For Book Lovers Everywhere

Dear Bibliophiles,

Give yourself a treat, avoid the lines at your local box store today and read this opinion/memoir piece by author Anne Lamott which appeared in the Sunday Week in Review Section of the New York Times last weekend. Lamott is a  popular author of down to earth reflective memoir with realistic insight rooted in the wisdom of sobriety and an adult experience of faith. The love of reading, cultivated by otherwise disfunctional parents, is one of the gratitudes on Lamott's Thanksgiving list.

 

What would your personal account of early exposure to the wonder of books include? Where do the memories lead you?

 

Its a great day to curl up with a good book? What are you reading? The middle school  librarian in me is eager to finish "Son" by Lois Lowry, the fourth in her "Giver" series.

 

Happy Reading!

 

Anne Lamott is the author of "Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers".

Time for a Book Review

The Paper Garden

by Molly Peacock

Pancratium Maritinum




No, this is not a painting. No, it was not recently done. No, it is not the work of some agile, bright-eyed student of the fine arts or avid botanist. This is an exact botanical reproduction entirely constructed of cut paper. It was made in the late 1770s or early 1780s. The artist, Mary Granville Pendarves Delany (1700-1788) began creating such works in the 72nd year of her remarkable life. After the death of her second husband, a much older man with whom she had a most affectionate marriage (very unlike her first), she distractedly picked up paper and small scissors in an attempt to create an exact replica of a geranium blossom. With this creative act and she became the originator of the art of paper or mix-media collage. She produced 985 of these works in an eight year span. These breath-taking botanically correct cut-paper flowers are housed in the British Museum. In 2010 a large exhibit featuring some of her works was mounted at the Yale Museum of British Art. 

Molly Peacock's book, The Paper Garden: An Artist {Begins Her Life's Work} at 72, NY: Bloomsbury, 2010, is an unusual combination of biography of the subject with a smattering of the author's autobiographical material. Although her family had good connections they were forever concerned with having enough money. However, the good connections served Mary Delany well so the book is sprinkled with great historic figures such as the composer Handel whom she met as a young girl and in adulthood was invited to sit-in on his rehearsals!

Her story appeals to the artist in me. Her pursuit of beauty and art throughout her life, her ingenuity and application and skill in her seventh decade sets her up as quite a heroine. Even more encouraging is that a lifetime of fine work in the needle arts seems to have prepared her for this tour de force. Twelve of her works appear in the book, some with additional detail images. It is worth looking for the book at your public library (where I found it by pure chance) just to examine and mediate on the blossoms.

What? Catholic Science Fiction?

A Classic of the Sci-Fi Genre

Just in case you haven't noticed, this blogger and contemplative nun has been a heavy duty reader since fourth grade. That's the year Miss Laventhal walked our class to the local storefront public library. I fell in love; began with the YA biography section; and worked my way thorough shelf by shelf.

In 1961 - OMG - 50 years ago - my parents took my sister and I on a three month long driving tour of  Europe - probably the most educational experience of my life. The trip was noteable on so many counts but is also memorable for the number of times I was sick. TV in my language could not be my distraction so Dad would do one of his favorite things. He would prowl the book stalls for books to amuse me. One of his purchases was A Canticle for Leibowitz. It is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller, Jr., first published in 1960. Based on three short stories Miller contributed to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; it is the only novel published by the author during his lifetime. Considered one of the classics of science fiction, it has never been out of print and has seen over 25 reprints and editions. It won the 1961 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. Recently I re-read this unlikely sci-fi choice for my diversionary reading. I recommend it highly.

Set in a Roman Catholic monastery in the desert of the Southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the story spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz take up the mission of preserving the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the day the outside world is again ready for it. Sounds like our own historical Dark Ages in which monasteries preserved ancient learning while the barbarian hordes were being fought all around them.

