Review of The Backyard Bird Chronicles, by Amy Tan

Audiobooks, Musings, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

The Backyard Bird Chronicles

by Amy Tan
read by the Author

Books on Tape, 2024. 6 hours, 29 minutes.
Review written August 20, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This book is what the title suggests – the story of the birds who came to Amy Tan’s backyard, since 2016, when she took a class on nature journaling and started paying attention.

The nature journaling class was also about sketching birds – saying you notice better when you draw the birds. The audiobook is supposed to have an accompanying pdf, but I wasn’t sure how to access it, so I’ve put a hold on the book to glance through the pictures she drew.

And this book is excerpts from her nature journal, telling about her visitors, as she got to know them. Mind you, Amy Tan has a bird-friendly garden and a green roof on a home overlooking the San Francisco Bay. And she has multiple feeders out for different kinds of birds – in fact, some of the fun in these chronicles is her quest for feeders that are squirrel proof and scrub jay proof.

The book was a little repetitive in spots, I think because it was a journal. Occasionally she’d refer back to something that had happened before as if we hadn’t just heard about that in the earlier part of the journal. But that didn’t really detract from the meditative writing, all about noticing her visitors.

I listened to almost all of this book while obsessively doing a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, and it was soothing and comforting, making me feel like I was observing nature while I was actually doing a puzzle and thinking about nature.

I am lucky – I live in a second-floor condo. My downstairs neighbor puts out and fills a bird feeder, so I can sit out on my balcony and be on the level of the birds lining up for the feeder. Although the book didn’t convince me to try sketching the birds, it did make me want to notice a little better, pay attention, and enjoy the visitors here.

So – this is a book about bird-watching. In the author’s backyard. In the hands of a skilled author, that turns out to be a delightful and interesting topic.

amytan.net

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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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Somehow, by Anne Lamott

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Somehow

Thoughts on Love

by Anne Lamott

Riverhead Books, 2024. 194 pages.
Review written August 27, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Yes, when Anne Lamott brings out a new book, I need to read it. They are a little bit about faith, a lot about life, and always inspiring and encouraging.

Anne Lamott has a quirky perspective, and she knows how to bring the reader along with her, so we look at things a different way. She’s also self-deprecating and never makes you feel bad for being spiteful, angry, or whiny, because she tells hilarious stories of when she was all those things, too, and really, who wouldn’t be?

Anne Lamott writes about the human condition and helps us realize how much we have in common and that we’re all in this together.

I didn’t mark quotations in this one. There are lots of great paragraphs, but they’re generally all from a longer story and the power of her words is in the path she leads you down to get you there.

So I think for this review, I’m going to give you the first and last paragraph, to give you the flavor. Here’s how the book begins:

My husband said something a few years ago that I often quote: Eighty percent of everything that is true and beautiful can be experienced on any ten-minute walk. Even in the darkest and most devastating times, love is nearby if you know what to look for. It does not always appear at first to be lovely but instead may take the form of a hot mess or a snoring old dog or someone you have sworn to never, ever forgive (for a possibly very good reason, if you ask me). But mixed in will also be familiar signs of love: wings, good-hearted people, cats (when they are in the right mood), a spray of wildflowers, a cup of tea.

And here’s the last paragraph:

I’ll tell you what Blake actually wrote more than two hundred years ago: “And we are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love.” If the younger ones in our lives can remember only this one idea, that they are here, briefly, a little space to love and to have been loved, then they will have all they need, because love is all they need, rain or shine – love, cough drops, and one another. Good old love, elusive and steadfast, fragile and unbreakable, and always there for the asking; always, somehow.

In between you’ve got the wonderful musings of Anne Lamott. I read a chapter each day and they always leave me feeling uplifted and more hopeful. If you haven’t read an Anne Lamott book yet, it’s time to dive in!

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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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Book Bonding, by Megan Dowd Lambert

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Book Bonding

Building Connections through Family Reading

by Megan Dowd Lambert
illustrated by Mia Saine

Imagine! (Charlesbridge), 2023. 160 pages.
Review written December 4, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

Book Bonding is a collection of essays about the joy and wonder of reading to and with your kids, but especially about the powerful connections you can build that way. The author is a children’s literature professor and a mother of seven, so she has lots of experience with this topic.

