Mark Nepo's "Book of Awakening" helps set a good tone for each day. It is one of those books with a message for each day of the year, but unlike some of them, the messages are helpful, and create a harmonious beginning. With a beginning that resonates with me, my surroundings, my thoughts and the world I am in, I am pretty well set to see the good fortunes in a day and to deal constructively with the downsides.
Karen Maezen Miller's "Paradise in Plain Sight" is like her previous excellent books but this one may be better. "Momma Zen" and "Hand Wash Cold" are full of clear language that shines a spotlight on aspects of motherhood, parenthood and marriage that are clearly platforms just waiting for us to see, and do and love and be loved.
"Paradise in Plain Sight" is one of those books that stops me over each sentence or two. So resonant, the echoes harmonizing with each other that the sounds of the words and the taste of the images require a pause at each step. My background mind keeps interrupting the flow: "Yeah!" "Exactly!" "Hey, that's right! I have a back yard, too! I can feel that way, too!"
She pulls back the curtain of her life on just those scenes, at the very moment that gives me a gift of her life and her mind, only to show me gifts in my own life and my own mind. She says her book is about seeing what is in plain sight and it certainly is but she leads the reader to being better able to use what he sees.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
