I was not disappointed, to say the least. The fable unfolds by weaving poignant messages with powerful character development in a seamless storyline. Each character has his/her own unique story within the bigger story, and learns more about him/herself and the world during their integrated journey together on a quest to find a timeless truth (i.e. the prayer that changed the world). I found myself going on the journey with them and pondering what self-discovery I was making, or how I could relate to each character. Slipping in and out of the story, I kept trying to figure out what I was going to figure out at the end of the book. I wish I hadn’t approached the book like this, it was not a good method. Reflecting back, I can now see that, as usual, its more about the story and the process of getting the answers than the actual end point itself.

I recommend this book if you need a break from didactical books, etc. It is entertaining. You will find yourself engaged in the characters and their stories and the bigger story that encompasses the entire fable. And in the end you will finally find out which prayer changed the whole world….

It isn’t a life changing story, but a refreshing read that should leave you with a renewed outlook on your own faith journey.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/88489965

Sorry to be so negative, but I just didn’t get it.

Each person we encounter has a tale of his or her own, so the short novel becomes a series of interwoven stories, each with its own bit of wisdom to impart. The author of the book, Joann Davis (who “discovered” the manuscript “By the Scribe”), acknowledges in her Afterword the sources for the stories’ insights, which range from Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels to M. Scott Peck and even Charlotte’s Web.

The “prayer that changed the world” is the classic Prayer of St. Francis, which in this story becomes the hidden treasure found by the shepherd and his companions on a parchment scroll in a dark and perilous cave. The prayer has been shortened and bowdlerized, perhaps to suit the “spiritual but not religious” audience to whom this book is being marketed. “Lord” and “O Divine Master” have been deleted (perhaps too “patriarchal” or “religious”?), so the prayer is addressed to no one in particular. But most annoyingly, a line has been added at the end of the prayer: “For this is the Law of Substitution.” This added line has the effect of making a beautiful prayer that has inspired millions over the centuries sound like a PowerPoint presentation at a Deepak Chopra seminar.

This short novel does not rise to the level of excellence found in Master of the Jinn by Irving Karchmar, which is (by far) the best book I’ve read in the “spiritual novel” genre. But The Book of the Shepherd also avoids the preachiness and wooden dialogue found in other “spiritual novels” like The Celestine Prophecy and The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Apart from its tampering with the Prayer of St. Francis, The Book of the Shepherd is indeed “an inspiring and moving fable,” as the cover blurb from Paulo Coelho claims.

This small story of fiction exceeded my expectations. It’s very short, is set in times of antiquity and yet reveals marvelous nuggets of truth that are very relative in today’s world.

The tale begins with a small fellowship consisting of a young shepherd, a boy and a young servant girl. They have grown up in an abusive world where there is a religious fervor to uphold the letter of the law but little compassion for those caught in it’s web. They yearn for a new way one that they heard exists but have yet to see. On their journey they encounter many difficulties. The shepherd longs to see this new life of love and grace yet gets drafted in a carnal war. What seems tragic turns into an opportunity to demonstrate what loving your enemy may look like, loved it! Along the way there is the blind man that sees with his heart, and the storyteller that helps the characters share their story and discover who they really are. It really is a great read and one that you can read over and over and discover new truths and hope that is practical and encouraging.

There is some good truths to the book, but they are what I consider to be surface level truths. They are things that many of us know to be true and probably believe, but that we do not always act out.

I wanted to like the book. I wanted it to be something that I could read with a group and start serious discussion with, and I believe that it could do that, I just do not think that it would lead to the sort of discussion the author intended.

I honestly think that the fact that the author wanted me to believe that this was some story that was found and recently translated, I immediately distrusted the tale itself. It allowed me to read it and feel that the author did not believe the very words that were penned.

All in all, I cannot say that I disliked the book, but it is hard to openly and honestly say that I enjoyed it as well.

The three learn many forms of compassion and wisdom along their journey. And find themselves wrapped up in each others stories so much that Elizabeth and Joshua come together in marriage on their love for one another.

The “new way” we find is really based in “the One” a monk who taught this “new way” of living and riled against the religious authorities of the day. Who wanted to silence any truth or way but their own. To the Christ-following believer this story sounds very similar to that of Jesus. The symbol of “the new way” is a fish. The fish was also a symbol for the early Christians. To a non-believer without a knowledge of biblical accounts we simply understand the Jesus figure to be a monk “the One” who taught “the Way”, but really “the Way” is “the One”.

The prayer in the book called “The Law of Substitution” is more commonly known as “The Simple Prayer” “The Peace Prayer” or “The St. Francis Prayer”. In the book it reads this way.

