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Full review coming soon!
This book gave me a lot to work with... and continue working with.  I'm hoping that trying to post a review of it will get me back into the text and sort of pick up where I left off - in absorbing what it means and incorporating it into my life.

Check out these chapter titles:
• Gracious Mystery, Ever Greater, Ever Nearer
• The Crucified God of Compassion
• Liberating God of Life
• God Acting Womanish
• God Who Breaks Chains
• Accompanying God of Fiesta
• Generous God of the Religions
• Creator Spirit in the Evolving World
• Trinity: The Living God of Love
 
 
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A well-crafted coming of age story that intimates an homage to J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey.  

The story opens with the protagonist, Troy, an obese teenager, considering a suicide attempt on the subway tracks.  He is interrupted by Curt, a legend at their high school, a homeless drop-out & punk rock guitar fiend in the local scene.  They're friendship, such as it is, initiates significant changes in both of their lives.  A typical sounding summary but a really well delivered story: realistically rendered urban setting; genuine relationships; true to life dialog; awkward moments;  engaging & often funny narrator; a truly unlikely hero for today's culture; and an unlikely savior in the form of punk rock music.

I loved watching the gradual, passionate, changes Troy makes over the course of this story.  HIs newly discovered confidence and skill.  His deep compassion that extends to his new friend & changes how he see his own family.  His self-possession. His truth-telling.  

I don't usually read young adult fiction, but my toddler happened to be strolling that aisle of the library & this book caught my eye.  Another book on the same shelf was about a transgender teen... and I wonder if hip, well-written novels engaging difficult issues for teens is a new trend or just one I've overlooked. In Fat Kid Rules the World Going gracefully manages big issues & a big character, in slender, easy to read, well-paced book.  I'm curious to see what her other books in this genre are like.
Going, K.L. Fat Kid Rules the World. New York: Puffin Books. 2003
 
Eat, Pray, Love 05/15/2009
 
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"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments."Eat, Pray, Love p. 260

You've already heard of this book. It's a hit memoir that women around the country have been devouring for a couple of years. It even has a fansite!

It requires some suspension of disbelief to get into it at first. Following a grueling divorce and all the identity & faith issues tangled up in that, the author takes off for a year in Italy, India, & Indonesia. Sound like your life? Or anyone you know? Me neither. So we accept that and move into her descriptions, dripping with flavor and feeling, the new people in her life, and her reflections and discoveries. Then she does start to sound real, accessible, and relevant.

Her time in each location took a different focus: Italy was about pleasure; India about devotion; Indonesia about balancing the two. These three are significant themes for me too. In recent years I struggle to remember what gives me pleasure or what pleasure is worth. Her stories of Italy keened my own senses to recognize and value pleasure in my life. The question of devotion has risen a few times in this blog, so reading about the effort she exerted to stay put in the ashram in India (& with herself) to practice meditation and all struggle and transformation that wrought challenged me to push myself (a little) more. Balance is where the two extremes cooperate in one life. For me, for a spiritual path to be real and valid it must be possible for a regular person, working a job, living as part of a family.

Elizabeth Gilbert. Eat, Pray, Love. New York: Viking. 2006
 
 
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I read this book for the first time in August 2007 and am rereading it now.  I missed the characters, the irreverent & loving flavor of the book, and the unique perspective into the life & death of Christ.  Plus the narrator, Maeve, is so real - she's passionate, imperfect, engaging, committed, raw, fun, funny...  I want to be (a little bit more) like her.  I"m also enjoying rediscovering the book, picking up on different elements or specific quotes that are standing out for me in a new way.

Here's the review I wrote the first time I read the book:

I've just read Elizabeth Cunningham's The Passion of Mary Magdalen and I recommend it gleefully. In this fun, insightful, challenging, thoughtful, bittersweet & salty novel she reveals Christian and Pagan and Jewish as one whole, shows us the gospels freshly, and stirs our desires. At least, she did for me.

Cunningham navigates the lofty terrain with the grace of one who knows where she is and where she is leading us. Her writing is confident, clear, grounded, and always in motion. There are lots of opportunities to turn away - I confess I nearly put the book down in the first section after finding it to be just a period piece romance novel. But even then the character of Maeve Rhaud (aka Mary Magdalen), in Cunningham's prose, intimates an invitation to something more satisfying. And where she leads, into material long espoused and explained by synods and theologies and Sunday morning sermons, is new and you want to explore it for yourself.
Elizabeth Cunningham. The Passion of Mary Magdalen. Rhinebeck, NY: Monkfish Book Publishing Company. 2006.
 
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