True Prayer/The Way of the Heart/Prayer of the Heart
Imbelli, Robert P.
TRUE PRATER AN INVITATION TO CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY Kenneth Leech Harper & Row, $10.95, 202 pp. PRATER Or THE HEART George A. Maloney, S.J. Ave Maria Press, $3.95, 206 pp. Robert P....
...This "political" reading of spirituality does not condone a reduction of life in the Spirit to its political dimension...
...For one, though the author quotes widely and suggestively, he refrains from giving explicit references...
...It is in the latter task that Nouwen's penchant and genius reside...
...Its quotes from the classics of spirituality suggest real insight and sensitivity...
...The great ages of spirituality drew upon the resources of just such an integration for a comprehensive vision and sustained a faithful practice...
...My own dissatisfactions with the book are, perhaps, the inverse side of its strengths...
...Nouwen Seabury, $7.95, 96 pp...
...Perhaps the key index here lies in their respective sensitivity to the political and its bearing upon the mystical...
...as a result, while the book is not burdened by footnotes, it is also less useful as a resource than it might have been...
...day, among the welcome signs of vitality in the contemporary church, one must count the effort of many to promote a reconciliation and to recover a theology that nourishes the heart and a spirituality that does not require a suspension of the mind...
...their divorce often issuing in both arid dogmatism and mushy spirituality...
...ToTHE WAT OF THE HEART DESERT SPIRITUALITY IN CONTEMPORARY MINISTRY Henri J.M...
...The book is unsystematic and repetitive (indeed it seems somewhat repetitive of Father Maloney's previous work...
...The Way of the Heart, as its subtitle clearly indicates, is Nouwen's attempt to apply the insights of his long and loving wrestle with the writings of the desert fathers and mothers to the needs and challenges of contemporary ministry...
...Spirituality has for too long stayed on the water's edge...
...Of the three books, this one succumbs most readily to the perennial temptation of work of this genre to fall into slogans which aim so fervently at the heart that they bypass the mind...
...In the United States Thomas Mer-ton provided pioneering insight and inspiration in this direction, and his influence shows itself clearly in the books under review...
...Since perceived weaknesses so often stem from personal requirements, those I've listed might well be deemed recommendations by some...
...the merit of the books here reviewed is that, in varying degrees, they have begun to take the plunge.egun to take the plunge...
...My sole complaint is that such a slim volume (it runs barely eighty pages of generous-size text) should have appeared in a more modest and moderately priced format...
...but the gifts lie upon the table juxtaposed rather than integrally related in coherent and compelling fashion...
...but to my mind they prevent a good book from being a truly excellent one...
...During my own tender years pamphlets were available from various sources which introduced us not too badly and certainly less expensively into the concrete concerns of the spiritual life...
...He lingers over the themes of solitude, silence, and prayer, leading the reader, by a combination of concrete anecdote and pointed aphorism, into the spaciousness each signifies...
...Henri Nouwen's latest book (as of this writing) is broadly related to Leech's as practice is to theory...
...Now, while each book under review shows some appreciation of this need (and Leech's in particular), none succeeds in fully exposing and developing renewed foundations for spirituality in an anthropology which images man/woman anew...
...The author of Soul Friend is a widely-read and genial guide to the spiritual tradition, and here he issues "an invitation to spirituality" whose focus upon prayer gives the book a concreteness and im-, mediacy to experience which make it appealing and helpful...
...Put another way, spirituality as practical skill needs to be rooted in a theological anthropology which maps the shape of life in the Spirit in a given historical and cultural context...
...for each insists, in the words of the Russian mystic appropriated by all three, that prayer itself is "to descend with the mind into the heart...
...The most ambitious of the three works, and perhaps the Most successful, is Kenneth Leech's study, True Prayer...
...Robert P. Imbelli ONE OF THE UNHAPPY dichotomies of our recent theological past has been that between theology and spirituality...
...I have evaluated the foregoing books, among other considerations, on their 'success in suggesting the integration of theology and spirituality, of theory and practice, which I take to be one of the crucial ecclesial tasks of our day...
...It strikes me that the book offers an especially sound introduction to spirituality for those who come with little formal background, since the author incorporates into his exposition good basic insights into such topics as eucharist and penance which stand at the center of Christian life in the Spirit...
...But like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, Thomas and Bonaventure in different historical contexts, it recognizes that if cultural energies are not baptized, they risk becoming demonic...
...The psychological acumen of the author helps him cut through many of the subterfuges of our compulsive ego...
...Secondly, and more seriously, though the matter is organized under the rubric of prayer, what is lacking is a truly systematic perspective...
...If so, a quick appearance of this work in Image paperback is to be ardently desired...
...yet often they are inserted into a commentary that trivializes the insight or reduces the sensitivity to mere exhortation...
...Leech organizes his reflections around the themes of "Prayer and God," "Prayer and penitence," "Prayer and conflict," and "Prayer and progress...
...Each of them seeks a theology and spirituality that honors both heart and head...
...while his own commitment to life in the Spirit and his willingness to apply his insights first of all to himself (as The Genesee Diary illustrated so marvelously) relieves the book of the lurking danger of preachment and renders it truly pastoral...
...Do the exigencies of publishing today prohibit a like enterprise...
...Good things, old and new, tumble out in profusion, and one feasts richly and well...
...For if theology as theory seeks to map the contours of life in the Spirit, then spirituality, as a more practical skill and discipline, seeks to discern the individual's place on the map, the concrete obstacles and helps he or she encounters on the way...
...In developing these themes he quotes richly from a range of spiritual writers who witness to the tradition of both the Christian East and West...
...Disappointingly, the promise of the author's undeniable scholarship and experience remains in large measure unrealized...
...For "to descend with the mind the heart" today is to bring the concerns of justice and peace before the Lord and to allow that prayer to issue into a spirituality of action which seeks to further a universal transformation, of society as well as of the individual...
...The final volume under review, George Maloney's Prayer of the Heart, likewise appeals to the rich tradition of the desert and attempts to apply its insights to the predicament of modern man and woman...
Vol. 108 • November 1981 • No. 20
