hopes for heaven or fears hell cannot be free."

On love: "Perfect love exists between two people only when each addresses the other with 'O myself'"

As one might expect, Kazantzakis expands on these themes which are but a few among many. There is much food for thought in this book.

It is also my opinion that Kazantzakis never lost his way, although many critics seem to think he did. Somewhere in the book he states that he took a path similar to that of a boat tacking into the wind, tacking first to the right, then to the left, but always gaining on his objective.

He must have done something right in the way he lived his life, because his only true regret when he knew that he was dying was that he didn't have time to complete his planned projects. "Oh for a little time, just enough to let me finish my work. Afterwards let Charon come." A little time to finish and then on to his maker.

I feel that neither I, nor any reviewer for that matter can do REPORT TO GRECO justice. It would take the soul of a born and bred Cretan to begin to do so. There's so much here to be read, contemplated, and absorbed that only a cover to cover reading can begin to reveal its magic.

The descriptions of Love's parents (especially his dad) and how they cut their teeth in the ranching business on the unforgiving landscape proved the most entertaining for me. The time spent looking for lost sheep, and moving herds put David Love on a path to his ultimate passion.... The geology of Wyoming. For Love, the Wyoming landscape appeared more interesting and mysterious than anything else. To his credit, Love is the only person to build a complete geological survey of an entire state. Not to mention probably one of the most complex.

McPhee wraps up the book by looking at the challenges that face a place rich in resources such as coal, shale, and uranium. As a geologist, Love reflects on the interesting role his life work plays in this regard. For me, the story reveals two competing forces. One being how a land like Wyoming can influence and shape a man's entire life, and conversely how that same man's life work can change our view and understanding of a complex landscape such as Wyoming.

As a teacher, I'm first of all impressed by how McPhee makes an academic and scientific subject (geology) not just interesting but gripping. For the most part, he personalizes it, introducing an eminent field geologist, David Love, who takes him and us on a tour around Love's home-state, Wyoming, describing over 2 billion years of the geological past as revealed in the cuts along Interstate 80 and in a side trip to Jackson Hole, outside Yellowstone Park. Love is very much a product of his upbringing on an isolated ranch in central Wyoming, his mother educated at Wellesley, his father an immigrant from Scotland who quotes William Cowper and Sir Walter Scott.

Love is independent, old school, hands-on, tireless, scrupulous, an innovative thinker who has made a significant impact over a lifetime in his field, choosing to work for the US Geological Survey after a short period of unhappy employment for an oil company. McPhee captures his very individual point of view, his dedication to science, and his Western perspective in character sketches and fragments of conversation between them. He has a dry sense of humor, colorful turns of phrase, and a toughness that goes along with long periods of field work and sleeping rough under the stars. He's also a grand-nephew of John Muir.

The book actually begins with his mother's wintery journey by horse-drawn coach from Rawlins to central Wyoming, where she has accepted a teaching job at a one-room school. It segues between the story of his parents' courtship in the first decade of the 20th century and his travels with McPhee over 70 years later, finally devoting a long section to Love's own boyhood, growing up on his parents' ranch, with an older brother, among cowboys raising both sheep and cattle. The accounts of surviving blizzards and floods that nearly wipe them out, the visitors passing through who may or may not be hunted killers, even an appearance (possibly two) by Butch Cassidy make this compelling reading for anyone with an interest in the early days of ranching in the West.

There's a brilliant section late in the book as McPhee describes Love's fascination with Jackson Hole while he's still a graduate student at Yale, and after many years of walking the ridges and summits around it, developing a scenario of how it was formed over the eons. McPhee's rendering of this scenario in words is vivid, and in the mind's eye, you can see mountain ranges and seas rise and fall in all manner of climates from tropical to ice age, until the topography assumes its present configuration, which is still changing.

I highly recommend this book. As companion volumes, I also recommend Loren Eiseley's memoir "All the Strange Hours," Geoffrey O'Gara's book about water rights in the Wind River basin, "What You See in Clear Water," and James Galvin's novel, "Fencing the Sky," in which a modern-day cowboy fugitive travels much of this same terrain on horseback.

Her relationship with her past and the family she was born into, reveals the earliest struggles with her sense of self growing up in a poor Brooklyn secular Jewish family. She asks herself the questions that she will repeat in one form or another as she moves from one world to another, growing from one period into the next phase of her life. The questions are basic. Who am I? Who are you? Why are we here doing this together? Each of her roles in life, among them, daughter, wife, mother, mentor, artist, poet, playwright, feminist, activist, peacemaker, Jewish woman, and friend are subject to questioning of self and spirit.

