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Title: Golden String by Bede Griffiths ISBN: 0-87243-163-0 Publisher: Templegate Publishers Pub. Date: 01 January, 1980 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Learning about a life of growing in the spirit with God
Comment: There is a formative sense to his writings, a recollection in faith and God
that is delicately wrought and said with a sense of the imminence of God in
his life as a young man, and the beauty of poetry. I like that he comes to
the subject of generations and of the various human forces of mankind in
twentieth century history with a willingness of being open to some
imaginative life that seems touched with the Holy Spirit. I wonder about
this man of Christ, and his life that is lived in a way that is really
outside my experience and observation (saintly); here is Dom Bede's genuineness in faith
and his own religious devotion. When reading the work, I sought: I want some of that richness that is
tenderly present. I understand this to be his first book. One reason to read the work for me I found is to look for it to open me, and there I found a kind of widening of the vista where there
is a wind that blows that says this is a strong current in our lives. Here in this book, an autobiography of a man of God, there is a larger sense of the Christian faith ecumenical, a to
be of our future, yet with the promise of Christ that says we are this
unique group, Christian. The book is about the modern world. So it comes to me that way, and as I go through
it I sought some taste of the wisdom that is inherent in what is a
life that is gifted with the Grace of God. Certainly there is the inter-religious, and some notes to understanding an inner dialogue including the dialogue of prayer. Someone needs to want to read this kind of work to enjoy it in that light. The slim volume is good for reflection and meditation. One reflection it offered me was newly awakened: to think of charity. This "Golden String" is a holy kind of history. For me I continue seeing it as a kind of religious record and writing. The book was recommended by a monk to me. He said it was like reading something by Thomas Merton.
Rating: 4
Summary: One of the World's Greatest Spiritual Autoiographies
Comment: This book is a very truthful look at one man's struggle to find the meaning of life. It is a fascinating look at a very complicated and sensitive individual. He describes his spiritual journey from agnostic to Roman Catholic monk in candid detail. He details his early agnsoticim, his epiphany during his final year at Oxford, his friendship with C.S. Lewis, his Waldenesque experiment. his pantheistic pagan nature worship along with the poets who he was inlfuenced by and finally his discovery of the orthodox Christian tradition, rebellion against rationality and journey to India. Griffiths reveals himself to be an unusually ecumenical man, finding wisdom in the Gita, Dhammapada and Dao de King as well as the gospels. he makes no attempt to gloss over the inconsistencies in the gospels, but intimates how they echoed the things that he had come to believe independently of the Bible. The main fault of the book was that his eventual conversion to orthodoxy seemed to be somewhat improbable -- we are still left wondering how it is that such a man was eventually able to reconcile the butchery and savagery in so much of the Bible as well as much of the moral corruption with the mystical god that he claims to have known. he also identified the Catholic church with the "mystical body of Christ" (Hooker) but fails to reconcile this with the church's history as one of the most brutal and repressive institutions in western history. He mentions that the 12th century was the height of human intellect and creativity, that Giotto and the medeival thinkers and artists were far superior to those of the renaissance (which he absurdly regards as the "beginning of the decline" of human acheivement) without giving a very good notion as to why he thinks this. The problem of his conversion was really still a mystery after I had finished the book -- it just didn't seem to fit somehow. Readers may do well to keep in mind that this book was written while he was in his late 40's and that he still had not assimilated the wisdom that he was to learn in his 40+ years in India -- this book, therefore, is a rather immature work, but is essential readers for all interested in modern religion, mysticism or comparative religion. I personally found this book of more value than Augustine's "Confessions". I think you will too.
Rating: 5
Summary: From Atheism to Spiritual Depth where East Meets West
Comment: After Oxford Bede Griffiths started life as an atheist who felt the need for 'something more.' He first found it in nature and the English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. He pursued this further with the study of philosophy, went through Descarte, Kant and into Coleridge's synthesis with Platonic concepts. Griffith believed he was also a communist, or certainly a socialist, in the pre-World War II days.
Richer experiences with nature led him to a belief that what he found in nature was what he also had heard preached from church pulpits in his childhood. This led him first to the Anglican Church, then to the Catholic church because he wanted to become a Benedictine monk.
Once taking his final vows he remained content in a monastery in England. Eventually he was invited to help out at a Benedictine monastery in India. There he began to learn Sanskrit and study Hindu and Buddhist scriptural classics. He left that monastery after a few years at an invitation to join an even stricter Cistertian monastery in another part of India.
He became strongly influenced by the spirituality of the principle religious philosophy of India, Vedanta. He combined Vedantic spiritual practices with Christian monastic practices and eventually established a Christian ashram with overtones of Indian Hinduism. There he and his monks' practices include meditating twice a day, praying the eight Benedictine monastic hours, and reading the scriptures of the three principle religious traditions -- Judeo-Christian bible, Hindu-Buddhist scriptures and Moslem Koran -- at each of the eight canonical hours. This ashram/monastery has become famous for its broad ecumenical practices.
The Golden String is one of the great spiritual biographies of the world.
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Title: Marriage of East and West: A Sequel to The Golden String by Bede Griffiths ISBN: 0872431053 Publisher: Templegate Publishers Pub. Date: 01 June, 1982 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: "A New Vision of Reality : Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and Christian Faith" by Bede Griffiths ISBN: 0872431800 Publisher: Templegate Publishers Pub. Date: 01 May, 1990 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Beyond the Darkness: A Biography of Bede Griffiths by Shirley Du Boulay, Shirley Du Boulay ISBN: 0385489463 Publisher: Bantam Dell Pub Group Pub. Date: 20 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Return to the Center by Bede Griffiths ISBN: 0872431126 Publisher: Templegate Publishers Pub. Date: 01 January, 1982 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Cosmic Revelation: The Hindu Way to God by Bede Griffiths ISBN: 0872431193 Publisher: Templegate Publishers Pub. Date: 01 July, 1983 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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