Tying Rocks to Clouds: Meetings and Conversations with Wise and Spiritual People

Propelled since childhood by the untimely deaths of his parents, author Bill Elliott has searched for answers to the fundamental questions of existence. What is life's purpose? What is God or Ultimate Reality? Why do people suffer? Does a part of us live on after death? What role do relationships play in life? In his quest, Elliott traveled the world and conversed with twenty leaders of spiritual renown. Time and again, luminaries such as Mother Teresa, H. H. the Dalai Lama, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Ram Dass, and others warmed to Elliott's heartfelt longing for meaning behind the workings of the world. Their views are framed by Elliott's endearing voice: personal, engaging, and remarkably perceptive. Tying Rocks to Clouds is sometimes sad, often funny, and always filled with freshness and joy as it reveals the wisdom of highly spiritual people.

Would you like to talk about the meaning of life with Mother Teresa, Norman Vincent Peale, the Dalai Lama, B.F. Skinner, Ram Dass, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Pir Vilayat Khan, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Jean Houston, Brother David Steindl-Rast and other world-renowned spiritual leaders and experts in wise living? In this ecumenical volume, "ordinary person" Bill Elliott asks 20 such people essentially the same set of questions: "What is the purpose of life?" "Why is there suffering?" "Do all religions lead to the same place?" "If you were on your deathbed, what advice would you give to your son or daughter?" What emerges from this process is nothing less than a snapshot of our planet's philosophies at the end of the millennium. In perfect counterpoint, Elliott also surfaces in the course of the book as a wise, humorous, spiritual person himself. This invaluable record deserves to be a bestseller, not only for its inherent wisdom but also for its clarity and respect for the many ways there are to be and to believe.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This is an utterly winsome book, one that will win a special place in readers' hearts. Elliott was not a particularly wise or spiritual person when he began the search he reports upon. He was simply unhappy, having lost both parents as a child and lacking any trust in the universe thereafter. To begin healing his inner wounds, he wrote to people he believed might have answers to help him: Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, B. F. Skinner, Jean Houston, Ram Dass, Elisabeth K{}ubler-Ross, and a dozen others. When they agreed to talk to him, he traveled from his trailer home in the Midwest on his own funds. The result is an endearing book in which it's not just the wise and spiritual things his respondents say that make it sing--it's the search that Bill Elliott undertook and his bold idea of finding wisdom by simply asking. By book's end, Elliott is wiser, more spiritual. So will be many of his readers. Pat Monaghan