Like many, ^z became interested in religion as a teen-ager; unlike many, his hyperanalytic persona sent him not to temples or mosques or chapels but rather to bookstores and library stacks. Four authors encountered in the 1969-1973 timeframe still surface sporadically from the swamps of his subconscious:
- John Fletcher --- Situation Ethics --- discovered on the shelf at the Southern Methodist University (Dallas, Texas) bookstore in the summer of 1969 during ^z's first extended time away from home (see BookhouseBoy, 29 Sep 1999) ... perhaps more ethics than theology, perhaps more controversy than rigor, but definitely a cage-rattler to a young mind
- C. S. Lewis --- Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, etc. --- light but literate, modern but with deep roots, entertaining but thought-provoking ... and better, in ^z's judgment, than Lewis's allegorical fantasies
- Paul Tillich --- The Shaking of the Foundations, The New Being, The Eternal Now, etc. --- mainly collections of sermons, highly readable and modular, delivered to a sophisticated academic audience and horizon-broadening in their argument that God should not be anthropomorphized and limited as often happens in popular religion ... like Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, Tillich initially came to hand as ^z was reshelving books in the Rice University main library ca. 1972 (see CollegeCollage1, 29 Sep 2000)
- John Robinson --- Honest to God and sequels --- heavier going than the above, written by an Anglican bishop who, like Tillich, proposed an existential vision of God as being-itself, the foundation of all existence, the cornerstone of reality ... also found first while browsing in the Fondren Library at Rice
What more recent books should one read on modern theological themes?
(The above citations are from memory, somewhat faded over a span three decades; please forgive any garbles. See also MyReligion, 6 Nov 2000, and BearingWitness, 17 Jan 2001)
TopicFaith - TopicLiterature - TopicPersonalHistory - Datetag20020315
Tao : The Watercourse Way, by Alan W. Watts, Al Chung-Liang Huang
Alan Watt's last and unfinished book. As someone once commented, unlike most writers, Alan's insights actually affected the way he lived his life. Includes a fascinating section on the Chinese language.
The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff
Lao Tsu wasn't the only person to discover the Taoist view of the world and uses AA Milne's writing to illustrate the key concepts.
-- JonathanSturm
(correlates: MysticMantra, SelfGovernmentAndSelfControl, StrobingTailLights, ...)
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