Rating: 
Summary: Real Spirituality Begins With Acknowledging Our Imperfection
Review: Kurtz and Ketcham have written a classic that illustrates well how acknowledging, facing, and honoring our imperfection is essential for spiritual growth. Their stories and explanations warm the heart, and so briing to life the the Twelve Step approach to spirituality.They do such a good job, that I have quoted them extensively in my own book: Light in the Darkness; A Guide to Recovery; A Physician Talks Openly About His Own Addiction to Sex If you are interested in more info on the latter book, go to: ... St.George Lee
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking to alcoholics and non-alcoholics alike...
Review: Little does one know what they are in for when they begin sharing openly about their lives in recovery (and arguably outside of 12-step groups as well)- but it is in community that we discover the meaning of spirituality. Thanks to the author for such a deep and engrossing journey. Read this one slowly, there is a lot to absorb - heck, read it twice!
Rating:
Summary: One of the most important books I've ever read
Review: My AA sponsor suggested this book to me. I've already read it two times and will read it again. Far from diluting my faith, this book has helped to restore it. The stories from different traditions show that there are many ways to say essentially the same thing. Some of the stories touched me more than others. It had to do with WAY they were said. Even with my own prejudice against organized religion, this book spoke to me. It helped me find my way back to the God of my understanding. I've already recommended this book numerous times to others and loaned it out on several occasions.
Rating:
Summary: The Broad Canvas of Humanity
Review: Telling your story and listening to the stories of others breaks barriers. Like all good literature entering into it brings an experience which can be shared. Life which is shared is lived in double dimensions and can form community....can divide loneliness. This book contains insights into more shallow insights-- I want to say by that this book, these authors, take the "common wisdom" and bring forth extraordinary insight in my view. I bought this book and read it several years ago. I pulled it off the shelf to read once again and, once again, I am discovering new meaning at a deeper lever for me. The authors have brought to bear the wisdom of many religious traditions and those traditions which did not have a religious background but which was born of human wisdom. It's a keeper that reveals something each time I read it--I can't wait to set it down and come back to it later.
Rating:
Summary: The Broad Canvas of Humanity
Review: Telling your story and listening to the stories of others breaks barriers. Like all good literature entering into it brings an experience which can be shared. Life which is shared is lived in double dimensions and can form community....can divide loneliness. This book contains insights into more shallow insights-- I want to say by that this book, these authors, take the "common wisdom" and bring forth extraordinary insight in my view. I bought this book and read it several years ago. I pulled it off the shelf to read once again and, once again, I am discovering new meaning at a deeper lever for me. The authors have brought to bear the wisdom of many religious traditions and those traditions which did not have a religious background but which was born of human wisdom. It's a keeper that reveals something each time I read it--I can't wait to set it down and come back to it later.
Rating: 
Summary: Confusing to this Christian.
Review: The book was confusing to me, a Christian Man. I am one to follow the Bible and found all the other religoius references distracting. Some will see that as narrow minded. Perhaps. If you are a Christian, there are many better books that will not dilute your faith.
Rating:
Summary: A new way to consider spirituality; a wonderful way.
Review: This book explains right off, that spirituality can't be defined. It can be seen in others by the way they think and act. Dr. Kurtz makes clear that progress toward spiriituality is the goal. I am now better able and much more comfortable in living with my imperfections. This book will loose the bonds of those idealists/perfectionists who can't comprimise with imperfection. It is beautifully written and deals by story telling with that most elusive states of being.
Rating:
Summary: More than a book, this is an experience
Review: This book is to spirituality as riding a rollercoaster is to physics. It is not a read; it is an experience. Kurtz and Ketcham have managed to tell their own story in such a way that the reader is invited to share in that experience. Finding this spirituality of imperfection in Alcoholics Anonymous and the twelve-step program, K&K have scoured spiritual writings throughout history to find the words to describe their experience. Boldface quotes and stories color almost every page. K&K find the essence of the spiritual in human imperfections and failure, in the inevitability of pain. Spirituality is not the evasion of consequences or errors, but rather learning how to live with them. They call trying to be perfect the most tragic human mistake. They are clear, spirituality is found in asking the right questions, not in finding the right answers. Perhaps every reader of this book will not be able to hear it's music. Perhaps only those who have been wounded by life, need it. Perhaps only those who have drunk deeply of failure will find nourishment here. All I know is that I did, and to Kurtz and Ketcham I will always be grateful.
Rating:
Summary: A must for those wishing to understand spirituality.
Review: This book lifted me into that other, non-physical dimension that was previously lacking in my life. Seeing, acknowledging, and accepting my imperfections with the help of Kurtz has delivered an inner peace previously unknown to me. This book is for everyone--alcoholic, non-alcoholic--looking for that something, that spirituality, that is the real journey in life.
Rating:
Summary: An exploration of spirituality that speaks to all traditions
Review: This book successfully relates the spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous,
and its Twelve Step program, to the other major spiritual traditions of
the world. It is related in such a way that the non member of these programs
can appreciate the depth and importance of this movement for everyone. Alcoholics Anonymous has been praised by Aldous Huxley, Scott Peck
and many other religious thinkers as possibly America's own contribution to the history of western spirituality. Kurtz and Ketcham do a fine job showing the
uniqueness of AA's modern insights as well as their kinship to forms of spirituality
which pervade the wisdom of many traditions from the early Christian Desert Fathers to
the wizened Rebbes of the mystical Hassidim. The Spirituality of Imperfection tells this story with the colorful stories and parables of these various traditions. Some of the tales are wise,
some funny and all have the quality of capturing our humaness in a form that is entertaining as well
as instructive.
These stories comprise a minor theme of our spiritual heritage, which celebrates our humaness
and limitation as a source of wisdom, rather than "totalitarian" forms of spirituality which subjugate
human experience to an obsession with abstract and antiseptic perfectionism.
| 