Here’s an excerpt from the Preface that captures well what she’s doing in this book:

So how can I best bridge the distance that exists between my children and me, while I recognize and celebrate that they are their own human beings and not “mine”? How can other parents and caregivers do so, too? My multiracial, adoptive, queer, blended family life affirms that familial bonds are rooted not only in biology but in legal measures, choices, and above all, in shared experiences and love.

This is where “book bonding” comes in. I coined this phrase during my time as an educator at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in western Massachusetts. It highlights the social and emotional impact of shared reading in classrooms and libraries. It’s a happy truth that my work as an author, educator, and children’s-literature scholar is deeply enriched by my life as a mother. The books on my family’s bookshelves hold not just words and pictures but also memories of time spent together and of moments when reading and talking about reading have helped us better understand each other. In other words, books have helped us bond.

Time and again, shared reading has forged a common ground for my children and me as we reach toward each other across the distances between us. Witnessing my children’s minds and hearts in action when we read together — or when we discuss books we read separately — gives me a greater appreciation for their individuality. This, in turn, helps me be a better parent, attuned to my kids’ specific needs, strengths, and interests….

I’m convinced that the sort of book bonding that my family experiences is similar to that of anyone who reaches out to the children in their life with a book in hand. I hope my essays will enrich your family’s reading and perhaps inspire you to write down some of the book-bonding memories and connections you’ve created when you and a child have met in the pages of a book.

The essays themselves are beautiful. Yes, they will inspire you to read with kids.

This book is a good defense against book banners, too. In her multiracial family, she talks about reading and discussing books with her white kids and her Black kids and talking with all of them about how diversity is portrayed in books. Diverse books get adults and kids thinking and talking.

She talks about specific books that inspired her kids and tells stories about their interactions with books. Yes, you’ll learn about specific wonderful children’s books here — and there’s a list of books mentioned at the back.

I also love the way she models talking with kids about books. She gets the kids’ perspectives on how books are mirrors and windows for them, and gets insights from the kids that she wouldn’t have noticed on her own.

I read this book too slowly — an essay now and then as I had time, and I didn’t have much time because I was reading for the Morris Award. But whenever I did dip into it, I was reminded of the power, beauty, and joy of reading with kids, and this made my children’s librarian heart happy.

megandowdlambert.com
agoodson.com/illustrator/mia-saine
imaginebooks.net

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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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of The Gift of Story, by John Schu

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review 0

The Gift of Story

Exploring the Affective Side of the Reading Life

by John Schu

Stenhouse Publishers, 2022. 170 pages.
Review written August 1, 2023, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com
Starred Review

First, a disclaimer: John Schu is a librarian I’ve met and even was briefly on a committee with. He’s also the kind of person whom once you meet, you think of him as a friend. He has Mr. Rogers’ ability of focusing on the person he’s talking with, making you feel like he cares – and you can’t help but care back. So this is a review of a book by my friend and fellow librarian, and of course I’m going to love it.

That said, this is a wonderful book for people who love children’s books and want to influence children to love children’s books. It’s a book about Story, and the wonderful ways that Story touches and enriches our lives. The book is written mainly for those who work with kids in schools, teachers and librarians and staff, with many ways for connecting children with books they will love. Here’s how John sums it up in a note at the front:

I want you to know that this is a book of my heart. In it, I’ll share thoughts, recommendations, stories, and the interactions I’ve had with thousands and thousands and thousands of students and educators over the past twenty years. And, even as I write — without the energy of a live audience providing input, guiding the conversation, and filling the room and my heart with joy — I will imagine you are sitting beside me as we take this journey together, working tirelessly to create environments in which all children interact with teachers, teacher-librarians and administrators who read to them, booktalk with them, and view them not as labels but as individuals who need to be surrounded with authentic literature, given opportunities to discuss, debate, connect, laugh, and cry over stories — and experience buckets and buckets of love.

