Book Reviews (Nov 2008)

Larry Dossey, The Extra-Ordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things: Fourteen natural steps to health and happiness, New York: Harmony/ Random House 2006.  305 pp  
Notes 32 pp   $24.95

Larry Dossey is one of my favorite authors. I always look forward to reading anything he has written, as there is always information and wisdom with healing in his writings. This book is certainly no exception.

His fourteen chapters consider the topics of optimism, forgetting, novelty, tears, dirt, music, risk, plants, bugs, unhappiness, nothing, voices, mystery and miracles. In each, Dossey considers how aspects of each of these elements can enrich our lives. I particularly enjoy Dossey’s gifts of pattern recognition and lateral thinking, which point out fresh awarenesses and understandings of the world.

Here are just a few of the numerous gems you will find in this lovely, informative book:

Under Dirt:

Throughout history, rituals evolved as a way of acting out and neutralizing the dirt of the shadow [deeply buried aspects of our awareness], thus functioning as a kind of safety valve for the psyche. These rituals were bawdy, relatively innocuous, and fun. For centuries the Church didn’t make much headway in its attempts to clean up the behavior of parishioners. They were still trying to sanitize things when, in 1444, the Theological Faculty of Paris issued a letter to all the French bishops fulminating against festivals known as “Fools’ Holidays.” Even the priests joined in these celebrations, in which worshippers gleefully elect a “Fools’ Pope,” which was a deliberate insult to His Holiness. These events must have been quite a show. “[In} the very midst of divine service masqueraders with grotesque faces, disguised as women, lions and mummers, performed their dances, sang indecent songs in the choir, ate their greasy food from a corner of the altar near the priest celebrating mass, got out their games of dice, burned a stinking incense made of old shoe leather, and ran and hopped about all over the church.” (p. 88-89)

While we all enjoy bawdy humor, which is today shared broadly and generously in internet passalongs, the ritualization of such humor as a release for negativity is largely missing in our lives.

Under Plants:

…African and Asian immigrants [to the ecologically isolated island of Madagascar] confronted nearly fiteen thousand species of flowering plants, 90 percent of which they were totally unfamiliar with from their previous habitats. Yet in a mere hundred generations they managed to sort through this huge inventory of exotic plants, so that today they have an impressive array of useful herbal remedies for sale in any market. How did they do it? there simply hasn't been time to test every strange plant, and determine which part of the plant, in which season, and from which species, works best – and whether it should be eaten whole, boiled, dried, or fresh. As Watson succinctly puts it, they must have had help.

And the help, it seems, comes from the plants themselves. When Watson asked a local healer how they know that an extract from the leaves of a local flowering plant, picked in the spring, is good for a condition they call ‘milky blood,’ he always gets the same answer, “Oh, it’s easy,” they say, “we ask the plants.” (p. 137-138)

As with any of Dossey’s observations, there are always quotes and references that enrich his discussions and invite deeper explorations by interested readers.

Under Risk:

Do risk and safety really contradict each other? Many ancient philosophers said no. they maintained that opposites were actually in cahoots with each other. Oppositional relationships were fundamental, they said, a kind of glue that held the world together. As the ancient Greek sage Hermes Trismegistus allegedly said, “By the friendship of contraries, and the blending of things unlike, the fire of heaven has been changed into light, which is shed on all below…”

Dossey considers a variety of evidence of health benefits of risk-taking, such as a study showing that men who are moderately more aggressive having stronger immune systems, and women who risked joining the work force evidencing better cardiac health.

This is a great book to keep by your work station or bedside for a few delectable minutes of refreshing ideas.

 

Matthew Fox, Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet.  New York:  Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2002.  ISBN 1-58542-178-2.  246 pp. $21.95.

Matthew Fox, an Episcopal priest and author of more than 20 books, believes that human beings are born to co-create with God.  In his words, “the work of the artist in all of us is to be in dialogue with our hearts, for God dwells therein.  And the work of the artist is nothing less than to ‘put divinity into things.’” (p. 52-53) 

The ultimate goal of this holy artistic communion is service.  Fox weaves together beautiful and poetic excerpts from different spiritual traditions that are rich in depth and symbolism, and point to one unifying truth – that creativity is both our fundamental essence and responsibility.  In this age of colossal self-destruction and multiple crises in ecology, global-warming, terrorism, and energy, the author urges us to recognize our individual impact on the rest of the world and begin manifesting our creative purpose with more compassionate consciousness.  Fox calls us to reassess our approach to the planet, emphasizing that it is through our imagination that we can launch the necessary change.   

