5 comments about Praying for My Life.

1. I ordered this book to be read and discussed in a church book club discussion group. Most of us agreed that the book has some wisdom, particularly involving the concepts of trusting God and handling life's challenges with prayer. One of our group members is a widow who related well to Marion Bond West's description of early widowhood. However, the book seemed poorly organized and the writing lacked strength and depth.



2. In an instant, your life can change from calm and peaceful to one filled with personal trauma. Where do you turn for peace? How do you find God's help and comfort?
   
   The key points of PRAYING FOR MY LIFE by Marion Bond West are captured in the prophetic words from Habakkuk 3:17-19, which describes a difficult personal plight. In part it says, "Though the flock should be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation." The phrases from these verses create the section divisions of Bond West's personal story of dealing with adversity.
   
   The mother of four, Bond West writes movingly about the difficulties she faced with her fraternal twin sons, Jon and Jeremy, after her first husband died from a brain tumor. Over a four-year period, this now-single mother had to look after these "strong-willed" brothers who stretched every boundary and limit.
   
   In an early chapter, Bond West describes her fears when Jon and Jeremy, as 35-year-old adults, are patients in two different hospitals. Jeremy suffers his fourth car accident, while on the other side of the city, Jon is hospitalized with a fever and a life-threatening bacterial disease to his hand and arm. Just when you believe Bond West is carrying more than a human can bear, she's challenged to say "no" to a grown son who wants to move back home.
   
   In a modern sense, Bond West's personal experiences capture the emotions of the prophet Habakkuk, and she declares her own determination to follow God in faith no matter what happens.
   
   Each chapter ends with a pointed personal prayer related to Bond West's experiences in that section. As she grows through the life-changing situations and walks in faith, the reader's faith is also strengthened. Not every chapter relates to her family --- several sections deal with befriending nearby neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Farmer. Despite her hardships and struggles, Bond West never stops believing and never stops praying. She continues to experience the transforming power of God in her life and in the lives of family members, providing hope to readers that they too can continue to move ahead through life's challenges.
   
   In this well-crafted book, Bond West uses vivid dialogue and rich, engaging prose to relate her experiences. Anyone can gain strength and encouragement from these pages.
   
   --- Reviewed by W. Terry Whalin



3. When life became overwhelming, testing author Marion Bond West's faith in God, she found herself praying for confidence and belief - and her spiritual memoir shares her story and how this new approach changed her life. Her twin sons struggled with an auto accident, bipolar disorder, and addiction - when her husband died her faith was sorely tested as a single parent. Her wellspring of inspiration translates well to this vivid memoir: a top pick for any spirituality library.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



4. Do you feel like you're on the verge of losing hope? Marion Bond West has been there, and in her powerful spiritual memoir, she'll show you how she survived with a little known prayer in the book of Habakkuk.
   
   Now a grandmother and contributing editor for Guideposts magazine, Bond West has had to overcome early widowhood, raising four children as a single mom, and dealing with rebellion, substance abuse, and bipolar disorder in her adult sons.
   
   Marion's honest, transparent writing will restore your hope.
   
   I loved this book, and it's the kind of book you write your name in so when you loan it to people they'll be sure to give it back to you. (I've already loaned mine out twice so far!) Each chapter is a stand-alone story that demonstrates how God brought the author through a trial -- sometimes funny (as in the time she fell through the flooring of her neighbor's attic trying to take care of a cat) and sometimes painful (as in having to say good-bye to her adult son who was leaving for a treatment center).
   
   But always, you feel a little bit closer to the heart of God when you journey alongside Marion Bond West.
   
   -- Christian Women Online Book Buzz



5. It happens to everyone--unexpected experiences in life. It seems like Marion Bond West had almost more than her share of difficulties. When the experiences of life seemed almost too much to bear, she turned to prayer and found unusual strength and peace.
   
   The theme of this book uses, Habakkuk 3:17-19--some little known verses from a minor prophet in the Old Testament. The world crumbled around Habakkuk as well yet he chose to follow the God of his salvation. It's a timeless choice which Marion Bond West makes in this book--and each reader can make as they reflect on these experiences.
   
   Here's a book loaded with hope and encouragement for the most challenging of life's experiences. I recommend it.

3 comments about Never Forget: The Riveting Story of One Woman's Journey from Public Housing to the Corridors of Power.

1. YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK by Kay Coles Jones. She tells of overcoming obstacles some of us can not even imagine. She is an inspiration to everyone.



