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Joyce Marshall has been writing reviews of movies and books in our Realistic Living Journal for three decades.\u00a0 She has now put up on Amazon.com hundreds of the best of these reviews.\u00a0 We invite you to visit this collection of her work at:<\/p>\n
Joyce\u2019s Amazon Reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n Here you will find recommendations for some of the best movies ever made plus a careful selection of good books on secular and religious topics, women\u2019s studies, Buddhism, great novels, and much more.\u00a0Click here to see Joyces Reviews on Amazon<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Select Reviews Written by<\/big><\/big><\/big> Following is a brief book list and a review of each listed book, assembled in relation to the life, work, and legacy of Joseph W. Mathews, who as a seminary professor, a Christian renewal organization dean, and a founder of a religious order of families become the mentor for many of us who have created Realistic Living.\u00a0\u00a0 We can view Mathews as a revelatory event that has both an \u201cOld Testament\u201d set of writings that illuminates this event and a \u201cNew Testament\u201d set of writings that illuminate further the influence of this man on the work of Realistic Living and many others.\u00a0 For our \u201cbefore Mathews\u201d selections, we have chosen one easy to read book from each of the five theologians who most influenced Mathews’ life and contributions.\u00a0 And for our \u201cAfter Mathews\u201d selections, we list and review significant books that have been written about Joe Mathews or written in the wake of Joe Mathews by some of us who were \u201cshaped\u201d by him and who attempted to further expand and update the opening in Spirit living that he initiated.<\/p>\n THE LIST OF BOOKS<\/strong><\/big><\/big><\/big><\/p>\n Selections of Classic 20th Century Theology<\/strong><\/big><\/big><\/p>\n H. Richard Niebuhr —\u00a0Radical Monotheism and Western Culture<\/em> Each of these authors wrote many other books, and many other authors (secular and religious) shaped Mathews thinking and life.\u00a0 But these selections provide a baseline grasp of where he was grounded in the Spirit upwellings of his century.<\/p>\n Spirit Movement Writings<\/strong><\/big><\/big><\/p>\n Theology and Spirit<\/strong><\/p>\n John Epps\u00a0 —\u00a0Bending History: Talks of Joseph Wesley Mathews<\/em> Richard Elliot —\u00a0Falling in Love with Mystery: We Don\u2019t Have to Pretend Anymore<\/em><\/p>\n John Cock —\u00a0The Transparent Event: Post-Modern Christ Images<\/em> Brian Stanfield —\u00a0The Courage to Lead: Transform Self, Transform Society<\/em><\/p>\n John Baggett —\u00a0Seeing Through the Eyes of Jesus:<\/em> Wesley Lachman —\u00a0The Shortest Way Home: A contemplative Path to God<\/em><\/p>\n Desmond Avery —\u00a0Beyond Power: Simone Weil and the Notion of Authority<\/em><\/p>\n Gene Marshall —\u00a0The Love of History and the Future of Christianity:<\/em> Biography and Autobiography<\/strong><\/p>\n James K. Mathews —\u00a0Brother Joe: A 20th Century Apostle<\/em> Social Vision and Life Methods<\/strong><\/p>\n Bending History:\u00a0Talks of Joseph W. Mathews, Vol. II, toward a New Social Vehicle<\/em> The Road from Empire to Eco-Democracy<\/em> Brian\u00a0 Stanfield —\u00a0The Art of Focused Conversation:<\/em> Priscilla Wilson —\u00a0The Facilitative Way: Leadership that Makes the Difference<\/em> <\/p>\n THE REVIEWS<\/strong><\/big><\/big><\/big><\/p>\n Selections of Classic 20th Century Theology<\/strong><\/big><\/big><\/p>\n Radical Monotheism and Western Culture<\/em> This book defines the very word \u201ctheology\u201d for the 20th Century Theological Revolution in Christian thought.\u00a0 So defined, theology is not about believing in a supreme being or power.\u00a0 The struggle is not between a theism that believes in such a divine being and an atheism that does not.\u00a0 In the Niebuhr analysis everyone has faith in something that serves as his or her God or gods and goddesses.\u00a0 Whatever gives meaning to your life is properly called your worship. Niebuhr defines three types of worship: (1) polytheism in which many meaning givers characterize your worship, (2) henotheism in which your social group provides your overarching meaning and loyalty, and (3) monotheism is which Reality as a Whole is your worship \u2013 in which faith or trust is attached to the Void out of which all things come and to which all things return.\u00a0 This Void is also the Every-thing in which all things cohere.\u00a0 Niebuhr then shows how radical monotheism relates to Incarnation, Revelation, Religion, Politics, and Science.\u00a0 If the shapers of a Next Christianity were to read only one book of 20th Century theology, this is it.<\/p>\n The Shaking of the Foundations<\/em> This collection of 22 sermons on Old and New Testament passages shows clearly how the basic breakthrough in Christian understanding requires a shake up in our culture\u2019s familiar presuppositions, overall attitudes, and programs of action.\u00a0 In these talks Tillich clarifies how a contemporary person of integrity can appropriate words and topics such as: God, Time, Existence, Holy, Religion, Providence, Love, Truth, Spirit, Christ, Sin, Grace, and more.\u00a0 These topics are not skimmed over but probed deeply.\u00a0 If these sermons seem difficult it is not because they are hard to read, but because what is said requires so much re-evaluation of life on the part the reader. \u00a0We may need to read other books by this author to meet Tillich, the philosopher, social critic, and systematic theologian, but this book allows you to meet Tillich, the person \u2013 and perhaps meet your own person as well.