Review of I Dreamed of Flying Like a Bird, by Robert B. Haas

Art, Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

I Dreamed of Flying Like a Bird

My Adventures Photographing Wild Animals from a Helicopter

by Robert B. Haas

National Geographic, Washington, DC, 2010. 64 pages.
Starred Review

This book is a delight to look at. Robert Haas is an aerial photographer. In this book, he tells the story of getting his stunning images — and he also includes the images.

He tells about his methods; it sounds much more difficult than I ever would have guessed. He usually flies with the door off the helicopter and not one, but two, safety harnesses. It’s very cold up there with the door off, so he wears many layers of clothes.

In this book, he focuses on some images that have a story behind them, like the time he saw a herd of African buffalos being hunted by lions. Another time, he found a bear in Alaska just coming out of its den from a winter’s hibernation. He also does amazing photography of sea creatures, and once the pilot almost lost control right over a large group of sharks.

My favorite image, though, is the one that goes with this description:

“One of the most beautiful sights from the air is a large flock of flamingos moving around in shallow water. The flock forms one shape after another and leaves different patterns as it sweeps across the water. One time off the coast of Mexico, I came across a large flock of flamingos that changed its shape every few seconds, and I kept shooting and shooting for a very long time. And then, when I was just about to leave, I noticed something that was simply unbelievable — the hundreds of flamingos in the flock had actually formed the shape of a flamingo! I was able to capture that shot, and it has become one of my best known photos.”

I’m taking a class on the Caldecott Medal, and we have been discussing whether a photographer will ever win for the most distinguished picture book. I hope last year’s committee gave this book consideration, since the images are truly stunning. This book will be enjoyed and marvelled over by children and adults alike.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/flying_like_a_bird.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Proofiness, by Charles Seife

Current Issues, Mathematical, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Proofiness

The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception

by Charles Seife

Viking, 2010. 295 pages.
Starred Review

I’ve already admitted that I’m a certified Math Nut. And that I read popular-audience math books for fun. I had to remind myself that I’m not teaching Introduction to Statistics any more, so I didn’t need to mark passages to read to the class. (I couldn’t stop myself, though, from noticing passages that would have been great to read to a Statistics class.)

This book is very much along the lines of How to Lie With Statistics, but it uses up-to-date, recent examples. It demonstrates all too public examples of people who, either through ignorance or malfeasance, use statistics for nefarious purposes.

When I started at the library where I work now, they asked me to participate in a game of “Three Truths and a Lie.” I had just read the introduction to this book and effectively used what I learned: I inserted a number into each statement. Sure enough, only one person guessed which statement was my lie! Here’s how this concept worked in a much more serious scenario:

“As he held aloft a sheaf of papers, a beetle-browed Joe McCarthy assured his place in the history books with his bold claim: ‘I have here in my hand a list of 205 — a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.’

“That number — 205 — was a jolt of electricity that shocked Washington into action against communist infiltrators. Never mind that the number was a fabrication. It went up to 207 and then dropped again the following day, when McCarthy wrote to President Truman claiming that ‘we have been able to compile a list of 57 Communists in the State Department.’ A few days later, the number stabilized at 81 ‘security risks.’ McCarthy gave a lengthy speech in the Senate, giving some details about a large number of cases (fewer than 81, in fact), but without revealing enough information for others to check into his assertions.

“It really didn’t matter whether the list had 205 or 57 or 81 names. The very fact that McCarthy had attached a number to his accusations imbued them with an aura of truth. Would McCarthy make such specific claims if he didn’t have evidence to back them up? Even though White House officials suspected that he was bluffing, the numbers made them doubt themselves. The numbers gave McCarthy’s accusations heft; they were too substantial, too specific to ignore. Congress was forced to hold hearings to attempt to salvage the reputation of the State Department — and the Truman administration.

“McCarthy was, in fact, lying. He had no clue whether the State Department was harboring 205 communists or 57 or none at all; he was making wild guesses based upon information that he knew was worthless. Yet once he made the claim public and the Senate declared that it was going to hold hearings on the matter, he suddenly needed some names.”

