Update: Rev. Jensen has posted part 2 of his review. You can read it here.
Rev. Gregory Jensen, who writes at the Koinonia blog, recently reviewed Rev. Robert Sirico and Jeff Sandefer’s new book A Field Guide for the Hero’s Journey.
This is what he had to say about it:
Prudence along with justice, temperance and courage, is a cardinal virtue. Unfortunately as contemporary Western culture has become more secularized it has formed generations of men and women who are deaf to the music of human virtue. Many of us embrace a vision of human life that counsel spontaneity not habit as the mark of a life well and fully lived. And since any discussion of virtue necessarily brings with it a discussion of tradition such a conversation is an affront to the atomistic individualism that is at the center of contemporary culture.
…
And as I read [Hero’s Journey] something unexpected and wonderful happened—I began to see myself in a new light.
The book reminded me that once the language and the idea of virtue were as foreign to me as it is to most contemporary men and women. If I am no longer the book’s intended reader I once was because, like the authors I felt “like something big [was] missing from [my]life.” Like so many of the people I meet on a regular basis, I felt “trapped, bored, stuck in a meaningless routine” thinking myself “too ordinary to ever do something special” and just as afraid that, if I tried, I’d only fail.
Fr. Gregory has only published the first part of his book review and you can read it here. The Field Guide for the Hero’s Journey is now available from the Acton Institute. You can purchase the Kindle version or the softcover here.