<\/p>\n Life Together<\/em> The communal nature of Christian practice was a core theme in Bonhoeffer\u2019s life and writings.\u00a0 This theme characterized everything, beginning in his 20s with his fabulous doctoral thesis\u00a0The Communion of Saints<\/em>\u00a0and lasting to his death at the hands of that national Nazi \u201canti-community\u201d that he so thoroughly opposed.\u00a0\u00a0Life Together<\/em>\u00a0goes straight to the vulnerable heart of living together within\u00a0 the Word of forgiveness that restores humans to their authenticity.\u00a0 He makes it painfully clear that Christian community is not an ideal that progressive leaning leaders impose upon the reality of a group of people.\u00a0 And he also makes it clear that the \u201creal\u201d community of Christian living is not about the idolization of the ego strengths of an accomplished leader who binds others to his charisma.\u00a0 Though some of Bonhoeffer\u2019s orthodox language needs to be translated for our times, he may be, among all the great 20th Century theologians, the most existentially personal.\u00a0 It is essential for a vital spirit movement that we take this interpersonal wisdom into our intimate circles of practice.<\/p>\n Primitive Christianity in its Contemporary Setting<\/em> Bultmann\u2019s emphasis was excellence in scientific New Testament scholarship and the translation of the New Testament message from two-story metaphors into one-realm, down-to-Earth ways of talking about our fundamental existence.\u00a0 So penetrating was his work, that theologians in this century tend to be divided into (1) those who think he went too far and (2) those who think he did not go far enough.\u00a0\u00a0Primitive Christianity<\/em>\u00a0is a helpful choice from among his many writings, for it explores in an existential manner the historical context for the New Testament writings. With respect to our own lives, we get an understandable summary of the Old Testament Heritage, first Century Judaism, the Greek Heritage, Stoicism, Gnosticism, and more. Then we get an exploration of how the original Christian community used and opposed all these influences.\u00a0 At some point in our Christian education, we all need this grasp of our origins as a community of faith, and we need to learn Bultmann\u2019s method of\u00a0 seeking the existential truth that breaks open for our era these Spirit expressions from that ancient time.<\/p>\n The Sickness Unto Death<\/em> Kierkegaard considered\u00a0Sickness<\/em>\u00a0\u201chis most perfect book.\u201d In it he defines sin, not as the opposite of virtue, but as the opposite of faith (by which he meant trust in the given Mysterious Eternality with which we are inescapably related).\u00a0 Because we ourselves are inescapably a\u00a0 Mystery-related being, our unwillingness to be so related is a condition that can be described as despair.\u00a0 Sin is despair.\u00a0 We can be in an unconscious form of despair in which the despairer hides this unacknowledged sickness.\u00a0 Or our despair can become painfully conscious, but still hidden away behind a reserved, accommodating exterior.\u00a0 Or despair can break to the outside into a desperate plunge into noble work or sensual debauchery.\u00a0 And despair can become a defiant project of self-created selfhood that can be resolved in the twinkling of the eye into the nothingness that it is.\u00a0 Finally, despair can become a defiant project of dismal living that \u201cproves\u201d to the despairer and to the world that the whole of Reality is \u201cno damned good.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Kierkegaard satirical description of these states of despair needs to be vividly pictured in the memory of every leader of Spirit transformation and nurture.<\/p>\n Spirit Movement Writings<\/big><\/strong><\/big><\/big><\/p>\n Theology and Spirit<\/strong><\/p>\n Bending History<\/em> This first of two volumes of Mathews\u2019 talks focuses upon the religious and Christian aspects of Joe\u2019s ministry.\u00a0 These well-selected sets of talks reveal the \u201csoul\u201d of this amazingly intuitive and creative critic and formulator of religious understanding. Without ever ceasing to be a Christian and a church renewal advocate, Mathews looked into the profound humanness that all religions access in various ways.\u00a0 He spoke of the revelation of a New Religious Mode that any religious renewal movement can ignore only at the peril of losing all relevance for our times.\u00a0 His talks are spellbinding in their colorfulness and aggressive combativeness with illusion.\u00a0 The editors of this book have done an excellent job of choosing, arranging, and contexting these wild and widely scattered contributions that Joe Mathews put forth.\u00a0 Take your time in reading this book, and promise yourself to read it over again, for it is deep enough to continue addressing us decade after decade into the future.<\/p>\n Falling in Love with Mystery<\/em> This book is an exception to the rule that theological writers are confused in their use of the word, \u201cGod.\u201d\u00a0 With simple, readable, and colorful life stories, Elliott tells us what it means to confront the actual Mystery that will not go away and call that Mystery \u201cGod.\u201d He also explores the various tragedies which characterize most Christian religion.\u00a0 He makes clear again and again how our religion is alienated from the actual living of our lives. And he shares his breakthroughs on how we can proceed in constructing a meaningful and relevant contemporary Christian spirituality.\u00a0 This book makes a good study resource for small groups, and it can be read in small portions for a daily solitary reflection.