Article
- Author:
- Draper, Brian
- Publisher:
- Lion Hudson (2009)
- ISBN:
- 9780745953212
- Purchase:
- Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (commission earned)
There is a massive segment of the publishing industry that supplies "how to" books but the strange paradox is that most of these are read by people who already know how to. Cookery books are mostly read by cooks and car manuals by motor enthusiasts.
The same applies to "how to" books in the Christianity market. I love this book by Brian Draper, a well loved Thought for the Day regular, because it's packed with aphorisms of his own and those culled from others but I doubt that anybody will read it who comes cold to the subject from off the street and wants to end up talking to God privately at home and corporately in church.
For those who think they will enjoy the aphorisms there is the problem of overcoming a structure which imposes an unduly rigid pattern on the text. Draper approaches spiritual intelligence, a concept developed by Danah Zohar as that core of our intelligence which enables us to reach our full potential as creatures, by taking us on a journey of spiritual transformation at four levels:
- We are where we are;
- The false self;
- The true self;
- Living in "flow".
which makes some kind of sense but then each of these is divided into:
- Awakening
- Seeing afresh
- Living the change
- Passing it on.
You won't want to buy the book if I list all my favourite aphorisms but here are a few:
- It is not a matter of seeing new lands but of seeing with new eyes;
- It's one thing to keep your mind clean by averting your eyes when something unhelpful appears on the TV; it's quite another to use your eyes creatively and perceptively to see what’s really going on around you;
- If you stop to notice you will start to notice;
- Change can only happen in the present.
and all of those are in the opening chapters.
So buy this book if you want to increase your store of potted wisdom but if you're reading this review you probably won't want the book to fulfil the purpose for which it was written.