What is Story, anyway? John Schu has been pushing children’s books in schools for years, and so he has connections with hundreds of authors. He asked authors what Story is to them, and their answers appear throughout the book. In fact, he invites people to make their own #StoryIs statements, and you can find responses by searching the #StoryIs hashtag.

He sums up where he’s going at the end of the first chapter:

Stories affirm our experiences. They challenge our comfort zone. They give us space to hibernate and pull us out of our isolation when we need to be reminded we aren’t alone. They help us evolve. They feed our human existence. In the following chapters, we’ll explore how stories can change us, inspire us, connect us to others, answer our deepest questions, and help us heal. We’ll look at ways sharing our hearts through literacy can help us celebrate, tell, define, revise, and imagine our own stories and how experiencing other people’s stories can connect us through universal truths. And we’ll do all of this while shining particular light on the important role books and libraries in our communities play to help us connect across stories.

The chapters that follow focus on particular aspects of Story: Story as Healer, Story as Inspiration, Story as Clarifier, Story as Compassion, and Story as Connector. Each chapter talks about the topic, has a section “From the Brain to the Heart” talking about what it means in lives, a section “From the Heart to the Classroom” about getting the ideas into the classroom, a section bringing in other voices on the topic, including other librarians and teachers and authors, and many recent book recommendations that tie in with the theme. And of course the whole thing is peppered with authors’ #StoryIs quotations. At the end of every chapter, there’s a place to list your favorite titles for that chapter’s focus on Story.

I was reading this book on vacation and saw my sister who’s a school psychologist. She needs this book! In fact anyone who works with kids in schools needs this book. There are so many ideas of ways to bring books into your students’ lives, so many great children’s books introduced, and inspiring reminders of how you can touch and uplift students’ hearts.

Yes, it’s also fantastic for public librarians who work with kids. You’ll get a fantastic list of books to check out and recommend, and you, too, will get ideas for ways to connect books with readers and be inspired.

This book reminds me how lucky I am to do the important and wonderful job of connecting children with books that will touch their hearts.

johnschu.com
stenhouse.com

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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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of A Rhythm of Prayer, edited by Sarah Bessey

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

A Rhythm of Prayer

A Collection of Meditations for Renewal

edited by Sarah Bessey

Convergent, 2021. 146 pages.
Review written March 7, 2023, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com.
Starred Review

A Rhythm of Prayer is a book of prayers and meditations about prayer from a stellar group of Christian writers — I found some new books to buy from the credits after some of the selections.

This little book gave me something to think about each morning as I read and prayed a selection, and usually this included something I hadn’t thought of before in that way.

In her Introduction, Sarah Bessey says she thinks of this book as calling you into a prayer circle.

When I first began to envision this book about prayer, I knew right away what I didn’t want to give you: a nice and tidy new set of prayers to co-opt for your own. Nope, what I wanted was equal parts example and invitation, permission and challenge, to acknowledge the heaviness of our grief and at the same time broaden our hope.

Frankly, I love to pray, and I think the prayers of people like us — however we show up to these pages — matter. Not in spite of scripture but because of it. Not in spite of Church but because of her. Not in spite of our questions and doubts but because of them. Not in spite of our grief and our longing, our yearning for justice and our anger, but because of them.

So no, the point of this is not to give you prayers to pray but to show you: you still get to pray. Prayer is still for you. You still get to cry out to God, you still get to yell, weep, praise, and sit in the silence until you sink down into the Love of God that has always been holding you whether you knew it or not.

This book will give you things to think about, things to meditate on, things to contemplate, and yes, things to pray. And it will also inspire you to do those things on your own.

I’m thinking about prayer often lately, because I recently finished writing a book about prayer, using patterns from the book of Psalms. (I’m still seeking a publisher for that book.) This book fit beautifully with all that I’m thinking about, modeling opening your heart to God in prayer.

sarahbessey.com

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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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Collective Wisdom, edited by Grace Bonney

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Photography, Starred Review 0

Collective Wisdom

Lessons, Inspiration, and Advice from Women over 50

edited by Grace Bonney

Artisan, 2021. 399 pages.
Review written July 23, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

This gorgeous volume of photographs and profiles is a perfect coffee table book to read slowly.
I’ve been reading one profile per day for many months now, and I’m inspired. Yes, in my case I used a library book and simply kept renewing, but this would be a lovely investment to enjoy all over again even after you’ve been through it once, especially since 50 percent of the profits are to be divided among the women featured in the book.

