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Author Mary Rose O'Reilley is decidedly eclectic. She confidently blends sheep tending with her Quaker background as well as her passion for Mahayana Buddhism (a form of Buddhism taught by Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh). This may sound like the recipe for a soup of spiritual mush, but nothing could be further from the truth. Like Anne Lamott, O'Reilley also happens to be a hysterically funny storyteller who understands the importance of humility when writing spiritual autobiography. (One reviewer called O'Reilley a "social anthropologist from the Planet Mongo, a stand-up mystic going for the belly laugh...")
Whether she's talking about grief over dying lambs, the plague of Monkey Mind, flipping sheep, or a barnyard fashion crisis, O'Reilley keeps her metaphors down to earth and her epiphanies humble. The structure is especially inviting: a collection of brief essays of only about three to five pages each. But this collection also reads like a journey with a beginning and an end. It starts with O'Reilley as a college professor who decides to try some part-time animal husbandry at a local farm and ends with her finding a new direction in life that we can only hope will inspire her to write a sequel. --Gail Hudson --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
From Publishers Weekly
Quakers, a Christian sect that arose in 17th-century England, are known for their pacifism, egalitarianism and reliance on the "inner light" for guidance. Depending on what branch they belong to, Quakers may give the inner sense of guidance more authority than written Scripture, which explains why a modern Quaker like O'Reilley can adopt Buddhism as her faith and still remain a Quaker. O'Reilley, professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., and author of The Peaceable Classroom and Radical Presence, tells the story of her decision to tend sheep and describes the spiritual ramifications of that experience. Anyone who is looking for a religious instruction book will not find it here: O'Reilley's writing is narrative, not didactic. She simply tells more or less connected short stories about her sheep-tending and concurrent religious explorations. Whatever one thinks of her philosophy, O'Reilley has obviously mastered the craft of writing. Her rich, allusive prose draws on Catholicism, Quakerism, Buddhism, monastic tradition, Shakespeare and the Bible. Her short vignettes are luminous with faith matters, yet full of the earthy details of animal husbandry, resulting in a style that's a cross between Kathleen Norris and James Herriot. The only caveat is that any readers who are squeamish about the messy details of barnyard life may find O'Reilley's descriptions of her farm work too realistic for their stomachs.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