<\/p>\n The Transparent Event<\/em> The core of this book makes it plain to us that everyone has some image of Jesus, of what he means to us, and of what it means, or does not mean, to call him \u201cthe Christ.\u201d\u00a0 In this sense Christology is a pattern of thought for every human being. Cock constructs exercises that enable the reader to discover what his or her current \u201cChristology\u201d might actually be.\u00a0 In Section Two, Cock summarizes how a list of renowned theologians think about this topic. Then in Section Three: \u201cThe Dynamics of the Christ Event,\u201d he republishes the amazing essay by Joe Mathews, \u201cThe Christ of History,<\/em>\u201d and spends the next chapter discussing it.\u00a0 He then writes a chapter on \u201cThe Christ Event in Life and Art\u201d in which he shows how the dynamics of the transforming Christ event appear in ordinary secular art and thus in our everyday lives.\u00a0 In one illustration in this chapter, he walks us through the Christ event in the life of Mountain Rivera in the movie,\u00a0Requiem for a Heavyweight<\/em>.\u00a0 Moving from the turning point contained in this gem, Cock goes on to explore further his own Christology and share other gems that might be helpful to the reader.\u00a0 In the end Cock returns the reader to the challenge to work through his or her very own Christology.<\/p>\n Our Universal Spirit Journey<\/em> This book, completed under the emotional shadow of the September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, attempts to develop an inter-religious language for the central experiences of profound humanness expressed in the key symbols of the Christian tradition.\u00a0 Cock takes up the challenge of the \u201csecular religious\u201d \u2013 the search for a language of awe that we can share in common among historic religious traditions and outside those traditions.\u00a0 In order to meet this challenge, he focuses on the word \u201cSpirit\u201d which has been as troublesome for most of us as the word \u201cGod.\u201d\u00a0 In order to invite secular people into the conversation about the meaning of \u201cSpirit,\u201d Cock uses a mixture of poetry, aphorism, and essay to show how Spirit is revealed in the ordinary experiences of everyday life.\u00a0\u00a0 This book can be useful for anyone interested in inter-religious dialogue and in the renewal of traditional theological language.<\/p>\n The Courage to Lead<\/em> The premise of this book is that to transform society, we first need to transform ourselves.\u00a0 The book includes a history of the Christian Faith and Life Community, the Ecumenical Institute, the Order:Ecumenical, and the Institute of Cultural Affairs \u2013 as well as a summary of these sixty-years of amazing in-depth research and practical experience by this network of people.\u00a0 The book is presently a bestseller on the iUniverse bookstore site, having sold 9500 hard copies.\u00a0 And at least 1500 persons have\u00a0 been in\u00a0Courage to Lead\u00a0<\/em>study groups.\u00a0 The recent editing of this latest edition has made the book even more accessible.\u00a0 Under the four headings of Relation to Life, Self, World, and Society, 12 stances of an effective leader are laid out: everyday care, disciplined lucidity, continual affirmation, secular depth, self-reflectiveness, radical vocatedness, historical involvement, comprehensive perspective, inclusive responsibility, social pioneer, transestablishment style, and signal presence.\u00a0 While often autobiographical, the lives being shared illuminate all our lives. This book is for the thousands of us who have participated in this 60-year journey, and it is also for all \u201cThose Who Care\u201d who have found themselves called to lead.<\/p>\n Seeing Through the Eyes of Jesus<\/em> A whole new library of scholarly work on the historical Jesus has been produced over the last three decades, much of it historically and exegetically rich but almost all of it theologically thin.\u00a0 In\u00a0Seeing Through the Eyes of Jesus<\/em>, John Baggett addresses this problem, showing how the painstaking historical and archaeological work these scholars have performed can help us clear from our minds our obsolete images of Jesus.\u00a0 Baggett devotes the first part of the book to a highly readable and insightful \u201cbiography\u201d of Jesus informed by this scholarship.\u00a0 In the second part of the book, he argues in detail that we must also clear away obsolete images of God and world as well in order to hear the full impact of the address of Jesus’ life to our own.\u00a0 In both parts Baggett uses the device of seeing through the eyes of Jesus, which means placing our own lives within his life and thus rendering all these topics fully existential in their meanings for the reader.<\/p>\n The Shortest Way Home<\/em> Lachman, like many of us in recent decades, has been gripped by the power of meditation\/contemplation as a method of accelerating our Spirit journey into the depths of our being.\u00a0 In the first eight chapters he shows us how contemplative work is a valid quest for truth and how the contemplative heritage of Christianity is a strong heritage along with the teachings from Hinduism and Buddhism that are making such inroads in the awareness of so many of us.\u00a0 In chapter nine Lachman shows us how contemplative wisdom illuminates the meaning of key Christian terms like \u201cGod,\u201d \u201cChrist,\u201d and \u201cHoly Spirit.\u201d The way he contrasts Holy Spirit with the ego\u2019s humanly created \u201cstory of I<\/em>\u201d is most illuminating.\u00a0 Here is a line that might stand as a summary of the book: \u201cFreed from the myopia caused by living within our own\u00a0story of I<\/em>, we begin to appreciate the strange, wondrous people and things around us, as if for the first time.