It's All God

Rating:
Summary: The Path of Understanding Yourself
Review: Believing that it is all God and acting on that belief are two different things. Mr. Starcke comes from a place of not only understanding, but also from a place of acting, or writing. This book shows the way, tells the way, and brings the way to clarity. I am overwhelmed by the perceptions, the sight, the vision, and the love of Life.

Rating:
Summary: This is Starcke's Masterpiece on spirituality!
Review: Having read most of Walters books and hearing him speak on several occasions,its it great to see his unique blend of spirituality evolving to a point that is enclusive for all christians and others on the spiritual path.Hopefully the Christian churches and their ministers will someday be aligned with Walters message.

Rating:
Summary: Expanding and Revitalizing the Gospel of Christ
Review: Walter Starcke is a figure in the current day culture of the Texas Hill Country and occasionally a character in the gay community of San Antonio. He's been a young dashing Texan in New York City, a Broadway producer, a friend of Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal, Chris Isherwood and his circle, a Key West entrepreneur, a gay man, a straight man, an adventurer and world traveller, a spiritual seeker, a mystic, a teacher for the various progressive churches called "metaphysical," a retreat master, a meditator, a spiritual writer, a devotee of Joel Goldsmith, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Albert Einstein and Jesus for the quantum age, a textile manufacturer, an innkeeper, the wise gay elder of central Texas' original Shaman Circle.

He's now in his early 80s, but still seems young and vibrant. He is on the road these days, taking the wisdom of his newest book across the country. One of Starcke's aims is to show how "new age" and "new paradigm" spirituality can be derived from Christianity and the sayings of Jesus, certainly a worthwhile endeavor in the contemporary process of transforming religion.

Ralph Walker, Founder of The Loving Brotherhood, ran an enthusiastic review of Walter Starcke's book in the August issue of the TLB Newsletter. Here's a version of that review.

This book is about expanding and revitalizing the message of Christ seeing him clearly as human, as are each of us, and touched by the Divine like us, and far more profoundly experiencing That than any of us, and yet who told us, in "oh so many ways," that what he did we too could do indeed, "even more so than I."

In nudging us toward the experiencing of our own Christ nature, Starke manages to incorporate and acknowledge all of our weaknesses and foibles and makes clear that Christ too, was flawed. He got angry, he was tempted, he made mistakes. Indeed, the tragically inaccurate "teaching" of most churches is of Christ as "perfect" and thus saddling us with the notion that only as we "become perfect," as he was perfect, are we acceptable to God.

How can that be, if "all of it" is God? For even the weak, the fallen, those wallowing in sickness and sin and depravity are, too, a part of God, for "it's all God!"

For, at all these earthly levels that we are told are "God, there do exist the dualisms of good and bad, yes and no, right and wrong. AND, if we are to be fully in touch with our own Buddha nature, the "Christ within the soul" it will require that we accept our failures and frailties and those of others as opportunities for expansion, learning and growth, and part of what "God" is about.

What Starcke manages, with consummate skill, is a "wholing" of all of the parts, and as he does so, in each instance, often as the last sentence in each chapter, as still one more reminder, he repeats: "It's all God."

What a blessedly ecstatic way of looking at the world! To see that "all of it," when embraced exactly the way that it is, is perfect! Until we are able to accept, acknowledge, allow, and indeed embrace all of it, exactly the way that it is, our lives will be plagued with sadness, distress, a sense of futility or loss....

For those of us who still are venturing toward fullness and ecstatic living, Walter Starcke is offering a formulation that does indeed, include it all. Yes, I advise you again: it is hardly a quick and easy read. It requires--yet clearly merits--slow and thoughtful reading and soul-searching thought. It yields a plenitude of rewards, and most of all, a restored Self. Or as Starcke's suggested prayer says it: "All of what God is, I am That." A most profoundly rewarding place to be!

Reviewed by Ralph Walker in White Crane Journal #50