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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
This is a thought-provoking but funny piece of writing. Braestrup uses the death of her husband, her grief, and her new career as a Unitarian-Universalist minister serving as chaplain of the Maine Game Warden Service to illustrate her belief that God is love. Followers of any other religion will probably find ideas with which to argue but the author clearly has such a giving heart that it's impossible to dislike her, even if you don't agree with her. The writing style is challenging - bits of her home life are parsed with bits of her work life to ultimately make a point - and some readers in my book club felt she didn't include enough detail about her kids or new husband but the point of the book is less memoir and more testifying to a nonjudgmental, all-inclusive view of God and religion. She does include graphic details of death but always toward providing the reader with a new experience - preparing a body for cremation, death in the woods, the dangers faced by search and rescue personnel, etc.
This is a little weepy, but a great book. The author is not preachy or woe-is-me, she just tells her story with just enough sentimentality to make you like her, but balances it with a matter-of-fact tone.
Here if You Need Me is not a long book, but you'll come out thinking it was very worth the short time it takes to read it...
Here if You Need Me is not a long book, but you'll come out thinking it was very worth the short time it takes to read it...
As a mother struggling to heal from the grief of the loss of a partner while starting a spiritual direction practice, Kate's story hit very close to home.
What I found most interesting about her journey is how her vocation as a chaplain emerged from her desire to take up her late husband's unfinished dream, despite her own rather agnostic spirituality. Her dedication to bringing a "ministry of presence" to the members of the Maine Warden Service (who do wilderness law enforcement and search and rescue) and the families and friends of those who need rescue is truly moving.
What I found most interesting about her journey is how her vocation as a chaplain emerged from her desire to take up her late husband's unfinished dream, despite her own rather agnostic spirituality. Her dedication to bringing a "ministry of presence" to the members of the Maine Warden Service (who do wilderness law enforcement and search and rescue) and the families and friends of those who need rescue is truly moving.
There are many parts of this book that are simply stunning - thus the five stars. It slows down in places, but the beauty of the story, and her writing, more than makes up for it.
This book made me want to move to Maine and become a game warden so that I could have the author as my chaplain. Seriously, go read it.
A tough book to read, but good writing and the occasional funny line balanced it out even if only a little bit. Interesting to learn of a position, a vocation, so essential to some of our everyday heroes.
I really enjoyed this book. I gave it 3 instead of 4 stars simply because I felt it wrapped up just as it was getting started.