There are 80 profiles in this book, all accompanied by full-page photographic portraits. Most of the profiles are of individual women who are over fifty, but also pairs of intergenerational friends, and some featuring groups of older women who have found community together. The majority of the individual women featured are in their seventies and eighties. These are accomplished women, and there were several writers whose work I knew about and admired. There’s great diversity in the profiles, with I think the majority being BIPOC, and queer and transgender women included as well.

I love rereading the Introduction after having read the whole book, because I think Grace Bonney has succeeded in meeting the goals she expresses there. Here’s a sampling from that:

Since the beginning of time, women have been the keepers of stories, traditions, and wisdom. And for too long, the powerful conversations women have with each other have been overlooked, because society often devalues women, age, and knowledge that is spoken rather than written. Collective Wisdom seeks to rebalance these scales by valuing women who have lived long and complex lives — and the experience and perspective that come with that.

My goal with Collective Wisdom is twofold. I want to gather and share stories and advice that we can all return to, over and over, whenever we need help finding our way. But I also want to remind anyone reading that the most powerful and life-changing tools we all have access to are the connections we form with other women….

In sharing and celebrating the stories and the lessons the women in Collective Wisdom have learned, my hope is that anyone reading will feel uplifted, less alone, inspired to reach out to women who are older or younger than they are right now, and moved to nourish and celebrate the relationships they already have. Your whole world can change when you change whom you listen to. Mine has changed from listening to everyone here.

The editor has met that hope in me with her wonderful book!

Another thing she’s accomplished is that listening to the repeated questions and hearing answers from so many different women, I’m mulling over how I, another woman over fifty, would answer them. Questions like: “What does your current age feel like to you?” “What are you most proud of about yourself?” “What misconceptions about aging would you like to dispel?” “When do you feel your most powerful?” “What role do you feel your ancestors, or the women in your family who came before you, play in your life?” “How has your sense of self-confidence or self-acceptance evolved over time?” “What would you like to learn or experience at this stage in your life?” “Knowing what you know now, what would you go back and tell your younger self?”

There’s so much beauty and wisdom in this book! I love the way the large photographic portraits show that each woman is fabulously beautiful, including those wrinkled with age. This book uplifted, inspired, and encouraged me from start to finish.

artisanbooks.com

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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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Dusk Night Dawn, by Anne Lamott

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Dusk Night Dawn

On Revival and Courage

by Anne Lamott

Riverhead Books, 2021. 208 pages.
Review written March 30, 2021, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

It’s impossible not to love Anne Lamott. This is because she tells us all her failings, instead of trying to impress us with how wonderful she is. It’s so easy to relate to those failings! Plus, she makes us laugh by looking at things in an unexpected way.

And now she’s married! So now we get her thoughts about this man she’s married and about living with a partner and about being real with each other.

If you’ve read Anne Lamott, you’ll understand it’s more of her funny, insightful, quirky goodness. Without fail, her chapters leave me smiling, though I can’t always pull out a paragraph for quotes, because it takes the whole story to fully appreciate it.

But here’s a nice paragraph I did pull out:

Trust me on this: We are loved out of all sense of proportion. Yikes and hallelujah. Love reveals the beauty of sketchy people like us to ourselves. Love holds up the sacred mirror. Love builds rickety greenhouses for our wilder seeds to grow. Love can be reckless (Jesus is good at this), or meek as my dog, or carry a briefcase. Love is the old man in the park teaching little kids to play the violin: much time spent tuning, the children hearing their way into the key he is playing. My parents heard the key as success, security, moving expeditiously, and living as expected. But love lumbers like an elephant, it naps on top of your chest like a cat. It gooses you, snickers, smooths your hair. Love is being with a person wherever they are, however they are acting. Ugh. (A lot of things seem to come more easily to God.)

