No comments about The Life of St. Catherine of Siena.

5 comments about Rolling Thunder Speaks: A Message for Turtle Island (Rolling Thunder Speaks) (Rolling Thunder Speaks).

1. If you wanted a sequeal to Rolling Thunder's first book this is not it. This book represents itself as from Rolling Thunder but it is written by his second wife with the intension to make money from the coat-tails this great man's lessons. It is an interesting text, BUT what does one believe to be true? Stick with the real thing and Rolling Thunder is it. RT died from cancer and Rolling Thunder Speaks was written after his death. Read for entertainment but be aware what you take for truth, DO NOT QUOTE as from RT himself.



2. I'm not sure what the family members are complaining about in the content of the book. I do sense resentment toward a spouse getting a book out. The messages in the book are spiritually overpowering. Rolling Thunder pulls no punches in laying down the facts about how the white man (I am white) is completely destroying the circle of nature and life. He shows the Native connection to it and how tribes need to get back to the old ways, to return to teaching and handing down the culture. This message is clear, concise, and thorough. It left me motivated to help the original inhabitants of this country restore Mother Earth to a condition more pleasing to the Great Spirit. It also spurred me to take action supporting Native Americans in their fight to return to the old ways.



3. Doug Boyd's book was the step forward.
   It is true that Carmen Sun Rising Pope promptly married my grandfather Rolling Thunder in his last and mentally muddled days. He died and Carmen took everything from my family. I don't recommend supporting her.
   I can tell you as his grandson I have not ONE item gained from Rolling Thunder's passing.
   But never mind all of that. Everything returns to earth in the end anyway. The point here is that I am soon releasing a Rolling Thunder book which will contain stories of RT never before read and anecdotes from people all over the United States who knew him personally. No one-sided perspectives here. Just the simple inner journey of a youth trying to piece together the real fact and the real fiction of Rolling Thunder.



4. Why would anyone feel the need to critisize this book? I can't imagine. The style is very simple, and inspiring. Rolling Thunder is portrayed in these pages as warm, human, full of wisdom, and it provided helpful pieces for the path I'm on. While I (in contrast) believe the Bible has much to say on preserving the earth, I was never taught that in Christianity. Now, I'm walking a different, more connected path of oneness with Creator and Creation. Wonderful book!!!



5. This is a great book that shares true insight about who Rolling Thunder was. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has a sincere intrest to learn about real medicine people.

5 comments about Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson.

1. I have never had a book effect me so personally before. I felt as though I was Sister Aimee. I attended L.I.F.E., the school she founded, and knew many of the people referred to. I was too young to have met Sister Aimee, but the book helped me to know the lady I so long have admired and never knew the entire story about. Thank you, Mr. Epstein for this wonderful book.



2. Aimee Semple McPherson was born to a young mother and an old father on an Ontario farm in 1890. Her mother eventually divorced the father becoming a Salvation Army sister.
   Aimee was precocious and charismatic from birth. She loved living on the farm with animals a special joy in her life. Aimee read Darwin in school becoming an agnostic for a brief period in her adolescence. She then met the Irish Pentecostal preacher Robert McPherson whom she married.
   The couple were missionaries in China prior to the death of Robert in a malarial epidemic. The couple had two children Robereta and Rolf. Young widow Amy returned to America. She married a dull man in Harry McPherson who wanted her to stay home. Instead Amie, her mother and at times her children barnstormed across America preaching the gospel message. Amie had an ability as a faith healer. Epstein relates several miraculous cures Amie made of the deaf, blind and crippled.
   Epstein devotes several chapters to Aimee's crusades and healing services. She was financially deprived until she hit the big time in large weeklong services in places like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC and New York.
   Aimee divorced McPherson and in the 1920 established Angelus Temple in Los Angeles. She founded the Foursquare Gospel Church;was a pioneer of religious broadcasting and gave thousands of sermons. Aimee was a skilled performer with many of her sermons being acted out in dramatic/musical presentations. She even wrote a religious opera; an autobiograpy and was one of the most famous women in America,
   In 1926 she disappeared while swimming and was presumed dead. Several weeks later she emerged from the desert claiming she had been kidnapped. A court trial ensued accusing her of fradulence. Though acquitted she was never as popular as she once was. A third marriage to a 300 pounder proved a disastere. Aimee was highstrung, controlling, mesmerizing and completely devoted to her ministry. She knew many of the great folk of her day including Charlie Chaplin who gave her advice on staging at the Temple; Anthony Quinn was a musician in her Temple Band.
   In her later years she was plagued by poor health and bad business decisions. She became estranged from her dominating mother and her daughter Roberta. Her son Rolf is still involved in Foursquare International Ministry.
   Aimee had no racial prejudice and condemned the beliefs of the KKK who had given the Temple financial support. She was a fundamentalist Christian who would go into bars and nightclubs to preach to the people there in a loving manner. Aimee's faith was joyous and she eschewed hell fire and damnation sermons. She had an unlettered though brilliant mind.
   She was sensitive,impetuous, lonely and moody.
   Epstein's biography is positive in its view of Aimee Semple McPherson who used her abilities for God. I found it commendable that she and her Temple fed, clothed and ministered to thousands of Los Angeles residents during the Great Depression. Her patriotic rallies during World War II and sale of War Bonds is to be commended. Aimee died young worn out in body but her soul shines in a life well lived.



