Love & Death: My Journey Through The Valley Of The Shadow (2008) - Plot & Excerpts
Forrest Church is a well-known Unitarian Universalist minister who recently lost his battle with cancer. This book is about his thoughts on love and death (what else is there), facing his own death and what is the meaning of life. As a UU, I'm sympathetic to his worldview and enjoyed his writing and philosophy. The problem is that much of the material is from sermons....and no matter how you fix them up....they're sermons. "Love and death are allies. When a loved one dies, the greater the pain, the greater the love's proof. Such grief is a sacrament. Sacraments bring us together. The measure of our grief testifies to the power of our love." (p10)"The opposite of love is fear." (p14)"Just where you think that the grass would surely be green, it may be dying. I am no longer startled by this. What startles me still, though it no longer should, is precisely the opposite. Often, just where you'd think that the grass would be dying, it is green." (p39)"We do what we can, want what we have, and embrace who we are." (p41)"For me, religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die." (p51)"We cannot embrace our life fully until we find a way to accept our death." (p91)"Don't throw yourself against the wall. Walk around it. You can't do the impossible, but so much is possible. So many of the things you haven't tried you still can do." (p96)"Until life ends, no destination is final. In fact, the best decisions are those we look back upon as new beginnings. Good journeys always continue. So don't be driven by desire (that empty place within you), never to rest until you reach your goal. Invest your joy in the journey." (p97)"Greater than all and yet present in each, no less mysterious than the creation itself, God is not the cause of our undoing but the cosmic ground of our being. I've never needed biblical miracles to confirm my faith. It's not the supernatural, but the super in the natural, that I celebrate. I draw strength and insight from the Bible and embrace Jesus's two great commandments (love to God and love to neighbor) as my own, but following the spirit, not the letter, of the Scriptures, my abiding touchstones are awe and humility." (109-110)"In trying unsuccessfully to be who we aren't, we fail to become who we are." (p111)"Let us awaken to the saving grace of forgiveness; where we can, in a single breath, free ourselves and free another." (p142)
What do You think about Love & Death: My Journey Through The Valley Of The Shadow (2008)?
Reading this book was like receiving an IV of reality infused hope. Read it, you'll see.
—pinque108
Some good quotes in here. Also, good advice for dealing with someone who is dying.
—whitelight
very moving sermons on the title subjects, by a unitarian pastor with idaho ties
—Pooja
Want what you have.Do what you can.Be who you are.
—juicyfruit7272