2. Friends kept telling me they'd read this book long ago and loved it. So, I ordered it immediately when a hardback copy was listed on Amazon for 49 cents. It was worth ten times that price...



3. Reading aloud to your children opens their eyes to new worlds. Even, in this case, to unknown worlds right next door. How does life look through the eyes of a bright young African-American woman, raised in a junkyard of broken hopes and frustrated dremas? How did the lessons in integrity learned in that environment carry her to a position of high visibility in the White House? How do you deal with the unintentional slights thoughtlessly handed out by the dominant culture, while yet retaining your own sweetness of spirit?

No comments about Professor Reinhold Niebuhr: A Mentor to the Twentieth Century.

5 comments about In Buddha's Kitchen : Cooking, Being Cooked, and Other Adventures at a Meditation Center.

1. This is a wonderful book, and if you haven't spent any time in a dharma center, you will feel as though you had. I loved how Dr Snow's realization shone through. You can learn a lot from this book, and it so fun & easy to read.



2. I picked up this book with wonder. I am a writer who lived in a California Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Center, and was the Cook. South of Dorje Ling, and thus somewhat different - yet I was profoundly moved by her eloquent portrait of what could have been my own experience. Despite the unusual reason for my personal resonance with the story, I believe that even people who are not former Meditation Center cooks will find this book wonderful reading. The story is quite entertaining, and the dharma is presented in an elegant, unassuming, and egoless style, that is incredibly readable.



3. What a fun and insightful book. While the theme of cooking runs through the book, the lessons are much deeper than recipes. Highly recommended!



4. I really enjoyed this book about the author's experiences cooking in a Buddhist Monastery in Northern California. Several chapters are real gems: Jizo Ceremony, Impermanence, A Cup of Tea and On Having A Teacher. She makes good use of her early experiences as a chef to contrast with the new attitude of mindfulness and silence.

   Even though I give it five stars I still walked away from the table hungry for a little more.

   I would have liked to read a deeper treatment of transforming the five poisons into the five wisdoms, something intriguing that was only mentioned in passing.

   How can you write a whole book about cooking in a Buddhist kitchen and not include a single recipe? The Author does mention at one point that she is working on a cookbook. I'd love to read that as a companion volume to this great book on practical application of Buddhist ideas to daily life.




5. Congenially written by Kimberley Snow, (a resident of a Tibetan Buddhist community for six years and who served the center as head cook), In Buddha's Kitchen: Cooking, Being Cooked, And Other Adventures In A Meditation Center is a wry memoir of both physical and spiritual work, and which showcases the those transcendent values of meditation which can be found in mundane tasks and the simple joys of everyday life. A delight to read, In Buddha's Kitchen is enthusiastically recommended to students of Buddhist philosophy and practice as being deeply spiritual and embracing the crucial importance of compassion, love, and joy in even the most menial of life's duties.

No comments about Living Little Way of Love: With Therese of Lisieux.

1 comments about Holy Tears, Holy Blood: Women, Catholicism, and the Culture of Suffering in France, 1840-1970.

1. This intriguing study answered many a question of mine about the idea of 'vicarious suffering' in French spirituality. Burton develops the topic in an arresting writing style, showing the political and social influences which contributed to this variety of Ultramontane attitudes towards sacrifice and pain. The characters he treats were largely familiar to me, and I am not ignorant of French history, yet, in his deep and absorbing treatment, I found answers to areas that had puzzled me for decades.
   
   In a larger realm, Burton's subject applies to the overall 'good wife, good daughter' idea that thwarted those seeking to promote prayer, service and sacrament in Britain and other areas of Europe. For example, the development of how church involvement was seen as taking away the (usually very secular) husband or father's authority has implications that go far beyond France itself.
   
   This is not a 'devotional' book, and those who are looking for such may be disappointed by Burton's honest and detached treatment of the ailments, physical or psychological, which contributed to the manifestations these women displayed. Nonetheless, there is nothing offensive to religion here at all, and indeed the sincere devotion of those of whom he writes is affirmed. Burton's originality is in his explanation of the factors that made spirituality in this time and place sometimes take a particular form - and one that could be devastating and, in the outcome, quite contrary to the solid and positive Christian approach which Thérèse promoted.
   
   I read this book in an afternoon, totally absorbed. I would recommend it heartily.

5 comments about Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Uncovering the Mystery Behind a 17th Century Forbidden Love.

