The Star at the End of the River

From an early age author Paul Vincent has been drawn to the night. With hope and joy he has looked forward to sunsets and oncoming nights a attitude counter to a thousand common religious metaphors. In <i>The Star at the End of the River</i> Vincent shares his important life experiences in order to illustrate how to transform conventional religious ideas about darkness.Bringing to bear his forty years' experience as an amateur astronomer Vincent shows how sustained night-sky observation enhances the human receptivity to transcendent departure. He examines one of the many treasures of the heavens a star-which under the paradoxes of the mystical journey is the most apt symbol of the human hope for eternal happiness.<i>The Star at the End of the River</i> proposes a new kind of mysticism-an ascent not of a mountain as in the traditional metaphor but of an inclined plane. Vincent sketches a spiritual journey of marked gradualism and invites contemplation of the mystical power of such pedestrian experiences and objects as supermarket aisles interior stairways gooseflesh and penmanship.