Make me a channel of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where this is injury, let me sow pardon
Where there is doubt let me so faith
Where there is despair, let me sow hope
Where there is sadness, let me sow joy
Where there is darkness, let me bring light
For it is in giving that we receive
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life
For this is the Law of Substitution

The Book of the Shepherd is very enjoyable, well written, and a quick read. I will say however that the books greatest weakness comes from some of it’s source material: The Gnostic Gospels, The Golden Compass, and Charlotte’s Web are noted by the author. There are also some things in which it seems that the journey to find the “new way” may differ from “the Way of Christ”. A good friend of mine, Darien Gabriel, also read and reviewed this book. He discusses this idea much better than I can.

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.” Well, that all depends on what’s in you, does it not. If you follow the truth of the Bible, you would want to know if they were following the old nature or new nature from within. And does this mean that you can save yourself or that God in you saves you? And if he’s in you, are you not already saved?

Pick it up and remind yourself of some truths rooted in scripture and some things not so rooted in scripture presented in a “new way”.

Disclaimer: This book was given to me to read and review by Viralbloggers.com.

http://thecommoncup.tumblr.com/post/407837611/the-book-of-the-shepherd-by-joann-davis-book-review

Given that it’s likely scribes who were responsible for editing disparate oral traditions into the various cogent scriptures the major religions of the world currently adhere to, it’s appropriate that The Book of the Shepherd has only “the Scribe” listed as its author (though a quick perusal of the copyright information will give you the author’s real name). Imagine that someone saw it as their scholarly duty to take all those pithy emails you receive about peace, or love, or spirituality, the ones that often come with a Power Point presentation set to music, and felt that there was  need to amalgamate these into a single, coherent narrative. Now imagine that after they’re done, due to the way in which the Internet acts as a disseminator of modern folklore, this book is well received as a book of spiritual guidance. Imagine they’ve packaged it in a nice little hardback with a cover graphic that makes the slipcase look like vintage leather binding, already letting the reader know that this book contains ancient wisdom (which in this era, email forwards from five years ago are). Imagine this, and you’ve imagined The Book of the Shepherd.

I like fables. I like parables. I love allegory. None of these are easy to write, contrary to popular opinion. The majority of short didactic narratives are either excessively heavy-handed or cloyingly sentimental. The Book of the Shepherd is the second. It’s the result of a trickle-down from the pop-spirituality of the 80s and 90s into the mass-email forwards of the early twentieth century, made into one little book that feels old world, but is so ultimately new world that it fails at having the sort of authority other texts like it do.

Parables and fables work well when they’re short. As either of these, The Book of the Shepherd fails by going on too long, giving too much character information. It starts to approach being a modern work of fiction, but because it’s trying to hard to be didactic and teach us something, it never achieves the believability or relatability of character modern fiction requires. And we can’t call it allegory, because the characters aren’t symbolic in the way allegories demand. So I’m not sure what it is. What I do know is that I can’t recommend it, for the same reason I wouldn’t recommend The Celestine Prophecy.

When I was a minister, I was supposed to tell people to avoid reading The Celestine Prophecy because it was New Age. But that wasn’t the reason I’d tell you to avoid reading it. I’d tell you to avoid reading The Celestine Prophecy for the same reason I’d tell you to avoid reading Left Behind or Atlas Shrugged: they’re poorly written works of didactic fiction. The Book of the Shepherd is another. Most of the time, when an author tries to hard to tell me how to live, he sacrifices his chance to tell me a decent story in the process. There are exceptions to this, but they are few and far between.

Writers risk us missing their point when they work towards the sort of moral complexity and ambiguity a good story demands. The more simplified the moral strata, the less I can buy in. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe remains one of the best allegorical pieces of fiction because you can miss the Christian message. It can be appreciated simply as a great piece of children’s fiction. I don’t have to “get” something out of it to enjoy it. Writing like The Book of the Shepherd is only worth reading if I think it holds the keys to my spiritual well-being. Since its mostly just a collection of bumper-sticker spirituality, I’d recommend anyone interested in this sort of spiritual path to Google Scott Peck or Thomas Moore, read the wikipedia articles on them, and save yourself the bucks. 

