It's always important to see what others think of ones own's beliefs. Witch trials are still a bit to close for comfort... Not a bad book actually. I was expecting to be told we were all wrong and doomed to hell fire and found an actually accepting, lie and let live book! What a relieve! Though I do know that there are many who still dislike us out there. Kudos to Paul Cudby for having an open mind!

As a pagan, I was interested in reading this book, but I had serious reservations. I was raised in a Roman Catholic family, and my beliefs haven't always been met with open minds or hearts. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this book was written by a very open-minded priest, and instead of deriding pagan beliefs, simply discussed them in a Christian context.

I new, from the moment I started reading ‘The Shaken Path,’ by Paul Cudby, that I would be in a danger zone, not because I consider myself Christian, but the whole opposite: My mind is more than fine considering Pagan oriented ideals and ideas.
There was something that told me I should read this book, and I kind of knew this could be a comparison between the two faiths, but there was still the fear, the doubt. Would I be facing an egocentric priest that wanted to tell me that Paganism was only a misunderstood Christianism? Not at all.
What I discovered was that there something in common between the Gospels and the Pagan believes, more than what I would have ever thought. Uncomfortable experience, yes, but who said that learning would be an easy process?
We live in a world where everyone thinks it is their path the right and only one that is meant to exist, even I tend to think this would be a better planet if we all started learning about Paganism, but that exactly when Cudby comes: Nothing could be more wrong than thinking that.
Is not like Christians and Pagan are two halves of a whole, or that where one fails, the other prevails, but about the fact that we can all learn from each other, that Christ can teach the pagans and that Nature can help the Christians. Seems we often forget this.
Mr. Cudby goes to the most known branches and concepts related to nature-based religions, explaining them to a Christian reader, but even if that same reader is a Pagan or an interfaith, they can still discover a few interesting things just as I did.
There’s no point in denying that sometimes we all wish to ‘transform’ the other person and make them part of our religion, I think humans need to feel safe in an environment they can identify with, but ‘The Shaken Path’ proves more than once that differences and challenges work way much better than comparing two things.
However, I won’t lie telling that this an easy and light book, as it took me a long while to read it; the Animism and Shamanism sections were hard to swallow, each page a challenge, and I’m most likely to think that this is because of the amount of information and (shame on me) my lack of interest in those areas.
I would only prevent a reader from taking this books if they want to see a religion being ‘better’ than the other, to be more ‘correct’ and more ‘true,’ as if there could be only one faith in the whole world. Such a closed minded creature would not enjoy to discover that those ideals should be dead by now.
Thsi is a book for those who are interested in learning, exploring and discovering about different faiths, about that that coudl sound alien and supernatural, that that seems to be different and, therefore, dangerous.
If this seems to be more an extensive praise than a review, it is only because Paul Cudby was brave enough to open his mind, and so should we. May Nature never turn their back on him now that he realized that the Divine is in all things and that we can live and let die in peace.