Original Faith: What Your Life Is Trying to Tell You by Paul Martin, Maurice

Publisher's Reviewby Lucid_Interface

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November 29, 2008: The premise of Original Faith is that becoming the persons of our love and faith requires seeing and feeling things for ourselves. Spiritual and religious practice that is founded on such knowledge can make a lasting difference in how we lead our lives.

Paul Maurice Martin's credentials for coming to this realization are impressive. He began work on his manuscript following a spontaneous awakening from despair in his mid-twenties. Two years later, Martin enrolled in the University of Chicago Divinity School to test and question his developing faith perspective.

A dozen years later, with the book nearing completion, the author was stricken by a devastating autoimmune disorder. Plunged into an unfamiliar world of misdiagnosis, medical travel, research and treatment regimens that only accelerated progression of his disease, he was forced to set the manuscript aside for several years, returning to it in 2002. By then his increasing disability was bringing his career as an elementary school counselor to a close.

Written with beauty, power and informed by his work with young children, the book has as much to offer atheists as believers. Original Faith is written without reference to belief, offering insights and practical suggestions that can benefit believers and non believers alike. This is a book meant to bring people together: those who self-identify as atheists or agnostics, religious or spiritual, healthy or sick. Martin's work shows us that there is an identity that transcends such labels and a self that is more than self referential.