A highly personal story of a physical and spiritual recovery, with sage advice on how to embrace trauma, fear and...
A psychotherapist and longtime athlete recounts his spiritual discovery and growth following his traumatic fall into a 50-foot ravine.
Weafer is a successful psychotherapist, athlete, husband and father. A high achiever, he was used to being in control. But while doing heavy yard work alone on the grounds of his Westchester County, N.Y., home, he fell into a 50-foot ravine and was trapped alone for more than two hours. Afterward, suffering great pain due to his debilitating physical injuries, he entered a vulnerable state—somewhere he’d never been before. While tempted to simply give up, Weafer began to embrace the changes in his life, a positive attitude hugely informed by the blessed presence he felt while alone in the ravine. Prayer became a guiding force, and he opened himself to having deeper, more significant relationships with his family and, particularly, with his caregivers and his father. He also connected more to his inner child (Jackie versus Jack) and feminine side: In art therapy, he found himself drawing a picture of a goddess. Nine months after his accident, Weafer was back walking and even running, participating in a triathlon, a milestone goal in his physical recovery. However, in Weafer’s transformed existence, such athletic competition isn’t as large a part of his life. His heartfelt account of physical recovery and spiritual awakening may be an inspirational guide to anyone recovering from traumatic injury. Male readers in particular will likely relate to Weafer’s experience with the emotional walls many men face and create. Rather than imposing a strict spiritual doctrine on readers, his discussions of God are of a gentle, New-Age variety. Occasionally, however, Weafer can be overly focused on certain aspects of his life or, at other times, distractingly digressive regarding details that could have been pruned to make his narrative more succinct and compelling for general readers.
A highly personal story of a physical and spiritual recovery, with sage advice on how to embrace trauma, fear and uncertainty.Pub Date: June 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482359138
Page Count: 388
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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