3. This book glosses over her scandals. Someone with an investigative bent should really check into this woman's life. She had issues! Fascinating, though.



4. This biography reads almost like fiction because the subject lived an amazing yet strange life. The book is a great example of how God utilizes the imperfect, not the perfect people, to do His will. Aimee Semple McPherson lived an extraordinary life. She had plenty of controversy and failures but she managed to touch thousands and perhaps millions of people. She changed people's lives in dramatic ways. The author did an amazing job because while I think he admired her, he managed to keep an objective perspective throughout the book. Regarding events that are not clearly known, he simply reported the facts, that events occurred and he did not draw conclusions or give his opinion. He simply told the story which was fascinating and did not contaminate it with his opinion.



5. Reading about Aimee Semple McPherson was so insightful! A must read for women who believe women can do! I was surprised to learn that she was the first woman to drive across the United States--when many of the roads were not much more than dirt trails. She was also the first woman to have a radio station. Remarkable!

3 comments about What the Land Already Knows: Winter's Sacred Days (Stories from the Farm in Lucy).

1. By the fact of being close to my own age, I am totally impressed by Phyllis Tickle's creativity in picturing Epiphany moments out of her large family in Lucy, Tenn. My one regret is growing-up in East Tenn. I was not privileged to live nearby to Lucy, close to Memphis. While I identify being a member of the little country village of Hall's Cross Roads in East Tenn, it was very nearly the same sort of community that gave all small farmers a closely-knit, feeling of belonging! My sense from Phyllis' neat chapters on "Noel, Holy Mother, The Joseph Candle, Christmas Eve Gift, Silly Sally's Gift, and Name This Child" all create their closely-knit Family in activity reflecting the Christmas Story!

   Once I got into the chapter on the "Days of Thomas the Doubter" I noted her carefully portrayed choice of gifts for Laura, "one of the older, newly-wed children...just starting a home." By St Thomas Day, "as my mother used to call it, the Day of the Old Doubter Himself"... She struck a familiar chord in my own sense of describing one of our favorite pastoral characters! In fact, my own point in reading and writing about this unique collection of essays is that it becomes a great model for blending family antidotes into Reflections upon Holy-days and Epi-phanies that people our fondest memories of Christmas.

   If I only picture a couple of more impressive spots, they would lie in the chapter, Christmas Eve Gift: "Appalachians conserve everything in order to survive a geography that has no intention of allowing them...or anything else to survive." No pecans are indigenous to Appalachian mountains...just like East Tenn! I was smitten with Ms Tickle's creative pictures of her environment. In particular the family cracking and shelling nuts for nursing stations at Sam's hospital; also the informal relaxed manner of attire when the family sat around the kitchen on the Feast of St Stephen! "We ate and drank and looked for all the world like a Norman Rockwell come to life." Where else could I find a clear reality pictured in beautifully homespun words of real-life?

   I am now a Fan of anything written by Phyllis Tickle, regardless if it is "The Graces We Remember or Wisdom In the Waiting!" Let me just soak it up for my writer's hunger and thirst for reality. Retired Chap. Fred W. Hood




2. In 1976, Publishers Weekly religion editor Phyllis Tickle and her husband Sam decided to abandon city life and move their family back to their rural roots in western Tennessee. What the Land Already Knows is Tickle's account of winters spent on their farm in the small community of Lucy - "about four thousand citizens if, as we used to say in town meetings, one counted the tractors as well as the cows and people."