1. There is some doubt surrounding the authenticity of the heart-rending love notes claimed to have been written by a cloistered nun to a French officer, the lover who abandoned her. Published in the seventeenth century, the four passionate letters filled a tiny, but incomparably-popular book measuring only 5 1/2 inches by 3 inches. The four letters are included in Myriam Cyr's book, but the largest part of the book reveals the well-researched and well-written story about the history supporting, as well as explaining, the circumstances in which the letters were written. The author also illustrates the opposing opinions that the letters are truly those of a Portuguese nun, and that they were actually written by a French aristocrat. The author believes that the letters were indeed those of a jilted, heart-broken nun. I sincerely hope that she's right!



2. Mariana Alcoforado was a Portuguese nun at the end of the 17th century who wrote a series of love letters after her lover, a visiting aristocratic solider, returns to France. The five letters she wrote, full of passion, reproach and sadness at the loss of her love were later published in Paris where they turned into an instant best seller.
   
   The strange thing, in modern eyes, is that at the time nobody could believe a woman had actually written the letters because they were so full of life and so well expressed - and this view continued right into the 20th century.
   
   Myriam Cyr has put the letters back in the context of the times that they were written and in doing so has taken us into the little known world of 17th century Portuguese convents and politics. She has managed to bring alive a world of war, love and letters. This is a genuine mystery that has been clarified in this book. Having said this, the letters themselves don't seem quite as remarkable today but then we have the benefit of a couple of centuries of literature to draw on that the Mariana did not. This book is a quick and easy read that may make you look at the 17th century world in a way that you'll probably never see in another book on the period.



3. Let it be known that Simon Schama (The Embarrassment of Riches; A History of Britain) has very recently chosen Myriam Cyr's LETTERS OF A PORTUGUESE NUN as one of his "top reads" for the 2006 London's GUARDIAN Summer Reading List. This surely says it -- this book tops many well-researched literary offerings in a very long time. It is no wonder that the Kirkus Review dubbed it "Pulp romance for the Masterpiece Theater set." Scholarship and imagination have indeed prevailed -- all in a perfect piece of beautifully written non-fiction.
   
   In addition to her detailed and carefully attended and written literary history, and to the subtle nuances of a love relationship still quivering in its newness, Myriam Cyr tends to the unfolding darker corners of this mysteriously entangled love story as she interprets the searingly passionate LETTERS: Cyr draws the reader closer and closer to the beating pulse of what makes love real for each of us -- then she sweeps us away, and we are breathless.
   
   Four years of critical work by the author -- scouring with painstaking care the books, letters and papers in the old libraries of Europe and beyond, checking data and facts -- have blossomed into this lovingly researched first novel. As well, Ms. Cyr has an irresistible speaking voice for listening audiences: In her Boston speaking tours she reads the Portuguese Nun's LETTERS with a surge of such poetic passion, beauty and emotion that it is as if she wrote these letters herself.
   
   LETTERS echoes in the feeling heart of the contemporary reader --and lingers. The tender power of this haunting 17th century love story reaches to our essence and activates an empathic compassion for the longing and desire for what is fundamentally vital to our souls in our search for love.



4. I am surprised to see such favorable reviews of this book. I was struck by how poorly written, poorly organized, and poorly argued it was. The only thing worthwhile was the expository section setting the scene in Portugal, describing convent life, and the actual letters themselves. I found myself wondering who had edited this and how it got published.



5. They were an international bestseller when they were published, five love letters from a devastated woman who had been left by her lover as he went on to military duties. It does not matter that this was more than three hundred years ago; the theme is one that is immediate. The letters were so piercing that immediately a controversy arose over their authorship; no woman could have written them, it was said, because women generally didn't write, never wrote well, and never felt love as deeply as men. The controversy has persisted, and will persist, because there is no proof on either side, but in Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Uncovering the Mystery Behind a 17th Century Forbidden Love (Miramax Books), Miriam Cyr argues the case for authorship by the nun herself. This is Cyr's first book; she has had a successful career as an actress, and first heard of the letters when they were performed as a play. She determined to translate them herself (unaware that they were hugely famous and had been translated many times), and performed them on stage herself. She could not answer questions from those who heard her readings about the authenticity of the letters, but sympathized with a woman who told her the letters expressed her feelings during a painful breakup and was outraged that anyone thought they were fictional. Cyr, probably motivated by the same sort of feeling, did three years of research, and even though her conclusions are not watertight, her advocacy of the nun's authorship is convincing. More importantly, she has brought the heartbreaking letters to a new audience and supplied them with sufficient context to understand their themes.
   
