Because of Katie (Book Review)

Katie Gerstenberger died at twelve from a particularly vicious form of cancer (I know; is there any other kind?) that moved with speed and in silence to strangle her internal organs before offering only the subtlest hints of its presence.  

I don't remember how I "met" Katie's mother Karen.  It happened sometime during that fog of the first couple of years after Josh's death, when I was searching for  . . .  well, I have no idea what I was searching for online, but among my discoveries were other mothers, other women whose lives had been transported to that other place where children die.  I suppose we all live in a Madeleine L'Engle novel, and not a very good one at that.

At some point, four of us connected in a particular way, and spent months together writing our way through a "retreat" with Joyce Rupp's book, Open the Door.  By that time, our children had been gone for awhile, and we had each reached a point at which we wanted to re-engage with the rest of the world.  Of the four of us, three had young adult children who had died suddenly, without warning: an unknown complication of an illness stalked a young man in the night, a rogue wave pulled a young woman out to sea, and depression claimed another young man, in the form of suicide.  Katie was by far the youngest of our children, and the only one to die after a lengthy illness.

Because of Katie chronicles the Gerstenberger family's experience with that illness, from the first hint that Katie was not bouncing back from what seemed to be some sort of childhood virus, through the terrifying testing and diagnosis, through the family move to the hospital, through Katie's return to home and hospice care, through her death.  Throughout the book, Karen offers commentary and suggestions that should be helpful to families and medical caregivers alike.  

I think that the book may prove particularly helpful to parents and older siblings caught in the same maelstrom of illness and procedures.  Karen describes the alarming disorientation of being sucked into the world of children's cancer and hospital life; in particular, the loss of privacy and the sudden appearance of an entire phalanx of personnel in her family's life, each representing a profession and set of responsibilities previously unknown to Katie's family.  Seattle Children's Hospital clearly represents a model of family centered care at its best.  The family is involved in every decision; parents are able to be present for every procedure.  School and tutoring options are available for patients and siblings alike ~ a semblance of normalcy and activity for those who as a family move far from home to access care for a child.  And yet . . .  some interactions go poorly.  And parents sometimes have to travel several floors to use the bathroom or take a shower!

Since the beginning of my breast cancer experience, I have realized anew how important it is to have a guide (or several) whose perspective mirrors your own.  I have learned a great deal about breast cancer from the doctors and nurses, of course, but none of them have provided much in the way of guidance about daily life and comfort.  That has all come from other women: from their books and phone calls and emails and blogs and, in the case of a couple of friends who are nurses, from their generous arrival on my doorstep to help with home care.  In the shocking world of children's cancer care, Karen Gerstenberger is such a guide.

No one would envy a mother whose child has died, but I think that in our little group of conversing mothers, the rest of us have envied Karen her time to care for Katie and to say good-bye.  What shines through this book, and is of far more importance than the medical detail (although I know that parents in similar situations will cling to that, and rightly so), is the closeness of the Gerstenberger family, a closeness forged in honesty and love as Katie's prognosis worsens.  Probably many of us have experienced that awful silence and isolation that accompanies serious illness and death; family and friends vanish into thin air, put off by the vehemence of our reactions, frightened by the physical realities, and afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing.  Karen's forthright approach to her daughter's final months will perhaps ease the way for others to know how to offer companionship to those in trouble.  And her honesty and compassion certainly serve as a model for other parents called to wade in these particularly deep waters alongside a beloved child.

The Daily Examen (Book Reviews)

Since the Ignatian Prayer Adventure for Lent (see previous post) begins tomorrow, this is an appropriate time to mention a couple of books that do a wonderful job of presenting a crucial spiritual practice that many people refer to, as the first title indicates, as life-changing: the examination of consciousness.  

I have to admit to being lax and erratic in this prayer practice myself, which is why I was grateful when my friend Wayne brought the Jim Manney book back to my attention a few weeks ago.  It's on my Kindle, I'd already read it . . . but for some reason the timing for renewal was just right.  And now Law and Gospel has returned from retreat with a review of the second book.  So, OK: you have my attention.

Most often referred to in the past as the examen of conscience, implying that at its heart is a look at matters of conscience, i.e., sin,  the examen has been re-thought and re-imagined in the past several years as the examen of consciousness, meaning:  It's a way by which we become conscious of how God has been present in our days, of when and where we have been close to God, been moving toward God, been aware of God, and when and where not.  In Ignatian terms, it's a way of becoming aware of God in all things.