Inspired by the author's participation in the Allied bombing of the monastery at Monte Cassino during World War II, the novel is considered a masterpiece by literary critics. It has been compared favorably with the works of Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Walker Percy, and its themes of religion, recurrence, and church versus state have generated a significant body of scholarly research.

At first reading when I was sixteen years old I was fascinated by the idea of my own civilization being deciphered by another less sophisticated defining itself hundreds of years after a nuclear war. Like the archaeologist  Howard Carter discovering Tutankamen's tomb, they could only guess at the meaning of their finds. The novel reveals what happens when the technology of the nuclear age is reappropriated; when the science is figured out; when once again atomic tests are being carried out in the desert. There are lessons here about the risks of not being students of history. The novel is also an astounding commentary on what is currently happening in our Church because of its way of doing business, a way light years removed from what Jesus would do. In this aspect, A Canticle Leibowitz, is very much a Catholic science fiction novel. Who would have thought?

BTW, I got my copy from the local public library on inter-library loan. I am still in love with the public library.

The Book Corner

In my former life as a middle school librarian, I loved the "book talk" aspect of the work. My job was to make a selection of books so irresistable that they would immediately "walk off the shelves" in the hands of an eager students.

Here I would like to recommend two books which are more than worthy of walking off the shelf of your local book store or online provider. The first is The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind - A New Perspective on Christ and His Message. The second is The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity. For some, this author, Cynthia Bourgeault, PhD, may be a new voice of spiritual guidance.  Episcopal priest, writer, and internationally known retreat leader, she divides her time between solitude on Eagle Island, Maine, and a demanding schedule traveling globally to teach and spread the recovery of the Christian contemplative path.

Cynthia Bourgeault is also author of:  Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, Mystical Hope, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, Chanting the Psalms, and Love is Stronger Than Death. She has also authored or contributed to numerous articles and courses on the Christian spiritual life. She is a past Fellow of the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural research at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, MN, and an oblate of New Camaldoli Monastery in Big Sur, California.

This author invites her readers to consider Jesus from the biblical and theological perspective that reminds how radical the essential teaching of Jesus was in his time on earth and how that radicality needs to be reconsidered today. Bourgeault engages us in an attractive conversational tone that is, nonetheless, rooted in sound theological and biblical teaching. The heart of the message is expressed in the first two of its three parts: The Teachings of Jesus and The Mysteries of Jesus. The last part covers Christian Wisdom Practices - centering meditation, lectio divina (sacred reading and meditation), chanting and psalmody (Divine Office or the Liturgy of the Hours) and the Eucharist. These are presented as the spiritual practices in which lives must be grounded in order to enter into and live out the radicality of Jesus' message in their everyday lives.

The second book concerning the figure of Mary Magdalene, much honored in Sacred Scripture and much maligned throughout the ages is a most welcome addition to general consideration of her importance in  Christian tradition. Here Mary Magdalene is presented not only as Apostle to the Apostles  but also as model of the spousal relationship of the Christian soul and Jesus Christ.

Conscious Living

Gratitude:
Given and Received

In one of my past lives, as member of a parish liturgy committee, it was my task for a number of years to round up twelve people willing to participate in the foot washing ritual of the Holy Thursday Mass. It turned out to be a very difficult job. I can say without exaggeration, that it took months to find twelve souls, male or female, young or old, religious or lay person who would give their consent. The issue in many cases was that of their sense of unworthiness.

Here is a photo of that memorial of Jesus's last supper with his disciples; a remembrance of his last gesture; a striking visual representation of love and service. The ritual is being performed by the prioress of our monastery. Perhaps this picture moves me so because I know the personalities of those involved. Our superior is kneeling at the feet of her sister in community. One of the foundresses of this house has put on an apron and given herself to the task. She has been a Redemptoristine for over 55 years. We all look up to her. The sister whose foot is being so tenderly cared for is known for generous service in community; no task is too lowly or menial; the needs of the other are always considered first. The one whose rightful place is at the head of the table has come down to its foot as servant. And the one who naturally gravitates to the foot of the table is allowing herself to be served. Gratitude being given and received.

I have been impressed to hear my son and daughter-in-law say "Thank you" to their children so frequently. I don't know how often I thanked my son when he was a child. I do not remember hearing these words often in my own childhood. We've not talked about it but I gather that this new generation has adopted the practice as an effort to give good example and because they know the power of positive re-inforcement. But at an even deeper level this is most valuable communication heart to heart.

For some adults gratitude is hard to offer and hard to receive. I was taught a lesson years ago by a friend who brought me up short saying, "Do you realize that you never accept a compliment without responding with at least one reason, if not more, about why you do not deserve it? It is very rude because it tells me that my appreciation is really poor judgement." I still fail in this but most of the time I remember her well-taken point.

It is as if human gratitude, owed to or received from another is a realm into which some simply cannot enter. I have found it helpful to remember that it is a foreign country to them. Sincere, face to face, square in the eye gratitude is far too intimate an expression of emotion, far too connecting - too close for comfort.

Expression of human gratitude may also frighten due to the implication of personal indebtedness or obligation implied. It can offend stubborn adherence to a rugged individualism, that personal autonomy which is to be defended at all cost. To accept gratitude is also to suggest that one must take the needs of others into consideration. Conversely, to extend gratitude may imply a personal need which we cannot bear to admit. Reluctance on either part may also be due to a subtle fear of blurring the boundaries between levels of authority in families, in the workplace, within organizations and even religious communities. And sometimes the sheer emotion of profound gratitude can be a fearsome prospect to the highly controlled individual. Such emotion brings to the surface a swirling, living interior reality that they have been taught to keep at bay and learned to suppress.

All of this came to me today as I read the last pages of Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth - Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. He speaks of awakened doing, new vocabulary for what many have come to call contemplative action or conscious living. Tolle speaks of three modalities for awakened doing: acceptance, enjoyment and enthusiasm. He goes on to say, "Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to be sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all - from the most simple task to the most complex. If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others." It seems to me that conscious cultivation of the abiltiy to give and receive gratitude would go a long way to promote the presence of these modalities within me. Tolle would  say that these modalities have an energy of their own. Not only a positive energy for the person in whom they reside but a positive energy that flows out of the person into their environments and realtionships. This awareness, this consciousness, is an effort to love and to respond to love. "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love Him." 1 Corinthians 2:9

Book Talking Again

One of  gifts of our recent community retreat was the recommendation by Fr. Philip Dabney, CSsR, our director, that I read Eckhart Tolle's 2005 book "A New Earth - Awakening to Your Life's Purpose." Now some, I am sure, will scoff due to its designation as an Oprah Winfrey Book Club choice and dismiss it as just another new-agey kind of book. Others may dismiss it because it is not a 'religious book'. However, I found Tolle's insight regarding the ego constructed self and the roles we learn to play while disguised in this self extremely helpful. Traditional religious language describes conversion as an annihilation of the false self. This is exactly what Tolle reflects upon using a different vocabulary. He quotes Jesus very often but also spiritual wisdom figures of many other traditions. Tolle's name has become quite well known since his first book "The Power of Now" appeared on the New York Times best seller list. That book is really a new take on living in the present moment, a version of the "Practice of the Presence of God" by Brother Lawrence. In this Tolle follows the way of Thich Naht Hanh, the Vietnanese Buddhist spiritual teacher.

Most enlightening for me in "A New Earth was the nature of the ego-mind construction, the protective behaviors developed over time that keep us in the head, in the mind, and make us unhappy, angry, resentful, afraid, neurotic and narcissistic. Tolle writes that once we become conscious of this ego action-reaction tendency in ourselves and those around us, that realization alone can begin a kind of shedding (annihilation?) of ego-mind constructions and enable us to hestitate just a few seconds before reacting from our ego-bound position or reacting to another's ego-protective act which would normally send us over the edge.

