Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World's Greatest Cathedrals

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Even though this chapter zeroes in on the kibbutz, Muravchik’s investigation of the rise and demise of the kibbutz leads him to zoom out to attempt to provide an answer to his two “central mysteries,” and, hardly surprising, it comes down to religion. Historians might quibble with his claims as too broad and vague, but nonetheless, I will let Muravchik speak for himself: The Sacramental View, Transposition, and Media Critique: Divine Encounter in Minari November 13, 2023

The chapter on Tanzania and the chapter on Tony Blair are examples of this (although the Kibbutz chapter was by far the worst. If he republishes this book he should just delete that entire chapter and write a paragraph in the epilogue that covers the basics). The minutia that the author goes into about each of these characters is completely useless to the overall picture of the history of socialism. Also he goes over a semi-history of the writing of the Communist Manifesto, but spends effectively zero sentences going over what is actually written in it. He doesn't have to print a word-for-word duplicate, but the overall theory is actually important to understand if you want to grasp the motivations of the characters later in the book. This is a strange oversight. Divine light reaches the heart as well as the head. The beams of divine light shining in upon the soul through the glorious face of Christ are very working; they warm the heart, they affect the heart, they new mold the heart. Divine knowledge masters the heart, it guides the heart, it governs the heart, it sustains the heart, it relieves the heart. Knowledge which swims in the head only, and sinks not down into the heart, does no more good than the unicorn's horn in the unicorn's head. Persecution brings death in one hand and life in the other; for while it kills the body it crowns the soul." It is beautifully illustrated, with a helpful ground plan at the beginning of each chapter. The premise is that Europe’s great cathedrals tell the story of Christianity. Specifically, in her introduction, Wells argues that “these great multifaceted buildings were attempts to make the spiritual concrete”, and “represent symbolic voyages between this world and the next”.through, and so far it's not grabbing me. Maybe it'll jump into gear once all the place-setting is through. While I didn't hate The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, I did finish it feeling frustrated with McBride's plotting and prose- and there was a lot more "she breasted boobily down the stairs"-style characterization than I expected. It read like a first draft that desperately needed an editor to say, "please trust your reader to make meaning out of your story, you don't need to bludgeon them over the head with Significance."

But these are small criticisms of an otherwise first-rate book; and they are not so damning: for even in these travel sections Kadri's research is prodigious and his descriptions of the abuses of Islamic law, such as in the area of blasphemy in Pakistan, very affecting. At its best, Heaven on Earth is a meditation on how decline – and the attendant loss of self-confidence – can reduce the once grand ideas of a civilisation to petty rigidities. CHAPTER III: HINDRANCES AND IMPEDIMENTS THATKEEP POOR SOULS FROM ASSURANCE; WITH THE MEANS AND HELPS TO REMOVE THOSE IMPEDIMENTS AND HINDRANCES

Painting and the Life to Come

First published in 1654, Heaven on Earth is a treatise on Christian assurance. Brooks explores in great depth the roots, essence, and fruit of assurance within a genuine child of God. Brooks' contemporary Joseph Caryl summed up Brooks' treatise quite well: "All saints shall enjoy heaven when they leave this earth; some saints enjoy heaven while they are here on earth. That saints might enjoy two heavens is the project of this book." Joshua Muravchik tells the story of the pursuit of socialism, presenting sketches of the thinkers and leaders who developed the theory, led it to power, and presided over its collapse. He also highlights those trying to revive it today.

Chapter 6—which takes more than its fair share of space, almost half of the book—is an extended detour from the point of the book, but it still serves to support the theme. He begins by saying, "In the previous chapter, you saw the seven choice things which accompany salvation. But for your further and fuller edification, satisfaction, confirmation, and consolation, it will be very necessary that I show you," these seven choice things. Which are: A debt crisis]. What was so devastating about all the borrowing […] was that little of the money had been used as capital to boost the kibbutzim's earnings. Instead, it had been spent to raise the standard of living. The impulse to do this did not grow out of hedonism, but in the hopes of stemming the loss of members. By some point in the 1970s the majority of kibbutz-raised children were leaving. The children of the founders, being raised in this irrational pseudo-religion, were expected to be “the best kibbutzniks”. It failed. It just goes against human nature. Decent humans want to be free. Amazing that Christians in the West should be looked down on by this crazy and dangerous God-haters as unscientific and irrational; well look at them! This one is, sadly, a mess. I don´t mind books with lots of characters, and going on tangents, spinning stories from stories,in fact, I love them...if they serve a purpose and "weigh" the main line. Here, there are mostly lost opportunities,with sketches of potentially great characters who disappear (Malachi),nuanced ones who are never fleshed out (Chona, Moshe,Bernice,and others),and I could go on.points to answers to the central mysteries of socialism. Those mysteries are two: How could an idea that so consistently showed itself to be incongruent with human nature have spread faster and further than any other belief system ever devised? And how did an idea calling upon so many human sentiments lend its name to the cruelest regimes in human history? (352)

As a musician, he has written songs (music and lyrics) for Anita Baker, Grover Washington Jr., and Gary Burton, among others. He served as a tenor saxophone sideman for jazz legend Little Jimmy Scott. He is the recipient of several awards for his work as a composer in musical theater including the Stephen Sondheim Award and the Richard Rodgers Foundation Horizon Award. His “Riffin’ and Pontificatin’ ” Tour, a nationwide tour of high schools and colleges promoting reading through jazz, was captured in a 2003 Comcast documentary. He has been featured on national radio and television programs in America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The man who put this forth was named François-Noël Babeuf, and he called himself Gracchus. He was the native son whom the diverging factions of French socialists united to honor that day in Saint Quentin, as he had been lauded in the writings of Marx and Engels, and as he would be extolled again at the founding of the “Comintern.” James McBride’s set-up is not unlike Richard Russo’s in his recent Somebody’s Fool, although the writing style and plot lines are very different. Both create a world of overlapping characters, focusing in on each and then focusing out again to define how they fit into a broader world. McBride’s goal is to illuminate the comradeship and sometimes, the distrust, of people who have been exclude from the Land of Liberty. In doing so, he shines a harsh light on racial, religious and social identity. The explicit religious roots of socialism also led to the zeal with which socialists embarked upon grand visions, and ominously, their willingness to justify and embrace top-down, centralized methods as not just the means but the ends; radical schemes of re-education and the state supplanting of parental responsibility in the name of making the “new man;” and even the use and endorsement of violence, revolution, and racism/nationalism, particularly embodied in the socialism of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. I listened to the audiobook version which is narrated by the incredible Dominic Hoffman (who previously narrateded Deacon King Kong, Homegoing, The Starless Sea). If you decide to give The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store a try, I highly recommend this format.The narrative arc of McBride's novel may echo Shakespeare's comedies but history sets them apart. We bear the weight of this history in our own time, although many would wish it otherwise, and its presence is everywhere in "Heaven & Earth." One scene in particular captures what I mean. When one of the characters suddenly dies, we see a line of well-wishers quietly filing down a hospital corridor to offer condolences to her husband. It's a touching moment, to be sure, but then the fourth wall is once again pierced -- with palpable anger. The mourners, we are told, are "moving... into a future of American nothing." All of the socialist societies had to adapt capitalist tendencies in their economies to survive, which were completely against the original tenets of the socialism set forth by its original creators,such as Hess and Marx. Even the kibbutz that scholars and socialists have held up as examples that socialism can work (I remember reading about those in school)are starting to break down. The only small social communes that have been able to be relatively successful are those that revolve around religion, which ironically is something that most socialist leaders oppose.