Charles Seife sums up the point of this book:

“As McCarthy knew, numbers can be a powerful weapon. In skillful hands, phony data, bogus statistics, and bad mathematics can make the most fanciful idea, the most outrageous falsehood seem true. They can be used to bludgeon enemies, to destroy critics, and to squelch debate. Indeed, some people have become incredibly adept at using fake numbers to prove falsehoods. They have become masters of proofiness: the art of using bogus mathematical arguments to prove something that you know in your heart is true — even when it’s not.

“Our society is now awash in proofiness. Using a few powerful techniques, thousands of people are crafting mathematical falsehoods to get you to swallow untruths. Advertisers forge numbers to get you to buy their products. Politicians fiddle with data to try to get you to reelect them. Pundits and prophets use phony math to get you to believe predictions that never seem to pan out. Businessmen use bogus numerical arguments to steal your money. Pollsters, pretending to listen to what you have to say, use proofiness to tell you what they want you to believe. . . .

“At the same time, proofiness has extraordinarily serious consequences. It nullifies elections, crowning victors who are undeserving — both Republican and Democratic. Worse yet, it is used to fix the outcome of future elections; politicians and judges use wrongheaded mathematics to manipulate voting districts and undermine the census that dictates which Americans are represented in Congress. Proofiness is largely responsible for the near destruction of our economy — and for the great sucking sound of more than a trillion dollars vanishing from the treasury. Prosecutors and justices use proofiness to acquit the guilty and convict the innocent — and even to put people to death. In short, bad math is undermining our democracy.”

But the good news is that you can fight Proofiness with knowledge:

“The threat is coming from both the left and the right. Indeed, proofiness sometimes seems to be the only thing that Republicans and Democrats have in common. Yet it’s possible to counteract it. Those who have learned to recognize proofiness can find it almost everywhere, ensnaring the public in a web of transparent falsehoods. To the wary, proofiness becomes a daily source of great amusement — and of blackest outrage.

“Once you know the methods people use to turn numbers into falsehoods, they are powerless against you. When you learn to shovel proofiness out of the way, some of the most controversial topics become simple and straightforward. For example, the question of who actually won the 2000 presidential election becomes crystal clear. (The surprising answer is one that almost nobody would have been willing to accept: not Bush, not Gore, and almost none of the people who voted for either candidate.) Understand proofiness and you can uncover many truths that had been obscured by a haze of lies.”

So this book can make the reader proofiness-proof. Besides being fascinating, it will empower you to see through the methods people use to try to cloud the truth. (You also might get some ideas for being a better contestant in a game of Three Truths and a Lie.)

I find myself wanting to cite examples of proofiness in action in the real world, but I’m afraid that once I get started, I won’t be able to stop. Even though I don’t teach Introduction to Statistics classes any more, I hope that professors out there will bring this book into their classrooms. They can use it to utterly silence that oh-so-annoying question students inevitably ask: “But how will we USE this?” The math in this book is woven into the very fabric of our society.

To finish off this review, I’m going to give a spoiler, so don’t read any further if you don’t want to know the “surprising answer” of who should have won the 2000 Presidential election:

Statistically speaking, within any reasonable margin of error, the 2000 presidential election in Florida was a tie. So according to Florida election law, the winner should have been determined by lot — the flip of a coin. I guess you can see why he says almost nobody would have been willing to accept that determination.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Barefoot in Baghdad, by Manal M. Omar

Cross Cultural, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

Barefoot in Baghdad

A Story of Identity – My Own and What It Means to Be a Woman in Chaos

by Manal M. Omar

Sourcebooks, 2010. 244 pages.

Manal Omar knows how to work cross-culturally. She begins her book like this:

“Throughout my childhood I struggled to answer the simplest of questions: where are you from? I was born in Saudi Arabia to Palestinian parents who moved to Lubbock, Texas, when I was six months old. During my childhood, my parents would uproot me every few years, from Texas to South Carolina to Virginia. Living in the American South, I was far from the image of a Southern belle, and yet the summers I spent in the Middle East only emphasized my American identity and made it clear to me that I would also never exactly be an Arab poster child.

