Indirections to God: A Book of Reflections

J.R.C. Perkin is President of Acadia University and a professor of
religious studies.

This slim volume comprises 32 sections of meditative, reflective
material, compiled over a period of several years. Some sections recount
personal experiences, some relate stories told by others, and some
record prayers and hymns. Whereas a great deal of writing and preaching
offers directions to God, this material consciously proffers
“indirections” to God; that is, it approaches an understanding of
faith by less obvious, less traditional routes. Some of the most
powerful incidents do not even use the word “God,” a term that,
Trudinger believes, has become (like the word “love”) debased from
overuse.

Some of the sections give us a glimpse of divinity in scenes of human
compassion; others, equally, give the reader a sense of the absence of
love in the lives of some very religious people. The insights in these
passages are often penetrating, if gentle.

The author chose to record several important quotations from memory in
order to allow the reader to hear them as he did; however, this
procedure is, at best, a risky one, and many of the passages referred to
could easily have been checked.

The other critical observation is more fundamental in nature. One
section deals with the false distinction often employed in Western
thinking between the bodily and the spiritual. Trudinger implies that he
is aware of the danger in what he calls this “dehumanizing
distinction.” But it may be questioned whether he is equally aware of
the danger in making a sharp distinction between the spiritual and the
intellectual. One gets the impression that the reflections deliberately
appeal more to the emotional than the intellectual, instead of aiming at
a balance between the two.

Many will be helped by this book’s genuine catholicism; some will no
doubt be encouraged to keep their own journal of significant thoughts
and experiences.