\u201d\u00a0 Lachmann illustrates how true compassion or Spirit love is a given part of our being that bubbles to the surface of our living when the old\u00a0stories of I<\/em>\u00a0are put in their place.\u00a0 Freedom, too, is what we have left when\u00a0stories of I\u00a0<\/em>no longer dominate.\u00a0 This short book can be read again and again and still be a challenge.<\/p>\n Beyond Power<\/em> This is an immaculately scholarly and profoundly existential book.\u00a0 In terms of those two criteria, its equal cannot be found among all the other great books produced by descendants of the Joe Mathews breakthrough.\u00a0\u00a0Beyond Power<\/em>\u00a0is an illuminating combination of Avery\u2019s mastery of the Joe Mathews\u2019 heritage and his thorough dialogue with a truly great philosophical and religious writer.\u00a0 In philosophical and sociological depth, Simone Weil is the equal of more well known figures like\u00a0 Simone de Beauvoir and Susan K. Langer.\u00a0 T. S. Eliot and Albert Camus acknowledged her as one of the great writers of their century.\u00a0 Avery reveals her value for Christian renewal, has mastered her story and writings, and has made her available to us in an accessible style.\u00a0 A Jew by birth, Weil forged for herself a radical Christian practice in the Roman Catholic style.\u00a0 Her decision not to be baptized had to do with her realization of the contradiction between an honest mystical faith and the misuses of Christian institutional power.\u00a0 This book is not an easy read, but not because of a cryptic style on the part of Avery or Weil.\u00a0 It is challenging because of the profound nature of the insights being shared.\u00a0 She has raised issues that are still living-edge topics.\u00a0 We can profit from reading this book, every page of it.<\/p>\n The Love of History and the Future of Christianity:<\/em> This book is the most recent and perhaps the best summation of a long history of Marshall\u2019s writing on these topics.\u00a0 It assumes that some of us are called to reconstruct the practice of the Christian religion for the 21st Century.\u00a0 It grounds the important truth that Christianity, at its best, is characterized by a love of history, and that we who dare to forge this heritage anew need a grasp of that history.\u00a0 We need to tell ourselves and others a story about this long development reaching from \u201cAbraham\u201d to tomorrow.\u00a0 We need to review the key turning points within the New Testament formation and within the long history that brings us to this moment of vast turning.\u00a0 S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard is a symbol for\u00a0 the beginning of this new era of Christian practice in which we are living.\u00a0 Also assumed is that the never-finished theological work has been done to a degree that it is not longer our only focus.\u00a0 Our most urgent focus is now upon the sociological forms and methods of a Next Christian practice \u2013\u00a0 on a new way of being religious that is thoroughly, perhaps shockingly, post Christendom.<\/p>\n The Enigma of Consciousness<\/em> In Part One of this book, a philosophy of truth is laid out in an accessible manner, honoring the scientific approach to truth, but making clear that the contemplative approach to truth is also crucial and absolutely essential for an exploration of profound humanness and religion.\u00a0 Part Two uses the contemplative approach to truth to examine and theorize about the basic enigma of consciousness as it appears in the human species.\u00a0 In Part Three, profound humanness or Spirit is explored, described, and shown to be a given within human existence. In Part Four, \u201creligion\u201d is redefined for our time (a New Religious Mode) and various practices that characterize the meaning of \u201creligion\u201d are described.\u00a0 Using the category of \u201cPrimal Metaphors\u201d rather than Joe Mathews\u2019 \u201cUr-Images,\u201d Part Five explores the vast diversity of religious expression on this planet.\u00a0 Part Six deals with \u201cdoing,\u201d \u201chistorical engagement,\u201d or \u201cresponsible action\u201d that derives from the states of Being outlined in Part Three.\u00a0 This is an ambitious thought project, bringing to further clarity breakthroughs that Joe Mathews intuited but did not live to finish fleshing out.<\/p>\n Jacob\u2019s Dream<\/em> Part One of this book is about the discovery of soul or the essence of being human.\u00a0 Part Two describes the states of profound humanness pulled through the basic Christian categories of Trust, Love, and Freedom.\u00a0 Using the enneagram typology of human personalities, Part Three describes the Fall from Spirit authenticity into personality identifications.\u00a0 Part Four describes the stages of the journey home to our Spirit authenticity.\u00a0 Part Five explores the solitary, but also profoundly communal, nature of the Christian life.\u00a0 This\u00a0 book focuses on the fulness of Spirit realization.\u00a0 To put this in Christian language, it focuses on sanctification rather than justification.\u00a0 With help from the enneagram heritage as well as from the current planet-wide flourishing of Eastern religions, this book adds clarity on the fall from our true authenticity to our self-created and thereby illusory selfhoods.\u00a0 The capacity of the human species to create symbols for and models of our reality turns out to be both our glory and power but also our ability to lose ourselves in illusory facsimiles of the truth about ourselves and our world.\u00a0 Our journey home to our reality entails becoming disentangled from this illusion-making creativity and allowing our posited being to flower.