“By the time I was in high school, I had learned to embrace and love all parts of my joint identity with the fervor only a teenager could feel. I was an Arab and an American. I was a Palestinian and a Southerner. I was a Muslim and a woman. As I grew, I accepted that the emphasis on each facet of my identity would shift with the phases of the moon. Growing up in a world struggling to understand multiculturalism, I saw this ability to move among my many identities as my own secret superpower. . . .

“In Iraq, I was finally able to put my superpower to full use. A wave of my American passport at the checkpoint of the fortified Green Zone allowed me access to the representatives of the U.S.-led coalition. My adherence to Muslim dress and my fluent Arabic made it possible for me to live in an Iraqi neighborhood with no armed security. This unique access allowed me to see an Iraq that was accessible to few others. With each passing season, the country would shed its skin from the past and emerge as a completely new place. Who was better positioned to adapt within a country experiencing a period of tumultuous change than someone who had been raised with an ever-shifting identity? In Iraq, I found a place with as many complicated contradictions as I had in myself. Here, though, my internal complexity was manifested in an entire society. My international colleagues were struggling to force Iraqi culture into convenient boxes, but I simply accepted its unique, fluctuating shape. International journalists marveled over the fact that women who were covered head to toe walked side by side with women with orange-colored hair and wearing tight jeans, but I simply shrugged. It was natural to me. The mosaic of identities inside Iraq was not hypocritical or schizophrenic; it was what made the country powerful.”

Manal went to Iraq to work for Women for Women International.

“Women for Women International focused on the most vulnerable women. This usually meant those who were the primary breadwinners in their house: widows, divorcees, or unmarried women living with elderly parents. In addition to the economic challenges, there was a social stigma attached to these women. This meant that their finding work was even more difficult.”

This book tells about her experiences there, and tells stories of some of the women she met and was able to help or wasn’t able to help. However, over the years she was there, the situation in Iraq deteriorated, and eventually she had to leave and base her actions from Jordan. So in that way, this book tells a sad story. Manal herself describes it this way:

“Barefoot in Baghdad is not a story of the war in Iraq. It is the story of the women in Iraq who are standing at the crossroads every dawn. It is the story of my time working with Iraqis as they struggled to create a new nation and a new identity. It is informed by my years of living and working within communities throughout the country. It recounts my own experiences and the stories of the men and women I encountered, each of them players in one of the most complicated political struggles in our era. It is also a memoir of the discovery of my many identities and the strengths and weaknesses inherent within them. Finally, it is a story of finding love in the most unlikely place. As my life became intertwined with the lives of the Iraqis around me, I lost sight of where my horizons ended and theirs began. Their expectations became my expectations; their disappointments, dreams, pains, and losses became my own.”

This book tells a fascinating story, and will give you insight into the lives of women in Iraq today.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/barefoot_in_baghdad.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Heaven Is For Real, by Todd Burpo

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Heaven Is For Real

A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

by Todd Burpo
with Lynn Vincent

Thomas Nelson, 2010. 163 pages.
Starred Review

I gobbled up this book in one afternoon. It’s not long, and the story it tells is truly amazing.

My first reaction was that this story would be a hard one for an atheist to explain away. However, I was quickly informed that is not the case. This concerns a little boy’s testimony. As for me, I think his way of talking about it totally rings true, but the fact that he was so young does allow skeptics to propose that he may have been swayed without realizing it.

However, if you do believe in Heaven, this book will encourage you tremendously. And anyone who has suffered a miscarriage, or lost a beloved parent will find themselves incredibly touched.

Colton first gave them a clue that something unusual had happened when they drove to the city where he almost died.

“‘Do you remember the hospital, Colton?’ Sonja asked.

“‘Yes, Mommy, I remember,’ he said. ‘That’s where the angels sang to me.'”

A little while later, they asked him more about it.

“Then he grew serious. ‘Dad, Jesus had the angels sing to me because I was so scared. They made me feel better.’

“Jesus?

“I glanced at Sonja again and saw that her mouth had dropped open. I turned back to Colton. ‘You mean Jesus was there?’

“My little boy nodded as though reporting nothing more remarkable than seeing a ladybug in the front yard. ‘Yeah, Jesus was there.’

“‘Well, where was Jesus?’

Colton looked me right in the eye. ‘I was sitting in Jesus’ lap.'”

