“To nurture her spiritual life as a graduate student, hooks revealed in All About Love that she repeatedly reflected on these lines from Corinthians [1 Corinthians, chapter 13]:
“ 'If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.'
“Her time in graduate school may have been trying but she cautions her readers against turning to spiritual practice only when life is difficult. Instead, one should engage the spiritual consistently, and in so doing, 'recognize divine spirit everywhere.' As her maternal grandmother believed, one needn’t take part in organized religion to be a spiritual person, hooks writes. By meditating, praying, communing in nature, serving others, or choosing to remain connected to the divine forces 'that inform our inner and outer world,' people can lead spirit-filled lives.
“In her spiritual life, hooks, of course, took cues from Buddhism and Christianity. From the latter, she learned that 'anyone who does not know love is still in death,' as the Gospel of John states. And from Sharon Salzberg, author and teacher of Buddhist meditation methods, she learned that spiritual practice is 'the liberation of the heart which is love.'“