The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer ego, but just an old, conditioned mind pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist. The old mind-pattern or mental habit may still survive and reoccur for a while becasue it has the momentum of thousands of years of collective human unconsciousness behind it, but every time it is recognized, it is weakened.

It is difficult to do this material justice. I can only heartily recommend Tolle's book for adults aware of their own need for growth in more conscious living and relating . He also offers some very valuable advice on how parents may avoid some of their unconscious behaviors and words that propel children into ego-protective construction which they will only have to stuggle to dismantle when they reach their own adulthood.

The wonderful local public library just put this brand new book into my eager hands. The wonderful Tracy Kidder has been interview in all the media about his rendering of the riveting story of medical student and Burundian refugee Deogratias (yes, that is his first name) who flees the genocide is his country and neighboring Rwanda only to arrive in New York City with little money and no English language skills. He has fled one horror only to arrive in another version - homelessness and victimization. His suffering is great but the grace of God remains and is manifest in a chance meeting with a very good soul whose determination finds Deo a family who will 'adopt' him. It seems one mircle after another and sheer instinct for survival get him through Columbia University undergraduate school and then into medical school and finally back to Burundi. There he reconnects with the family he long thought dead and realizes the dream of his boyhood to create a medical clinic in his native land.

Both of these boooks can enrich your soul.

Reading

for the

Discerning

Soul

These have been busy times at our monastery. One sister was hospitalized for a while but is home and on the mend. Two sisters had the joy of visiting their families. And now we have a sister with us who is considering a transfer to our community. Just like any family we have our busy and our quieter periods and also times when everyone has to pitch in more than usual. And, as in any family, these times reveal the strength of our bonds with each other and with our God, for whom, in an ultimate sense, we do it all.

But my work as Vocation Director continues; answering requests for information via, mail, phone and internet; corresponding with and talking to those who are wending their way through the discernment process. Lately, a few have asked about what they might be reading to further inform themselves. My recommendations come from the point of view of contemplative monastic life. Yet these books also hold wisdom for the broad spectrum of vowed religious life and interested laity.

Thomas Merton

- The Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality

- New Seeds of Contemplation

- The Inner Experience

All of Merton's writing is powerful reading that withstands the test of time. He died in 1968. These three works speak not only a particular life style and its spirtuality but to the totality of the contemplative dimension and its call to live out of the true self.

Michael Casey, OCS

- Strangers to the City: Reflections on the Beliefs and Values of the Rule of St. Benedict

- A Guide to Living in the Truth: St. Benedict's Teachings on Humilty

- Fully Human and Fully Divine (Christology)

- Lectio Divina (Sacred Reading)

Michael Casey is a Trappist monk of Tarawarra Australia. His writing is total gift.

Barbara Fiand, SNDdeN

- Refocusing the Vision: Relgious Life into the Future

An experienced religious and writer of depth locating religious life in our time.

John Neafsey

- A Sacred Voice is Calling: Personal Vocation and Social Conscience

Wonderful comparatively new book concerned with the philosophy of discernment of vocation in general stressing the sacredness of personal call.

Sandra Schneiders, IHM

- Finding the Treasure: Locating Catholic Religious Life in a New Ecclesial and Cultural Context
- Selling All: Commitment, Consecrated Celibacy, and Community in Catholic Religious Life.

The third book in this series is eagerly awaited by those who read the first two. Sr. Sandra is a first class scholar whose writing makes demands on the reader. The first volume situates religious life in the context of its history and experience extending into our current time. The second volume concerns itself primarily with the vow of chastity. The third volume, yet to come, will focus on poverty and obedience.

HAPPY READING!

