Amazon.com (ISBN 0060192860, Hardcover)

Spirituality should never be used as an escape route, according to Thomas Moore's Soul's Religion. Rather, it should be the catalyst that helps us face our everyday failures, angst, and emotional entanglements. This has always been Moore's anthem: that spirituality rests in the depths of experience, in the ordeals and challenges that initiate us into a stronger sense of life's meaning. "This book may look simple, but it is not naive," promises Moore, who sees Soul's Religion as a companion volume to the bestselling Care of the Soul.

It doesn't coddle the ego. It offers challenge to the person fully in the flesh while developing at the same time an intelligent and deep-seated spiritual identity.... In this spirituality justice is more important than enlightenment and humor holier than ambition.

This is Moore at his best--taking spiritual teachings out of the texts, temples, and churches and applying them to everyday life. The former monk draws upon Christianity, Zen, and Taoism as he shows readers how religion should not be used as a shield. Rather, it should be a tool that cracks open our defenses so we can live without fear and judgments. Time and time again Moore takes readers to the daily place of "emptiness and not knowing," the place where we can best meet God. --Gail Hudson