   Mariana Alcoforado was born in 1640 in the picturesque town of Beja, Portugal, and was put in a convent at the age of ten. The Marquis of Chamilly was a Frenchman, a born soldier who was helping the Portuguese fight incursions from Spain. He was garrisoned in Beja in 1666, and the nuns looking out on the fields around them were entertained by the sight of officers exercising their horses. Mariana was captivated by Chamilly's dash in such capers, and inevitably the officers were invited into the convent. As she often has to do, Cyr invites us to imagine details, such as their meeting and growing acquaintance; even in the letters there are few details about any courting. We also have to imagine how the pair eluded detection, or how Chamilly might have been able to sneak into Mariana's quarters before she was locked inside for the night, and how he sneaked out again. Cyr summarizes, "Unsuspected and unseen, Chamilly and Mariana entered a world more intimate than a prayer and more ethereal than air." There was no dramatic discovery of the affair by authorities, but it ended when Chamilly was called back into the official service of his king, Louis XIV. He simply chose duty over love. In her letters to him, Mariana wrote, "It may be you will find greater beauty, but never will you find such love, and all the rest is nothing."
   
   That sort of sentiment is unsurprising now, but when the letters were published in France, they were a sensation, at least partially because they addressed romantic injustice; women were supposed to keep quiet about men's behavior toward them, however painful or unfair. How the letters came to be so widely known is full of mysteries. The dashing and victorious Chamilly may well have been invited to the evening salons of the marquise de Sabl?, and may have circulated the letters himself, which would not have been seen at the time as a violation of privacy. The marquise had a fear of germs, and perhaps her doctor copied the writing out for her (as he did do for other documents) so she would not be contaminated by holding the originals. Perhaps the doctor sought out the worldly and beloved Guilleragues, a witty and well-educated man, to help translate Mariana's colloquialisms. Indeed, many scholars attribute the authorship of the letters to him. With the publication of the letters, any love letter became known as "a Portuguese." Counterfeit versions came out, and whether the letters were real or imaginary was a question that was argued then as now. It was all settled in the mind of Rousseau, who sniffed that "women in general do not like art... they cannot describe or feel love...I would bet everything in the world that the Portuguese letters were written by a man." It is this sort of sentiment that has entered even into scholarly debate over the centuries. Cyr can't prove her case for Marian's authorship, but she still makes a good argument, reminding us that the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one. The resolution is only part of the book, which invites us to read the letters for ourselves, and to contemplate the dance of love performed in an exotic and distant locale.

1 comments about Pope John Paul II: Young Man of the Church (Childhood of World Figures).

1. At first I thought popes were kind of boring, but when I read this book I thought they were cool! If you like biography, fun, and learning about chilhood of world figures ,this is the perfect book for you. Pope John Paul II went through a lot of sorrow in his life; when he was 9 his mom died,when he was 12 his brother died and when he was 15 his friends went away because of the Nazis. What I learned is that no matter what happens, life goes on and things will get better. I can't wait for you to read Pope John Paul II, Young Man of the Church!!!

2 comments about A White Preacher's Memoir: The Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1. One thing I really enjoyed about reading Rev. Graetz's book was that it showed some of the diversity that was a critical part of the Civil Rights movement without making the case that African-Americans could not do it alone.
   
   Anytime a book is written in this type of context - a minority perspective on an issue - there is a danger of overshadowing the majority's struggle. In this case, Rev. Graetz merely tells of his involvement in what he saw as the right thing to do. Never does he make a huge deal about his own sacrifice, but instead talks about the general struggle. In the fine line between unique-diversification and over-the-top self praise, Rev. Graetz clearly falls on the side of the first.
   
   In addition, the book looks at different congregational backgrounds in the black community coming together for the common cause.
   
   There are many stories to be told about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and this is one that should be read.



2. Pastor Robert Graetz left seminary with his young family to take a call to Trinity Lutheran Church in Montgomery, Alabama. As a white pastor during the time of the civil rights activity in Montgomery, he writes of his day to day struggle with racial hatred and how it affected his congregation and his family. This book defines the courage it takes to live out Christian justice and mercy and added a dimension to my knowledge of this era I had not yet experienced before I read it. Although I rated it a 9, if someone did not return my copy, I would buy another. It is a must for my library.

No comments about The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-century Normandy.