by Dee Pennock
Format: Soft Bound
Description:
This book brings the reader together with holy physicians of the soul in ancient Christian Traditions, offering superbly clear examples of the patristic method of diagnosing and healing many disorders of the soul that are now being widely treated with brain-crippling drugs. Addresses violent mood swings, uncontrollable willfulness, anger, depression, suicidal urges, ambivalence in decision-making, built-in self-defeating programs, ignorance of oneself, inability to control thoughts, being "possessed" by passions, compulsive physical appetites, social isolation, inability to love and feel loved, demonstrating just what the Fathers say about recovering sanity in the love of Christ. The author, a Stanford graduate and a veteran editor and author, worked at Harvard with Fr. Georges Florovsky. Early reviewers have dubbed this book a "must read" for spiritual health and sanity.
Available from Light and Life
Sample Quotes:
"If we have health of soul (so called ‘sanity’) our energies work to benefit us, now and eternally. With illness (‘insanity’) our energies keep working to cause us pain and distress, psychological and spiritual damage. The greatest benefit we are capable of achieving is being in harmony with God’s perfect (all-loving and divinely wise) will for us. Obedience to God’s will, therefore, is the ultimate sanity." p.11
"The saints in the mainstream of what we call patristic teaching, because they are known as Fathers of the Church, are the only ones who can lead us into this sanity. They diagnose our mental conditions with perfect accuracy. …And when we practice what they prescribe, it restores our soul." p.11-12
"What is a passion? Passion is an unnatural movement of the soul, says Maximus the Confessor, just as a physical disease is something unnatural to our body… 'Passion is an excessive feeling, or appetite, going beyond what is reasonable. Passions are a disturbance of our soul contrary to our nature, in disobedience to reason. Passion is not natural and it ruins our nature instead of fulfilling it- Clement of Alexandria” p.30
"Here are patristic descriptions of the three basic passions in human nature-VAINGLORY: Wanting the approval of people more than the approval of God, enslavement to idols, cruelty, hatred of repentance; SELF-LOVE: Attachment to what is carnal, rather than to what is spiritual, inability to love others, willfulness, anger and depression; PRIDE: Ignorance of oneself and one’s need for God, self-exaltation alternating with despair, going out of one’s mind, hearing voices, frenzy." From the back cover
The Church Fathers prescribe a therapeutic method or cure for all of these problems and more. Mrs. Dee Pennock offers us a detailed description of the way to healing in her book; Path to Sanity. It is fascinating reading!
Path to Sanity, Dee Pennock, Light & Life Publishing Company, Minneapolis, MN 2010,
ISBN 978-1-933654-26-3
just started reading your beginner's text: who is god? who am I? who are you? it's refreshing to recognize a focus on "personal psychology" viewed through the lens of orthodoxy spirituality and exegesis. it's also rings true. thank you for this unassuming gem which I recently picked up on the book shelf of a shop in the greek orthodox church in Southampton, long island, ny (fyi) someone is on the ball at that parish!
ReplyDelete