The Nightingale

From Wikipedia:

The Nightingale (2015) is a historical fiction novel by American author Kristin Hannah published by St. Martin's Press. The book tells the story of two sisters in France during World War II and their struggle to survive and resist the German occupation there.

The book was inspired by accounts of a Belgian woman, Andrée de Jongh, who helped downed Allied pilots escape Nazi territory.^[1][2]

The Nightingale entered multiple bestseller lists upon release. As of 2021, it has been published in 45 languages and sold more than 4.5 million copies worldwide.^[3][4]

I know this is the "IT" book of 2015, but I was not grabbed until halfway through the book! I had to force myself to read it. I had some middle of the night awakenings on my camping trip (very cold and had to get up to go to the bathroom each night at 1:30-2:00 causing me to be wide awake until 4am). So I forced myself to read it. 

 I am a sucker for a good World War II story, but this is not my favorite one. I love that it is inspired by a true story. It just was very SLOW and needed some good editing at the beginning of the book!

All that said, I was hooked about halfway through, and I did cry at the end. The French people went through so many horrors, and I admire the Resistance. My husband's uncle was assisted by the Resistance only to be caught and send to a POW camp until the end of the war. The brave French people were his heroes. 

I was surprised that this is on many people's list as the best book they have ever read. I think they need to get out a little more. There are so many more rich, classical books out there! 

This is my third Kristin Hannah book. I read the Great Alone, and that was a slog like this one.  I read The Women, and I loved it. I think that one was because I was close in age, grew up in a Southern California beach town, and lived the Vietnam War as a civilian. That one was one of my favorites of the year. Go figure! 

I would love to see it in film, and I just read this on Wikipedia:

 Filming began on March 29, 2026 in Budapest.^[25] On July 10, 2026, TriStar pushed the film to March 19, 2027.^[26]

It will star real-life sister Dakota and Elle Fanning. So I am all for that!  

Loving Companion Presence

From Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness by Nan C. Merrill

Friday Freewrite Fifteen: Finishing Well

I am 3 days and 1 hour away from finishing the LONG marathon that started in October of last year. I did not know what anyone looked like, other than the pictures (and an old picture of me was taken off the web for the welcome packet and then I was publically made fun of for looking so different from my picture. I didn't know why that was necessary. She pulled a picture from that was from July of 2016, and it was October of 2025. I no longer dye my hair and was 66 rather than 57. But I digress on this Freewrite and digression is not a transgression in the Freewriting world!) from the welcome packet. I was not even scared. I was excited. 

We were welcomed with open arms by M who took us to her wonderful house on the hill overlooking the Mediterranean. It was lovely to stay there for three nights to begin this year long odyssey.

On the training started; I was so impressed with the trainees that this training attracted from all over the world. I was especially impressed with my lovely little, small group that I would supervise from October 2025 to September of 2026. It has been many hours and a big investment, but I think what has come out of it is beautiful friendships and four people who will take what they have internalized into their walks with God and in walking alongside others. It is a WIN-WIN in that respect. I am grateful for these four.

Overall, I am grateful for my involvement with this training school. I first workeed for them in 2023 for 10 months. Then I took another group of them through more independent supervising in 2024. Then i continued to supervise one of those from the 2023 group, and she eventually did the Spiritual Exercises with me and two others (who were in another group). Now, I have another graduate doing the Exercises, and the wife and sister of others who were trained by or work this group. 

So the fruit has been wonderful in terms of relationships with those who have gone through their training. They do attract such amazing people. It was a privilege to get to know them.

With all that said, I am relieved to be done in 3 days and 55 minutes! It was a very long journey, and it was SO MUCH TIME. I was told 5 hours a month. But it is much more than that. I would say at least 10 and probably closer to 20 and really a lot more if you average going overseas for a residency and working from 8:30 am - 9:30 pm for five days (with one day off which was used to write blessings and prepare for the final talk that I gave to the group of 18 trainees). 

So, I am going out with JOY in PEACE. It contained some of my greatest CONSOLATIONS of the last year, but it has also contained some of my greatest DESOLATIONS as I was an outsider in so many respects. It was cross-cultural in the sense that I was trained in a very different way both as a director, supervisor, and trainer. 

But as my dear Ignatian trainer has said, "With every desolation, consolation is right around the corner, Carol." And the verse this morning depicts where I have ended up. Going out with JOY and PEACE today. 

It was all worth it. 

There we go 15 minutes and DONE! 

Suicidal Empathy

I have heard this also termed "Toxic Empathy." This man's mind is amazing. I recommend it. He is rather harsh. So, I recommend reading it with Jamie Winship's book The War of Worldviews to explore the internal things going on in one's heart that causes divide in our society. Both contribute to the conversation. 

The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers

Here is a wonderful summary of this profound book.

I read this book in 2006 and 2016. I guess it is an "every ten years" kind of book! It is so profound and short. I am putting quotes from it before I send the spiritual directors I am training on a day of prayer during the summer between their first and second years. My heart is warmed from this book.

He really unpacks the meaning of Hesychasm - stillness, quiet, silence, rest.

Here is my previous review from 2016 (I don't think I was reviewing books here, but I was just listening the books I read during the year.).

I am cutting and pasting the quotes from the book that I have in that post below.

"In Solitude we become compassionate people, deeply aware of our solidarity in brokenness with all of humanity and ready to reach out to anyone in need."

“Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into this furnace. There he was tempted with the three compulsions of the world: to be relevant ('turn stones into loaves'), to be spectacular ('throw yourself down'), and to be powerful ('I will give you all these kingdoms'). There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity ('You must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone'). Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter - the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers 

“Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions. 'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a businessman or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failure and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same - more work, more money, more friends.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers

"Silence first makes us pilgrims. Secondly silence guards the fire within. Thirdly, silence teaches us how to speak."

"Prayer, when we are faithful to it and practice it at regular times, slowly leads us to an experience of rest and opens us to God's active presence."

“Prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions and where we are totally one. There God's Spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place. There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, with us.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers   

“For many of us prayer means nothing more than speaking with God. And since it usually seems to be a quite one-sided affair, prayer simply means talking to God. This idea is enough to create great frustrations. If I present a problem, I expect a solution; if I formulate a question, I expect an answer; if I ask for guidance, I expect a response. And when it seems, increasingly, that I am talking into the dark, it is not so strange that I soon begin to suspect that my dialogue with God is in fact a monologue. Then I may begin to ask myself: To whom am I really speaking, God or myself?”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers

"By their solitude, silence and unceasing prayer the Desert Fathers show us the way. These disciplines will teach us to stand firm, to speak words of salvation, and to approach the new millennium with hope, courage, and confidence.

"When we have been remodeled into living witnesses of Christ through solitude, silence, and prayer, we will no longer have to worry about whether we are saying the right thing or making the right gestures, because then Christ will make his presence known even when we are not aware of it."

Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy

This was a "God is sovereign" book. I was in the middle of writing a handout about lament, but I had to go to a dinner with friends, and one of the friends was reading this book about lament! It is one of the nicest things on lament I have read. It is a quick read. 

Where the Crawdads Sing

This is a slow-moving story at the beginning, but it picked up about 1/3 of the way through, and I ended up liking it.  

I remember reading a non-fiction book by this author called Secrets of the Savannah in 2019 for my book club and thought it was too flowery. I just wanted the facts of the incredible thing they did on the Savannah. When I found out she had written a novel, it made sense. She was trying to make her non-fiction work like a novel, and I hated it!

But I liked her fiction. It is a coming of age and murder mystery rolled into one. She does bring her science background (her bio said she always wanted to be an author, but she settled for science instead). 

Friday Freewrite Fifteen

Today, I will write on my blog and not my private journal. Combined with the other blog I lost but then I found again, I have been blogging for 22 years in October. There were only 24 posts on that blog (and I cannot remember how I lost it). 

So many memories of blogging. I had this blog, but I also had the blogs that were for Project365 - taking a picture a day for the whole year and posting the picture on the blog so that the other 32 people I did it with could also look at the picture you posted. Now, people would probably do it on Instagram, but there was fun in doing it on a blog because I could write something to go along with the picture. It was photojournalism. It was beauty too. I have asked my directees (especially when I was training to do it with children) many times, "Where did you see beauty in the last week?" Keeping my eyes open to the beauty around me was so enriching for me. I am so glad I did that. I did it for five years starting with 2007. That was the year my mom died. So it was also healthy to document that journey. 

I am deciding whether I will go to the Prayer Watch at 5:30 am. They do not offer much variety in the Watches. It is always a few minutes of introduction by the leader. Then they always break you up into rooms where there is discussion and you pray for yourself after you pray, then we all come back for the final prayer. There used to be so much variety. There isn't much contemplation like there used to be. Often, we would have prayerful meditation as a group in a passage. I don't even get asked to facilitate it anymore because I have said, "No" so many times. 

I feel like I should go just to keep in touch with people, but it isn't like it used to be. I asked about starting up Silent Prayer (or Centering Prayer) again, but they have not gotten back to me. Maybe I didn't get back to them, and maybe i just need to not lead anything because I am leading three and possibly four groups in the fall. Supervision for B, C, D; Direction Training for five, Exercises for four (plus an intern), and possibly a Director Development group with Renovare. I don't know. Maybe that is enough for now. 

With the Director Development, I would like to lead that monthly rather than every other month. I want to go deeper in the books, if that is possible. I will probably still go to the group that I have been in locally for 10 years, but I had told some of my directees that I want to offer that to directors that I am involved with. 

So, I think I have freewrote for fifteen now, and I need to decide about the Prayer Watch. I feel like I have so much to pray about. Maybe I will go to the next one at 8:30. That will work out much better with my schedule. Bye! 

The War of Worldviews: Choosing Connection in a Culture of Separation

Our culture is obsessed with safety and self. We are constantly assessing risks, prioritizing tasks, and categorizing people. We seek out security, efficiency, and comfort and avoid uncertainty, wasted time, and distress. We crave the known, the quantifiable, the safe. We resent people who interrupt us, challenge us, or need something from us.

"Listen, Hear, Obey, Shema!" Those are the last lines of this book. And it sort of sums up the book and how the world can change as a result. It is a God sized vision for the world. 

I am a "micro" person, and Jamie is both a "micro" and "macro" guy. His first book, Living Fearless, is for the individual and is a "micro" book, but it is the foundation for living a "macro" life out in the big world. 

This book is looking into this on a "macro" level in the world, but don't let it scare you. Jamie is brilliant, and I encourage you to read it. Some things may be over your head, but the stories are so engaging, even for a "micro" person!

Here is an interview with Jamie about the book: