The Choice - A Book Review

The Choice was acclaimed a Best Seller by the New York Times and came to me highly recommended.  Dr Edith Eger is the 90-year author and an internationally known psychologist.

It begins with her Hungarian Jewish family living in an active neighbourhood and then eventually the rumblings of war, the Nazis, restrictions imposed, and eventually the movement of family and neighbours to Auschwitz in the cattle car of a crowded train.  At arrival into the camp separation of parents and children occurs.  Edith, a teenager excelling in ballet and gymnastics is allowed to remain with her sister while her dear Mom and Dad are separated and faced immediate death.  

“Hope is the boldest act of imagination I know”

— Edith Eva Eger

Edith and her sister are courageous survivors of horrific trauma. However, throughout their years of concentration, they maintained that hope was essential.  Hope for another day urged them on each day.  “Hope is the boldest act of imagination I know,” Edith writes.  In 1945, the prisoners in the camp are liberated by the American soldiers.  Edith is discovered among the dying prisoners. In her study and work as a psychologist, Edith discovers a valuable way to use her personal traumatic, experiences to assist others: 

“Our painful experiences aren’t a liability, they are a gift.”

 -Sister Mabel St. Louis, csj

““Change is about interrupting the habits and patterns that no longer serve us” ”

Summer Reading

The Consequences of Fear: A Recommended Summer Read

Jacqueline Winspear has written and published a yearly novel for the past sixteen years. The setting is England during WWII. Maisie Dobbs and her associate, Billy, become involved in undercover work which is both dangerous and very important. Maisie’s life has been a series of unfortunate personal happenings which reveal not only her interesting background but also her desire to improve the “lot of the less fortunate”.  Since the main characters remain consistent, the plot in each book always presents a new and novel revelation of Maisie’s life. It is like meeting an old friend once a year. Maisie’s psychological training with a renowned professor has enabled her to be a keen observer of the actions and motivations of others.

The mysteries of why people commit crimes or become involved in corrupt practices are motivated by any number of reasons. Maisie’s training and experience are key to her investigations as well as her efforts to bring forth justice and healing for both the victim and the perpetrator. The Consequences of Fear is a “must-read”.

Sister Valerie Van Cauwenberghe, csj

12 Steps to a Compassionate Life - A Book Review

Reviewed by Barbara Stanbridge, IHM, Detroit, MI.

Karen Armstrong, prolific author and religion historian, won a TED grant in 2008 to create a process for reinfusing our global society with compassion. Scholars from six major world religions created a “Charter of Compassion” and have been working ever since with nations and groups to sign on.

In this brief but inspiring book, Armstrong shows how compassion is fundamental to all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions and using the scaffolding of 12 steps, lays out a process for individuals and groups to build their compassion competencies.

Each step is examined and illustrated by way of practices: learning about compassion; looking at our world; compassion for yourself; empathy; mindfulness; action; how little we know; how we should speak to one another; concern for everybody; knowledge; recognition; and love your enemies. This is not another self-help, new age book, but rather a deeply spiritual book for the spiritual seeker with the capacity for reflection. It is in the best tradition of Confucius, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, the Dalai Lama, Etty Hillesum, Dorothy Day, Florence Nightingale and Nelson Mandela.

Perhaps there is nothing more important for us to get a grasp of in these days of polarization than compassion. Karen Armstrong lays out a path.

-Barbara Stanbridge, IHM, Used with kind permission.

Please Read This Book.

“Racism should never have happened and so you don’t get a cookie for reducing it.”

-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

‘Oh my. Even the title of this book incites discomfort in me' was my first thought when I found online at my local library the book "Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World and Become A Good Ancestor" by Layla F. Saad. And that was my signal that I had to read it.

In all the events over these past months especially since the murder of George Floyd, there has been much said about white supremacy sometimes sugar-coated in the more palatable expression of ‘white privilege’. This book called me out to examine how I and the society in which I live has participated and supported white supremacy in the many forms in which it expresses itself: fragility, tone policing, silence, apathy, Saviourism, tokenism, colour blindness, and optical allyship to mention just a few.

Each section of the book asks:

a) What is ________________?

b) How does ________________ show up? (with practical examples)

c) Why do you need to look at _______________?

The end of each section then offers some reflective journaling prompts to help us examine how we both individually and as members of various groups of which we are a part have experienced each of these things and to look at ways and means by which we can move towards the eradication of racism in all its forms.

I ask everyone to read this book.

-Sister Nancy Sullivan, csj

Summer Reading

Talking to Strangers - by Malcolm Gladwell

The central question is how do we make sense of strangers, people we don’t know?  Using examples from real life, well-known author Gladwell exposes some of our common fallacies about figuring out others.  First, we tend to default to the truth in spite of evidence to the contrary.  Generally, our bent to believe what people say serves us well but does not help us determine scammers.  Second, we believe people are transparent; i.e. that their responses match their feelings or even their guilt/innocence.  Thus we build a world that systematically discriminates against those who don’t fit our ideas of transparency.  

Dealing with the issue of sexual assault and drunkenness, especially on campuses, he shows the myopia often caused by alcohol. which transforms us into someone else.  Our field of emotional and mental vision changes; we are not our true selves.  Similarly torture, especially sleep deprivation, like traumatic events, often produces untrue results.  In these cases the harder we work at getting strangers to reveal themselves, the more elusive they become.

Central to his book is the concept of coupling where things coincide to produce certain results or the idea context is a large influencing factor.  One example he uses is the huge increase in suicides when Great Britain switched their home heating to an inexpensive gas that could be toxic.  As soon as the gas was changed, the numbers of suicide returned to normal.  Thus, to even begin to ‘see’ a stranger we need to look at the stranger’s world.  When we look at strangers without our assumptions and within their context where they appear coupled with other factors, we begin to appreciate the complexity and ambiguity of strangers.  He concludes that because we do not know how to talk to strangers when things go awry we often blame the stranger. 

I found this latest book by Gladwell as fascinating as his previous ones.

-Jackie Potters, csj Associate