July 2006 Books
In Sweet Company; The 100-Mile Walk: Warning Love is Not a Game
In Sweet Company
Conversations with Extraordinary Women about Living a Spiritual Life
“It was three days after I met with her that I realized Grandmother Twylah Hurd Nitsch is a small woman.”
That single comment following the author's interview with a Native American wise woman encapsulates the magnitude of presence shared by the fourteen women interviewed in this amazing book.
From beginning to end,
Wolff treats us to a profound spiritual odyssey into the hearts and minds of some of the most influential women of our time. We become privy to intimate conversations in which these women consider how their spiritual life has nourished them and served “as a dependable compass for their decision making.”In the opening interview, we are riveted by Wolff's conversation with activist nun Sister Helen Prejean, who has made it her mission to bring whatever solace she can to death row inmates and their families. This woman has walked with convicted murderer Patrick Sonnier and four other death row inmates to meet their state-decreed demise. What courage! To step up and be of comfort to men society has thrown away, deemed unworthy to live—what deep well of spiritual strength can she be tapping into?
Gestalt psychotherapist Miriam Polster expresses her thoughts on every woman's need to find the heroic within herself, and on how women satisfy that need in ways quite different from those chosen by men. Asked if she doesn't agree that women often minimize their wisdom or abilities to keep the peace, she shares a short poem called ‘Sleeping Beauty' she once wrote on that very subject. “It goes like this: Quick! He's coming! I have to lie down And pretend I've been sleeping All These Years.” Ain't it the truth!
Reverend Lauren Artress, who became a priest and accepted a position as Canon Pastor at Grace Cathedral, reflects on her own story of finding God and how a “personal experience” is required to make God meaningful to us.
Actress Olympia Dukakis—the intrepid wife in Moonstruck, the devoted friend Clarey in Steel Magnolias, the clear-sighted landlord of indeterminate gender in Tales of the City —dives with gusto into the subject of the many contradictions most of us experience in our daily lives. Contradictions between what we think we believe and the way we actually live, between the way we'd like to be and the way we find we have to behave to make it in a competitive world, between what is really going on inside women and what we feel safe to express.
Other interviews include conversations with Riane Eisler (author of The Chalice and the Blade ), Alma Flor Ada (author of over 100 children's books), author and international ambassador Le Ly Hayslip, Zainab Salbi (founder of Women for Women International), Katherine Dunham (dancer, choreographer, anthropologist and humanitarian), international management consultant Margaret J. Wheatley, Rabbi Laura Geller (senior rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills), Gail Williamson (mother of eight, including a Down syndrome child, and executive director of the Down Syndrome Assn. of Los Angeles), and Sri Daya Mata (president of Self-Realization Fellowship).
If the list is impressive, the conversations are even more so. This is a book from which both men and women have much to gain.
—Chiwah
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The 100-Mile Walk
A Father and Son on a Quest to
Find the Essence of Leadership
What is leadership? It's not a new question. Lots of books have been written on this topic. But I don't know of any others written by a father-and-son partnership in which the father is a 65-year-old traditional CEO and the son a 36-year-old entrepreneur and student of Zen.
This combination has given rise to an insightful compendium of ideas tested against the values of East and West.
Father and son didn't just sit down and hash this out over dinner, either. As the title suggests, they walked together. Over mountains, on beaches, on city streets and country roads they walked, over a six-month period. Along the way they learned about each other as they shared their ideas about what constitutes leadership.
With a foreword by John Glenn, The 100-Mile Walk is readable and thought provoking.
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Warning: Love Is Not A Game(But You Should Know the Odds)
If you're looking for a lasting romantic relationship, you wouldn't expect to gamble… would you? What if all you want is good sex! In either case, perhaps a roll of the dice couldn't hurt. Especially if they're the dice that go with this book.
You don't just roll these “love dice” and pray. In fact, they're actually just a clever metaphor the author intends as insurance against gambling in love.
With the help of an in-depth questionnaire created by Hurlburt's mentor, Dr. Harold Bessell, you determine your score and your partner's (you guessed it: on a scale of 1 to 6) with respect to two parameters: attraction (“chemistry”) and maturity.
How good a match are you? Both sixes? You could live together happily ever after. Some fours in the mix? Maybe not hopeless, but you've got work to do. Your partner's immature? Don't give up; people sometimes grow up. But if your chemistry rolls below a five, you should probably just settle for being friends.
The book is a bit of a cross between diagnostic tool and survival manual (with some interesting ideas about how to stay alive and juicy while you're waiting for Mr. or Miss Right to appear), illustrated via a plethora of case studies. I found the questionnaire particularly insightful.
—Chiwah
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