God at the Edge
Searching for the Divine in Uncomfortable and Unexpected Places
by Niles Elliot Goldstein On impulse and anger, Goldstein ripped a urinal out of the wall. Although he did not serve jail time beyond his initial detention, the memory of that short time spurred him to seek God. In his search for God, Goldstein goes to the extremes of society. Interspersed with his own travels, Goldstein retells stories, some mostly legend and some mostly history, of Jewish and Christian religious figures who also left the comfort zone of society to find God. Goldstein is a Reform rabbi.
In the conclusion, Goldstein writes that he fears that this book may be mere rationalization of his own ascetic urges, his own disposition. Much of this book does sound like a rationalization of the ascetic urge. But that doesn't make the book needless or its arguments false. Some of the ways in which Goldstein describes God appear contradictory. The intention of the pieces is to show ways in which God may be approached, and approaches to the One Above do not all have to come from the same direction.
Prickly reading.
