Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.38 (535 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0345384245 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-03-27 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Should be a zero I have tried twice to read this book and couldn't get through it either time. I was determined the second time I read it to try harder, thinking there had to be some redeeming value, but if there is I just didn't have the patience to perservere. There are too many engaging books to be read.. Wonderful fun read, simply could not put it down! Although I do not consider myself to be religious and have seldom set foot in a Catholic Church, I found this book captivating. It is refreshingly honest and simple to read and the characters are charming and sometimes quirky. The narrator has spent her life trying to break free of her childhood Catholic roots only to find herself drawn back into them in middle age. She begins her pilgrimmage in Italy with a group of agnostic British couples and moves on to a group of Friars and Nuns, who are delightfully humorous and not at all what one would expect them to be. Thr. "Travel, memoir, contemplation: Two out of three ain't bad" according to Jeff Duntemann. As memoir and (especially) travelog, VIRGIN TIME works reasonably well. The author has a quietly introspective prose style well suited to the topic. The reminiscences are well-drawn, and her observations of "sacred travel" are astute and entertaining.But I bought the book to learn something of the contemplative life, and come away feeling like I know nothing more than when I began. This may be due to a sharp divide between two parts of the book: The first, an intertwined memoir/travelog, and the second, a crimped and uninforming description of a retreat at a dismal-
It was not done in the mind, that chilly place, but in the heart, where the real mystery of intelligence--intuition rather than thought--lay catlike and feminine, ready to pounce." Accordingly, as she seeks the meaning of faith--by visiting several Catholic pilgrimage sites in Europe and a California-based Cistercian women's monastery, and by musing over her religious upbringing in Minnesota--she exercises her observational skills with a fury. But for all its prettiness and earnestness, Hampl's prose is finally prolix and enervating. She describes the wildflowers of Umbria and the quirks and passions of English agnostic travel companions; she relates how, in Assisi, touring Franciscans "spoke of Francis and Clare as of people who had just left the room for a moment"; in Lourdes, she is overwhelmed by a crowd of supplican
On her pilgrimage she meets others seekers--crotchety English agnostics, American Franciscan friars and nuns, and the seekers that fill every charter flight. "A religious cliff-hanger--intimate, compelling, hard to put down."SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLEEager to shake off the indelible brand of a Catholic upbringing, Patricia Hample seeks the "old world" of Catholicism. But what she is looking for confronts her, finally, on a rereat at a monastery near the Lost Coast of northern California in the still, virgin moments of silent prayer.. Inevitably, t