   This small book is beautifully written, often funny, always touching, and nearly impossible to put down. I devoured it in one sitting, then went back to reread each chapter separately, slowly, savoring the sweetness, the sadness, and Tickle's remarkable insights on family, winter, isolation, and faith.

   Following an unhurried path from Advent through the children's return to school in January, Tickle introduces her family - human and animal. Husband Sam is a doctor and passionate grape vine tender. Their seven children, the oldest married before the family moves to the farm, thrive in a world defined by chores, farm animals, and family traditions. Her mother, whose yearly frenzy of pecan cooking the author first tries to escape, then comes to cherish. Silly Sally, Mary, Saint, and Oscar, the cows whose lives, calvings, and deaths bring humor, blessing, and meat to the family's life.

   By the time you turn the last of the 114 pages, you feel you might recognize Tickle's family on the streets of Lucy, Tennessee, or any other small farm town.

   From her agonizing ambivalence over finding the right gifts for her children to her unabashed pleasure in returning the house to order after the holiday frenzy, Tickle's honesty, always spoken gently, is disarming, beguiling, and sometimes startling.

   Perhaps the finest chapter is a reflection on names. Musing on her children's delight in the naming of farm animals, of which there were scores, she notes that the named and the namer create together the identity of each, ending with this beautiful reflection: "What is New Year's Day for the world at large is also the Feast of the Holy name for the church. . . . [B]efore the day is done, I still walk out by myself to Mary's Hill for a little while and think about what it means to know the name of God and to be yourself called by it."

   Small enough to fit into a stocking, this is a nearly perfect book for reading and rereading during the long, dark nights of winter.




3. Wonderful essays about Advent and Christmas.
   Mrs. Tickle writes beautifully. In other hands these stories could be overly sentimental, but she puts just the right touch to make them touching without being maudlin.
   I re-read it every year to put myself into the real Christmas spirit.

5 comments about Under God.

1. With everything in me, I had to keep from screaming when I read this book. To be so infatuated with "Jesus Freaks" and martyrs, Toby Mac and Michael Tate have deliberately ignored the passages in Romans 13 that specifically tell Christians to not rebel against their governments. They actually suggest at one point that Jesus would have picked up a weapon and joined the fight if he had been here at the time of the revolution. This is the abomination of abominations. Jesus told his disciples to sheath their swords. He would have never condoned a revolution for any reason.....especially for some farmers and merchants who were ticked off that their taxes were too high. Why didn't the disciples declare war against the Roman government? I mean, they were being treated much worse than the American colonists. Maybe it's because they cared about following Jesus and not leading a physical rebellion against Caesar. Your taxes go to Caesar, and your life belongs to Christ. May the Church begin to ponder these issues and study the commands of their Savior because the end is near.
   Toby and Michael, I will be praying that you learn of your blasphemy and repent of the wicked false gospel that you have poured out on so many young people. What a wretched shame that you have deceived them into believing that there are times when we should ignore the commands of the Bible. Start following Jesus!
   
   "Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."
   Matthew 5:9
   
   "Therefore he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves."
   Romans 13:2
   
   "My Kingdom is not of this world. If My Kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting that I might not be delivered up to the Jews."
   John 18:36
   
   "The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as Jesus walked."
   I John 2:6



2. Though fragmentary and sometimes inaccurate, this book contains some wonderful stories about the U.S.'s progress and the powerful Christian faith of individuals. "American Gospel" by John Meachum does a better job overall of showing how the Christian and Deist faiths in the founding fathers shaped the nation's Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and historic events. Sadly, these particular stories in "Under God" are often more legendary than factual, especially in the cases of Franklin and Jefferson. "The Christian History Book of Days" also gives good information on faith's impact in the Revolutionary period and during the U.S. Civil War.
   
   That being said, wow! What inspiring acts of faith the authors mentions! The stories of Ruby Dee and various civil rights leaders clearly contradict Marx's supposition that "religion is the opiate of the people." These people put their belief in Christ's truth in action in amazing ways that still impact us today. The info on the Sand Creek Massacre and on the Tejanos also give excellent background, though it shows little directly about the Christian faith. The details about lynchings sober the reader, and lead him to consider how far our country has come and how far it has to go. An especially poignant example is the story of Wilson's showing of "Birth of a Nation" in the White House. The book's strength is its documentation of the impact of faith in the civil rights struggle, and this is often overlooked by those who mention the historicity of the Christian faith in the U.S.
   