The practice itself is simple, although different folks tend to emphasize different aspects.  Essentially, it incorporates a prayer to move into God's light, an expression of gratitude, a look at the events of the day, and a plea for help with what's coming tomorrow.  There is good reason to do it at the end of the day, but any time that works will do.  And while the formal examen itself might take no more than ten minutes, a daily practice is likely to result in a growth in examen-type awareness throughout the day.

Jim Manney's book has more of an instructional bent; the Linn book is more experiential and anecdotal.  They compliment one another well, and both are short, meaning that they are quick reads and easy to refer back to.

The Linns point out that "the criteria for hearing the voice of God, as Ignatius did, is not holiness, but rather the willingness to become aware."  If you've wondered about a more contemplative approach to prayer, about how to pray in a way that involves more in the way of looking and listening than speaking and imploring, the examen is a good place to start.

(And if you'd prefer an article over a book as a starting point, "Rummaging Backward Through Your Day" is another excellent introduction to this little but powerful practice.)

Here Be Dragons (Book Review)

Many thanks to Quotidian Grace for directing me to Sharon Kay Penman's historical fiction.  Here Be Dragons is a fantastic read.

Set in thirteenth century Wales, this first novel in a trilogy focuses on the seemingly unending conflicts over lands and castles among the English, Normans, and Welsh by zeroing in on the loves and heartbreaks of Welsh Prince Llewelyn and his wife Joanna, daughter of King John of England.  Many readers will recognize some of the characters, if from not history, then from a mingling of Shakespeare and film -- John's mother Eleanor of Acquitaine, his brother Richard, and John himself.

The novel offers a lush portrayal of landscapes, personalities, intrigues, gentility, brutality, and relationships forged by both politics and romance, all woven into a fascinating tale by a meticulous researcher and consummate storyteller.  My only complaint? Welsh is a confounding language, and so the names are difficult to track.  But as my husband's family were Welsh coal miners who arrived on Ellis Island in the early twentieth century,  my interest in the lives of their medieval forbears prodded me forward.

I did a bit of googling, and the image above is of one of Lleweyln's castles, Criccieth.  According to the site where I found the photo, "Criccieth Castle, established by the Welsh Prince Llywelyn Fawr (Llewelyn the Great) and later enlarged by King Edward the First of England, is a landmark for miles around and dominates the small town. Welsh castles usually typify the history of the English and the Welsh nations. The English built the castles, the Welsh knocked them down and in-between they fought each other. However, in Criccieth's case the Welsh built the castle, the English tried to knock it down, the English then rebuilt it and in between, they fought each other."

Behind all that knocking down and fighting, the Welsh and their neighbors found plenty of time for personal drama.   Medieval Wales was no place for the faint of heart, whether woman, man, or child, but it made for great stories of human courage, valor, foolishness, cruelty, ambition, and love.

I'm working on the second novel in the trilogy now.

Forget Me Not: A Memoir (Book Review)

I thought I'd catch up with a few book reviews while I recover from  being so sick that I barely moved for several days.

I read Forget Me Not: A Memoir some weeks ago.  It popped up as a Kindle recommendation and I was intrigued by the wildly divergent reviews.  Was the man in question a genuinely loving and committed husband and father whose career happened to interfere with his home life to an extreme degree? Or was he a callow and selfish sort, bent on fulfilling his own desires to the exclusion of all else?

As with most of us, I suspect, the truth lies somewhere in between.  Alex Lowe was a world-class mountain climber, killed in an avalanche; the book chronicles the memories of his wife, artist (and often fellow climber) Jennifer Lowe-Anker, of their courtship, marriage, family, and final separation.

It's not the best-written book in the world, but it intrigued me for two reasons.

For one, our family has always enjoyed the outdoors ~ my husband and I took a few backpacking trips in our pre-children decade, and then with our three we shared hiking, backpacking, and backcountry canoeing.  I always knew that we were rank amateurs, but: Wow!  There is a dimension of outdoor engagement and skill of which I was completely unaware.  This book offers a glimpse into that world, in which people devote their lives to little-known climbing activities in remote and dangerous locales, lives which are often drastically shortened as a consequence of the passion for one more climb.   Sometimes Jennifer forgets her audience, and the jargon obscures the realities for the reader unfamiliar with her world, but on  the whole she presents a vivid picture of a dramatic way of life most of us will never encounter.