Her insights are deeply touching particularly when she expresses the darker emotions usually omitted from books claiming to be spiritual. She never shies away from anger, fear, or resentment when they are true to her experience. She gives us permission to appear less than angelic to ourselves when we experience that shock of recognition, "Oh yes, I felt that, too." Her courage to express it directly reminds us that a spiritual life must be grounded in honesty with our humanness. What she has done is to take those emotions and turn them into art. In doing so she honors that place in her life and encourages us to embrace all the contradictions in our own selves.

Just as the negatives are embraced, Feld also reveals tenderness and joy. Her evocative depiction of Shabbos with her family invites the reader into the sacred time that nourishes the spirit. She makes us aware of the efforts involved in creating sacred space and time, efforts of intention and demonstrations of labor. We learn that to create a spiritual life, one must want to have one. There is a shifting of consciousness and a commitment in action whether baking challah for Shabbos or later working with Palestinian women in Israel. This relational spiritual life is expressed both in brave action and then in honest reflection.

I would encourage anyone to engage with Merle Feld on her intimate and profound spiritual journey. In reading the book one encounters her not only in the roles she has carved out for herself; the reader's spirit is enriched by the words of a wise teacher, the vision of an artist, and the compassion of a loving heart.

This book will speak to anyone, regardless of gender or background, who has ever felt that spirituality is in competition with the overwhelming demands of everyday life. Without offering formulas or prescriptions, Merle's voice speaks to a part of myself that I struggle to find; it says that holiness can be found right in the midst of the most mundane tasks and minutae. It is a transcendent experience in itself to realize that we have the power to transform everyday life into something holy.

This small volume is a treasure. In hardcover, the pages are silver, the dark blue typography is a beautiful old-style Roman, perhaps Garamond or Times, good-sized and leaded out for easy readability. And the illustrations are unsurpassed.

First, the illustrator: Gustave Dore was born in 1832, sixty years after the birth of Coleridge. He died in 1883. Coleridge preceded him in death by 49 years. Coleridge was born in 1772 and died in 1834. Dore was born in Strasbourg, and was a renowned illustrator who was doing lithographs at the age of thirteen.

The fact that Dore was a near contemporary of Coleridge is important because we can be assured that the characters' costumes in his illustrations reflect the actual dress of the time Coleridge was describing. The ships also are correctly drawn and beautifully detailed.

To say that his illustrations complement this classic epic poem is an understatement.

As to the poet, some wag said once of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, that "a half-great poet had a wholly great day." I have also heard that Coleridge is supposed to have written his epic in one sitting, in a great burst of inspiration. I can't vouch for that, but it is truly a masterpiece--of that there can be no doubt.

I recall trying to memorize it when I was in high school, about sixty years ago. I loved it then, and I still do now.

For the price, this book is an absolute steal. No library is complete without this poem, and of all the renditions I've seen of it, this is by far the most beautiful.

This oversized edition by Dover Publications reproduces all 42 Dore engravings in their original size. Gustave Dore's illustrations are absolutely mesmerizing. I enjoy slowly turning the pages and examining the phenomenal detail in these famous Dore engravings.

Every aspect of this edition is great. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is an imaginative, haunting, and captivating narrative poem that has no parallel in the English language. The engravings by Gustave Dore - the open and endless sea, the vast icy reaches of Antarctica, the calm tropical sea with monsters swirling about, and the dead seamen sprawled on the ship's deck all translate the evocative words of Coleridge into unforgettable images. And the introduction by Millicent Rose is excellent.

Buy a copy. You won't be disappointed.

On the surface, this may just seem to be a simple poem by an English Romantic. But there is so much more. There is a lesson to be learned, one of respect for God's creatures and for all of creation. This is certainly a Romantic point of view, and Coleridge puts it forth very nicely in this poem.

This is a great beginning poem for novices of poetry, for beginners and for people who dislike poetry if it doesn't rhyme and have a definite rhythm. This is definitely Coleridge's best poem, one that everyone should be familiar with. This version with the woodcuts makes for a very attractive package--the illustrations add nicely to the poems overall effect.

Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor;
And mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

One of issues in buying an edition of these works is that they exist in a variety of colorings, and orders. I would recommend this edition for several reasons. The selection of the King's College Copy is one of the most uniformly delightful or the copies Blake (or his wife) colored. Also, the reproduction is of very high quality. Each plate is on a right hand page with the text in print on the left hand page (in case you have problem reading the plate). Even thought the book is in a large format, the plates are reproduced in their actual size (which is surprisingly modest).

There are also a dozen plates provided from other editions. However, I would recommend that you pick up other editions based on other copies. The variety of schemes Blake used in coloring the plates is quite interesting and, well, illuminating.

The second half of the book is commentary on the 54 plates of this copy. There is an introductory essay and a list of works cited in the commentary.

It really is a beautiful reproduction and a joy to have on my shelf.