That’s in the intro, to give you an idea of what’s in store. Then they tell about their crisis, where it looked like their four-year-old son was really going to die. Appendicitis wasn’t diagnosed correctly, and by the time a doctor at a second hospital figured it out, it should have been too late.

Colton’s father, Todd Burpo, is a pastor. But this was the latest of a series of trials, and he found himself yelling at God. “Where are you? Is this how you treat your pastors?! Is it even worth it to serve you?”

But miraculously, Colton recovered. And it was enough of a miracle that they noticed an awful lot of nurses coming to his room and just staring at him in amazement. One of them pulled his Dad aside.

“‘Mr. Burpo, I’ve worked as a nurse here for many years,’ she said. ‘I’m not supposed to tell you this, but we were told not to give your family any encouragement. They didn’t think Colton was going to make it. And when they tell us people aren’t going to make it, they don’t.'”

It wasn’t until four months later that Colton told them about hearing the angels sing.

“It was that conversation in which Colton said that he ‘went up out of’ his body, that he had spoken with angels, and had sat in Jesus’ lap. And the way we knew he wasn’t making it up was that he was able to tell us what we were doing in another part of the hospital: ‘You were in a little room by yourself praying, and Mommy was in a different room and she was praying and talking on the phone.’

“Not even Sonja had seen me in that little room, having my meltdown with God.”

They continue to ask Colton about his experiences, trying not to ask leading questions. They found out things from a child’s perspective that matched what they would expect from the Bible.

Some of the things he said were very striking. I loved this one:

“Suddenly, he piped up again. ‘Daddy, remember when I yelled for you in the hospital when I waked up?’

“How could I forget? It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. ‘Of course I do,’ I said.

“‘Well, the reason I was yelling was that Jesus came to get me. He said I had to go back because he was answering your prayer. That’s how come I was yelling for you.’

“Suddenly, my knees felt weak underneath me. I flashed back to my prayers alone, raging at God, and my prayers in the waiting room, quiet and desperate. I remembered how scared I was, agonizing over whether Colton would hang on through the surgery, whether he’d live long enough for me to see his precious face again. Those were the longest, darkest ninety minutes of my life.

“And Jesus answered my prayer? Personally? After I had yelled at God, chastising him, questioning his wisdom and his faithfulness?”

Later Colton had more bombshells for them. He talked about meeting his sister — the child he’d never known about, who had miscarried. He claimed to have met her in heaven. He also spent time talking with his Dad’s father, Pop, whom he had also never met on earth. He didn’t recognize a picture of Pop as an old man — but then later he spotted a picture of Pop young and newly married — and Colton knew him right away!

I also love the way he tells his Dad the pastor that the Holy Spirit “shoots down power for you when you’re talking in church.” He says the Holy Spirit showed him, that Colton got to watch the Holy Spirit “shooting down power.”

But I think my personal favorite of all the things Colton says is when he’s describing God’s throne:

“‘It was big, Dad . . . really, really big, because God is the biggest one there is. And he really, really loves us, Dad. You can’t belieeeeve how much he loves us!'”

Read this book to be encouraged and inspired. At the end of the book, Colton sums up what he wants to tell people:

“I want them to know that heaven is for real.”

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/heaven_is_for_real.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Biography, Nonfiction Review, Parenting, True Stories 0

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

by Amy Chua

The Penguin Press, New York, 2011. 235 pages.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle reading this book. Here in Northern Virginia, there are so many Tiger parents pushing their kids, and I had a feeling I’d feel sorry for the kids. Either that, or I’d be filled with guilt that I hadn’t been more of a Tiger Mom and ended up with prodigy children.

But Amy Chua handles the delicate topic with grace and humor. Although she acknowledges that there are stereotypes involved here and every single Chinese mother is not one way and every single American mother the other way, she does point out that the culture in which she was raised was completely different than typical American parenting culture.

“There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven people indifferent to their kids’ true interests. For their part, many Chinese secretly believe that they care more about their children and are willing to sacrifice much more for them than Westerners, who seem perfectly content to let their children turn out badly. I think it’s a misunderstanding on both sides. All decent parents want to do what’s best for their children. The Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that.”

However, she also uses the book to show that, no matter how strong your convictions about parenting, every child is different, and what works for one may not work for another. We all make mistakes, and the important thing is to do your best.