I was also intrigued by the struggles between Jennifer and Alex over the demands of his work.  As their sons were born, Jennifer gradually reduced her own outdoor activities, partly because of the demands of motherhood and her artistic career, and partly because her own physical safety became more of a concern once she had children.  But Alex was often away, undertaking lengthy and dangerous trips all over the globe, frequently sponsored by corporations underwriting the ventures of the world's finest climbing athletes.  At times his loving (and frequently eloquent) letters to his wife and sons became part of journeys filmed and written about for public consumption, and they generated debate about his commitment to his family vis-a-vis his passion for risky work that frequently took him far from  home.  

In the end, I felt that the separations were not unlike those many families endure for the sake of a career; perhaps they seem more significant in the case of the Lowe family simply because of the dramatic and unusual nature of the work at hand.  My guess is that many wives (and some husbands) of world class performers in any arena ~ executives, musicians and artists, sports teams ~ have similar stories to tell, and that Jennifer's frustrations and dilemmas would resonate with them.

Overall ~ a quick and intriguing read, set in a world of outdoor adventure little known to most of us.

An Altar in the World (Book Review)

When I read books ~ or articles, or blogs, for that matter ~ these days, I am looking, with some urgency, for answers to questions about how to live.  The cumulative effect of the past three and one-half years is that I don't live at all the way I used to.  Well, any one of the things that have happened would have accomplished that result, but all together?

The suicidal death of a child, ordination, and breast cancer.  Seriously?  Am I a woman who longs for a child she will not see again, at least not in this life; or a woman who celebrates the Eucharist; or a woman whose body has been rather significantly deformed as a consequence of cancer?  Oh, wait ~ I'm all three.

No wonder I read with an eye toward how to live.  I'm looking for ways of leaning into that word I chose for the year: Patience.  And its friends:  Sight.  Hearing.  Waiting.  Watching.  Absorbing.

I like Barbara Brown Taylor's An Altar in the World because she offers some clues, without insisting that her clues are necessarily yours.  I've heard her preach during the summer "season" at the Chautauqua Institution countless times and so, as I read, I hear the gentle southern lilt of her voice flowing out of the Ampitheatre, over the trees and across the lake, under the blue summer sky and across the brick walk.  She sounds like the friend who might have an idea, a non-obtrusive idea, about those how-to-live questions, as you walk and talk across the Chautauqua grounds early in the morning en route to yoga class, or late at night after the orchestra concert.

If you're not familiar with the book already, it consists of a series of short chapters focusing on a number of spiritual practices.  But these are not spiritual practices as you may have come to know them if you are a Christian churchgoer.  These are not practices like "reading the Bible" or "fasting."  These are practices like "Walking on the Earth" or "Feeling Pain" or "Carrying Water."

I should probably admit that I had a practical reason for re-reading this book over the past couple of weeks: I am planning a Lenten sermon series on spiritual practices and I want to step away from the traditional ones on at least a couple of Sundays.  I haven't been feeling terribly original lately, though, and I thought that BBT might give me a jump start.

But in the end, it all comes back to:  How shall I then live?  A couple of suggestions:

"This is how faith looks sometimes:a blunt refusal to stop speaking into the divine silence" (from "The Practice of Feeling Pain"), and

"My hope is that if I can practice saying thank you now, when I still approve of most of what is happening to me, then perhaps that practice will have become habit by the time I do not like much of anything that is happening to me" (from "The Practice of Being Present to God"),

I think that if you are trying to revive or renew your spiritual life, it might be possible to travel a good long way by glancing at a sentence of two in this book each evening and letting those words become your prayer for the next day.

Four-Plus Weeks and a Book Review: The Christmas Cantata

I've had a string of really good days.  Week-ends at my church, preaching (albeit recyled sermons) and doing other worship and pastoral things, then home for the week to rest, teach a little, and grade a lot.  My brain seems to have cleared (four hours of anesthesia = four weeks of fog; the rule of thumb seems to be accurate).

It's an up-and-down process, though.  After a couple of easy weeks, today's medical procedure has produced hours of relentless pain.  X-S Tylenol and narcotics have made barely a dent.  If I sleep tonight, it will be the sleep of the utterly exhausted.  

I have triumphed in one regard this week, however: I've made it from the beginning to the end of a book!  A very small book, but a book nevertheless.

