Soul Celebrations and Spiritual Snacks by Alexandra York

Hertford, NC: Crossroad Press, 2019
162 pp. $21.45 (hardcover)

In the introduction to the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand wrote of man worship and the joy of realizing one’s potential, saying:

It is an emotion that a few . . . men experience consistently; some men experience it in rare single sparks that flash and die without consequence. . . . Yet it is the view with which—in various degrees of longing, wistfulness, passion and agonized confusion—the best of mankind’s youth start out in life. It is not even a view for most of them, but a foggy, groping, undefined sense made of raw pain and incommunicable happiness.”¹

How do we fan those “rare single sparks” into roaring flames? How do we amplify our experience of “incommunicable happiness”? The Fountainhead shows that, fundamentally, we must stay true to our selves, to our own chosen values, and work creatively to bring them to fruition. But are there more concrete steps we can take to further increase our joie de vivre, to enhance our sense of the sublime, to live ecstatically? Are there effective guidebooks to joyous living? If previously there were not, there is one now.

Alexandra York’s Soul Celebrations and Spiritual Snacks is dedicated to “men and women of reason who sense there may be something missing and to men and women of faith who sense there may be something more” (dedication page). She guides readers toward experiencing “spiritual celebrations” not in supernatural fantasies but in reality, via “secular spirituality.” . . .

About Andrew Bernstein

Andrew Bernstein holds a PhD in philosophy from the Graduate School of the City University of New York and taught philosophy for many years at Marist College. He is the author of Capitalism Unbound: The Incontestable Moral Case for Individual Rights (2010), Capitalist Solutions (2011), Heroes, Legends, Champions: Why Heroism Matters (2020), and, most recently, Why Johnny Still Can't Read or Write or Understand Math.

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