I can't believe I didn't enter a posting on this book when I first read it back in May or June of this year, unless I knew that I'd probably be reading it again and again. I'm presently on my third reading of it, this time chapter by chapter because our study group is using it as our focus for this year.
Karen Armstrong is one of my favorite spiritual writers, and this one is a handbook, if you like, to leading a compassionate life. I've felt for some time that, even as my views on faith and religion have changed so much over the past five years or so, I could be doing more - more to help others, more to express in a positive way those changes in my perspective, more to help myself along this life journey. This book is built around the Golden Rule, and the twelve steps are presented first as a treatise on compassion itself and how it is built into the major religions of the world, but then she moves on to finding compassion within your own world, within yourself, then moving out to others.
Reading this enabled me to finally be able to communicate with Brooke as the mother of our grandchild to present as clearly as I could how David needed some compassion in this trauma he's experienced for the past 16 months. I don't know what influence it had, but it doesn't matter - there were finally some more positive movements. I felt infinitely better for having done it, too.
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