Now, the book is The Christmas Cantata by Mark Schweizer, and I don't quite share my friend Quotidian Grace's enthusiasm for it.  It's not a gem of written expression, a lot of both the plot and the character development seem to be missing, and it's pretty sappy.  But the truth is, I was laughing so hard that my eyes teared up when the woodpeckers invaded St. Barnabas Church to feast upon the beetles lodging in the styrofoam  ornaments.  The woodpeckers are responsible for the best lines in the book, including the "doctrinal schism prevented in 1378 when a woodpecker killed the anti-pope and saved the church."

The book is short and entertaining and, truth to tell, would make an excellent Advent gift for anyone in need of some light reading, such as the recently hospitalized.  That may not sound like a ringing endorsement, but I'm actually quite grateful to this book for making it possible for me to read again!

Resilience: Book Review

One of the books I've been reading is Elizabeth Edwards' Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life's Adversities.  You may recall that Mrs. Edwards was married to vice-presidential contender John Edwards, that they had lost a sixteen-year-old son to a car accident, and that she herself, having finally divorced her lout of a husband (and I describe him thus with regret, as I was excited about him during the 2004 election and even braved a long and cold night that fall to watch them both speak) before herself succumbing to breast cancer.

I was, of course, most interested in her twin burdens of dead son and breast cancer.  (I have been rather more fortunate than she in the husband department.)

I have to say that I am deeply disappointed by the book, and ended up skimming  most of it.  It is, indeed, little more than a series of reflections, and fairly disjointed ones at that. 

I wasn't put off by her emphasis on the loss of her son, as some of her Amazon reviewers were ~ I completely understand that.  I suppose some of her thoughts about grief ~ and particularly her thoughts about how a bereaved mother comes to see death for herself ~ might be startling to a reader who does not live where we do.  But they seem normal enough to me.

I wasn't interested in the  salacious details of her former husband's adulterous misadventures, and to her credit and dignity, she does not provide them.  And I wasn't interested in the details of the progress of her cancer and its treatment ~ that kind of information is amply available elsewhere.

But what I am interested in ~ and did not find in the book ~ is a deeper understanding of that word resilience.I am fascinated by words, and often find contemplation of the etymology of significant words to be a form of prayer.

Here are two definitions of resilience, from dictionary.com:

1. the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.

 

2. the ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy. 

It comes from Latin, from to rebound or to spring back.

Now that I've read those definitions, I wish more than ever that she had explored the word resilience  and what it meant to her.  Was it merely an editor's choice, slapped on book covers as a promotional gimmick?  Or did the word itself resonate with her?  Was it a personal matter of vigilance, of determination, of religious faith, of hope? Was it a word she pondered and prayed with, or was it a word she came to despise?

I've come to think of myself as a resilient person, you see, but now, with those definitions in hand, I'm not so sure.  

I think that the problem lies in the phrase "original form." 

I am about to lose my literal, physical, original from, but I have long before now lost my original emotional and spiritual form.  And I'm not sure that that's a bad thing.  A childhood without a mother, a motherhood without a child, a body without a breast ~ in the face of all that, would I desire to spring backward into the person I once was? Wouldn't that be a little, well, silly?

And that phrase, "recover readily" ~ that's problematic as well.  Believe me, Elizabeth Edwards did not recover readily from the death of her son.  That's not something we do.

But we do move forward, into these other, unexpected and, in many of their dimensions, unwanted, lives.  We make new lives as new people, as different people. 

 I wish that Elizabeth Edwards had shared something about how she did that.  I wish she had related some of the conversations she had, with the friends with whom she shared her life and with the wisdom figures from whom she sought counsel.  I wish she had ruminated on what it felt like to discover that she had breast cancer, of all things, when she had already lost a child.  (Me, personally ~ I will tell you that it's a particularly rough combination of fates.)  I wish she had reflected a bit on how she found her way forward when life must have seemed like little more than betrayal upon betrayal: her love for her children, her body, her marriage.

I hope that the book was a bit cathartic for her to write.  She seems to have been a gracious and generous woman, someone whose friendship I would have valued.

But the final word on resilience awaits another writer.

A Sunlit Absence - I (Book Review)

After months of eager anticipation, I have zipped through Martin Laird's A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation and begun, as of late last night, a much slower and more careful second read.