\u00a0 Our own journey and our witness to others requires this kind of clarity.<\/p>\n The Call of the Awe<\/em> This book is a pull together of the theological revolution that rankled the Christian churches of the mid 20th Century and inspired so many of us to teach courses in basic theology to tens of thousands of clergy and laity in the decades of the nineteen sixties and seventies.\u00a0 Part One of this book moves through the basic themes of Christian Heritage: Awe, Spirit, God, History, Jesus, Christ, Personality, Religion, and the Authority of Authenticity.\u00a0 Part Two is about the enrichment of interreligious dialogue: (1) The Children of Abraham, Yahweh and Allah, (2) The Asian Enrichment (especially Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism), and (3) The Return to antiquity (the Great Goddess recovery and the manyness of the Divine in ancient tribal life).\u00a0 All these topics have needed and still need freshening up for the 21st Century. This book provides some basic summaries and ways to keep moving on these topics.<\/p>\n Great Paragraphs of Protestant Theology<\/em> This spiral-bound, 8 1\/2-by-11 booklet focuses on key paragraphs from the writings of Rudolf Bultmann,\u00a0 H. Richard Niebuhr,\u00a0 Paul Tillich, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.\u00a0 Each of the nine chapters of\u00a0Part Two<\/strong>\u00a0provides a commentary on paragraphs taken from an essay or chapter by one of these four authors.\u00a0 The aim is to break open the sometimes cryptic language used by these authors in order to allow a more thorough grounding in our lives of these groundbreaking insights.\u00a0\u00a0Part One<\/strong>\u00a0introduces this process of discovery by exploring three approaches to truth and the relation of these approaches to the three aspects of the triune experience of God that has characterized Christian heritage.\u00a0\u00a0Part Three\u00a0<\/strong>explores three types of Unitarianism that have fragmented the triune experience.\u00a0 Part Three also demonstrates the openendedness of good Trinitarian theology rather than the sort of dogmatic cocoon or box that orthodox Trinitarian theology has often constructed.<\/p>\n Biography and Autobiography<\/strong><\/p>\n Brother Joe: A 20th Century Apostle<\/em> Joe Mathews\u2019 younger brother James became a progressive Bishop in the Methodist\u00a0 Church, serving first in India and then in Boston.\u00a0 The two brothers were quite close, assisting one another in important ways.\u00a0 Though less flamboyant than Joe, James was a solid theologian and a forceful and beloved leader.\u00a0 Perhaps no one was more qualified to write an intimate and yet objective story of Joe\u2019s life than Jim.\u00a0 Those who worked with Joe day-to-day in the Order:Ecumenical may have a more detailed view of some aspects of Joe’s creativity, but Jim\u2019s story is a fair one and his skills as a writer have served us well in giving us a picture of Joe\u2019s complex story in easily understandable chapters.\u00a0 This book definitely belongs in our mini-library of Spirit movement books.<\/p>\n Called to Be<\/em> This spiritual memoir contains the author’s careful and passionate reflection on crucial events and images recalled from his lifetime of inquiry into what it means to be a human being standing before vast and impenetrable mystery.\u00a0 The Order: Ecumenical is at the core of the book, both in terms of the amount of pages devoted to it and the central role it plays in the author’s self-understanding.\u00a0 The pages devoted to explaining why the author ultimately left a body that had given him a sense of Spirit vocation he could not find in the congregational church or secular society are worth the price alone.\u00a0 Spirit colleagues who were in the Order or connected with it will find much to delight in and much to ponder.\u00a0 And those who were never directly involved in the Order but who see in it clues to a potential Christian renewal in the third millennium will want to put this book on their shelf alongside Bishop James K. Mathews’\u00a0Brother Joe<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cJust Checkin\u2019 on Ya\u201d<\/em> Many of us may face going through the death process with a loved one. Jeanette Stanfield describes her own walk on that path with unflinching honesty.\u00a0 Her writing is matter-of-fact, straightforward, and thereby deeply moving.\u00a0 Brian Stanfield was a five-foot giant of a man.\u00a0 Jeanette decided soon after she met him that she did not want to miss sharing her life with this man. The main gift of this book is the attitude with which Brian and Jeanette face death.\u00a0 Recognizing death as a natural and good part of life, they handle whatever sorrows and inconveniences it brings with wholehearted creativity, not blaming or complaining, simply living it to the full.<\/p>\n Social Vision and Life Methods<\/strong><\/p>\n Bending History:\u00a0Talks of Joseph W. Mathews, Vol. II, toward a New Social Vehicle<\/em> This book contains some of Joe Mathews best talks, certainly his best talks on the spirit dimension of envisioning and building a New Social Vehicle.\u00a0 Joe\u2019s interest in social engagement is part of his religious vision, his insight that the discovery of profound humanness is also a discovery of the journey of \u201creturn\u201d to the real world as a servant, a servant who understands that in this day and age \u201call the Earth belongs to all the people.\u201d\u00a0 This includes all the economic resources, all the political decisions, all the cultural gifts.\u00a0\u00a0 For the individual person of any race or sex living in any place on the planet, the whole story of life on this planet is her or his story and each person is to be given the opportunity to participate in helping to create that story.