The Soul's Journey: Exploring the Spiritual Life With Dante As Guide

Rating:
Summary: A healthy soul, a healed community, and a vision of God
Review: In The Soul's Journey Alan Jones explores the three universal spiritual passages of human life by drawing insights from the timeless allegorical truths of Dante's The Divine Comedy. He gently but persistantly guides us through Dante's descent into hell, his climb through purgatory, and his ascent into heaven, thus illustrating the three stages of spiritual growth: a healthy soul, a healed community, and a recovered vision of God. Jones is a profoundly clear spiritual companion for all who feel they have lost their way and have embarked on the journey of finding their life's "right" path. About the author: Alan Jones is the dean of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco.

Rating:
Summary: Dante overmatches Jones
Review: The subtitle of this book, "exploring the spiritual life with Dante," should warn all who want to immerse themselves in the great sea that is the Divine Comedy that they are entering a text that will read THEM up and down, backwards and forwards, through numerous levels, many times over. The Divine Comedy is inexhaustable and exhausting.

Perhaps the problem is inherent in the approach of taking such a challenging text as an "exploration," as does Jones. His book is targeted to educated, middle class searchers, those acquainted with pyschotherapeutic understandings. It is always right to remember that a masterpiece asks everything of its readers and interpreters. It wants you way down deep, and asks you to change your life.

Unfortunately, early on Jones goes through a lot of circular, repetitive and confessional observations, making too many therapeutic concessions to readers, instead of plunging them into the epic poem's metaphysics, especially its Christian metaphysics, and its late Medieval sense of justice as well as Dante's sense of mercy. Jones also tries to be conversant with just too many concerns and they get away from him, are unsatisfactorily resolved, or distract the reader from the demands of the Divine Comedy.

The book DOES have a fairly thorough bibliography and the reader will be better advised to consult it for more promising endeavors than Jones.

In addition, please note that there is another review here and it is favorable. It comes from .......none other than the book's publisher, Cowley Publications. CAVEAT EMPTOR!