Joan Chittister

Wow!

That's what I said when I first picked up this book. Wow! is what I said after almost every chapter, and Wow! is what I'm still saying as I try to bring my senses back to earth after wallowing in this book for almost a week. This work, a meditation on the famous words of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, "To everything there is a season..." is also a series of reflections on the art of John August Swanson's incredibly sumptuous serigraph Ecclesiastes which provides the cover art and illustrations for show more each chapter.

Chittister begins with reflections on the Seasons of Life and the Dimensions of Time and studies each element of the zodiac in the center of the picture and on the cover off the book. I seldom quote from books when I do reviews, but Joan Chittister had me gasping with some of her insights:

Speaking of the scriptural verses she says: "...I saw...Swanson's painting...and suddenly, in the struggle to understand the print, everything came together. The words took on a timbre I had not heard before; the ideas sprang to meaning in a new way, a new form.The painting with all its complexity made it very clear....Life is the citadel of time in which we find ourselves and which we ourselves build...." pg. 1.

She goes on to examine each element of the picture matched to its appropriate "a time to...."
One of my favorites is "A Time for Peace". The picture shows a young person standing in front of lambs lying down with a huge lion, with figures above sharing a meal of bread and probably wine, stars, sunbursts, a figure of what is obviously a dove meant to portray the Holy spirit, peacocks, birds, all in drenching colors. Chittister begins by quoting Kazantzakis "I fear nothing. I hope for nothing. I am free." then she posits that "...we are too enslaved to ourselves to be at peace."(pg. 107).
She talks about how noisy the world is today, blocking out our ability to be quiet, to listen, to THINK.

She says "..Quiet has become a phantom memory in this culture. Some generations among us have had no experience of it at all....In New York City, in Small Town USA, (noice pollution) is blaring every hour of the day....Muzak in elevators, ...people standing next to you on cellphones, ...the ubiquitous television spewing talk devoid of thought... we don't think anymore. We simply listen."

She discusses how we are afraid of silence, how different societies in the past dealt with thinking and silence. She quotes the desert monastics, and ends this section by saying that "Peace will come when we stretch our minds to listen to the noise within us that needs quieting and the wisdom from outside...that needs to be learned." (pg.109).

Each section is just as deep and thought provoking. Each provides enough food for the soul to last an entire season of seasons. The final chapter, "A Time for Every Purpose under Heaven" shows dancers, musicians, a panoply of colors and banners and joy. She uses this to recap everything and ties it together:

"No doubt about it, the cycle of time shapes and reshapes our misshapen selves until we have the opportunity to become what we can."

"There is a time to kill whatever it is within us that fetters our souls from flying free...
There is a time...
...to sow the seeds that will be reaped by the next generation...
...to weep tears of pain and ...loss to dignify the going of those...people in life who have brought us to where we are...
...to embrace the goods of our life with great, thumping hugs....
...to reap, to work without stint...so that what must be done in life can be done...
...to love...to find ourselves in someone else so that we can find ourselves at all.
...to lose...to let go of whatever has become our captor...
...to be born fresh and full...to begin again...
...to laugh, to let go of the propriety and ...pomposities
...to die, to put things to an end...
...to heal ourselves from the hurts that weigh us down...
...to build up, to construct the new world.... (pp.113-118)

This book is not readily available in libraries or used book stores. I don't think too many people will want to part with it. I gave my original copy to my son and his wife for a first anniversary present (paper gifts!!), and had to get another one online. It's that good. It's every adjective you can think of and then some. The words are almost poetry. The artwork is breathtaking.

All I can say is Wow! show less

I found this book very hard going -- not gracefully written, too general to make its points effectively. And some of it is just plain hogwash ("Each of the great spiritual traditions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- has multiple variations of one basic message. They spring from the same kind of spiritual impulse and seek the same kinds of spiritual things." p. 167). The best thing about the book is the stories from the traditions (not the scriptures, notice) of the show more religions that illustrate themes that interest her. I noticed all the Islmaic stories the author offers are Sufi, which hardly represents mainline Islam. Also, all the stories in the Christian tradition are from the Desert Fathers. She really doesn't give any knowledgable definition or understanding of the world religions -- in the Hinduism summation at the end, she doesn't include a single date. She seems to be looking for feel good answers to universal questions, but that isn't really what any of the world religions are primarily about. show less

I find it odd that there are no reviews for this very wonderful book. In the introduction, Joan Chittister states that "This is a book for those who are on the brink of 'old age', for those who have just received their first mail message from the Association of Retired People, and knowing themselves to be young and healthy, are very surprised by it." But she also goes on to say that she writes for those who might be concerned about their parents; or those who are "facing the time of life for show more which there is no career plan." I knew I would love this book the moment I read the line, "The thing most wrong about this book could well be that I may be too young to write it. I am, after all, only seventy. So in the interest of full disclosure, I reserve the right to revise this edition when I am ninety."

If you know me at all, you know I love working with the elderly. I consider myself somewhat of an 'expert.' Saying that, let me say this. I LEARNED from this book. I have turned down nearly half of the pages of this library book (gasp!!) and I am going to have to purchase my own copy. It is so good that I will be referring back to it as I develop training and need points to consider and quotes to include. Chittister has done an excellent job (in my opinion) of breaking down the most important concerns and tasks we face in aging and how we cope (or don't) with them. Chapters include themes like Regret, Meaning, Fear, Ageism, Adjustment, Tale-Telling, Letting Go, Spirituality, Faith, Legacy, etc. and she begins each with a poignant quote. She ends each chapter by summarizing a burden of the years and a blessing of the years related to the chapter / theme.

My current boss recommended this book to me months ago at a training when she was reading a "book on aging written by a former nun." When she mentioned it again in my interview, I knew I'd better go get it from the library immediately. Boy, am I glad I did! It was well worth it and I see the reason she was encouraging me to read it now! Hey you!!! READ this one!! :)

5 stars show less

The world glorifies youth and degrades old age. The Gift of Years flies in the face of this conventional wisdom. It is a wonderful celebration of the blessings of growing older, clear-eyed and unsentimental about the reality of the ageing process but showing us that our later years are gift, not burden.