penguinrandomhouse.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of A Short Philosophy of Birds, by Philippe J. Dubois and Elise Rousseau

Musings, Nonfiction Review 0

A Short Philosophy of Birds

by Philippe J. Dubois and Elise Rousseau
translated by Jennifer Higgins

Dey St. (William Morrow), 2019. First published in France in 2018. 176 pages.
Review written May 15, 2020, from a library book

A Short Philosophy of Birds is a collection of twenty-two short essays that refer to details in the lives of various birds and then draw philosophical conclusions and suggestions for human lives.

Many of the topics discussed have birds with contrasting behaviors. For example, some types of birds have equality in parenting duties and others don’t. Another fun example is that it turns out robins generally have more courage than eagles. So we’re often asked which type of bird we’d like to emulate.

I enjoyed the essay that talked about the joy a hen displays when taking a dust bath. Here’s a bit from that:

The hen’s bath should give us pause for thought. Why don’t we bathe with the same intensity of purpose? Our lack of plumage means that we don’t need to spend so much time cleaning ourselves, but even so . . . Dogged as we are by duties and commitments, worries about the past, the future and the sense of being in a hurry – always in a hurry – we rarely find a moment to experience true delight in the act of cleansing ourselves. The hen does not wash if she is stressed. No, she doesn’t take her usual jubilant bath, but either sits still and silent or rushes around screeching. But we still wash even if we’re worried or tense, so how can we manage to savour the moment, as the hen does?

Each chapter is only several small pages long, and so they’re just the right length to read one essay per day and have something to mull over. Along the way, you’ll learn many interesting facts about the life of birds and perhaps become more observant. But you’ll also have many occasions to think about your own philosophy of life.

hc.com

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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 Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Pain Studies, by Lisa Olstein

Musings, Nonfiction Review 0

Pain Studies

by Lisa Olstein

Bellevue Literary Press, 2020. 191 pages.
Review written December 2, 2020, from a library book

Pain Studies is a book of musings about living with migraines. I’ve gotten migraines since I was a child, so I was ready for a book like this. Though it also made me thankful for how very much better they’ve gotten since menopause.

I’m not sure I approached this book in the best way, just a short chapter every day or two. Using that approach, I didn’t really catch her train of thought too well, so it felt like scattered musings about living with pain. When I look back, I see a few more themes than I remembered. Joan of Arc, for example, is mentioned in the last chapter, and I’d almost forgotten how much attention she’d gotten earlier in the book, as someone who experienced voices and visions other people didn’t understand – a little bit like how migraine sufferers experience things other people don’t understand.

This doesn’t try to pull meaning out of migraine, doesn’t try to make the reader see a higher purpose. I appreciated that, even if the result felt a little bit scattershot. But my own thoughts about migraines, when I have them, take on that same wide-ranging aspect. And I found many nuggets I appreciated. There’s a fellowship of migraineurs that none of us actually wants to be part of, but I recognized this voice speaking from that group.

Let me give you a couple of the nuggets I liked. This is in a chapter about the difficulty of describing pain:

The trouble with standard pain scales, it seems to me, is that they weren’t written by the right people – the people in pain. Often misheard as language that does not communicate, it turns out that the seemingly chaotic fragments of description people in pain manage to offer in fact cohere into meaningful systems of categorization. Researchers, Scarry tells us, have gathered up the shards and found logic in their arrangement, mapping dimensions relevant not only to diagnosis but also to treatment and sometimes even cure.

This one’s at the start when she’s introducing the topic of pain:

Drowning is one of the words we use to describe pain when we’re desperately in it, though often it’s used for other things, too: heartbreak, overwhelm. I’ve never experienced anything close to drowning, but I imagine that, like pain, it has a way of flooding you with the present. Yes, it makes you hazy, it fogs up memory’s edges, but in the moment, it is the moment and you are nowhere else except and only exactly where it puts you.

