Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #507724 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 363 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
Spirit Matters is a highly recommended book for anyone who longs to live in a world with stronger spiritual values and less emphasis on ecological destruction, material gain and technological progress. And nowadays, there are a lot of us out there, according to acclaimed rabbi and author Michael Lerner (The Politics of Meaning). Many individuals live as a "divided self", he explains. We privately hold deep spiritual beliefs, but are too uncertain or shy when it comes to asserting those beliefs in the public arena.

To bridge this duality, Lerner offers this thoroughly readable manual on how to introduce solid and healthy spiritual values into our world culture. This is not about pushing a hidden religious agenda, or trying to create a fad-like movement around the latest "New Agey" ideology. Rather, Lerner devotes this book to presenting an intelligent vision of deeply caring for one another and our planet. Chapter by chapter Lerner gives examples of what readers can do for the environment, endangered animals, hospitals, prisons, the workplace, home front and neighbourhood. As a narrator and thinker, Lerner is sweeping and eloquent in his understanding of spiritual complexities, yet he also offers specific suggestions, such as improving education by eliminating "the SATs and other odious forms of testing". Or addressing the US prison problems by eliminating jail terms for non-violent crimes. As a spiritual/political manifesto, Spirit Matters cannot be praised enough. --Gail Hudson

From Publishers Weekly
Lerner, psychotherapist, rabbi and editor of Tikkun magazine, strongly feels that people subconsciously realize that they have closed off their sense of spirituality, and that they long for deeper meaning. He calls for this hunger to be openly recognized, with humanity working toward a global "Emancipatory Spirituality." Emancipatory Spirituality proclaims a recaptured awe of the universe, affirms the equal worth of every human being and promotes the healing and transformation of the world. It connects people to the "oneness of all being," embracing our innate sense of play, creativity and intellectual capabilities. Spirit matters, Lerner says, and denial of this fact leads to fractured personal lives, an alienated society and the unhealthy treatment of our environmental resources. His theoretical arguments are compelling and well considered, particularly as he traces the history of the horrors we have reaped from collectively denying the Spirit, and readers will no doubt appreciate his exercises in becoming more open to the Spirit. Unfortunately, Lerner's arguments on how to implement the needed focus on the Spirit in vocations such as medicine, education and law often fall short of reality and practicality, sounding shallow and glib. While he may be correct in arguing that individuals should remain open to the Spirit made manifest in their lives, he neglects to acknowledgeAor prescribe a cure forAthe large numbers of people who may not care to do so. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A comprehensive manifesto calling for the development of a socially and environmentally responsible spirituality. Tikkun editor Lerner (Jewish Renewal, 1994) is a former Clinton guru who helped develop the ill-fated Politics of Meaning some years back. Here he tries to hit the comeback trail with this earnest, long-winded, radical attempt at giving American society some spiritual CPR--an effort sorely in need of details, parables, or (at the very least) a sense of humor. Lerner anticipates a great spiritual awakening in our millennium, after which market profits will no longer dictate the cultural bottom line. Instead, a GNP of spiritual happiness, oneness with our creator (and creation), social responsibility, and goodness will transform our institutions and prevail throughout our noncompetitive globe. The idols of amoral scientism and unchecked greed will be toppled. The lubricant for this messianic world will not be religion: the organized religions, in Lerner's view, peddle a reactionary spirituality that is given to veiling women and circumcising men. Lerner's God, on the other hand, is the force of healing and transformation in the Universe, and his emancipatory spirituality will challenge the male chauvinism that objectifies women. Too many of Lerner's fine sentiments and proposals (for sharing resources equitably, forcing corporations and nations to be accountable for social and environmental sins, and reforming law and education) are hortatory rather than specific, and his spirituality in general has too many syllables to catch fire. His treatise is so warm and fuzzy that the bibliography is called Supportive Reading (although Lerner is not shy about plugging his own magazine ad nauseam). This ambitious and worthy effort would be far more effective if told in a voice that was less shrill and more eloquent. But that would require a different author. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.