Book Review

A LUCKY CHILD
A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz
as a Young Boy

by Thomas Buergenthal

Forward by Elie Wiesel

Children liberated from Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1945

Recently had the great good fortune, really a blessing, to just happen upon a radio interview of Thomas Buergenthal, former judge at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, now serving on the bench of the Central American International Court. He spoke mainly of his work concerning international law, his judicial philosophy and his very impressive case experience. But he also spoke about this book, the expression of his childhood memories of of fleeing Nazi terror, entering the concentration camp of Auschwitz with his parents, being separated from them and how he survived the death camp as a truly "lucky child." I was most impressed with his moderate and compassionate tone, remarkably free of bitterness or hatred and the utter miracle of his survival.

Thomas Buergenthal, born to German-Jewish parents living in Czecchoslovakia, grew up in the Jewish ghetto of Kielce, Poland. He was sent to Auschwitz in August, 1944. As Russian troops approached in 1945, he was among those force-marched for days in freezing weather to the camp of Sachsenhausen from which he was liberated in the spring of 1945. He was eleven years old and did not know whether his parents were dead or alive. Over a year later he was miraculously reunited with his mother. In 1951 he emigrated to the United States where he studied at Bethany College in West Virginia graduating in 1957, received his J.D. at New York University in 1960, and his LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees in international law from Harvard Law School.

Justice Buergenthal has served as a judge for many years, including lengthy periods on various specialized international organization bodies. Between 1979 and 1991, he served as a judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, including a stint as that court's president; from 1989 to 1994, he was a judge on the Inter-American Development Bank's Administrative Tribunal; in 1992 and 1993, he served on the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador; and from 1995 to 1999, he was a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

Justice Buergenthal wrote:

...I was drawn to international law and human rights law...because I believed...that these areas of the law, if developed and strengthened, could spare future generations the type of terribly human tragedies that Nazi Germany had visited on the world...Over time I also gradually concluded that I had an obligation to devote my professional activities to the international protection of human rights. This sense of obligation had its source in the belief, which grew stronger as the years passed, that those of us who had survived the Holocaust owe it to those who perished to try to improve, each in our own way, the lives of others.

He concludes:

Today it is...easier that it was in the 1930s to arouse the international community to act. That does not mean that such action will always be forthcoming. But it does mean that we now have better tools that we had in the past to stop massive violations of human rights. The task ahead is to strengthen these tools, not to despair, and to never believe that mankind is incapable of creating a world in which our grandchildren and their descendants can live in peace and enjoy the human right that were denied to so many of my generation.

Hearing Justice Buergenthal speak and reading his memoir were gift and inspiration.

Time for Another Book Review

A Voice from the Past

Speaks Truth for Today

In the early 1980s I was devouring popular but serious books concerning the search for God. Spiritually I was in a state of arrested development, stalled at the point of Catholic high school graduation and suffering from the lack of adult re-education at the parish level after Vatican II. An experience of the At Home Retreat Movement in 1980 brought me to a new place, a place that included meditation on scripture, contemplative prayer, and a more intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.

One of the books I read at the time was Henri Nouwen's Genesee Diary, his journal of a six-month sabbatical spent at the Trappist Abbey of of the Genesee in New York State in 1974. I loved it then and remembered loving it throughout the intervening years. If asked why I held it in fond memory I probably would have had trouble saying exactly why, after almost 30 years. Surely the monastic milieu fascinated, but I couldn't put my finger on why I still remembered it as speaking to my heart.

Recently a hardcover copy that no one wanted found its way into my hands and I thought, "Why not re-read it. It might touch your heart again." Today, I believe that finding this book in my hands was no accident. It was, if not a divine intervention, at least a divine synchronicity. In simple terms, it was the answer to prayer.

Henri Nouwen, a Dutch diocesan priest, was taking a break from teaching at Yale University. He was already well known for a number of books including The Wounded Healer and Out of Solitude. His complex and very human personality was evident in his writing and may have been one source of his popularity. He often wrote about constantly struggling to love God and others in spite of his wounded humanity. In other words, he was very much one of us.