In some ways like any acute pain and in some ways possibly unlike any other, migraine is a particular version of the present. What happens when its present becomes yours for extended periods of time, for a significant portion of your life? This is the pain, or the present, I wish to discuss.

There’s a chapter toward the end that reminded me of all the times people asked me what caused my migraines.

Sometimes chance is cause, but is it ever what we mean by causality? Chance is cause stripped of meaning, an origin story or fated end without moral or lesson. (“People get what they get; it has nothing to do with what they deserve.” [House M.D.]) But any cause as yet unknown glows luminous. Answerless, we search for answers, because questions call and press. Somewhere out there, we feel sure, is the information that means, but, beyond our reach, it can’t matter yet. And when causality’s riddle turns out to be procedural or a purely chance operation, can it ever?

Maybe it’s a question of meaning versus meaningfulness. Chance may not teach us anything, but chance identified is a kind of answer and therefore a kind of balm, a version of no blame. I mean, in a way it’s reassuring how clearly the migraines come and go of their own volition, according to their own logic. One way of translating the void, the reams of unilluminating data, the typically atypical patterns: there’s nothing you did; there’s nothing you can do.

So this isn’t exactly a book I’m going to recommend to all my friends who get migraines. Because it’s not exactly comforting or inspiring. But on the other hand, it’s validating to read someone else’s musings on pain you’ve experienced. And if you’ve never experienced pain like this, perhaps reading this book will bring you a step closer to understanding.

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Living Buddha, Living Christ, by Thich Nhat Hanh

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Living Buddha, Living Christ

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Riverhead Books, 1995. 208 pages.
Starred Review
Review written August 17, 2019, from a library book

A big thank you to my friend who recommended this book to me. (Actually, he mentioned it as if I would have read it. I checked it out.) It ended up fitting nicely with another book I was reading, The Universal Christ, by Richard Rohr.

In this book, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk, looks at the wisdom that Christians and Buddhists can get from each other’s traditions and teachings.

He talks about his own encounters with Christians who embody the teachings of Jesus. He sees the coming together of people from different religions as the work of peace. This book explains many of the things we have in common.

Here are some thoughts from the first chapter:

When you touch someone who authentically represents a tradition, you not only touch his or her tradition, you also touch your own. This quality is essential for dialogue. When participants are willing to learn from each other, dialogue takes place just by their being together. When those who represent a spiritual tradition embody the essence of their tradition, just the way they walk, sit, and smile speaks volumes about the tradition.

In fact, sometimes it is more difficult to have a dialogue with people in our own tradition than with those of another tradition. Most of us have suffered from feeling misunderstood or even betrayed by those of our own tradition. But if brothers and sisters in the same tradition cannot understand and communicate with each other, how can they communicate with those outside their tradition? For dialogue to be fruitful, we need to live deeply our own tradition and, at the same time, listen deeply to others. Through the practice of deep looking and deep listening, we become free, able to see the beauty and values in our own and others’ tradition.

To be honest, I’m not sure I understood a lot of what was said in this book. But I was challenged, and some new ideas were presented to me. I do believe that some of these ideas can deepen my own faith.

Here’s an example of a section that challenges me to live out what I believe in community:

The church is the vehicle that allows us to realize those teachings. The church is the hope of Jesus, just as the Sangha is the hope of the Buddha. It is through the practice of the church and the Sangha that the teachings come alive. Communities of practice, with all their shortcomings, are the best way to make the teachings available to people. The Father, Son and the Holy Spirit need the church in order to be manifested. (“Wherever two or three are gathered in My Name, there I am.”) People can touch the Father and the Son through the church. That is why we say that the church is the mystical body of Christ. Jesus was very clear about the need to practice the teaching and to do so in community. He told His disciples to be the light of the world. For a Buddhist, that means mindfulness. The Buddha said that we must each be our own torch. Jesus also told His disciples to be the salt of the world, to be real salt. His teaching was clear and strong. If the church practices well the teachings of Jesus, the Trinity will always be present and the church will have a healing power to transform all that it touches.

It was good for me to admit and realize that I can learn spiritual truths from a Buddhist. And there’s much to learn in this book.

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