On the subject of spiritual reading, I’ll close by posting one of my favorite writings The Book of the Shepherd wishes it was in the tradition of: Walter Wangerin’s “The Ragman”:

I saw a strange sight. I stumbled upon a story most strange, like nothing in my life, my street sense, my sly tongue had ever prepared me for.
    Hush, child. hush now, and I will tell it to you.
Even before the dawn one Friday morning I noticed a young man, handsome and strong, walking the alleys of our City. He was pulling an old cart filled with clothes both bright and new, and he was calling in a clear tenor voice: “Rags!” Ah, the air was foul and the first light filthy to be crossed by such sweet music.
    “Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags! Rags!”
“Now this is a wonder,” I thought to myself, for the man stood six-feet-four, and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular, and his eyes flashed intelligence. Could he find no better job than this, to be a ragman in the inner city?
    I followed him. My curiosity drove me. And I wasn’t disappointed.
Soon the ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing into a handkerchief, sighing, and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and elbows made a sad X. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking.
    The Ragman stopped his cart. Quietly, he walked to the woman, stepping round tin cans, dead toys, and Pampers.
   ”Give me your rag,” he said gently. “and I’ll give you another.”
He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up, and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift to the giver.
    Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the Ragman did a strange thing: he put her stained handkerchief to his own face; and then he began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. Yet she was left without a tear.
    “This is a wonder,” I breathed to myself, and I followed the sobbing Ragman like a child who cannot turn away from mystery.
    “Rags! Rags! New Rags for old!”
    In a little while, when the sky showed gray behind the rooftops and I could see the shredded curtains hanging out black windows, the Ragman came upon a girl whose head was wrapped in a bandage, whose eyes were empty. Blood soaked her bandage. A single line of blood ran down her cheek.
   Now the tall Ragman looked upon this child with pity, and he drew a lovely yellow bonnet from his cart.
    “Give me your rag,” he said, tracing his own line on her cheek, “and I’ll give you mine.”
    The child could only gaze at him while he loosened the bandage, removed it, and tied it to his own head. The bonnet he set on hers. And I gasped at what I saw: for with the bandage went the wound! Against his brow it ran a darker, more substantial blood — his own!
    “Rags! Rags! I take old rags!” cried the sobbing, bleeding, strong, intelligent Ragman.
    The sun hurt both the sky, now, and my eyes; the Ragman seemed more and more to hurry.
    “Are you going to work?” he asked a man who leaned against a telephone pole. The man shook his head. The Ragman pressed him: “Do you have a job?”
    “Are you crazy?” sneered the other. He pulled away from the pole, revealing the right sleeve of his jacket — flat, the cuff stuffed into the pocket. He had no arm.
    “So,” said the Ragman. “Give me your jacket, and I’ll give you mine.”
    So much quiet authority in his voice!
    The one-armed man took off his jacket. So did the Ragman — and I trembled at what I saw: for the Ragman’s arm stayed in its sleeve, and when the other put it on, he had two good arms, thick as tree limbs; but the Ragman had only one.
    “Go to work,” he said.
    After that he found a drunk, lying unconscious beneath an army blanket, an old man, hunched, wizened, and sick. He took that blanket and wrapped it round himself, but for the drunk he left new clothes.
    And now I had to run to keep up with the Ragman. Though he was weeping uncontrollably, and bleeding freely at the forehead, pulling his cart with one arm, stumbling for drunkenness, falling again and again, exhausted, old, old, and sick, yet he went with terrible speed. On spider’s legs he skittered through the alleys of the City, this mile and the next, until he came to its limits, and then he rushed beyond.
    I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow. And yet I needed to see where he was going in such haste, perhaps to know what drove him so.
    The little old Ragman — he came to a landfill. He came to the garbage pits. And I waited to help him in what he did –but I hung back, hiding. He climbed a hill. With tormented labor he cleared a little space on that hill. Then he sighed. He lay down. He pillowed his head on a handkerchief and a jacket. He covered his bones with an army blanket. And he died.
    Oh, how I cried to witness that death! I slumped in a junked car and wailed and mourned as one who has no hope–because I had come to love the Ragman. Every other face had faded in the wonder of this man, and I cherished him; but he died. I sobbed myself to sleep.
    I did not know–how could I know? — that I slept through Friday and Saturday and its night too.
    But then, on Sunday morning, I was wakened by a violence.
    Light–pure, hard, demanding light–slammed against my sour face, and I blinked, and I looked, and I saw the first wonder of all. There was the Ragman, folding the blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive! And, besides that, healthy! There was no sign of sorrow or age, and all the rags that he had gathered shined for cleanliness.
    Well, then I lowered my head and, trembling for all that I had seen, I myself walked up to the Ragman. I told him my name with shame, for I was a sorry figure next to him. Then I took off all my clothes in that place, and I said to him with dear yearning in my voice: “Dress me.”
    He dressed me. My Lord, he put new rags on me, and I am a wonder beside him.
    The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ!

