IN THE ABSENCE OF GOD: DWELLING IN THE PRESENCE OF THE SACRED
By Sam Keen
Harmony Books, 224 pp., $23

Reviewed by Martha K. Baker


    The print of the title of Sam Keen’s latest book, In the Absence of God, is graphic and telegraphic.
    The pale blue letters of “absence” and “God” are fading, but that main title is subscribed by the subtitle in smaller, fully legible, black letters: Dwelling in the Presence of the Sacred. Reviewers commonly abbreviate a title for easy reference, but writing the first half without the second gives a false summary of Keen’s message.

    Both titles explain the thesis of In the Absence of God. Part I, “The Itinerary of the Journey,” builds a new foundation for belief by digging out the muck of the old. Keen believes there is a way out for people who long for the spiritual but cannot buy the “miracles, mystery, and authority” of institutional religions. “The vision we require is not missing, only forgotten,” he assures. “It sleeps in the taproot from which religion originally grew -- the kaleidoscopic richness of our experience of the sacred.”

    Keen, a former editor of Psychology Today, frequently lectures on religion and philosophy. In this book, he explores the way to “a new understanding of what lies at the heart of religion” by first looking at the desert -- specifically, at solitude and silence, “holy leisure,” and “blessed doubt.”

    In “Remembering Elemental Emotions,” Keen defines a baker’s dozen of them (the number matches this 13th book in his canon), from wonder and awe to gratitude, joy, grief and trust, ending with humility. In “God Talk and Sacred Nonsense,” Keen makes one of the book’s strongest suggestions: “Declare a verbal fast.” For a time, he suggests, do not speak “the tried, true, and revered names from the authorized scriptures of any religion....” Further, he exhorts believers to come up with new metaphors -- and really think about what they symbolize. He primes the pump with Karmic Control Central and Wave Rider and The Womb of Becoming.

    However, he cautions in the book’s last -- and sternest -- chapter, “The essence of a sacred life is not passionate belief in any of the aliases of God but a disposition to feel compassion for others and to act on that feeling.” He considers “communities of concern” (“Community is not the result of a social contract between autonomous individuals but the substance from which we emerge”) and “the quest for justice” (“To be concerned with spirituality but ignore the struggle for justice is as much of an oxymoron as compassionate egotism”). Ecological justice is the most important, he declares, because without that, economic justice and political justice are moot.

    Keen fills In the Absence of God with lists for easy reference and discussion, and he dots it with fine quotes from sages (plus a wag). He summarizes each section in a list that reads like poetry. He drops in the psychedelic and the erotic as equal to many ways of “living in the absence of God.” When he narrates personal experiences, he writes clearly and strongly; less so, when he waxes philosophic, glitters generalities, or scatters airy jargon (“quest print”?). His writing suffers from lax copy-editing: he does not distinguish “between” from “among,” for example, and far too many of his subjects do not agree with his verbs in number.     

     Throughout In the Absence of God: Dwelling in the Presence of the Sacred book, Sam Keen’s plain truths matter. He asks wise questions, and he comes up with good ideas for new risks. He also writes memorable epigrams: “There are no rainbows without blues.”