Fifth Sunday of Lent (Cycle A)

-
The Raising of Lazarus Lectionary:  34 Reading 1 -  Ezekiel 37:12-14 Responsorial Psalm -  Psalm 130:1-8 Reading 2 -  Romans 8:8-11 Verse - John 11:25a, 26 Gospel -  John 11:1-45 Lazarus, come out! LESSON: The Power of God Through Those Who Believe We’re a week away from the start of Holy Week. Our Lord now has his sights set on Jerusalem, and the pace is quickening. In these next two weeks, we’re living just one part of the Gospel passage from today: an encounter with the reality of suffering and death. Jesus is asking us to have faith in him. In today’s First Reading the prophet Ezekiel reminds us of the Lord’s promise to not only to bring us back to life but to bring us home. The background of this passage is the famous "Valley of Dry Bones." The people of Israel were in exile in Babylon. They weren't just sad; they were spiritually and nationally "dead." Their common saying was: "Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, and we are cut off." They d...
Post a Comment

Review: How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion

-
How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion by David DeSteno

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book looks at the intersection of Science and Religion by digging into the realm of human psychology and sociology to understand the impact of belief/faith, ritual/practice and cognitive dissonance encountered within a religious framework (even removed from the spiritual connections) on general health and wellbeing.  This is an ambitious goal to be sure.  The basic premise is that the relative success of religion through-out human history points to something they must be doing right … and the author calls these "spiritual technologies.”  He then makes a parallel with the bioprospecting of biologics in the early history of modern medicine to argue that we should also be examining these spiritual technologies to see what actually works and why.  

“Recent experiments have shown that even an arbitrary set of actions, when ritualized, can help people … Which rituals - which combinations of elements - work best?  And it’s here that religions have a vast head start.  They’ve ‘debugged’ the technologies that they’ve used through centuries."

DeSteno explores the following:

1.  Infancy: Welcoming and Binding … how communities help from the very beginning of Life

2. The Formative Years: Learning What’s Right and Wrong … how the moral teaching within religions work

3. Coming of Age: Adulting Isn’t Easy … how Rites of Passage work

4. Transcending the Twenties and Thirties: Love, Connection, and (Maybe) Ecstasy … how physical intimacy works ... along with meditation and asceticism (right-handing path) and mysticism (left-hand path) to transcend the mundane into the sacred. (Echos of Dr. Campbell here)

5. The Business of Midlife I: Maintenance for the Body … how the power of belief works (Placebo effects are legit)

6. The Business of Midlife II: Maintenance for the Spirit … getting in touch with our mortality and reflecting on the end (Reconciliation and Detachment) and the midlife transition to service of others

7. Saying Goodbye: All That Lives Must Die … how ‘Last Rites” work and preparing for the End.

While all of this was very interesting and educational, it lacked solid experimental support (generally because of ethical reasons inhibiting such experimentation).  In the end, this was not as illuminating as I was expecting, but still well worth the read.

I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#HowGodWorks #NetGalley

View all my reviews

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dominican Inquirer

-
Image
  Technically speaking, this is really more of an independent, unstructured, investigation of a particular Lay Dominican Fraternity, where you can attend meetings as a guest with no particular commitment ... so of a "try it before you buy it" approach to see if you and the fraternity members are even remotely compatible.  Given some of the conflict within the American Church today ... this might not be a given.  As might be expected, there can be strong personalities and intense beliefs about how to approach the faith within the fraternities that can reflect the same divisions that are seen in the Church at large.   However, there are also some additional questions to contemplate to see if you might be a fit for the Dominican Family in general.  Each of the Major Orders that have tertiaries (third orders) share their specific charisms (gifts) with their lay members, so in addition to a general desire for a deeper spiritual devotion to the faith, there are elemen...
Read more

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle C)

-
Image
The Pharisee and the Tax Collector   Lectionary: 150 Reading 1 -  Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18 [sic] Responsorial Psalm -  Psalm 34:2-3, 17-18, 19, 23 Reading 2 -  2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 Alleluia -  2 Corinthians 5:19 Gospel -  Luke 18:9-14 '... for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.' In today’s Gospel, Jesus presents us with the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. This story is closely connected to the one which comes just before it about the persistent widow who secures a just decision from a dishonest judge. While the first encourages us to pray and never give up. The second reminds us how, and in what manner, we ought to pray. However, to fully understand the example Jesus gives us, we should look more closely at first the century audience that He initially spoke to. A faithful Jew at that time would have assumed two things: That the Pharisee was a very holy and devout man.  And that...
Read more

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle C)

-
Image
Lazarus and the Rich Man (Dives)   Lectionary: 138 Reading 1 -  Amos 6:1a, 4-7 Responsorial Psalm -  Psalm 146:7, 8-9, 9-10 Reading 2 -  1 Timothy 6:11-16 Alleluia -  Cf. 2 Corinthians 8:9 Gospel -  Luke 16:19-31 'If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.' Justice, both socially and spiritually, is at the heart of today’s readings. Social Justice is about seeing the “unseen”… remembering the “forgotten” in our society. It’s about the men, women and children who only want a better life in a world that God has given to all of us, just not a select few. In our first reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, we hear from Amos, the prophet of social justice. God called him to speak to the rich of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The country was about to be destroyed by the Assyrians while the wealthy “lie on beds of ivory” and “drink wine from bowls,” confident that “the ruin of Joseph” ...
Read more

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle C)

-
Image
Teach Us To Pray Lectionary: 111 Reading 1 -  Genesis 18:20-32 Responsorial Psalm -  Psalm 138:1-2, 2-3, 6-7, 7-8 Reading 2 -  Colossians 2:12-14 Alleluia -  Romans 8:15bc Gospel -  Luke 11:1-13 Today we’re celebrating the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time; and our readings for the Mass invite us to reflect deeply upon the power and nature of prayer. From Abraham's bold intercession on behalf of Sodom, to Jesus teaching His disciples how to pray, we are called to a renewed understanding of our relationship with God. But first we should probably talk about what is prayer … If we look up “prayer” in the English dictionary, we see prayer defined as: a solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God .   It come to us from a French word that is based on the Latin precarius, which means ‘obtained by entreaty.’ For many of us, this is what first comes to mind when we pray … we are asking for something from God; after all, it was easy for the Israel...
Read more