Now the content. It feels Christian. Christian names (Joshua, David, Elizabeth) and Christian icons (shepherd, slave, a “new way”). But upon closer inspection, we find that it really isn’t. It’s a combination of random sources — the Bible, new age thought, Gandhi, Francis of Assisi, Obama campaign slogans, and I’m not sure what else. Davis lists her inspiration as The Golden Compass (strongly anti-Bible) and the Gnostic gospels. Not that the moral of the story — basically, love should triumph over justice, and you should be the change you want to see in the world — is a bad moral. It’s one that everyone should strive for, and one that I try to apply to my own life. But as a Christian, lines like this rubbed me the wrong way: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.” I guess it was more my own biases going into it. I’m not sure how non-Christians would read it — it could be that I was expecting something different, and was surprised by what I read.

Read my full review here: http://bit.ly/bv1OQQ

So to fulfill the old professor’s dream, Joann Davis found a way to have the story translated and now published. I think that the message attempting to be delivered through this fable is a wonderful one–one of love and forgiveness and mercy. However, the synopsis on the book’s jacket is what helped me really understand what the story was about. Then again, I’ve never been a great lover of fables.

Joshua, the protagonist in this little tale, is a kind young shepherd who believes there must be a better way, and so he embarks on a journey to find that better place. He is joined by a young boy, David, renounced by his father for a minor failure, and Elizabeth, a slave girl who has been set at liberty. As they travel, they met several guides (a storyteller, an apothecary, and a scribe) who all share wisdom for the journey.

Those who have trouble with myth and allegory will probably not like this book. If you are looking for a concise, reasoned, and well-ordered systematic theological treatise on law versus grace, you’ll not want to bother with this book. Davis has given us a fable, a story. It the best sense of the word, I see this book as a myth meant to draw people further down the road on their own journey out of legalism and into the grace life. Read it with this mindset and you’ll find it an enjoyable and inspiration read. Come at it with an overly critical mindset and you’ll find yourself very frustrated.

There might be another group who find this book a frustration. They may well be comfortable with fable, but will be challenge by this stories obvious challenge to legalistic order of many ecclesiastical societies (i.e. established churches). If order, structure, and control are the back story for your religious background, then this fables rejection of religious legalism in favor of a better way will certainly be a challenge.

Personally, I encourage everyone to accept the challenge of reading this book. It’s brief and easy to read and can be finished in one or two sittings. Read it for the pleasure, engage in the reflections it brings to mind, and don’t take the format so seriously as to prevent it from allowing the fable to be a benefit.

http://www.nieporte.name

I was truly hoping to like this book. I am a fan of the business parable genre as well as using modern day parables to teach. The Book of the Shepherd sounded like it might deliver a parable that would affect the way we live.

I quickly glanced at the book and checked out the jacket credits and thought, “hmm.” Paulo Coelho, author of “The Alchemist” endorsed it as did James Redfield (author of The Celestine Prophecy) and even Meredith Vieira (co-host of the Today Show).

The jacket credits, interestingly enough, had no Christian endorsement. I am not a person who limits his reading, believing there is something I can learn from everyone, so I sat down and began reading the smallish book published by Harper Collins.

In a nutshell…an ancient book is discovered in the house of deceased Professor Orlando Roberts. The new owner of his house, Joan Davis, finds the ancient scroll and has it translated. The vellum describes a “New Way” of living, and the journey begins.

The story begins in a small village where three events transpire that set the book in motion. A young boy is abused by his father; a shepherd decides to intervene in the domestic situation, and the young boys sister becomes guardian and is removed from her home with her little brother. The set-up is a world without grace.

The book moves quickly through very short chapters as the three travelers are introduced to various people who have a truth to instill and directions for the next leg of their journey to help them find a scroll that will reveal this new way of life.

There was never a moment for me in this fabolic-quest book that I said, “Wow, that was powerful.” The character development was shallow at best and never really drew me into the story. At times I thought, “Okay, now maybe we will strike some gold, but alas, it was always fools gold.

With each new chapter there was hope for something profound to be spoken or said or revealed, but it never happened. I felt like the author was trying to write an Alchemistic-esk book, but fell far short of it on both the content, and the writing.

“The book has no teeth” was the phrase that keep going through my mind…and then I noted that most of the spiritual maxims that the author brought in were from Gnostic sources (The Gospel of Thomas), or other New Age writers. The author wove the Golden Rule (treating others the way you would want to be treated, reciprocity), with Gandhi’s, “Be the change you want to see”. With these tow thoughts combined, the author creates a “New Way” for us to journey on and calls this new way “The Law of Sacrifice.”

The Law of Sacrifice moves us from the mantra of the Old Testament: An eye for an eye: to the new path of loving our neighbor as our self. The author garners her concept for the new way by adapting St. Francis of Assisi’s’ “Peace Prayer” and calls that the Law of Substitution.

