Eyes Remade for Wonder: A Lawrence Kushner Reader, by Lawrence Kushner, with an introduction by Thomas Moore, collects some of the best writings by one of the most insightful rabbis in America. Kushner writes with profound reverence for the silence that surrounds his words. He believes that the essence of religious seeking is to "devotedly, stubbornly, compulsively return again and again to that line between noise and silence, hoping against hope to find a way to say what finally cannot be said. If it could be said straight out, you wouldn't have to try to find a better way to say it. If you couldn't speak it at all, then you'd have to resort to such nonverbal modes of communication as art or dance or music. The thing about spiritual truth is that it wants to be spoken. It is too important, too transforming, to be left alone in silence. It seems to have speakable content." This book begins with a selection of writings on cultivating awareness of God, the self, and the world. It moves on to explore the bedrock of Jewish religion, sacred text. Later chapters describe mystical, ethical, and political aspects of Jewish spiritual life, concluding with an excellent selection of meditations on the revelatory power of daily life. Kushner sees divine light glinting off his eyeglasses, shining through telescopes, and beaming out from lighthouses. Eyes Remade for Wonder is excellent devotional reading, and a fine introduction to Kushner's wide-ranging mind and empathic spirit. --Michael Joseph Gross
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