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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
This is a beautiful and compelling story of loss, life, and God, told with humor, grace, and simplicity. I smiled the whole way through and closed the book with a full heart.
A highly recommended memoir.
A highly recommended memoir.
Read for Intro to Pastoral Care at Yale Divinity School, Spring semester 2018. I had previously hear Braestrup's story about cleaning her husband's body on The Moth Radio Hour podcast. The book provided a good glimpse into her experience as a law enforcement chaplain. I enjoyed the funny anecdotes about her kids, some of them made me laugh out loud. I wish she would have dove a little deeper into the theology or her Unitarian Universalist beliefs, but I understand that's probably not what the general public wants to read.
As I dispatcher, I often wonder at how LE chaplains deal with comforting families in such horrific circumstances. I stumbled upon this book and appreciate the insight it gave into this profession. This is a pretty simple, easy read, and I found the author's treatment of nature, religion, and life to be enjoyable.
Lovely, heartwarming and heartrending. This memoir of a Maine game warden chaplain read like a novel, with rich characters and scenes.
I hadn’t intended on bringing this book on vacation- I’d already chosen and packed others. But the night before leaving I picked it up from the pile of books to be left behind and then I was hooked. (It went with me on vacation.) The story of a woman you became a minister (Unitarian), chaplain to Maine’s game wardens, after she is widowed. She tells personal stories about folks lost in the woods and the aftermath- happy when they are found, sad when only bodies are recovered. Book shows how she deals with loss and bereavement, her own and others, and how an appreciation of the natural world suffuses her experiences. She offers herself as “glad company for the journey”. Her conception of God is soft-focused and she describes hers as a “ministry of presence” for the wardens and those she comes in contact with when someone is lost. I liked this book a lot. It is not smarmy or goody-goody. It would be good with someone dealing with questions about “why bad things happen to good people?” and are not satisfied with “that it is all part of God’s plan”. Highly recommended.
well worth the read, a unique perspective on service to others and how moments of grace can be witnessed with your next door neighbor, someone you've never met, and anyone in between.
Braestrup is a UU minister. This book is great from a spiritual viewpoint and for her stories of parenting her kids. It made me laugh, it made me sigh, it made me sad. That's a good book!
I honestly did not want this book to end. I think that is because each story put me in contact with love. The book is packed with love. There is intense sorrow and joy and lots of humor. Braestrup writes descriptions that seem to bring me right into the scenes with many surprising bit that are exactly how things really are, but are just not expected to be seen in writing. She has experienced a lot that is so interesting and meaningful. She writes these stories so incredibly well. She puts things together making a whole of all the parts. She seems to have a habit of looking for the love in situations and she shares that in this book in such a wonderfully readable and understandable way. I'll read this one again for sure.
This book was a quick read and just what I needed. This book reminded me of my work as a doula, how most of it was just being there while my clients' worlds changed completely.
A bit that I loved:
As I read about Braestrup embracing and physically bracing people in joy or grief depending on the news she had to deliver, I think of the time a laboring mother put her arms around my neck and used my body to support her weight through a contraction. We danced there together, shifting our weight from foot to foot, and I felt blessed to dance with her on the hinge of her life.
Now I need to write a thank-you note to the friend who handed this book directly to me at the church Book Sale instead of putting it in the "Memoirs" section to sell.
The only complaint I have with this book is the three typos I found in the last chapter, which made for a clunky ending to an otherwise exquisite book.
One more line that I love, which refers to a detective and breastfeeding mother who solved a homicide:
Indeed.
A bit that I loved:
"I am a transitional love object, an objet d'amour...what a strange privilege to be so used.
The lieutenant will muse, as we drive south together, 'It's like standing right on the hinge of someone's life. You know? Right there on the hinge, while the whole world swings around, and that widow, or that mother or dad's life is suddenly completely different, permanently different.'" (p 96-97)
As I read about Braestrup embracing and physically bracing people in joy or grief depending on the news she had to deliver, I think of the time a laboring mother put her arms around my neck and used my body to support her weight through a contraction. We danced there together, shifting our weight from foot to foot, and I felt blessed to dance with her on the hinge of her life.
Now I need to write a thank-you note to the friend who handed this book directly to me at the church Book Sale instead of putting it in the "Memoirs" section to sell.
The only complaint I have with this book is the three typos I found in the last chapter, which made for a clunky ending to an otherwise exquisite book.
One more line that I love, which refers to a detective and breastfeeding mother who solved a homicide:
"If we were a sensible culture, little girls would play with Anna Love action figures, badge in one hand, breast pump in the other."(p 177)
Indeed.