Providence
The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest
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4.3 • 8 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Providence is Quinn's fascinating memoir of his life-long spiritual voyage. His journey takes him from a childhood dream in Omaha setting him on a search for fulfillment, to his time as a postulant in the Trappist order under the guidance of eminent theologian Thomas Merton. Later, his quest took him through the deep self-discovery of psychoanalysis, through a failed marriage during the turbulent and exciting 60s, to finding fulfillment with his wife Rennie and a career as a writer. In Providence Quinn also details his rejection of organized religion and his personal rediscovery of what he says is humankind's first and only universal religion, the theology that forms the basis for Ishmael.
Providence is an insightful book that address issues of education, psychology, religion, science, marriage, and self-understanding, and will give insight to anyone who has ever struggled to forge and enact a personal spirituality.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Quinn's novel Ishmael, a cult favorite, elaborated an ecologically sound mythology for our time and won a Ted Turner award for fiction that offers solutions to global problems. In this windy, slow-moving memoir, Quinn summarizes Ishmael's vision of the universe, upholding the spirit-worship practiced by animist peoples as a viable alternative to Christianity and Judaism, religions he views as largely irrelevant. He tells how, as a 19-year-old Trappist novice in Kentucky, he received encouragement from a golden-headed guardian angel but was then ordered to leave the Gethsemani monastery by Thomas Merton, his spiritual director. Then came psychoanalysis in Chicago, a marriage whose failure he blamed on his sexual inadequacies, divorce and a successful career in educational publishing. Quinn's trajectory from ``fundamentalist Roman Catholic'' to animist marks an unusual odyssey.