The journal is not unlike many other personal accounts of time spent in the monastic environment and community. Nouwen's is made unique by its detailed accounts of numerous conversations with his spiritual director during the months at Genesee. His guide was the abbot of the community, Fr. John Eudes Bamberger. John Eudes was not only a wise and experienced monk but a physician/psychiatrist and former Navy man. The import these conversation had for me was underscored by another odd fact of my second encounter with this book. Shortly after I picked it up again the journal Human Development, in its spring issue (2009), featured an article concerning just these interactions between Nouwen and Bamberger at the Abbey of Genesee!

Suffice it to say that I feel a great personal kinship with Nouwen's 'issues', the struggles he confided to John Eudes and his process of dealing with them. The next reader may not feel that particular kinship but I do think that the substance of these conversations will touch many. In the following quotation the word "monastic" can easily be dropped anso that we understand that this is the state of angst to which we are all prone.

"When the monastic life does not hold anything new any more, when people do not pay any special attention to you any more, when nothing 'interesting' is distracting you any more, then the monastic life becomes difficult. Then the room opens up for prayer and ascesis." (p.43)

On another day John Eudes advises, "Take this as your koan: 'I am the glory of God." Make that thought the center of your meditation so that it slowly becomes not only a thought but a living reality. You are the place where God chose to dwell, you are the topos tou theou (God's Place) and the spiritual life is nothing more or less that to allow that space to exist where God can dwell, to create the space where his glory can manifest itself. In your meditation you can ask yourself, 'Where is the glory of God? If the glory of God is not where I am, where else can it be?' ....."You want God to appear to you in the way your passions desire, but these passions make you blind to his presence now. Focus on the nonpassionate part of yourself and realize God's presence there. Let that part grow in you and make your decisions from there. You will be surprised to see how powers that seem invincible shrivel away." (p.53-54)

Nouwen's journal entries about his talks with Bamberger are the subtext of the journal. They weave their way through and inter-relate with Nouwen's experiences of the routine of daily life in a monastery and his interior reactions to it. But I found John Eudes Bamberger, spiritual director/ psychological counselor, speaking directly to me in their power and wisdom. Perhaps you will too.

Time for Another Book Recommendation

Memorial of

Saints Timothy, Titus

and Paula Too!

Seems entirely fitting that on the day following our remembrance of the Conversion of St. Paul and the close of the Year of St. Paul, we should be remembering two of his loyal disciples, Timothy and Titus. Isn't it amazing to think that within so few years after the death of Jesus Paul should be able to exercise so much influence? To think of the loyalty to his person he was able to engender and, even more, the absolute attachment to the person of Jesus Christ in his followers. This is even more breath taking. He had the Madison Avenue advertizing executive's power to persuade without modern trappings, media or dreadful jingles! It seems he was chosen by God expressly for the message. What exciting times those must have been!

But in my breviary, appears a small, simple penciled note next to the names of Timothy and Titus. It just says, "St. Paula." This was noted because one of our sisters bears her name. Now Sr. Paula's names and feasts are rather convoluted because her name in religion was Sr. Mary Peter and she returned to using her baptismal name, Paula, many years ago. The feast of Sts. Peter and Paul seems to suit her these days. But it is good to remember St. Paula too.

What I have learned about Paula comes chiefly from a marvelous book by Patricia Ranft. The following comes from Macmillan Publisher's website.

Patricia Ranft, Professor of History, emerita, at Central Michigan University, is the author of numerous studies on religious, intellectual and women’s history. Her books include Women and the Religious Life in Premodern Europe (1996), a History Book Club selection; Women and Spiritual Equality in Christian Tradition (1998); A Woman’s Way: The Forgotten History of Women Spiritual Directors (2000); and Women in Western Intellectual Culture, 600-1500 (2002), all published by Palgrave Macmillan. With this current study she returns to her earlier interest in the medieval religious renewal movement, about which she published some dozen articles.

