A serious book without being solemn

Please don't take this book by its awful cover, which does no service at all to the content, which is serious without being the least bit solemn.

In her introduction, the author promises "a journey into the relationship between belief and bullying, between faith and fury, between the gospel of love and the evil of sectarian and other forms of group hatred". And this is what we get.

It has other virtues. For one thing, it proves the futility of the promiscuous labelling of people as conservative or liberal: Mary McAleese is both - or neither. She is certainly a committed Christian of the Roman Catholic obedience, but clearly, for her, obedience does not mean mindless submission to whatever authority proposes. And she can be scathingly critical (and self-critical), as she is about the "cloud of unknowing . . . hanging about the church over gender issues".

"We have heard the calls to battle - but remarkably not to prayer. I have sometimes been guilty of losing sight of love, too often in the passion of debate . . . the `my God-is-bigger-than-your-God' style of dialogue."

She can be equally scathing on the roots of sectarian and cultural discord, notably - and from sad experience - in the North, but also farther afield, as in what used to be Yugoslavia, and in Rwanda. But she probes, sharply and painfully, below the easy "us" and "them" categories, quoting the Croat theologian, Miroslav Wolf:

"The practice of exclusion is not just something that the evil and barbaric others out there do: exclusion is also what we, the good and civilised people right here do . . . the tendency lurks in the dark regions of all our hearts, seeking an opportunity to find a victim . . . "

This is just one of a number of sharply relevant quotes from commentators and thinkers at home and abroad, and from poets varying from Shelly and Lorca to W.R. Rodgers and Seamus Heaney.

That Mrs McAleese cares deeply for her faith is obvious, but this does not deter her from exploring the relationships between religion - all religions - and group prejudice, hatred and violence. As against this, she looks forward in hope to a future reconciliation of all faiths, offering a vision of truth and love.

The phrase "cloud of unknowing" comes from the title of a medieval English classic of mysticism. The mystical tradition is deeply important to her and especially the practice of meditation, revived and promulgated by the late John Main, OSB. Actually, the book consists of her addresses to this year's John Main Seminar which she led.

Personally, I have a blind spot about meditation, let alone mysticism. Any Christian, half-Christian, post-Christian can learn much from this book about society, and about oneself. It has a way of striking home.