The author offers various ways for integrating creativity into life, including through learning to praise, embracing both joy and darkness, welcoming our child-like and playful innocence, practicing intimacy, meditating and developing spiritual routine, and opening to gratitude.  Fox further elaborates on improving society and transforming the systems and dynamics in education, relationships, politics, and worship.  As an example, he encourages us to reinvent the way our schools are currently organized with growing drop-out rates and to return to the ancient teachings of diverse cultures that “valued creativity as being the heart and soul of education.” (p. 201)  Making this shift will motivate children to study because it will be fostering in them reverence for existence and more profound understanding of sustainability.

Fox believes in living simply and with appreciation.  This can be achieved through art, for it brings us into the present moment, filling us with gratefulness for the harmony of nature and re-connecting us with Sophia, our inherent wisdom.  He observes that because we are not ready for liberation as a species yet, we tend to get absorbed in cynicism.  However, instead of succumbing to pusillanimity, or fear of our own creativity, and sinking deeper into negativity, we have a choice to begin cultivating a more healing environment, where we are being honest and maintain a holistically-oriented view of life.  Embracing creativity leads us to begin to worship the universe in awe and to gather the courage to alter reality.   

Fox supports the idea put forward by psychologist Rollo May that Greek and Judeo-Christian myths have led us to associate creativity and consciousness with guilt.  Fox states that in both the Prometheus and the Adam and Eve stories, the punishment of humans is “for an act of learning and creative consciousness that comes close to Divinity’s ways.” (p. 89)  As a result, today, too many of us are afraid of our divine co-creative abilities.  Fox further notes that there is a deep need within each one of us to create. To reject this yearning is equivalent to “a soul-death.  A concealment of one’s truth.  Hell.” (p. 128)  The author reminds us that we are not machines and are meant to be uninhibited because being wild is the sacred spirit of life.  Through art, we can reclaim and free our souls. 

Fox highlights the importance of being comfortable in solitude and listening to our inner voice in full concentration.  Meditation can assist us in finding the stillness and spiritual centeredness necessary in developing the inner artist and thus, in “birthing Divinity.” (p. 67)  In this regard, art “can be meditation itself:  It is a discipline that opens us up to the joy of Divinity at work.” (p. 139)  When we are unrealized as artists in life, we are also joyless.  Freedom is about authentic self-expression of our total being and is reflective of the ecstatic union with God.  While creating from our very core, we connect directly with God and co-birth together as partners.  If we deny ourselves this organic companionship, we experience loneliness associated with isolation. 

Throughout the book, Fox is calling us to awaken to our purpose and transcend the collective amnesia to our inborn and infinite capacities.  The author is prompting us to be more aware and to love life rather than take it for granted.  He shows the way for re-discovering joy and observes that “to know joy, we must know the heart.  We must live where the heart lives.” (p. 167)  Fox is optimistic, yet he acknowledges that suffering is a fundamental part of creation and urges us to learn from pain rather than either deny or dwell on it.  The author considers that there is no reason to be intimidated by the darkness and furthermore, it is part of our mission as artists in life to communicate to others the insights we gain during difficult times.  Fox compels us to delve deeper into our souls mirroring the entire universe and seek that which is beyond the ordinary senses, to connect with the cosmos and bring the wisdom back to share and uplift humanity. 

Fox inspires us to live in the now and focus on the artistic process rather than on outcomes, in order to empty our minds and experience contemplation or “unity of forgetfulness of separation and duality.  And then creativity surely flows.” (p. 196)  Our minds are imbued with the remarkable power of intention and imagination because they reflect God’s own mind, allowing us the capability to create any form and therefore, redesign the entire world.  Essentially, Fox emphasizes that all the structures upon which our modern civilization is built have to be re-imagined because as he states, “they all lack feminine energy, wisdom energy.  They lack cosmology and creativity.” (p. 229)  It is time to infuse them with our integral artistic power.   

The book is pulsating with newly emerging life.  It is well-articulated and full of enthusiasm and empowerment to immediately start to initiate a personal change.  I found it to be a wonderful resource about the intersections of creativity and spirituality and highly recommend it to other artists-pilgrims walking towards creating Heaven on Earth.  

Review by Veronica Shipilov
Doctoral Student
Holos University Graduate Seminary
www.HolosUniversity.org