In writing about Paula, Ranft quotes extensively from St. Jerome. Now Jerome has a reputation for being somewhat of a curmedgeon, to say the least. But, it turns out that some of his best friends, supporters and intelectual partners were women. One third of his surviving letters were written to women. He met Paula and her circle of influential and holy women friends in Rome. She and her daughter followed him to the Holy Land. Later she founded monasteries, mastered Hebrew and continued to assist Jerome. He wrote, "If all the members of my body were to be converted into tongues, and if each of my limbs were to be gifted with a human voice, I could still do not justice to the virtues of the holy and venerable Paula." He praise her as a mother, scholar of Holy Scripture, linguist, and advisor. The great variety of her roles is particularly attractive to this contemplative nun who has her own checkered past as wife, mother, scholar and now nun. What a model she provides.

It is no wonder that Professor Ranft includes Paula in the ranks of female spiritual directors of note. Her book is a fascinating and informative corrective to many erroneous notions about the influence and contribution of women through the ages of both secular and religious history.

More about spiritual directors will come on another day.

HAPPY FEAST DAY to all named Paula loving and serving God as wives, mothers, teachers, scholars, advisors AND spiritual directors.

Read Anything Good Lately?

Time for a Book Talk

It has been a long time since I last wrote about one of my favorite subjects - BOOKS. I just love 'em! One of the favorite activities of librarians is the "Book Talk", in which the books just get talked right off the shelves and into the hands of readers, especially the reluctant ones. As a former librarian, I find myself still doing the "book talk" bit to whoever will listen. And one of my favorite questions to ask when conversation lags is, "What are your reading these days?"

Today I put up a new list of recommended books in the sidebar of this blog. There is more variety than usual because my reading taste are very eclectic - non-fiction, good novels, mysteries, self-help, and psychology with spirituality and religion always topping the mix.

The first is another fine book by the Trappist monk, Michael Casey. Everything he writes is so fine. Living in the Truth explores the teachings of St. Benedict concerning the virtue of humility. Humility is defined as the total self-acceptance of our humanity. Here we find what may be said to be the under pining of a modern and very popular book entitled The Spirituality of Imperfection which is also well-worth reading.

Waldron's book, Thomas Merton - Master of Attention, accompanied me on my retreat last October. Interwoven with Merton's thoughts on prayer as attention are the reflections of the French writer Simone Weil and the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz. To look, to see, to observe, to pay attention is to enter more deeply into the mystery of life, the mystery of God. Simone Weil said, "Looking is what saves us."

Your reaction to This Republic of Suffering - Death and the American Civil War may be, "Oh, how very depressing." I wouldn't say depressing. I would say sobering and necessarily sobering at that. More American lives were lost in the Civil War than in all the wars in which our country has been engaged from its beginning up to and including the Korean War combined. The author seems to have read every book, letter, journal, diary, or military report about or from the period and uses these primary sources to communicate, the psychological, sociological, cultural and religious ramifications of such horror. The chapter entitled "Killing" is a lesson in what must happen to the human person interiorly in order to engage in such slaughter. As I read it, I could not help but think of the men coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, the horrors they bring with them and the life-long consequences of their experience.

In 2004, Maryilynn Robinson's novel Gilead received great applause and a Pulitzer Prize. I recommend it highly. Her new book. Home, is about one of the characters introduced in Gilead. A father is dying. His dutiful daughter has returned home to care for him. Also returning is the prodigal, alcoholic son. So this a family story about disappointment, forgiveness and healed relationships; things about which we all know only too well.

Given recent work concerning the life and poetry of my Sicilian grand-aunt, I have been reading a lot of books about Italy and Sicily in particular. Dacia Maraini, a well-known Italian author has drawn my attention. And now I have decided to pick up again a book I rejected as a college student. It has now become a classic of 20th century Italian literature. The Leopard, by Lampedusa, takes place in the middle of the 19th century and portrays the demise of Sicilian nobility in the midst of political and class reform. The novel's focus is the drama of one fading noble family, emblematic of a disappearing world.