And nothing shows you your own weaknesses and misconceptions like being a mother.

Amy Chua tells a good story, too. She tells of her noble quest to sacrifice to raise perfect children, and the obstacles and drama along the way. I found myself a fascinated by how well it was working out with her prodigy children, though she definitely shows her own defeats. And, what do you know, the girls did not turn out to need years of expensive therapy.

“All the same, even when Western parents think they’re being strict, they usually don’t come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments thirty minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It’s hours two and three that get tough.”

And this Tiger Mother believed her way was definitely best:

“As I watched American parents slathering praise on their kids for the lowest of tasks — drawing a squiggle or waving a stick — I came to see that Chinese parents have two things over their Western counterparts: (1) higher dreams for their children, and (2) higher regard for their children in the sense of knowing how much they can take.”

All in all, this book made me feel much less judgmental of the overachieving parents I see come into the library. And other people who don’t parent the way I do. The fact is, everybody can think they have the one right way to parent, but there are strengths and weaknesses with every approach, and every child is different. In Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, you can read along as Amy Chua learns that lesson.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/tiger_mother.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Little Princes, by Conor Grennan

Biography, Cross Cultural, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Little Princes

One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal

by Conor Grennan

read by the author

Books on Tape, 2010. 8 CDs.
Starred Review

I was happy when I learned that Little Princes is the 2011 choice for All Fairfax Reads. I was captivated by the audiobook version and found myself listening as eagerly as to a novel.

I do like that the author doesn’t try to glamorize what he set out to do. He freely admits that he was planning to spend a year traveling around the world, and he decided to volunteer to help at an orphanage in Nepal to make himself sound less selfish. He didn’t know anything about taking care of children. When he meets them, they literally pile on top of him, and from there, you can hear in his voice how the children win him over.

I especially enjoyed hearing the author tell the story himself. That way, you know the names are being pronounced correctly, for one thing! He tells how he didn’t have the heart to tell the children he would never come back, and so a promise to them got him to return. Then he found out that these “orphans” were not actually orphans. That child traffickers told families in remote villages that for a steep fee they would protect their children from being conscripted as soldiers and give them an education and opportunities. Instead, the children are sold or abandoned in Kathmandu.

It began with seven children that Conor and his co-worker almost rescued. When they learned that those children had been lost, he had to come back to Nepal to try to find them. And along the way, he began a mission to find the children’s families.

The story is beautiful and compelling. Above all, it’s about bringing hope and joy to children, children who are like any other children in the world, playful and loving and deserving of a wonderful future.

I enjoyed the audiobook very much, but I did check out a copy of the print version in order to see pictures of the children, whom I felt I had come to know. A map in the front is also helpful.

www.nextgenerationnepal.org
www.harpercollins.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/little_princes.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Dreaming in Chinese, by Deborah Fallows

Cross Cultural, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, Travel, True Stories 0

Dreaming in Chinese

Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language

by Deborah Fallows

Walker & Co., New York, 2010. 205 pages.
Starred Review

I’ve always loved books about the cross-cultural experience of living in another country. Deborah Fallows has a PhD in Linguistics, and makes her story even more interesting by reflecting on aspects of the Mandarin language and the ways they are reflected in the Chinese people and culture.

She and her husband lived in China for three years, and this book is a fascinating look at her experiences. Don’t tell, but I’m already plannning to give a copy to my nephew for his birthday — He just spent two semesters studying in China. I wonder if he will have noticed some of these same things.

The author explains why the language lens worked so well for her:

“The language paid me back in ways I hadn’t fully anticipated. It was my lifeline to our everyday survival in China. My language foibles, many of which I have recounted in this book, taught me as much as my rare and random successes. The language also unexpectedly became my way of making some sense of China, my telescope into the country. Foreigners I met and knew in China used their different passions to help them interpret China: artists used China’s art world, as others used Chinese cooking, or traditional medicine, or business, or music, or any number of things they knew about. I used the language, or more precisely, the study of the language.

