Finding the Still Point: A Spiritual Response to Stress

A.J. Pell is rector of Christ Church in Hope, B.C., editor of the
Canadian Evangelical Review, and an instructor of Liturgy, Anglican
Studies Programme at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C.

The subtitle, “A Spiritual Response to Stress,” is what draws a
reader to this book. Stress is a very real danger for most people these
days, and there are all sorts of tools in the form of medication,
counselling, and books that offer to help us cope with stress.
Harpur’s concern is that none of these works in the long run, and his
diagnosis is that their inadequacies are rooted in a common failure to
recognize the centrality of spirituality for human existence.

So Harpur explores bringing spirituality to bear on the task of living
with stress. He spends time on Jon Zabat-Zinn’s Stress Reduction and
Relaxation Program, a synthesis of Buddhist meditation and modern
behaviour medicine. The reader is also introduced to the work of the
Roman Catholic–based but thoroughly ecumenical World Community of
Christian Meditation and to the ancient and modern use of seven-circuit
and 11–circuit labyrinths as an aid to meditation. Along the way,
Harpur provides valuable insights from his own personal exploration and
practice of meditation.

Then, in the fourth and final section of the book, he switches focus.
Here Harpur returns to his past writings, advocating the remaking of
Christianity into what he considers to be a form that commends itself to
people of the modern Western world by rejecting the “wholly outdated
idea of Original Sin, Atonement ... and Salvation.” This plunges the
reader suddenly into a topic that neither the title nor the jacket notes
indicate is part of the book, and that relates only tangentially to
spirituality and stress. A good editor could have prevented this.