The Star at the End of the River

From an early age, author Paul Vincent has looked forward with joyful anticipation to sunsets and oncoming darkness, an attitude that appears to be counter to the scriptural counsels of his own faith community. In The Star at the End of the River, Vincent shares his important life experiences in order to describe a transformative spirituality of the night. Bringing to bear his forty years' experience as an amateur astronomer, the author shows how sustained night-sky observation enhances the human receptivity to transcendent departure. Of the many treasures of the heavens, Vincent finds particular solace in a star he has never seen which, for that very reason, he regards as the most apt symbol of the human hope for eternal joy. The Star at the End of the River proposes a new kind of spiritual journey an ascent, not of a mountain, as in the traditional imagery, but of an inclined plane. Vincent invites his readers to become contemplatives of the ordinary and to discover the mystical power of such commonplace objects and occurrences as road signs, supermarket aisles, interior stairways, gooseflesh, and penmanship.