“As I tried to learn to speak Mandarin, I also learned about how the language works — its words, its sounds, its grammar and its history. I often found a connection between some point of the language — a particular word or the use of a phrase, for example — and how that point could elucidate something very “Chinese” I would encounter in my everyday life in China. The language helped me understand what I saw on the streets or on our travels around the country — how people made their livings, their habits, their behavior toward each other, how they dealt with adversity, and how they celebrated.

“This book is the story of what I learned about the Chinese language, and what the language taught me about China.”

Her result is completely fascinating. You will enjoy this book if you are at all curious about people and language.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/dreaming_in_chinese.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of As We Forgive, by Catherine Claire Larson

Forgiveness, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review, True Stories 0

As We Forgive
Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda

by Catherine Claire Larson

Zondervan, 2009. 284 pages.
Starred Review

This powerful and moving book tells the stories of seven survivors of the Rwandan genocide, and their difficult journeys to forgiveness and reconciliation.

Each story is heart-wrenching. But each survivor was able to rise above the horrendous things they experienced. That any one of these people is able to forgive is mind-blowing. Taken together, the book clearly makes the case that the path to healing lies in forgiveness.

And you won’t be ever be able to look at people who’ve wronged you as harshly again. If these survivors, whose families were killed, often before their eyes, can forgive and find healing, well, what has anyone ever done to me that even comes close?

And this book even tells stories of survivors who reach out in reconciliation to the one who harmed them, as they begin to put their nation back together again.

I like Appendix 2 at the back. It lists “Choices on the Way to Peace” for both the Victim and the Offender. Here’s the list for the Victim:

Steps to Forgiveness:
Step 1
– I face my truth.
– I move from denial to grieving the loss.
– I open my wounds and begin to heal my pain and shame.
– I forgive myself and cease blaming.
– I accept God’s forgiveness.

Step 2
The first hand of forgiveness …
I let go of my bitterness and the right to revenge.

Step 3
The second hand of forgiveness …
I confront the offender with a request to uphold my dignity by restoring something of what was lost.

Step 4
I become open to accepting the humanity and dignity of the offender — and even the possibility of restoring the relationship.

I especially like Step 3, because when you think of forgiveness, you don’t necessarily think of asking for restitution. But this list affirms that asking for some restitution is part of the forgiveness process. It’s not revenge — it’s just asking the offender to take some responsibility to help make things right.

The steps don’t talk about what happens if the offender won’t respond to the request, but the book did. The victim CAN forgive and still seek justice in court. The victim is upholding their own dignity by asking for some restitution, whether that restitution is granted or not.

The steps do make it pretty clear that reconciliation is not going to happen if the offender doesn’t respond to that request. (And the four steps for the offender are necessary, too.) But if the victim has already let go of bitterness, their own life will be transformed in a beautiful way, regardless of how the offender responds.

This is a beautiful book about forgiveness played out in actual human lives.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/as_we_forgive.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of When the Heart Waits, by Sue Monk Kidd

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review 0

When the Heart Waits

Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions

by Sue Monk Kidd

HarperSanFrancisco, 1990. 217 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s another book by a woman exploring the deep questions and issues of facing midlife. Those always resonate with me. This one, with the theme of waiting, of slow growth, seemed particularly apt.

She uses the image of spinning a cocoon and having radical transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly. It takes time. And when the transformation has been made, even unfurling your new wings is difficult.

Here are some passages I especially liked, to give you a taste of the wisdom in this book:

“When it comes to religion today, we tend to be long on butterflies and short on cocoons. Somehow we’re going to have to relearn that the deep things of God don’t come suddenly. It’s as if we imagine that all of our spiritual growth potential is dehydrated contents to which we need only add some holy water to make it instantly and easily appear.

“I received a letter recently from someone who was feeling impatient about taking the long way round. She wrote, ‘Pole vaulting is so much more alluring than crawling.'”

“Most of us Christians don’t know how to wait in pain — at least not in the contemplative, creative way that opens us to newness and growth. We’re told to “turn it over to Jesus” and — presto! — things should be okay.

“But inside things usually aren’t okay. So on top of everything else, we feel guilty because obviously we didn’t really turn our pain over or else it wouldn’t still be with us. Or we decide that God wasn’t listening and can’t be trusted to deliver on divine promises.