A Sunlit Absence is a companion volume to Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation, upon which Michelle and I reflected  over a period of several months last year. (See tab at the top of the page.)  I think that most readers will find A Sunlit Absence to be more challenging and, without a great deal of attentiveness paced over an extended period of time, less easily satisfying,  On the other hand, of course, perhaps such attentiveness will lead ultimately to a more rewarding experience of reading and prayer over that longer timespan.

Into the Silent Land, using the metaphor of the doorway, provides an introduction to contemplative practice in the sequence of a journey.  Moving from an introduction to Christian contemplation into the methodology of utilizing a prayer word, addressing the difficulties with mental distractions that cause many people to run as fast as possible away from anything that smacks of silence, and providing instruction in how to persist in prayer despite or even in aid of life's traumas and crises, Into the Silent Land eases us into an orderly exploration of prayer.

A Sunlit Absence is more akin to the experience of opening a scrapbook, inviting us to sift through a cascade of images, allusions, and parables in pursuit of the elusive God who need not be pursued at all because we live and move and have our being, always, within God's love.  I've just counted, and I have at least 25 of its 175 pages turned down as indications of material that called out to me for further reflection ~ but I don't yet have a sense of the whole.

The title of  the book comes from a Seamus Heaney poem which begins with the words, "There was a sunlit absence."  I'm not sure that Laird ever addresses the poem (as I said, my first read was a speedy one), but what he does describe in the introduction  is our experience of the God who both envelops and fills us as  that of water merging into water and light merging into light.  As Teresa of Avila says, "love melts into love."

As I pondered some days ago, before the book arrived, I have begun to wonder whether the silence of God is not, in fact, the compassion of God.  When I mentioned that possibility to someone else, he suggested that the silence of God is the patience of God ~ and, perhaps not surprisingly, referred me back to a passage in Into the Silent Land.  

I have been wondering, also, whether the silence of God perhaps reverberates through the universe?

Silence as the compassion of God, the patience of God, the echo of God?  We shall see what this book suggests.

Brother Lawrence: A Christian Zen Master (Book Review)

Let me say at the outset that I am not qualified to review this book except insofar as I approached it as many western readers might: with a little knowledge of Brother Lawrence and even less of Zen.  Brother Lawrence's name I recognized as that of a 17rh century French monk known for the simplicity of his approach to prayer, and for a capacity for becoming present to God in the most ordinary of tasks.  He was not a theologian nor even a particularly well-educated man, but his brief writings were compiled into a book that continues to influence many to this day.

Insofar as Zen is concerned,  I am aware of it as a Buddhist practice of mindfulness, and of the appeal of mindfulness practice to many of us caught up in the rushed demands of contemporary culture.  The well-known writings of Pema Chodron and Thich Nhat Hahn on Buddhism and Zen ~ particularly their work on suffering ~ have meant a great deal to me as I have dealt with some of the major challenges of my life. But I have never studied either Buddhism or Zen in any more depth than that required to provide high school students with an elementary survey of world religions.

All that said, this book is not intended as an academic approach to the interface between Christianity and Zen.  Rather, it offers a series of paired meditations from Brother Lawrence and from various Zen masters.  They demonstrate some of the many substantive similarities between the two expressions of contemplation.

I had at first thought in terms of noting that the coupled meditations might offer a fresh approach for Christians for whom some of the frequently repeated aphorisms sometimes cause the eyes and mind both to glaze over.  However, it occurs to me that the reverse might be true as well.

And ~ frequently westerners, completely unaware of existence, let alone the depth of the Christian contemplative tradition, turn to eastern religions as part of a search for a quiet, attentive posture of presence to something beyond ourselves.  (One of my college students wrote just last week, "It's too bad that we have no tradition of meditation in Christianity!") This little volume might be an excellent starting point, regardless of your own tradition or lack thereof, from which to glean some insight into two distinct and often very different traditions that share contemplative commonalities.

An example?  Among the big words with which I have been wrestling for the past two-plus years since my son's death are trust and surrender.  Here, from a page in the book:

The way of faith -- total surrender --

will lead us to completion;

it will show us how to achieve our full development.

[Brother Lawence]

If he comes we welcome.

If he goes we do not pursue.

-- Zen sayng

A person might spend a good many days with that page.

For anyone interested in more information, an appendix in the back of the book provides very brief notes in the Zen teachers quoted.  I would suggest this book to those who teach courses in prayer or religious studies, as well as to those who like to keep a page of meditations open for reference during the day.

