Archives: Product Reviews

“Though claiming to be both a ‘road map’ for  bereaved people and a guide for those who are supporting them, this book is clearly aimed primarily at  the supporters. It contains several suggestions of things to do or avoid and also provides explanations for why people who are grieving may react or behave in certain ways. It is not written in an academic, text-book  style and would make good reading for someone who has not made a study of grief but wants to both understand and help someone who has  experienced a death. The author uses many of her own experiences of bereavement in the text and this enhances the points she makes.

This is an interesting book that many will want to read from beginning to end, but it also works as a resource to dip into for information on specific topics that are relevant at the time. There is information on a wide range of issues, from the classic ones of shock, anger, guilt and depression to the more concrete ones of what not to say, suggestions for help, the gift of time and providing continuing support. Overall this is a very useful and practical book to recommend to those supporting the bereaved.”

Philip Lawler, one of the steadiest Catholic journalists alive and author of Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture the best book on the priestly abuse crisis … has put together a valuable collection of essays on things that are going right in the Church: When Faith Goes Viral: 11 Success Stories on the New Evangelization from Alabama to Vladivostok.

This is not a book to read and forget, but an invitation to action in whatever way you might feel moved to make something happen in the Church – and the world.

Pick up this little anthology for your pre-Christmas reading. Its inspiring chapters may help you, despite all temptations to Scrooge-like cynicism about our postmodern world, to welcome the commemoration of the birth of the Savior with greater joy and, who knows, maybe even a greater hope.

First, let me admit something: I’m not crazy about books that anthologize excerpts of writings from other sources. I find such “taken out of context” selections to be jarring to read. But that’s just my bias, so I’m recommending What the Mystics Know even though it’s that kind of book: sort of a “best of Richard Rohr,” at least in terms of his sizable corpus of writings published by Crossroad. Broadly divided into seven categories including enlightenment, imperfection, suffering, paradox, contemplation, truth and transformation, this book gathers together much of Father Richard’s easily accessible wisdom — not only on mysticism, but indeed on life in general. If you’re not familiar with Rohr, this would be a great starting point; if you already know his work, What the Mystics Know could work beautifully as a daily devotional.

Treat others like eagles; they’ll soar

By the time I was 22, I had already had considerable journalism experience, and I had some solid references endorsing my ability. But when I took a job in the Detroit metropolitan area, I ran into a supervisor who thought I was useless. Nothing I did was right. I didn’t gather facts to the supervisor’s satisfaction and I couldn’t write a lick in her view. I was on the brink of getting fired when she went on vacation. Her boss took over for two weeks and at the end of that time he walked past my desk and said, “There’s nothing wrong with you; you’re fine.”

Five months later my supervisor was promoted and asked me to go with her!

This same phenomenon can occur in any industry. An employee can be assigned the wrong supervisor and life can become miserable. The classic explanation is “personality conflict.”

Some psychologists would probably argue there’s a misplaced power dynamic at play and the supervisor is hard on the employee because the supervisor has the power.

If you look at this problem from a spirituality and work perspective, it’s pretty obvious the supervisor is not treating the employee the way the supervisor would like to be treated. It’s not a lot more complicated than that.

With few exceptions, every employee has special things to contribute to the organization, but we often don’t look hard enough for those special gifts.

Anthony de Mello, the late Jesuit priest from India, tells the story of a young boy who picked up a golden eagle egg and put it in the chicken house. The hens sat on the egg until it hatched and then they raised the eagle as a chicken. One day the eagle saw a beautiful golden eagle flying through the sky. He asked the chicken next to him what kind of bird was flying so gracefully. The chicken replied, “That’s an eagle. We could never fly like that.” The eagle wistfully agreed. That eagle lived and died thinking like a chicken. Nobody ever told him he could fly.

We often judge people to be chickens. We never release them to be the eagles they would love to be.

DeMello relates another story about an American research study in which I.Q. tests were administered to all the children in a certain school. The researchers then told the teachers a certain 10 kids were gifted. In fact, the students were randomly chosen and were not really gifted. But at the end of the year the I.Q. of each of those 10 kids had risen at least 10 points and some had risen as much as 36 points. The teachers believed in those kids and invested a lot of special effort in them.

They treated them like geniuses. They flew like eagles.

How many of the people you work with could be eagles if you stopped treating them like chickens?