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Showing posts from July, 2017

Snapshots: My Glory Was I Had Such Friends and Blue Whale

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New from Harper-Collins (1)  My Glory Was I Had Such Friends  is a memoir, the story of a lawyer who needs a heart transplant at the tender, life-affirming age of 25. We tune in at 50 when she needs another. The first donor heart is failing quickly, symptoms painfully communicating that she is in trouble. Amy Silverstein's My Glory I Had Such Friends -- glorious The disease turns unbearable, and she has endured a great deal. This is an emotionally strong woman, but we all have our limits. Pain medication can kill her, slow her heart to a stop. She is going it alone, white knuckling pain. Not easy reading. But it is chick lit, and we love any book with the word "friends" in the title. And Amy has friends, many of them, amazing women who will leave their daily lives to travel across the country, tend to her when she needs them the most. How in the world does this happen? How are some people so blessed, or so lucky? Once I asked a man why he married his wife. He told me tha

The Art of Fear

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A friend of mine was telling me over a piece of Torah (This could be anything learned from the Jewish holy books, from the most complex argument, to a simple story.) He added that on the day he learned it, he also came across the same lesson from a different source. And then it happened again, the very next day, same lesson, while reading something secular.   Cool, right?  We both said it at the same time. But a part of me thought, Or   random . What my friend is referring to is  Torat Emet , a sign, repeated pointers, to the truth of the lesson. The emet . It is a spiritual thing that manifests in the real world. Knowing this, while reading Kristen Ulmer 's book, The Art of Fear  I had a similar experience. Otherwise it would be easy to dismiss this bio-self-help book, like my professional self insisted. Because Ms Ulmer isn't a mental health professional, and she cites no research or empirical validation of her methods. The Art of Fear  is about the lessons she has learned fr