What Readers Are Saying

Quick read? Not this book. That would be like gulping a good wine instead of relishing it. First good wine must be sniffed, then rolled on the tongue to allow the fumes to climb more deeply into the nostrils before letting the heat and pungency of it slide down the throat to the place where it warms and settles. Our Journey to the Sky must be slowly imbibed to gain its full flavor. Read perhaps one phrase; then ponder and allow digestion of the new thought.

Actually, Our Journey to the Sky is a workbook. It should be approached with a pencil and highlighter. There are places for notes throughout the text. The lessons are in the last chapter entitled Illuminating the Path. It is well to bookmark that chapter for easy reference. You will want to refer to those exercises as you read through the book.

Fundamental questions are dealt with in Our Journey to the Sky such as: Does life have meaning? How do evolution and revelation fit together? And more. Highlight as you read. Re-reading only these special-to-you, highlighted portions at a later time will allow leisurely pondering and integration of the ideas as they move you forward.

Our Journey to the Sky has much to offer the careful seeker who is willing to work. In the chapter The Spiral of Fear, I was startled to read a very accurate description of a dynamic that was happening in my own family. Working in this section (pencil going furiously) helped me gain some clarity and new understandings. Then I could see the possibility of becoming part of the solution instead of helplessly continuing to be mesmerized by the miasma.

It has so much in it! Our Journey to the Sky is not for the faint of heart. It is a book that is meant for the person who really is on the path of spiritual growth formation. If you are willing, it will take you on a ride to the shores of your spiritual angst so you can tie up, look around, and check out all those gnawing uncertainties. A wonderful means of in-depth analysis of one’s self, it requires a commitment and a willingness to work by the reader. But that reader will be amply rewarded.

Of particular interest to me was an insight on good and evil found in the chapter entitled Looking Beyond Good and Evil. The author offers a new awareness of this difficult duality that is so prominent in our news today.

Our Journey to the Sky is for the person to wants to delve into the spiritual and peel away the layers of confusion that build up as we go through life and obscure our authenticity. It is for someone to desires to live deliberately and is willing to question all those early decisions out of which we continue to live long past their effectiveness.

Our Journey to the Sky needs re-reading on an annual basis. Moving up the ladder of understanding is a slow climb. But with each step we are better able to see the curious and wondrous landscape of our lives from a higher perspective. We gain the courage to allow the authenticity that facilitates the special contribution each of us is here to make.

It is a wonderful journey to the sky if you have the courage to climb.

Camille Dull
La Crescenta, California

Our Journey to the Sky – A Guide to the Process of Spiritual Formation - a fascinating and surprising book. The Voice – (my inner wisdom? ) – offers me the Sky and tells me how to take it and I am puzzled. "Open your heart" I am told. Is it that simple? I find an apple core in my pocket. Why? I climb up the hill to the empty stone church. I converse with the Wind and the Green Lizard as my life evolves and I seek to open my heart. Where are the Light-filled rooms? What is the black hole? These and other images may seem odd yet they clarify this inner development taking place in me.

I have read other books about spirituality but nothing like this one. Everyday life has taken on new meaning. I had never understood what becomes very obvious in reading about my own journey – that my life experiences are actually designed to guide the development of spiritual awareness – that built into the particular circumstances of my life is a evolving process with a specific purpose.

It is hard to accept the Sky. I am caught up in fear and self protection. I can see why my life has become a conflict of “Surrender versus resistance”. It has become, as the author states, “The foundation upon which our spiritual life is always shaping and changing”. Daily, actually minute to minute, I am being offered the opportunity to accept Love, to practice compassion.

Love’s presence is everywhere, chiding, guiding, encouraging. So also present is the conflict of good/evil., my judging mind, my set ways. ” Fear and Love. Love and Fear. This duality is a current moving through our life carrying with it the course of our spiritual formation” is a line from the book that really nails down my daily struggle.

I am also struck by the relationship between Revelation and evolution. “Two sides of the same coin”, writes the author. And the role that biology plays in our developing spirituality throw a new light on the “human condition”. This really is a must read book.

Our Journey to the Sky reads easily but takes time to digest, time to reflect upon every carefully chosen word. I have found the space for note taking and highlighting very helpful. And it turns out that this book is also a manual. The final chapter offers instructions on how to keep a spiritual journal using the material from the book.

Judy Reilly
La Crescenta, CA

It has been some time since I read Our Journey to the Sky and though this book deserves meticulous reading again, the impressions that have lasted from the first time are those I wish to record.

Our Journey to the Sky is refreshingly easy to read but it is not easy to digest more than one or two chapters at a sitting. It’s contemplative, philosophical, even scholarly nature requires time to absorb.

The author’s use of metaphor and what I call poetry – the apple core, the green lizard, the wind – compels me to explore even further why I derive so much pleasure from the moon, its rising, its setting, its every phase; why the bat in our family’s mountain home, flitting, and returning is so vexing, haunting; why and how each of my everyday life experiences make me and have made me what I am.

The book makes me even more aware that something is beyond what I or science can comprehend. Be it a greater hand, God, there is a thread which connects us all.

Our Journey to the Sky clearly gives each of us the tools to discover our inner spiritual self and how to move forward and “take the sky”.

I applaud Mary K DeLurgio. Her book is a masterpiece.

Charlotte Kovach
Yorba Linda, California

I want to share a few of more impressions I had when reading Our Journey to the Sky .

Mary K DeLurgio's presentation is unique and takes getting used to, but I really sensed it as inspired. Made me think about how often Jesus would present new ways of looking at life that just flummoxed his listeners. Maybe a person needs to have had some experience of inspiration to recognize it ...perhaps it is a "jolt" to demand one's full attention, full immersion.

As I mentioned before, I heard the voices of so many people speak through her words . the joys, the pains, the confusion, the searching, the denials, the awakenings of all the many folks Mary K has listened to with her heart as well as her ears through the years. She has made herself a conduit and God listens through her, gathers it all together, blesses it and then sends it back through her words to speak deeply to the hearts that are ready to listen.

She wrote a really incredible book.

Marynance Schellenback , author
Tujunga, California