“How did we ever get the idea that God would supply us on demand with quick fixes, that God is merely a rescuer and not a midwife?”

“If you want to be impressed, note how often God’s people seem to be waiting….

“I came to the parable Jesus told about the ten maidens waiting for the bridegroom…. I’d always thought that the point of the story was that we should be prepared. But in my reading after the retreat, it seemed to be just as much about waiting. Waiting through the dark night. The idea is that waiting precedes celebration. If you don’t show up prepared to wait, you may miss the transcendent when it happens.

“Most stunning to me was the picture I began to get of God waiting. The parable of the prodigal son would be more aptly named the parable of the waiting father. It tells us much more about God than anything else — a God who watches and waits with a full heart for us to make our homecoming.”

“Shifting from a self-centered focus to a more God-centered focus is terribly hard. I think we’ve gone wrong by assuming that such a radical movement can be achieved simply by setting our jaw and saying one or two prayers of relinquishment.

“Letting go isn’t one step but many. It’s a winding, spiraling process that happens on deep levels. And we must begin at the beginning: by confronting our ambivalence.”

“Looking back, I’m aware of several experiences that sifted together to bring me quietly to the place of letting go. They had the effect of slowly and gently uncurling my grip, finger by finger.”

She takes us through her midlife journey, including many painful moments. But then comes the time of unfurling the new wings:

“When the time is right, the cocooned soul begins to emerge. Waiting turns golden. Newness unfurls. It’s a time of pure, unmitigated wonder. Yet as we enter the passage of emergence, we need to remember that new life comes slowly, awkwardly, on wobbly wings.

“I waited many long months before I felt newness begin to form, and many more before it began to unfold in my life. Gradually — oh, so gradually — my waiting season came to an end. The pain began to diminish bit by bit, as if it had peaked and now was giving way to something new. Many of the questions I’d lived with began to sprout little seeds of insight. Light trickled in. A new vision and way of life began to take shape not only in my head but in my heart and soul as well. It was as if I’d discovered a new room inside myself — a wider, more expansive place than I’d known before, but a room that had been there all along.”

This book will uplift and encourage anyone going through a similar journey. She offers us Hope:

“Hope for you and me and the journeys we undertake. Hope that we would trust our waiting hearts enough to risk entering them, that we would listen for the Voice that bids us come to the edge, and that we would welcome the gentle push of God, who is both our wings and the wind that bears them up.”

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/when_the_heart_waits.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Feel, by Matthew Elliott

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Feel

The Power of Listening to Your Heart

by Matthew Elliott

Tyndale House Publishers, 2008. 266 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #3 Other Nonfiction

My home Bible study group leader picked out this book for our group to study for several weeks, and I thought it had some beautifully revolutionary things to say.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard it preached: “Love is not a feeling. Love is a choice.” Or I’ve heard sermons about the Fact-Faith-Feeling train — that “Feeling” is supposed to be the caboose in our Christian lives. Matthew Elliott says that such teaching is missing out on a full and rich Christian life. God wants us to feel.

Here’s what he says in the first chapter:

“The second thing that has gone terribly wrong is that we have become indoctrinated in the belief that emotions are unreliable, dangerous, and bad. Philosophy, psychology, our scientific culture, and the church have taught us that logic and reason must reign supreme, while feelings are trivialized and seen as something to be suppressed or ignored. Many successful contemporary writers have brainwashed us into believing that we must stifle what we feel in favor of what we think.

“The messages I have read recently in popular inspirational books include the ideas that emotions leave us in a fog and cloud our thinking; the notion that in order to live a godly life, we must control our emotions; and the belief that following our emotions often leads us to sin.

“I’ve heard nationally known speakers assert that anger, sorrow, and jealousy are signs of spiritual weakness; that our feelings cannot be trusted; and that God cares about what we believe, not what we feel.

“These are all myths. None of them are true; none of them hold up to good science; and none of them are from the Bible….

“I have come to believe that our emotions were given to us by God to drive us to our best.

“I have come to believe that emotions are among the most logical and dependable things in our lives.

“I have come to believe that emotions give us a window to see truth like nothing else.

“I have come to believe that the true health of our spiritual lives is measured by how we feel.”