\u00a0 This perspective is an anathema toward an upper class who owns almost half of the economic resources, makes all the big decisions, and hoards the best information, education, and cultural wisdom.\u00a0 Structures need to be built that change that topdown pattern, that make economic, political, and cultural democracy real in a very practical way.\u00a0 Joe was passionate about steps that could be taken by \u201cThose who Care\u201d way ahead of the political establishment, way sooner than anything we could vote for.\u00a0 So this book includes talks on methods of action as well as challenges to Spirit depth and a prophetic vision of the future.\u00a0 It may be surprising to some readers to see so much thoughtfulness in the awareness of a mid-20th-Century person that still applies today.\u00a0 Also the contexts and explanations applied to the various sections of this book by the editors are excellent.<\/p>\n The Road from Empire to Eco-Democracy<\/em> This\u00a0 book is also about the master picture of a New Social Vehicle, herein called Eco-Democracy.\u00a0 By \u201cempire\u201d is meant a quality built into the mode of social organization we have called \u201ccivilization.\u201d\u00a0 A core vision of this book is seeing how we are in the midst of a massive turning in human history that is at least as radical as the turning from tribal societies to the pattern of civilization.\u00a0 Civilization is ending.\u00a0 Humanity does not have to end with the end of civilization, but an alternative to civilization has to be built with considerable haste.\u00a0 The ecological crisis was not as visible to Joe Mathews as it is to the prophetic voices of the 21st Century.\u00a0 We can now see that our very first priority is to reconstruct the economic, political, and cultural structures of human life into compatibility with the real limits and possibilities of planet Earth.\u00a0 Part One of the book is about ten basic ways that civilized people are waking up to the extent of our crisis.\u00a0 Part Two and Three are about comprehensively envisioning an alternative future.\u00a0 Part Four is about the \u201croad\u201d or \u201cway\u201d from our tragic \u201chere\u201d to a viable and flourishing \u201cthere.\u201d\u00a0 Part Four examines the plausibility of finding whistle points and avalanches of change that can slide toward the unprecedented future we need to have.\u00a0 It is also about the forces that can envision, occasion, and guide that massive change.\u00a0 It is about the strategies that can be employed and the roles each of us might take in lifting our tiny corner of this massive weight.\u00a0 The insights of this committee-written book have been fought over for four years, and the product has turned out better than any of the coauthors imagined when they started.\u00a0 We need this book.<\/p>\n The Art of Focused Conversation<\/em> Brian Stanfield and his colleagues pulled together scores of uses of the art form conversation method pioneered by Joseph W. Mathews.\u00a0 This book focuses on its use in the workplace, but it is adaptable to any group.\u00a0 If you are interested in community or involved in any groups, no process is more valuable than this conversation.\u00a0 This book tells the history of the creation of this method following Mathews’ experience as a chaplain in World War II,\u00a0 explains its purpose and its parts, tells how to lead such a conversation, and offers 100 sample conversations for specific situations.\u00a0 The purpose of such a conversation is to allow a group of people to process their experience (to experience their experience, so to speak) by asking a series of questions in four different levels: the objective, the reflective, the interpretive, and the decisional.\u00a0 This conversation gives form to a natural process which\u00a0 (1) grounds us first in the reality of life,\u00a0 (2) acknowledges the reality of our feelings,\u00a0 (3) looks at meaning based on the first two steps, not on some abstract idea, and (4) moves us into the future from the wisdom just discovered.\u00a0 This is a book of practical inspiration.<\/p>\n The Workshop Book<\/em> This wonderfully practical book is a manual not only on the workshop method but on consensus process and its facilitation, which essentially is how to enable full participation and make meetings fun and meaningful.\u00a0 It is amazing how many miserable meetings take place without anyone knowing that they could be different if some basic skills were learned and used.\u00a0 Stanfield tells the history of the consensus workshop method and its development and its use by the Institute of Cultural Affairs since the 1960s.\u00a0 He lays out and explains the workshop steps of contexting the group, brainstorming the ideas, clustering the ideas, naming the clusters, and resolving to implement the results with a chapter on each of these five steps.\u00a0 He explains the role and necessary skills of the facilitator, noting that when facilitators are best, people barely notice them, thinking they did the work themselves.\u00a0 Included in the responsibility of the facilitator is attention to space, time, mood, and the group itself.\u00a0 Stanfield discusses each of these as well as potentially difficult situations, most of which are dealt with by appropriate contexting and methods that focus and enable full participation.<\/p>\n The Facilitative Way<\/em> Since the sixties, probably half a million workshops have taken place world wide, based on the methods created by The Institute of Cultural Affairs.\u00a0\u00a0The Facilitative Way<\/em>\u00a0is a highly motivating and comprehensive rendering of that intellectual capital.