   All in all, the book is not a definitive volume of the impact of the Evangelical faith in American history; I don't think it was meant to be. However, it is an excellent supplement to some of the other books that I mentioned.



3. This is a most enlightening book. It is a series of 60 short readings which will both break your heart and lift your soul. In today's world, the Christian base of America's history has been methodically played down in the desire that the USA not be called "a Christian country". Our roots have been squashed so thoroughly until few citizens even realize the basis upon which this country was actually founded. There is so much untold history here...for instance, I never knew how George Washington was Divinely protected in order for this country to come about. There is a lot about slavery in the book, which, sadly, I admit I knew little about. America is a most wonderful land, even with all its warts and blemishes, and to read its untold history was indeed revealing and heart-warming. To think that two young Christian rock stars wrote it makes it even better! Thanks, Toby and Michael; job well done.



4. This is a great book. We purchased extra copies to give as gifts and were very pleased at the condition of the books and the speed in which they arrived. Thank you.



5. What a great book. The stories are quick, to the point and inspiring. About people both famous and little known, but about people willing to lay it all on the line for God and Country. Real people in real situations. You showed our good side and some of our bad side. I hope to be able to measure up to the good side of some of these folks before I die. Thanks, Toby. You and Michael did a great job with this.

1 comments about A Dynamic God: Living an Unconventional Catholic Faith.

1. The ten remarkable essays of A Dynamic God continue the interior journey Nancy Mairs began in her spiritual memoir, Ordinary Time: Cycles in Marriage, Faith, and Renewal (1993). In that book, Mairs introduced us to her understanding of belief, faith, conversion, and social conscience, maturing within the context of family history (both she and her husband were conventional Protestants) and continuing medical catastrophes. (She has multiple sclerosis; her husband George has had multiple melanomas.) This one-disaster-after-another life, which might have led a less hardy soul to despair, has graced Mairs with both wisdom and a wise uncertainty. "I now know that I now know less about God than I did to being with," she says in A Dynamic God. "I have discarded as many fixed ideas as possible about the God I inherited, and I'm unlearning more every day."
   
   This "deconstructive process"--trading conventional notions of God for radical understandings of the Sacred--is traced in a variety of ways throughour the essays. In "Left at the Altar," about communion and community, she reminds us that the central purpose of the Eucharist is to take God in "in preparation for living God out," and that absent the outreach to others, communion has little significance. In "A Calling," she wonders what her life purpose can be, bound to a wheelchair: "My doing days are done," she says. "Wanting some task carried out, God can do better than look to me." But being has a purpose that far transcends mere doing. We have to help God be God, she says, echoing Etty Hillesum, in An Interrupted Life. I am who God is. God is who I am. It is a theological, moral, and ethical statement of profound significance, and it colors all of Mairs' beliefs and actions.
   
   Many parts of this book will be uncomfortable for conventional Christians. Rejecting belief in a personal salvation gained by taking Christ as a personal savior (she doesn't believe in hell, either, or the virgin birth or the resurrection--literally, at least), she insists that we are not in this world for the purpose of being personally "saved." We are here to be God, to love others as ourselves: "If we take care of one another, we are saved." Her profound faith in a God that is the Whole of It expresses itself in her moral and ethical life: the choice that she and her husband have made to live modestly and simply, their protests against war, their visits to the sick and imprisoned and gifts to the poor--acts of charity described with a refreshing humility. "Believing as I do . . . that our every atom bears God into being, I cannot experience myself as truly apart," she writes. "Between you and me there is no Between."
   
   But while Mairs' doing days may be done, she is still writing, and it is her wry, witty candor and fierce, unflinching honesty that draws me to her work, over and over again. As an agnostic, I find her radical doubt energizing and inspiring. I am moved by the unconventional questions she asks and by her embrace of the best of Catholicism, Buddhism, and Judaism, to seek radical answers for myself. Mobile and more or less able-bodied, I am challenged by her courageous refusal to allow her immobility to define the direction and dimensions of her moral and spiritual growth.
   
   A Dynamic God is rich, risky, and startling. It is a remarkable book. Read it.
   
   --Susan Wittig Albert is the author of Writing From Life: Telling the Soul's Story. This review is also published on the website of the Story Circle Network Book Reviews.

3 comments about Bernadette Speaks: A Life of St. Bernadette Soubirous in Her Own Words.

