Böcker av Ken Bazyn

The late Second Temple period in Judaism and the early Christian era witnessed the rise of apocalyptic literature, its zenith being the New Testament book of Revelation. Among its prominent features are the disparity between this world and the next, a vision of God as coming judge at history's culmination, and the call to perseverance during times of adversity. Bazyn's poems are introduced by an elaborate fantasy of what heaven might be like, citing a number of Christian writers throughout the centuries as well as sources from other world religions. Then you'll encounter verse on the macabre dance of death; Orwellian tremors of totalitarianism; premonitions of madness; visits from an alien world; a house of the Lord utterly destroyed; lingering ambivalence regarding a loving, but holy, God; a triumphant baaing lamb; the cavortings of a holy fool; a final gaze at earthly life from eternity's shore; believers undergoing continuous divinization.Bright 35mm color slides deepen the surreal atmosphere, enabling you to feel the thin boundary between the ephemeral and eternal. Qualms of conscience and mortality take center stage as the entire book turns into a searching exercise for the reader's spiritual formation.

The late Second Temple period in Judaism and the early Christian era witnessed the rise of apocalyptic literature, its zenith being the New Testament book of Revelation. Among its prominent features are the disparity between this world and the next, a vision of God as coming judge at history's culmination, and the call to perseverance during times of adversity. Bazyn's poems are introduced by an elaborate fantasy of what heaven might be like, citing a number of Christian writers throughout the centuries as well as sources from other world religions. Then you'll encounter verse on the macabre dance of death; Orwellian tremors of totalitarianism; premonitions of madness; visits from an alien world; a house of the Lord utterly destroyed; lingering ambivalence regarding a loving, but holy, God; a triumphant baaing lamb; the cavortings of a holy fool; a final gaze at earthly life from eternity's shore; believers undergoing continuous divinization.Bright 35mm color slides deepen the surreal atmosphere, enabling you to feel the thin boundary between the ephemeral and eternal. Qualms of conscience and mortality take center stage as the entire book turns into a searching exercise for the reader's spiritual formation.

"Here you'll find a weekly devotional for Christian disciples of all stripes, but with a different twist--it is a series of brief spiritual ruminations accompanied by black-and-white photographs, so you can meditate on the verbal and the visual at the same time--synesthesia! The more senses entangled up in a memory, the more likely we will make it our own. Each week you'll encounter a Scripture reading, a recommended hymn, a lead-in quotation, probing comments on the selected theme, and a closing prayer. These all work together to create an "ambience" which promotes spiritual growth. Material has been culled from world literature and major church figures, whether Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant as well as a variety of disciplines (e.g., sociology, psychology, anthropology, physics). The photographs range from the pensive to the humorous, manikins to real people, flora to fauna, street scenes to pastorals, contrasty shadows to high noon brightness. Monochrome is out of sync with today's technicolor extravaganzas, so the images allow the reader to pause and reflect"--

Who was it who asked, "Why does the devil have all the good tunes?"The seven "deadly sins" are not to be found in scripture as such, but they have been a staple of Christian preaching since the early church. Ken BazynÆs The Seven Perennial Sins and Their Offspring is more indebted to literature than to personal experience, ethics, or the contemporary obsession with psychology. Drawing upon a vast storehouse of reading from a wide variety of disciplines, Bazyn offers a "thick description" of each of these "root" sins, setting them in a broad temporal, cultural, and human context. The range of reference is enormous. We are as likely to encounter Madame Bovary as Evagrius Ponticus, Jay Gatsby as Blaise Pascal, Francois Truffaut as Francis of Assisi, testifying to the perennial nature of the temptation to pride or anger, gluttony or sloth. We succumb to them over and over partly, says the author quoting Jorge Luis Borges, because "our minds are porous with forgetfulness." With the widespread adoption of the Revised Common Lectionary, topical preaching--on the creed, the ten commandments, the beatitudes--has fallen out of use. Thus the even greater need for a book like The Seven Perennial Sins. Without ever moralizing, by means of anecdote and story, the book provides a serious, but often amusing, account of the dark side of the human comedy.