In a Nutshell: Simple Book Reviews

It's so difficult to be back behind my desk after such a fabulous week (Thanks Mom!) of 88 degree weather, sunshine, rum punch, swimming, snuggling, ping pong, learning to scuba dive (in a pool!), attempting to play tennis with little kids and stuffing our faces with food. Must go right back.

Can you drive to Barbados?

Instead, I must find peace at home.

At the end of mass last weekend, my mom's priest gave an announcement that they were selling the book My Life with the Saints for $10. Strange, that's exactly the recommended reading from Coffee Toast Milk Jam. My mom bought two! Can't wait to start reading tonight.

In preparation, for whatever reason extremely foreign to my normal behavior, I decided I shouldn't start another book until I had finished the three I was working on. So I did. Following are my two-second book reviews.

Reading Jesus by Mary Gordon: Interesting take on reading the Gospels from a Catholic who had never picked them up before. The author poses a lot of great questions about seemingly contradictory Bible passages; however, a little more probing prior to publishing her book may have answered some of the questions. I ain't no Biblical scholar but some of them seemed fairly easy to comprehend. For example, in thinking about the Prodigal Son's brother who gets screwed out of his possessions (including his fatted calf) when his drinking/whoring brother returns home and their dad throws a big party, she cries "unfair." Exactly. But she doesn't fully explore the greater meaning of a Father celebrating the lost son's return vs. not celebrating (but still loving and honoring with the remaining inheritance) the diligent son who, in turn, has no love in his heart -- even for his brother -- and is performing familial duties perfunctorily (i.e., who embodies legalism vs. passion).

In a nutshell: Short read, interesting observations, but really not worth running out to buy.

Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert: Not even remotely written in the same vein as her hit Eat, Pray, Love but I really enjoyed this book. As someone who a) has pondered the rationale of marriage for more years than I've been married (i.e., I never really understood the need for it prior to getting married) and b) agreed to get married without any real understanding of what being married entailed, I couldn't help wishing that someone had written this book in the early nineties. It is a well researched, well documented treatise on "holy" matrimony including the history of marriage, with some multicultural references and a few "what works/what doesn't" statistics thrown in for good measure. The author's writing style suits me well so, for me, it was a page turner even if the subject matter is a bit dry at times and somewhat irrelevant to many of us.

In a nutshell: Unless you really care about the history of marriage and/or are considering getting married and want to ponder the subject a little more deeply, why bother?

All We Wanted Was Everything by Janelle Brown: A beach read. No more/no less. Given that I don't live in a world of IPOs, wealth, extravagance, country clubs, etc., I didn't relate well to the characters. And although I finished reading it I feel certain that, had I not, I wouldn't have missed a thing.

In a nutshell: Don't believe the hype.



All in all, a bit of a bust. Onward now to My Life with the Saints.

Weightlifting

My girlfriend Melanie just posed the following question to her Facebook community: if you're in therapy/counseling, what do you think makes a good therapist?

My answer (assuming quality is a given): shared values/a shared belief system and someone who doesn't put his or her own labels on what you're processing.

I was in counseling a few years ago when I thought my life was falling apart. In retrospect, I believe this woman contributed directly to my rapid decline. On my first visit, I made a comment about how I wasn't sure if I really wanted to engage in counseling. In response, she said "Believe me when I tell you that you need it. If I ran into you as a stranger at Wegman's, I would be able to tell by your body language how depressed you are."

I should have been appalled at her direct hit but instead I was shocked at myself. Really? I must be way worse off than I thought! So I went back.

A few months later, I was describing a watershed moment in my marriage that was a quantum, positive shift in my perspective. Instead of allowing me to claim my breakthrough as my own, she said, "Don't misread that emotion. You're not feeling love; you're feeling guilt." And down I went. Again.

This woman was divorced, "never been happier," and spent session after session extolling the virtues of freedom from baggage. She also weighed at least 250 pounds. Can happiness and freedom co-exist with excessive weight? Isn't that the proverbial cover that people hide beneath? Perhaps I'm reading too much into that.

The final straw came one day when I was sharing with her another turning point in my life. I had read Mark 4:35-40 when Jesus calms the storm and it hit me like a ton of bricks. The disciples were professional fishermen who were on rough seas all the time -- yet this storm was so huge that they were freaking out. They thought they were going to die. Somehow, through all of that, Jesus was sound asleep at the stern. How is that possible? Worse yet, doesn't he care?? When they finally woke him up, he said "Peace, be still" and the water became completely calm.

That rapid shift must have been even more shocking to them because then, as the verses say, they were even more terrified. Dead calm after life-threatening seas. What the . . . ?

For me, it was just the antidote I needed. Yeah, my life was out of control. My work, at the time, was on major overload. But more importantly, if I claim to be a believer, isn't Jesus on my boat? I may feel like he's asleep but I'm not going to capsize. I am not going to capsize.

I felt a huge weight lifting.

When I recounted this life-altering insight with my then-therapist (on what was to be our last session), she responded slowly in a serious tone, "The difference between you and that parable is that you're on your boat alone and no one is helping."

What? Wait . . . what?? So I have no God? And no family that supports me? No friends who love me?

Man, have I been a patsy or what?

Blasphemous Rumours

I spent Friday night and Saturday at a church-sponsored prayer retreat on Canandaigua Lake. And it was fun. FUN. Yes, you read that right. Who knew? As Depeche Mode contends, does God have a sick sense of humor?

There were times when I was laughing so hard, with people I had only met that day, that the tears were rolling down my face. There were other moments spent in candlelit, guided meditation when God was so close that I felt he was hugging me.

And there was time spent in the sunshine just sitting on the dock with a close friend.

We had a bonfire on Friday night and watched the lightening light up the sky. (A Friday night without wine I may add!) And first thing on Saturday morning, after a walk along the road admiring all of the beautiful lake-front cottages, I forced myself into the water. It was ice cold and took my breath away. But I stayed in and swam for a while simply because I could. And I floated for minutes afterward letting the water support me.

Later that morning, in a "how befitting" fashion, our group meditation was on how Peter walked on water toward Jesus and then, when he turned his attention instead toward the wind and the waves and became fearful, he began to sink. Jesus held him until they reached the boat and said, "O ye of little faith." Until then, I had always thought that phrase was condemning. I now see how it was said in love and tenderness. Jesus didn't calm the storm; he just fully supported him in his walk. It was up to Peter to take the chance and step out -- something many of us aren't willing to do. Sure, he couldn't sustain his faith 100% of the time but he still knew who to call out to when he was failing.

Jesus Loves You

My first boss -- a beautiful, perpetually tanned widow who wore high heels daily with her tight skirts and had a dancer's body, infectious laugh and a more active social life than Paris Hilton -- once received a card that had an image on the front of Jesus hanging on the cross. Along the bottom it read, "Jesus loves you" and on the inside it said, "Everyone else thinks you're an asshole."

She thought this was the funniest thing she had ever seen. I shared it with my dad, who had a penchant for anything off-color, and he concurred. I think he may have even sent one to his brother, my uncle Frank, given that they had a lifelong exchange of all-things-vile.

Lark News has a t-shirt for sale with a tamer, more Christian version of this sentiment. "Jesus loves you. Then again, he loves everybody."



They also sell a shirt that says, "I want to be a pastor's wife" which I think we should sell at my church -- where every woman who attends claims to be in love with our pastor. We could make a killing! D'oh!