1. This is book is written in the format of a novel, but with Bernadette's actual words. This was a very satisfying hagiography, because it gave, I feel, a realistic portrait of Bernadette. Often, saints' biographies tend to make the saint out as more angelic than human.The author, for the most part, avoids this annoying habit.There are also many interesting photos, which add to the feeling of the "authenitic" Bernadette.
   In sum, I would definitely reccommend this book for anyone truly interested in the life, words, and spirit of the peasant girl from Lourdes who was graced with the presence of the "the Immaculate Conception".



2. As a biography, this is quite nice -- very detailed, highly readable, lots of photos. A good account of the life of St. Bernadette. From that standpoint I can certainly recommend it. But from the title and the description, I expected it to be comprised entirely of verbatim excerpts from the writings of, and interviews with, St. Bernadette herself, strung together to create a flowing narrative. I was looking for the most complete volume of the visionary's own description of the Lourdes apparitions, and of her subsequent life, in her OWN WORDS. This is anything but that. So apply caution when choosing this book.



3. Very interesting. Many details about Bernadette and the miracles of Lourdes included. Perfect reading for anyone who has been to the Lourdes Shrine or is thinking of making the trip to Lourdes, France. I highly recommend it.

5 comments about Meeting Faith: The Forest Journals of A Black Buddhist Nun.

1. Although Buddhism is one of the major world religions, many of us in the Western world are woefully ignorant of even the basic tenants of this faith. Faith Adiele leads us on an insightful journey into Buddhism, sharing both her personal journey and her understanding of Buddhist discipline. This is a well-written, well organized book that should be of interest to those interested in expanding their religious horizons.



2. Having read Adiele's essay in The Best Women's Travel Writing of 2005, I was disappointed in the structure of her book. The side page commentaries were distracting and sometimes didn't match the page they were on. The book contained a lot of factual journal entries but very little depth of insight or application to her life for the future. I found some flashback memories to 'prior to ordination' not attached to the context of that chapter. Some good writing, some good story telling. The book didn't live up to the section chosen for the book mentioned above. Kay Klinkenborg, Springfield, IL



3. I found the title of this book on a fluke, but checked it out of the library. OMG. After three renewals at the library I had to purchase a copy through Amazon. The author's experience in finding hereself in a free, spiritual way with no set rules is overwhelming. It has very good information on how anyone can look at life and find their way to peace of mind and acceptance of life.



4. As a biracial child of a struggling, single mother in a remote Washington state farming community populated almost entirely by white farmers, their families and their Mexican employees, Faith Adiele became familiar very early in life with race and class differences. In high school, as part of cultural-exchange programs, she visited Mexico and Thailand. In both countries, her experiences fueled her growing outspokenness on issues of race, poverty, and women's rights.
   
   A bright child and a gifted student, Adiele found her way paved way to Harvard but as her university career began was struggling with a ferocious set of personal demons. She discovered quickly that her own biracial background and rural upbringing made her experience of being an African-American utterly unlike that of her black classmates. "My entire identity was in opposition to what was around me," she says of those days. "I didn't have the tools to dissect what was going on in this very segregated community."
   
   Scared, exhausted and unmotivated, she found herself enrolling in a study-abroad program sponsored by the University of Washington, making her second visit to Thailand to develop a sociology project studying Buddhist nuns. Once there, she made an almost spur-of-the-moment decision to undergo ordination herself, but for scholarly rather than religious reasons: she wanted to experience the nuns' lifestyle firsthand. Doing so, she hoped, would allow her to "challenge traditional anthropological methodology and understand the women I was presuming to write about."
   
   Adiele, a Unitarian who had never before meditated, would later write: "Only after ordaining did I discover -- to my horror -- that I'd chosen to reside in an intensive meditation retreat," meaning that she could expect to spend up to 19 hours a day in contemplative activities. Bald and browless -- like many Buddhist nuns, she was required to shave off the trappings of vanity -- she spent two months in a forest temple, learning the intricacies of purposeful, mindful, seemingly simple living. She rose at 3:30 each morning, donned a heavy, full-length white robe, spent long hours in silent sitting and walking meditation sessions, and got by on a single, pre-noon daily meal of rice and vegetables. The adjustment was a huge struggle for Adiele's very young and, as she puts it, very Western mind and body.
   
