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'Stories of the Unborn Soul' by Elisabeth Hallett is a delightful book. Recounting the true and intimate stories of parents and others, the reader is invited to share in the mystery and delight of pre-birth communication.
Written in an elegant and yet highly objective style, Hallett entices us on a journey, taking as her starting point an invocation from Socrates: 'Of course, no reasonable man ought to insist that the facts are exactly as I have described them. But that either this or something very like it is a true account of our souls and their future habitations - since we have clear evidence that the soul is immortal - this, I think, is both a reasonable contention and a belief worth risking; for the risk is a noble one.'
The journey thereafter is of the homesick soul drifting through universal consciousness, reminiscent of Plato's 'Phaedrus', in search for its pre-chosen parents in order to manifest as a human being in this life. Short, manageable chapters thus describe the soul's rite of passage, from the first shivering signs tasted in a distant dream of a mother, through intuitive soul connections experienced between mother and foetus in pregnancy, and the final and mutual recognition instinctively felt between parent and child. As Kathy, a grown woman with pre-birth memory recounts at the end of the book: 'I remember coming here in spirit form, coming together into the body form and reluctantly floating down to this planet. This powerful experience from before my birth has affected everything I am today.'
'Stories of the Unborn Soul' is not however a sickly-sweet collection of wishful thinking. Not only are there wonderful touches of humour, Hallett manages to balance the stories of personal experience with appropriate use of scientific research, giving the book factual and intellectual gravitas. Moreover, Hallett includes chapters on Miscarriage and Abortion, commenting that there are many unresolved mysteries in the search for understanding the human condition: 'I am . . . For what seems like forever, I am only aware that I am.'
Suffused with profound reflections upon the greatest questions of all - Who am I? and where do I come from? - 'Stories of the Unborn Soul' is a book worth risking, for the risk is indeed a noble one.
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This book I still read for pleasure, even after I finished the cover. I read a lot of alternate history, and this surely ranks among the best.
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This was my first cookbook by Rozin. Now I also own Ethnic Cuisine and The Universal Kitchen. I like, and use, all three, but Blue Corn and Chocolate is my favorite.
The wild-rice and dried corn turkey soup is a post-Thanksgiving tradition at our house.
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Elizabeth Rozin has an amazing ability with flavor, I have yet to hit a dud and I use the book all the time. I made two totally untested recipes from this book for a dinner party, and they were the best things I served.
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In this book she introduces each chapter with illustrations about the cycles of plant life--based upon the books and illustrations of Lilias Trotter, a 19th Century British female missionary and artist who was a missionary in Algiers in North Africa. Personally, I thought the illustrations became a bit tedious and repetitious.
The theme of the book is Christ centered and Cross centered. Elliot makes the point--I believe correctly--that suffering finds its greatest meaning and depth in the suffering that Christ endured for us and that humanity, especially His followers, must to some point reduplicate in their own lives. Human suffering becomes in a sense redemptive, meaningful and even a source of contentment when in faith it is surrendered back to God just as Christ surrendered His own life and mission to the will of God the Father.
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