Jean-Francois Six shows you how St. Therese's sister editd The Story of A Soul and how it changes crucial elements of the saint's theology. It also covers the "touch-ups" of the saint's photographs. But the most provocative portion of the book points out how the saint died in the "dark night of the soul"..

St. Therese's famous and flowery autobiography, Story of a Soul, was so heavily edited by her sister Pauline (Mother Agnes of Jesus), that it could be considered more Pauline's views of the future Saint's theology than St. Therese's, herself. After reading it, I was left still searching for Therese, herself, and her beliefs and theology. How did she become such a great Saint, so favored by Jesus?

Light of the Night, flawed by the author's anger at his rejection by the established Lisieux hierarchy, helped me to better understand Therese's depth, which was and is considerable. I found it to be quite helpful to me on my quest to understand St. Therese and her process.

Jean-Francois Six has given Therese back to the world. As a Carmelite contemplative living at the end of the 19th century, Therese was in the midst of a cultural and spiritual revolution as Faith began to give way to Doubt and Cynical Skepticism. Her struggle was to remain faithful to her mystical devotion to Christ in the midst of a world eager to find new, and even more dubious, devotions. Her solution: if you can't beat them, join them; not by discarding faith, but by allowing the full force of doubt to fill and break her heart in order to understand and feel kinship with the doubting world around her, making her an even greater Saint than the revised, silly, "canonized" version given by her sister, Mother Agnes, and the Church. Her courage was to stare down the night in loving trust that there would be a dawn...somehow. Whether you understand or agree with Therese's spirituality, you cannot help but admire her mature and courageous faith and her simple belief in the power of Love. This book takes her down off the altars and solidly in our hearts, where she would most want to be...

Word and Spirit at Play is by no means a "classical" Pentecostal theology. By "classical", I mean a set of doctrines and theological presuppositions that can be traced to the holiness revival of the late 19th century right through the birth of so-called Pentecostal denominations from the 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. Suurmond does retrace this history briefly at the beginning of his book. However, he does not adequately link those experiences to the conceptual framework that he wishes to provide for global Pentecostal/Charismatic movements. He does do an excellent job in outlining a theology based on the theoretical notion of "play." He also embraces a fairly wide range of disciplines, sociology and psychology in order to explain what he believes to be the core significance of Pentecostal faith and practice. Perhaps most interesting is the emerging critical organic view of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church and in the wo! rld that he said is evolving in Europe.

What is ironic here is that Suurmond does a wonderful job invoking the intellectual tradition of those tapped into some deep-rooted sense of spirituality: John of the Cross, Martin Buber, et. al. However, it is not clear if he wants to talk about Pentecostalism or detached mysticism ultimately. Moreover, in terms that could be seen as racist and at the very least, condescending, he refers to Seymour, hundreds of years removed from Africa, as having blending the holiness revival with African retentions. He also makes vague references to "third world spirituality" as a moniker of Pentecostalism globally without intellectually or theologically clarifying what third world spirituality is.

Suurmond relies heavily on biased, anthropological studies of Pentecostalism by white/European academics and his organic construction of the Spirit is almost a rehash of Jurgen Moltmann's "The Spirit of Life; A Universal Affirmation."! ;

Suurmond has certainly provided an important synthesis ! of many areas and the "renewal" movement from which he comes in Europe has done much to provide conceptual expression for the heretofore non-intellectualized experience in prayer meetings and praise services in all types of estatic, Christian worship services around the globe.

The book is worth reading for those who have in fact embraced a Pentecostal type of Christian life, a life in which "spirit" is a sensed force or presence in one's life, but who do not wish to be constrained to Evangelical-fundamentalist understandings of the nature and work of the Holy Spirit or Charisma in the church.