\u00a0 As our times require corporations, government agencies and non-profits to evolve responses to global transformation, this book provides practical and inspiring approaches to engage organizational creativity and resolve.\u00a0 Commencing with \u201cLeading is a Decision, not a Job Description,\u201d there are seven successive, well-illustrated vistas: Make a Difference, Mobilize Energy, Orchestrate Interactions, Generate Reflection, Ignite Action, Capture Learning, and What it Takes.\u00a0 Revisiting activities such as setting a context, cultivating a compelling story, and others flow together to illuminate the timely role of the facilitative leader.<\/p>\n Concluding Comments<\/strong><\/big><\/big><\/big><\/p>\n Every specific movement of Spirit rediscovery or of social change has its Old and New Testament.\u00a0 The writings of\u00a0 H. Richard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolf Bultmann, and S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard are clearly Old Testament to the movement that Joe Mathews initiated.\u00a0 Other writers and their books may also qualify.\u00a0 Rudolf Otto\u2019s\u00a0The Idea of the Holy<\/em>\u00a0probably qualifies.\u00a0 Susan K. Langer\u2019s\u00a0Philosophy in a New Key<\/em>\u00a0 and Thomas Kuhn\u2019s\u00a0The Structure of Scientific Revolutions<\/em>\u00a0may also fill an essential niche.\u00a0 Herman Hesse\u2019s\u00a0Journey to the East\u00a0<\/em>and Nikos Kazantzakis\u2019\u00a0Saviors of God<\/em>\u00a0were\u00a0 determinative literature for Joe and many others.\u00a0 And we cannot omit the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, especially\u00a0The Brothers Karamazov<\/em>.\u00a0 Also, Picasso, especially his \u201cGuernica\u201d painting, has Old Testament standing for this movement.\u00a0 And this list is far from complete.<\/p>\n The \u201cNew Testament\u201d writings for this movement are also larger in number than those selected above.\u00a0 The talks of Joe Mathews are certainly core, and we believe the writings listed and reviewed above can each be experienced as important clarifications in the wake of this pivotal person.\u00a0 These diverse writings, though they may be somewhat inconsistent with one another, nevertheless each give guidance to the movement of humanity that continues to revere the inspiration that dawned in Joe Mathews.\u00a0 It does not matter that those of us who knew Joe best also knew his limitations and failings.\u00a0 The important fact is that this limited person was willing to be selected by Reality to be an initiator of a vast bending of history.\u00a0 Actually, his life was only a potential for a vast bending of history. The baton has been passed to those of us who have taken it or will take it.\u00a0 The \u201cAugustine\u201d who will synthesize our offerings for the centuries to come may not yet have been born.\u00a0 And he or she may not be born unless some of us run our laps of this race with sufficient effectiveness.\u00a0 Bending history is an ongoing bending that in the end requires millions of benders.\u00a0 We have made a beginning.\u00a0 Still to be realized is that fully effective coming together of a well-ordered network that calls forth the millions of benders needed to realize the potential we have glimpsed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Joyce Marshall has been writing reviews of movies and books in our Realistic Living Journal for three decades.\u00a0 She has now put up on Amazon.com hundreds of the best of these reviews.\u00a0 We invite you to visit this collection of her work at: Joyce\u2019s Amazon Reviews Here you will find recommendations for some of the … Continue reading Book and Movie Reviews<\/span>
\n<\/strong>
\nJoyce Marshall, Gene Marshall, Alan Richard, and Ken Fisher<\/big><\/strong><\/p>\n
\nPaul Tillich —\u00a0The Shaking of the Foundations<\/em>
\nDietrich Bonhoeffer —\u00a0Life Together<\/em>
\nRudolf Bultmann —\u00a0Primitive Christianity in its Contemporary Setting<\/em>
\nS\u00f8ren Kierkegaard —\u00a0The Sickness Unto Death<\/em><\/p>\n
\nwith: John Cock, George Holcombe, Betty Pesek, and George Walters<\/p>\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 — Our Universal Spirit Journey: Reflection\u00a0 and Verse for Creation\u2019s Sake<\/em><\/p>\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 His Revolutionary View of Reality & His Transcendent Significance for Faith<\/em><\/p>\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Toward a Manifesto for a Next Christianity<\/em>
\n— The Enigma of Consciousness: A Philosophy of Profound Humanness & Religion<\/em>
\n—\u00a0\u00a0Jacob\u2019s Dream: A Christian Inquiry into Spirit Realization<\/em>
\n—\u00a0\u00a0The Call of the Awe: Rediscovering Christian Profundity in an Interreligious Era<\/em>
\n—\u00a0\u00a0Great Paragraphs of Protestant Theology<\/em><\/p>\n
\nJohn Cock —\u00a0Called to Be: A Spirit Odyssey<\/em>
\nJeanette Stanfield —\u00a0\u201cJust Checkin\u2019 on ya\u201d: My journey of being a caregiver for a loved one<\/em><\/p>\n
\nJohn Epps with: James Campbell, James Wiegel, Clarence Mann, Marilyn Crocker, and George Holcombe<\/p>\n
\nGene Marshall with: Ben Ball, Marsha Buck, Ken Kreutziger, and Alan Richard<\/p>\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 100 Ways to Access Group Wisdom in the Workplace<\/em>
\n—\u00a0The Workshop Book: From Individual Creativity to Group Action<\/em><\/p>\n
\nwith: Kathleen Harnish and Joel Wright<\/p>\n
\nH. Richard Niebuhr
\nHarper Torchbooks: 1943<\/p>\n
\nPaul Tillich
\nCharles Scribner\u2019s Sons: 1948<\/p>\n
\nDietrich Bonhoeffer
\nHarper and Row: 1954<\/p>\n
\nRudolf Bultmann
\nMeridian Books: 1956<\/p>\n
\nS\u00f8ren Kierkegaard
\nfirst published in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus.
