Artist, sculptor, and writer Frederick Franck is a man of many talents who shares with us some of lessons he has learned on a spiritual safari that has taken him around the world in search of meaning. During visits to Sri Lanka, India, the Himalayas and Japan, he meets with Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian teachers and realizes: "The Sacred cannot be caught in formulas. It cannot be analyzed, not even in terms of ecology, as beauty cannot be caught in the semantics of esthetics. Fingers pointing toward the Transcendent need no vocabulary, for they do not preach. Beyond the dialects of all religions they witness to a religious attitude toward life itself."
Early in this engaging account of his travels, Franck shares a series of mystical experiences he had involving the melting of a snowflake, a bee sucking honey, and a fat man at a traffic light. Then he challenges us "Cannot each one recall such trivia of which no one has the monopoly, these trivia that open the eye to the natural being awesomely supernatural? These touches of grace where reality opens up and we know that we are one with this reality, no longer estranged, but belonging, at home, here and now." Although fascinated and intrigued by Catholicism and Buddhism, Franck proudly states that he has never become a card-carrying Christian or Buddhist. "I can't help but be a loner, incurably allergic to joining anything whatsoever, whether political party, church, sect, cult or even Zen Center. I must have suspected at a quite tender age that as far as the need for 'identity' is concerned, my (and everyone else's) only real, colorfast, identity is simply to be Human."
The author pays tribute to four pioneers of what he calls "a new Humanism": Albert Schweitzer, a Protestant doctor; John XXIII, a Catholic pope; and Buddhists such as the great Daisetz Suzuki and the Dalai Lama. With great élan and respect, Franck recounts his meetings with these extraordinary individuals. Most remarkable account are his experiences with the most human pope of all whom he calls a "genius of the heart."
Franck scatters 54 exquisite drawings, sketches, and squiggly swirls throughthe book, additional testimonies to the abundant marvels in his life. Near the end of this spiritual journey, the author concludes: "Home is where the heart is not famished, the eye not starved, the Sacred not banished or desecrated." From what we read and see here, the whole world is Franck's home.