The Shaping of a Life: A Spiritual Landscape

by Phyllis Tickle

Book Overview

Lively, entertaining, and inspiring, THE SHAPING OF A LIFE is in the tradition of the beloved bestsellers by Kathleen Norris and Anne Lamott, an intimate, lyrical, and thought-provoking memoir from... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385497555
• ISBN13: 9780385497558
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

The Examined Life

The title of this book misled me a bit. Reading the title, "Shaping of a Life: a Spiritual Landscape", and reading the jacket blurbs about Tickle's books on prayer, I expected something along the lines of "a guide to a better prayer life". And while prayer is an important component of this book, the book is really an autobiography. And it's an autobiography that supplies what we seek in autobiographies and biographies. I read a lot of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs -- and I'm disappointed so often that I wonder that I continue. Too often they relate events, yet the reader gains no sense of how the events affected the character. Not so with Phyllis Tickle. She imbibed early Socrates' maxim, "The unexamined life is not worth living." She examines the events in her life, and thoughtfully identifies how they impacted her, how they molded her character, her beliefs, her actions. She is not skittish about talking about her inner life. Besides this, Tickle is a literate and captivating writer. I couldn't put it down. I especially enjoyed reading her experiences as an undergraduate at Shorter College. She participated the "intellectual orgasm often anticipated but seldom experience. A very satisfying read.

A Well Wrought Sprituality

This is a lovely book! It isn't at all what one expected from someone religiously famous. Here is fine spiritual insight, wedded to incisive but highly courteous prose. Here is someone who leaps into God through the pages of T.S. Eliot, for Pete's sake. Someone who reads and has read widely, looking everywhere for God and finding Him. Finding Him in the mundane, unchurchy, and unpious events of her very life.

An Invitation...

Through one woman's story, we are invited to draw closer to the One who loves us the most. The beauty of Tickle's writing is that her tone is one of invitation to a life of prayer, rather than being preachy or self-congratulatory. By turns poignant and humorous, Tickle kept my attention through the very last page. My only disappointment was that her story ended much too soon. More, please!

Absolutely must read!

Phyllis Tickle is an enthralling, unique, transmuted specimen of the homo sapien species that I wouldn't have known existed or believed in if I hadn't read her book, The Shaping of A Life. The book made a believer out of me, she is truly a kindred spirit. Reading Shaping of A Life was both a struggle and a delight. I have spent almost as much time with the dictionary as with the book. It is one of the most well-written, intelligent, entertaining, inspiring, sensitive books I have ever read. I absolutely know she has worked very hard all her life and what an extraordinary life it is. Amazing! I am so grateful that she was willing to share parts of it with us. I feel privileged in having had the opportunity to meet her in this incredible book. The Shaping of A Life is a unique experience that must not be missed. Now I want more.

BEST SPIRITUAL MEMOIR OF 2001

Phyllis Tickle has written the most astounding and moving spiritual biography I've read in years. In beautifully detailed prose she recounts her earliest childhood memories when she was first awakened by the sacred. I knew I was in for treat when, early in the book, I felt the immediacy of her experience--she had a spiritual epiphany while crouched in a forsythia hedge during a game of hide-and-seek.As I followed her developing spiritual hunger through her high school and college years, I recognized so many parallels from my own life. But here's what I liked most about this book: the wonderful, thought-provoking meditative reflections on the everyday occurrences of life that, if one approaches life with an open heart, are imbued with spiritual meaning.And the other thing I liked? Just plain, good, old-fashioned story-telling. No one tells a great story like Phyllis Tickle. I loved it!