I love that prayer, my only wish is that the author would not have changed it, and then given Francis credit for writing it.

So, save your money. This is a weak book. Better yet, go and buy a book about St. Francis of Assisi and be challenged to live a life devoted to the betterment of each other…I’m sure that will have more teeth than this book!

~M.C Wright

http://www.montywright.com
http://www.plantechanger.com
http://www.remorph.wordpress.com
http://www.svaonline.org

It’s a small and simple book — but one that reminded me of some of the feeling I had when reading the works mentioned above.

Later than night, Joshua prayed to God. “Why didn’t you send help for that child?” God replied, “I did send help. I sent you.”

In this profound and heartwarming parable, we follow Joshua as he embarks on the quest for “the better way.”

Accompanied by his newfound friends, Elizabeth (a former slave) and David (the castaway child), Joshua searches for an ancient text that has been hidden in a distant cave near the Great Inland Sea

Along their journey to uncover long buried secrets, they meet an unusual assortment of characters — The Storyteller, The Apothecary, The Bind Man, and the Stranger, who teach them valuable lessons to aid them in the pilgrimage.

This little book, written by JoAnn Davis, is like a blend of Pilgrim’s Progress, Aesop’s Fables, The Shack, and The Hobbit.

It’s packed with pithy, thought-provoking statements. Here are a couple of my favorites:

“Speak the truth in love and love the truth in each, saying strong things gently and gentle things strongly.”

“Each morning, when you awaken, promise the dawn that you’ll keep your heart as light as a feather.”

This book is written like a fable and is a very quick read. It may have over 180 pages but because of the way it is laid out, it can be read in 1-2 sittings. It chronicles the tale of a shepherd named Joshua. Joshua is troubled by the harsh code of “an eye for an eye” that governs his world. He has a dream in which he is called to find a “new way”, so he sets off on a journey to learn the new way. Along the way, Joshua picks up two others who travel with him and together they encounter an interesting cast of characters. With each encounter along the journey, they learn a valuable lesson. Finally, they reach the end of the journey, find the “new way” and take their changed lives back to their world.

This book is based on The Prayer of Saint Francis and the good learned from that prayer is worth the read. But, I will say that the story is quite simple and lacks a “fullness” that you find in most books. I wouldn’t pay the $19.99 list price…but used copies are now available on amazon.com for $2-3 and for that price, it is worth the read.

I am reviewing this book for The Ooze Viral Bloggers and give “The Book of the Shepherd” 3 stars out of 5.

The old way was what a Dispensationalist would call the way of the Old Testament–an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth kind of philosophy. The three journeyers all know better somewhere in their heart and so they go on a quest to a cave they’ve heard about to find out what the better way is. It ends up being the St. Francis prayer, “Make me a channel of your peace/Where there is hatred, let me sow love…” etc. This new way is called “The Law of Substitution.”

Now all this seems nice and fits well into a (not very well thought out) Christian worldview. But there are problems and these problems insure I would never would this fable to my children.

1) Though the Bible is clear that Jesus set up a new covenant and that the Law would no longer be written on stone, but rather, on our hearts, it is clear that the same God who visited Mt. Sinai is the same God who visited Golgotha. Jesus fulfilled the Law, He did not abolish it. All humans at all times have been saved my grace through faith (even Abraham). This fable prevents God’s salvation as otherwise (or even worse, that the first thousands of years of human history were mistaken and God finally got it right on AD 29.)

2) The author presents this new way–The Law of Substitution–as a way of monks that got the kaboosh by “The Powers That Be.” How? She says that a document called “The Destruction and Overthrow of Falsely So-called Knowledge” barred these monks from having meetings and propagating their texts. Oh-so-not-ironically, “The Destruction and Overthrow…” is the title of a five-volume text by Irenaeus that argues against Gnostic thinking. It would seem that the author of this fable is a proponent of Gnostic thinking, proven by her malaligning the church father Irenaeus.

3) It is briefly mentioned that “The One” will be the person by which this new Law takes hold of the world. But then it is revealed that “The One” is each of us, each person who simply does the right thing and shows compassion. This sounds nice, but it is incredibly humanistic and ignores humanities need for a Redeemer. If each one of us could just follow the Law, then what need do we have for a Savior (particularly a risen one)? This seems to be Ms. Davis’s point. There is no “One”; it’s all of us.

For these reasons, I cannot suggest this book to anyone except as a academic study into how a modern day Gnostic (read: heretic) might think about salvation and redemption. In a word, its humanistic. Not to mention abiblical and illogical.