   Despite the emotionally and physically unsettling process of settling into monastic life, Adiele found that her time in Thailand offered a peculiar kind of respite. In a place that, in those days, had limited exposure to African Americans, she was merely "different," rather than the target of preconceptions based on race. Most importantly, she discovered that spiritual practice, with its conflicts and struggles, means moving toward self-awareness and inner peace. These lessons, she says, strengthened her resolve to work against racism and sexism. "When I read about the Buddhist quest, I realized that it was also the black quest, [or] the women's quest."
   
   "Meeting Faith" chronicles her months in the temple and her attempts, failures, and painfully-achieved successes at living the Buddhist monastic life. The main text, extracted from the journals she kept in Thailand, is a detailed, often emotional narrative of her experiences. A second column, in the margins, includes instructions and admonitions from the temple's head nun, along with excerpts from Adiele's research materials on Asian women, Thai culture, and the role of women in Theravada Buddhism. The resulting story moves between the author's intensely personal voice, the somewhat detached tone of social-science tomes, the head nun's prodding encouragement, the reverent clarity of Buddhist texts, and the concrete details drawn from other sources. Adiele says the technique allows readers to follow and feel her ordination experience in a far-off, unfamiliar place, and to be "disoriented and overwhelmed" -- just as she was.
   
   "Meeting Faith" is a funny, bittersweet, observant memoir by Adiele, today an English professor at the University of Pittsburgh, that offers a warm and witty accounting of an unusual woman's spiritual journey and search for identity between the vastly different cultures of East and West. I recommend "Meeting Faith" to anyone interested in learning more about Buddhism, its monastic institutions, the role of women in that great tradition or about Thai culture and lifestyles. This was a wonderful, "delicious" read, and a difficult book to put down; I very much look forward to reading anything that Faith Adiele may choose to write in the future.



5. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about this book. I am still reading it, but I look forward to reading a little more every day. It's a very interesting look into a lifestyle most people probably don't ordinarily get to learn about. The story of Faith's time as a Buddhist nun (particularly as a western woman engaging in this practice) is intriguing to say the least, but also the other details about Thailand in general and the social status of women at the time (especially women who become nuns) are fascinating as well. I recommend this book if you're interested in: spirituality, travel/Thailand, and/or women's issues.

3 comments about 100 Christian Women Who Changed the 20th Century.

1. One of the few books that I read that gave me an incredible feeling at the end. You know, when you finish the book, close it, and sit still for about 30 minutes in a world of wonder. I never knew that women invented so many important tools that play a major role in our lives. I especially enjoyed reading about Mother Teresa whom I came to know as a totally incredible person. Her good deeds, kindness, and wisdom are great examples to follow and live by. Thank-you Helen Kooiman Hosier for a wonderful and inspirational book. My only regret was that I bought this book at a nearby bookstore and paid almost twice as much as I would have compared to Amazon.com.



2. This collection of brief biographies of 100 women from different walks of life, living in different places, periods and cultures, who each served God in her own unique way is incredibly inspiring and motivational. My 8 year old daughter, who insisted that I read parts of this book to her, actually said this was a "cool" book. My only disappointment is that Oprah Winfrey, who is one of the most high profile God loving women in recent times, was not included.



3. Helen Kooiman Hosier gave me the beautiful gift of enabling me to get to know and understand the hearts and genius of 100 Christian heroines
   
   Every person on the planet over 12 would benefit from reading this book. Imagine learning the stories of women whose names you have heard, but don't know where they came from, how they got to make a difference in our world, and why they made the choices they made.
   
   I was amazed at the deep faith of women heroines I never knew were Christians.
   
   Here is one example of a name that I have heard all my life: Florence Nightengale. One patient in a hospital said this of Florence Nightengale's impact on him as she made her nightly rounds with her lamp to light her way: "What a comfort it was to see her pass even. She would speak to one, and nod and smile to as many more; but she could not do it all, you know. We lay there by hundreds; but, we could kiss her shadow as it fell and lay our heads on the pillow again content."

1 comments about The Confessions of Saint Augustine.

1. Garry Wills' translation of Saint Augustine's "Confessions" brings this work to life. Wills has rendered Augustine's Latin into beautifully flowing contemporary English. It is commendable that he was able to do this while preserving the personal character of this saint's life story and demonstrating the complexity and depth of Augustine's thought.
   
   While reading this book, I often felt amazed that this work, despite being written so long ago, appears to be so contemporary. Augustine's life and ideas really transcend time and are insightful reflections on the basic human condition. If you would like to read a good translation of the "Confessions" written in contemporary English, I highly recommend this edition to you.