I received a pdf version of this book ~ and nothing else ~  from the publisher, and offered no guarantees in return.

Earth Afire With God: Celtic Prayers for Ordinary Life (Book Review)

This little book from the editors of Anamchara Books contains several dozen short, sweet prayers.  Some are modernized versions of ancient prayers collected and published at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, while others were written by the editors themselves.

Three things struck me about this collection.   First, it emphasizes God's presence in the natural world, a welcome aspect of Celtic Christianity.  Second, it doesn't shirk from applying the gentle grace of prayer to contemporary life; there's a prayer to the God of the Internet!  (Nothing about texting, though.) And third, many of the prayers take the form of litanies, with a repetitive lilt that would be appealing for simple, ordinary moments, whether those spent alone or those in which community gathers.

I would caution potential readers that a few of the prayers center on Celtic festivals, such as Imbolc (the Feast of St. Brigid) and Samhain (the Celtic New Year), which might disturb those sensitive to pagan echoes or Wiccan overtones.

That said, I think that in this era of renewed interest in Celtic Christianity, this slim volume would make a lovely gift in honor of a new home, a new baby, or any event in which grateful attentiveness to God is called for.

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I received a pdf version of this book ~ and nothing else ~  from the publisher, and offered no guarantees in return.

Books and Quotes and Life

(1) My friend Quotidian Grace of the blog of the same name has begun a companion book review blog ~ I think the sheer number of book reviews that she was writing threatened to knock down the walls of QG itself ~ and I have the pleasure of being a guest reviewer for her today.  The book is about prayer and much of it is grounded in Ignatian spirituality, two of my favorite topics.  So please head on over and visit us both!

(2) Another of those little quotes that's been popping up on my screen:

"Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation."

I can't seem to recall where I initially read it, but the originator is St. Augustine.  He was probably talking about sex, but I personally understand the topic to be chocolate.

(3) I hate the new google thing whereby google tries to guess what you're writing in the search box.  Apparently my searches are not common ones, and it takes a long time to type and re-type until google gets the message. Perhaps I should develop more of an interest in Heidi Montag and Bristol Palin.

(4) Lots going on right now.  Preaching, teaching adult ed at church, public school subbing, major Presbytery stuff.  My plan for a week from today involves staying in bed until at least dinnertime.

Online Retreat for November

Last winter I took my final required seminary course, Missiology.  (Did you know that there is such a word?  It's the study of the history, theology, and practice of mission ~ and it was a fabulous course.)

Our very energetic and very Presbyterian pastor-professor, as I knew from a previous class, is much enamored of the Jesuits for their passionate work in and reflection on global missions over the past 450 years.  It's actually thanks to him and his insistence that we become more aware of global Christianity that I began to frequent the website of the Jesuit Refugee Service, from which the following is taken:

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"This November 14th we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Jesuit Refugee Service. We recall fondly Father Pedro Arrupe’s sound advice to “pray, pray much” as he encouraged the struggling first generation of JRS team members in Southeast Asia to bring the overwhelming challenges of their new apostolic work to the Lord in prayer. 

Three decades later, we once again invite our JRS family — current and former staff members, Jesuits, friends and colleagues—to reflect prayerfully on the ways in which we discover the presence of God in our ministry with refugees and displaced persons.

In honor of our 30^th anniversary, Jesuit Refugee Service/USA is introducing a free 30-day online retreat that links Ignatian Spirituality to the plight of refugees and vulnerable migrants.  It’s an easy way for people to fuse spirituality and social justice into your day .

The retreat will go live on November 1, and will be prominently linked on our home page.

The retreat links the Spiritual Exercises to the plight of refugees and vulnerable migrants and provides an easy way for people to fuse spirituality and social justice into their days."

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If you've never prayed in this way, you might enjoy giving it a try. Do as many or as few days as you like.  It seems to me that, particularly for those of us in the United States with our intense Election Day focus upon ourselves, today is a good one upon which to embark upon a equally intense focus upon the rest of the world.

Hat tip to numerous Jesuit and Ignatian blogs and websites!

Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography (Book Review)

My knowledge of Julian, a 14th-15th century anchorite,* was scant.  Although a friend of mine did her doctoral work some forty years ago on Julian, I have not read her material nor discussed it with her.  My information was limited to those couple of quotes from Julian's mystical visions which people like to bandy about:

"And in this the Lord showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand .  . .  In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God preserves it"

and

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

Some time ago, I began to wonder about Julian, mostly because I was aware that she had  lived during a time of plagues, and yet the most famous Julian quote is the second.  What might that mean, I wondered?  Much of the time I feel as if I am living my own small version of the plague, but she lived through the real thing, the bodies of those she loved stacked and burned all around her, and yet she retained her confidence in her vision of God's love in all things and in God's words to her that "all shall be well."

So when I discovered the existence of this new little book, I delved into it as if I were an investigative scientist, searching for sometime to bolster my strength for the rest of my life.

In writing a "contemplative biography," Amy Frykholm has made use of what very little is known about the times and life of the historical Julian to imagine her story. We do know something of Norwich, England of the 14th and 15th centuries ~ its vibrant life of commerce and trade, its experience of the political chaos in both England and in the papacy, and the havoc wreaked upon it by the plague. We know almost nothing of Julian's biography ~ not her name (the one by which we know her comes from the parish church to which her cell was attached), her marital or mothering experience, her education, or her life and work before she became an anchorite at about the age of fifty.  Her visions when she became deathly ill at thirty formed the basis of a lifetime of contemplation and study and, ultimately, the first book written in English by a woman, a book which remains in existence thanks to only a few copies which surfaced in the early 17th century.  Frykholm puts all of this together to create a possible version of a life which is remarkable in its reach across the centuries to the contemporary reader.

It's difficult to condense into a few sentences all that has held my attention in this evocative and beautifully written little book.  Let me aim for three:

The emphasis on Julian as the first woman to have written a book in English is fascinating to this English major who began her college career at a Seven Sisters school that to this day remains a proud celebrant of women's education. Having the required semester course in Chaucer under my belt means that I have read a great deal of that contemporary of Julian's in its original middle English, and have studied the cultural and literary context in which he wrote.  I am, as my readers know, fascinated by cathedral architecture.  I've been to England. And yet not until maybe ten years ago did I even hear of Julian of Norwich, medieval writer in a cathedral city in England.  (Norwich is now on my list, thanks to some of the cathedral carvings depicted ~ not well, unfortunately ~  in the book.)

Amy Frykholm's imaginative portrayal of a response to the horrors of the plague is extremely well done. Not extensive, it is nevertheless effective in conveying the experience of hopelessness and listless despair that follows devastating loss.  For someone whose own life has certain parallels to Julian's, this rendition of the path through and out which God offered her is deeply moving.

Julian's theology is grounded in God's deep love for all of God's creation.   Her focus on the suffering of Christ is not surprising, given her context of the theology and practice of the medieval church and the social effects of the plague and, as Frykholm points out, can be distancing to the contemporary reader who lives in a largely secular world in which we seek to diminish the long term effects of pain and sorrow as quickly as possible.  Her initial confusion about God's revelations and what she was to do with them is also unsurprising, as she lived in a time in which questions about and suggestions for reform of the church tended to lead to the stake and in which women in particular were vehemently discouraged from learning and writing.  Nevertheless, she found in God a deep presence in and love for all things.  She came to know, with a clarity that I'm not sure emerges again until Ignatius of Loyola discovers and articulates quite similar principles of discernment some 150 years later, how to distinguish God's understood voice from that of the enemy who seeks to contradict it.  And she found in that love of God and in that clarity of discernment the gifts of courage and skill which enabled her to write down her visions and reflections upon them and send them out into the world with no way of knowing how (or even if) they would be received.

This woman who lived a quiet life which affected many in her city and which was then forgotten is the subject of much commentary today. Here's a page with more context and detail if, like me, you find that an introduction is often followed by deep thirst and obsessive research. But before you head for Norwich, read Amy Frykholm's little book.  If I were an official book reviewer, it would have my highest recommendation.

*The life of an anchorite was one of the few choices available to women in medieval Europe.  It entailed the removal of oneself to a small residence attached to a church or cathedral for the purpose of living an isolated contemplative life.   Julian's contacts with the "outside world" after her enclosure consisted of her daily attendance at Mass, her relationship with the woman who served as her intermediary for provision of food and care for her bodily needs, and her interactions with those who wrote to her or came to speak with her through her small outside window, seeking prayer and counsel.

And . . . (later) just found this brand new interview with the author!