Stars at Night: When Darkness Unfolds as Light

Wonderful book. The book helped myself and friend navigate through her traumatic issues.

A truly prayerful, meditative experience. I have read this title twice and I know I will read it again. The stories within are heartfelt and honest. It's stunning.

I purchased this book from Franciscan Media to help me cope with deep grief after unexpectedly losing my Grandmother and Father within a span of a month. The book description offered "a light of new hope" in times of grief, which I expected to be a Catholic perspective on finding God's hand in our time of loss. However, I was disappointed in the book for several reasons. First, I was surprised by the structure of the book: small snippets that appeared to be journal entries and random thoughts dispersed in each section rather than having a cohesive story throughout the book. Second, I became alarmed at how the author started out describing "Life" or "Presence" and not really mentioning Christ. I read the book all the way through to see if it would somehow tie the snippets together or offer counsel through the eyes of Christianity but I rarely found mention of God, Jesus, or Christ.

I am an avid reader with strong roots in my Catholic faith and have never written a book review before. I contemplated and prayed about whether I should even write anything about this book, or just keep these thoughts to myself. But I kept going back to this excerpt from the book and felt an obligation to warn others... "As I began to emerge from the early darkness of grief, I yearned to stay closely connected to the Presence whose assurance had been my mooring in those long nights. Some call the Presence by the name God, or the Christ consciousness. Others speak of the Divine indwelling or the Formless...the Self. For some it is nameless. Whatever is right for you, each designation speaks of the ineffable Presence from which life springs." This type of writing is dangerously steeped in New Age ideas and is blasphemous. The only reason I purchased the book was because a much different excerpt was used for a Franciscan Media Daily Meditation e-mail, and that excerpt spoke to me. I had hoped to receive much-needed guidance and comfort from this book but in the end I received neither and found myself disturbed by the guise of this being Christian writing.