Those surprising assertions (Emotions? Among the most logical and dependable things in our lives? Really?) are all supported convincingly in the pages that follow. I came away with completely new ideas about what constitutes a growing Christian life.

The author spoke from the same kind of Christian background I’d grown up in, teaching that love in the Bible is not really a feeling, but more of a duty. He points out:

“There is no special category for ‘Christian love,’ that agape kind our Christian leaders like to talk about — intellectualizing an emotion into a philosophical ideal. Love, hope, joy — and even hatred — in the Bible are not lofty ideas and concepts; they are feelings and emotions, just as we know them in our own lives and talk about them with our families and friends….

“It occurred to me that our spirituality is all about how we are feeling — whether we are feeling life or are numb to it. If we are not feeling as we should, something is really wrong with our relationship with God.

“Paul takes no time to explain what he means by love and joy and hope and hate and sorrow. He doesn’t try to tell us that joy is not a feeling or that love is just a choice. He speaks in plain language and assumes that emotions are simply recording our feelings — the stuff of life that God has given us. Paul assumes we will know what joy and love feel like, and he exhorts that if we live by God’s standards, there are certain kinds of feelings that will fill our lives.”

There’s so much that’s so good in this book. Most of it, I had not thought of before, but how it rings true! I like this part about obedience and duty:

“One of the things we sometimes get confused is the difference between being duty driven and obedient. God calls us to obedience, but somehow we make that into a rote thing. It’s as if we don’t consider it real obedience unless it feels hard and tough and bad….

“Having positive emotion for doing what we’ve been asked to do makes all the difference in how we obey the command. When we see the reason for it, when we enjoy doing it, or when we want to please the one giving the instruction, we are much more likely to obey, and to obey with energy and enthusiasm….

“As we grow in our faith, we will be driven more and more to obey God’s commands, not because they are things we should do, but because they are what we want to do, and we desire in our deep places to do them. As we learn how good they are for us and those we love, we will see how it is a joy to obey. As we grow closer to God and know more of his great love for us, our desire to please him will grow deeper and wider and all-consuming in us….

“Not only will it be easier to obey, but we will obey more fully with greater passion and results.”

Another thing Matthew Elliott points out which I’d never thought of that way is that, far from being irrational and illogical, our emotions are often ahead of our thoughts in judging a situation correctly.

“Emotions are a complex judgment or evaluation of someone or something in light of the past, present, or future. Hope, for example, is the expectation that something good is going to happen in the future to something or someone we love; whereas joy is felt when something good has happened in the past or the present.

“Emotions can do what a wise counselor does, what a veteran mentor does, or what a spiritual advisor does — help you make right decisions from complex information. Emotions carry truth and wisdom, just as a good friend does….

“To say that emotions are connected to thinking does not mean they always come from conscious, intentional thoughts. Rather, emotions have a wisdom all their own, which is naturally informed by our circumstances, situations, and relationships. They speak to us about truth that we cannot always know rationally or even think thoughts about….

“It’s not uncommon for people to feel fear when they enter their house while it is being robbed, even when they have no direct knowledge that someone else is in the house. They step inside, and all of a sudden they’re afraid. They know something is wrong. This feeling has saved many a person from harm, as they have acted on that fear…. That is the realm in which emotions operate, which can make it difficult to figure out exactly why we are feeling what we feel.

“Our tendency when emotions surface is to decide that we shouldn’t feel them, so we dismiss them, ditching them in the first mental trash can we can find. But our emotions often tell us things that our rational processes cannot get to, things we desperately need to hear.”

I don’t want to write out every great point the author makes in this book. I hope this review has given you a taste of all the rich and revolutionary thoughts found in its pages. Here’s a paragraph that sums up some of the ideas:

“God wants us to be emotionally mature with emotionally full lives. Becoming emotionally mature is not, as many teach, about becoming emotionally controlled. It is about becoming emotionally adept, emotionally wise, and emotionally skilled. It is about having lives that are chock-full of wonder and feeling — and then having the ability and practiced skill to live well and wisely in a richly emotional world.”

I’ll close the review with a line I just love:

“God wants you to soar. He wants a ‘you’ more full of vitality and spirit than you’ve ever imagined.”

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/feel.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on my own copy of the book.