"Signals of Transcendence" by Os Guinness. A Review

 

I would sit enthralled as the old Colonel would pace the floor telling stories of serving under General Patton in WW II. The commandant of our High School JROTC was striving to get us young adolescents to think bigger than just their hormones and hungers. To do this he recalled life experiences that drew from others long gone to teach us leadership values. Os Guinness, author or editor of over thirty-five books and founder of Trinity Forum, does something similar in his newly published 128-page softback “Signals of Transcendence: Listening to the Promptings of Life”. Guinness retells the fascinating stories of ten people who were tripped up by “signals of transcendence” in their lives, those “arresting and intriguing experiences that both capture our attention and call for further explanation” (1). This delightful manual is the type of work that is easily digestible by teens and twenties and on to those in retirement.

 

Guinness recounts an abbreviated version of the lives of ten people, from Malcolm Muggeridge and Peter Berger to Windsor Elliot and Leo Tolstoy and more. Since, for moderns, “we have grown unused to the sound of any voice beyond the immediate” (5), his special focus is on when the signals of transcendence broke into these lives to spur each person to begin searching because they sensed something was deeply missing, something more than the voice of the immediate. As the author observes, we live in an era where the “overwhelming majority of people appear to be comfortable with their myopia” (16), and these accounts prompt us to think and care sufficiently enough to begin asking questions that are larger than our narrowness.

 

But Guinness is very clear that each person’s experience he narrates is unique enough that we shouldn’t expect identical encounters. Rather, he hopes it will build up in us an anticipation, a readiness for the signals of transcendence that may well “flash” into our narrow existences and give us a glimpse into the thin places and spaces between the seen and unseen. Though I deeply enjoyed each account, the one that was most touching was Philip Hallie as he came to recognize the darkness of his place, how he had gazed into the face of cruelty, becoming cruel himself, and into that black abyss broke in a spark of hope from an unlikely, almost unremembered people. That signal of transcendence was like a lifeline that drew him up out of the miry pit and set his feet on a rock.

 

“Signals of Transcendence,” though short, is packed with stories striving to get us to think bigger. Guinness, like my old High School JROTC commandant, is virtually pacing the floor regaling us with “and these people found that there was more to life than their obsessions and observations. So, learn from them and anticipate!” This manuscript would make a great addition to the libraries of anyone you know, older and younger alike. And as a pastor I can say that there’s potent sermon illustration stuff just sitting there waiting for my fellow ministers. I highly recommend the work.

 

My thanks to IVP for sending me a copy at my request. They made no demands. They gave out no brides. Therefore, my review is freely made, and I give it out freely to the reader.