Has anyone read "Inner River" by Kyriacos C. Markides?
Any thoughts if you have?
Thanks!
Monk Silouan

I have started to read it. As usual, there are some helpful and interesting parts from the character of Fr. Maximos about Orthodox anthropology and ascetic practice. The "dialogue" format of much of the book is painfully wooden at times.

The core of the book is a discussion, by "Fr. Maximos", of the nine gifts of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), and how to practice the Jesus Prayer. Some might have a problem with Markides' tendency to compare Orthodoxy to non-Orthodox spiritual systems, but I didn't mind it. In fact, I liked it. Towards the end of the book, Markides recoounts his response to a Jew who wants to pray, but who doesn't want (for obvious reasons) to pray the Jesus Prayer. The book has several audiences, I think, one of them being people not aware of Orthodoxy, and another being those who may think that real spiritual practice is only found across the Indus.