\nPrinceton University Press: 1941
\npublished with\u00a0Fear and Trembling<\/em><\/p>\n
\nTalks of Joseph Wesley Mathews<\/em>
\nJohn Epps\u00a0with:<\/em>\u00a0John Cock, George Holcombe, Betty Pesek, and George Walters
\nResurgence Publishing: 2005<\/p>\n
\nWe Don\u2019t Have to Pretend Anymore<\/em>
\nRichard Elliott
\nDorrance Publishing: 1998<\/p>\n
\nPost-Modern Christ Images<\/em>
\nJohn Cock
\ntranScribe books: 2001 Second Edition<\/p>\n
\nReflection and Verse for Creation\u2019s Sake<\/em>
\nJohn Cock
\ntransScribe books: 2002<\/p>\n
\nTransform Self, Transform Society<\/em>
\nby Brian Stanfield
\nNew Society Publishers: 2000
\nSecond Edition, iUniverse: 2012
\nAlso Available from:\u00a0 ica-usa.org\u00a0 or ica-associates.ca<\/p>\n
\nHis Revolutionary View of Reality & His Transcendent Significance for Faith<\/em>
\nJohn Baggett
\nWilliam B. Eerdmans: 2008<\/p>\n
\nA contemplative Path to God<\/em>
\nWesley Lachman
\nO Street Publishing: 2008<\/p>\n
\nSimone Weil and the Notion of Authority<\/em>
\nDesmond Avery
\nLexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield: 2008<\/p>\n
\nToward a Manifesto for a Next Christianity<\/em>
\nGene Marshall
\nAn advanced draft of this 2013 book can be downloaded from:
\nhttp:\/\/www.RealisticLiving.org\/PDF\/History\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nA Philosophy of Profound Humanness & Religion<\/em>
\nGene Marshall
\nAn advanced draft of this 2012 book can be downloaded from:
\nhttp:\/\/www.RealisticLiving.org\/PDF\/Enigma\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nA Christian Inquiry into Spirit Realization<\/em>
\nGene Marshall
\niUniverse: 2008<\/p>\n
\nRediscovering Christian Profundity in an Interreligious Era<\/em>
\nGene Marshall
\niUniverse: 2003<\/p>\n
\nGene Marshall
\nRealistic Living Press: 2005<\/p>\n
\nJames K. Mathews
\nResurgence Publishing: 2006<\/p>\n
\nA Spirit Odyssey<\/em>
\nJohn Cock
\ntransScribe books: 2000<\/p>\n
\nMy Journey of Being a Caregiver for a Loved One<\/em>
\nby Jeanette Stanfield, 2009
\nAvailable from ica-usa.org or ica-associates.ca<\/p>\n
\nJohn Epps\u00a0\u00a0with<\/em>: James Campbell, James Wiegel, Clarence Mann, Marilyn Crocker, and George Holcombe
\nResurgence Publishing: 2011<\/p>\n
\nGene Marshall\u00a0\u00a0with<\/em>: Ben Ball, Marsha Buck, Ken Kreutziger, and Alan Richard
\niUniverse and Berrett-Koehler: 2011<\/p>\n
\n100 Ways to Access Group Wisdom in the Workplace<\/em>
\nBrian Stanfield
\nNew Society Publishers, 2000<\/p>\n
\nFrom Individual Creativity to Group Action<\/em>
\nBrian\u00a0 Stanfield
\nNew Society Publishers: 2002<\/p>\n
\nLeadership that Makes the Difference<\/em>
\nPriscilla Wilson\u00a0with<\/em>: Kathleen Harnish and Joel Wright
\nTeamTech Press: 2003<\/p>\n