God at the Edge: Searching for the Divine in Uncomfortable and Unexpected Places

by Niles Elliot Goldstein

Here is a book about adventure, raw experience, and facing inner demons. Niles Elliot Goldstein is a young rabbi who sets out to find God in tough and often scary dogsledding above the Arctic Circle, taking the Silk Road into Central Asia without a visa, being chased by a grizzly bear, cruising with DEA agents through the South Bronx, and spending a night in jail in New York City's Tombs. He explores the connections between struggle and growth, fear and transcendence, and uncertainty and faith, seeking the boundary where the finite meets the Infinite.

Goldstein is not alone in making this kind of pilgrimage. There has always been a strong tradition of seekers who looked for revelation outside conventional religious settings and encountered God in moments of anguish, terror, and pain. Goldstein juxtaposes his own experiences with those of some of the great historical figures of Judaism and Christianity -- Jonah and St. John of the Cross, Moses Maimonides and Julian of Norwich, Nachman of Bratslav and Martin Luther -- as well as lesser known mystics and preachers, and he discovers, as they did, that it can sometimes take a journey to the edge to recognize God's presence in our lives.

Genres: Biography

192 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2000

Reviews

[Megan Uy · Rating 3 out of 5]

p. 102: “I wrote in my journal: [italics] The fear I feel is matched only by my excitement. [end italics] (I wondered whether this mission wasn’t rooted more in the selfish craving for an adrenaline rush than in altruism.)”

DUDE. I was asking you that question back on page ONE.

There are some great parts of this book, some excellent summaries of Jewish and Christian history and theology, (especially liked the last chapter on the way religions have evolved over time) but I just felt that this author’s whole approach to spirituality was so individualistic, so stereotypical male, so indulgent.

Which made the book’s conclusion only more frustrating as the author anticipates this exact critique with a “but hey, guess what? I actually try to look for God in community now.” Too little, too late for me, man.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

As I crank through my book-stack, I'm back into reading things I don't technically need to read. Next in the rotation was a book given to my by one of the saints of my church. The book, by Rabbi Niles Goldstein, is entitled God At the Edge. Goldstein is a faith extremophile, meaning he's the sort of person who seeks out intense wilderness experience and wild-and-wooly EXTREEEEEME faith experience. You know. Wandering the wilderness of Alaska. Trekking through Uzbekistan without the proper papers. That sort of thing.

God at the Edge was quite readable, and the scholarship...particularly as Goldstein cranked his way through a variety of the mystics in both Judaism and Christianity who inspired him...was excellent.

What caused me to be a-strugglin' a bit with this book was the seeming inability of Goldstein to find contentment as a rabbi in a standard-issue synagogue. The births and marriages and mitzvahs and funerals...well...they just weren't exciting. He chafed and struggled with the tedium of it all. He needed to be chased by bears, or shot at, or something...more...adventuresome.

I can understand that. There's much within the lives of synagogues and congregations that is...well...boring. Just routine. It can be smotheringly irrelevant.

But there's this thing about even the most seemingly staid communities of faith: they are filled with human beings. And those human creatures experience some pretty intense stuff. A new life comes into the world...that's a big deal. A marriage falls apart...that's a huge and complex thing, as fearsomely searing as the desert at the height of the day. A life comes to a close, either softly or through a crucible of suffering...and that last breath rattling out after a years-long struggle against cancer is just as final as the sharp crack that ends a life on the battlefield.

I feel the extremophile yearning myself. The voice of our Maker is more easily heard in places that kick us out of our complacency. But the intensity of existence isn't something we have to wander far to find. If we live and breathe, no matter where we are, it tends to find us.

Those who feel the need to seek it out just aren't paying attention.

[Iain Every · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and thoughtful

[Kim Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got a lot out of his personal stories, but the rest read like a dissertation