The Beatitudes in Modern Life:
Smith, Karen Sue
The Beatitudes in Modern Life. Edited by Margaret Garvey. Thomas More, $8.95, paper, 183 pp.
As a genre, devotional literature is beset with problems. It is difficult (thank God) for writers to...
...Rachelle Lin-ner tells the inspiring story of the Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb, but leaves the reader wondering whether "hungering and thirsting for justice" is to be equated with their particular political/moral position: absolutely no nuclear weapons...
...Thomas Cornell's efforts to end the Vietnam War were remarkable and far reaching, but draft card burning and Cornell's brand of pacifism will not be every reader's idea of peacemaking...
...Patrick Jordan, with sensitivity and wisdom, unfolds story after story of mercies offered to and by the dying...
...Sheila Cassidy, through her experiences of physical torture and the pain of deep doubt, struggles here to express what "blessedness" might mean...
...Even so, these stories are specific, powerful applications of the Beatitudes that undergird the book's basic contention that the retarded, the poor, the hungry, the sick, the persecuted, and the imperiled have something vital to teach all Christians...
...K.s.s..s.s...
...Most moving and convincing are the essays on the sorrowful and the merciful...
...It is difficult (thank God) for writers to establish spiritual authority, to convince a reader that they know what they are writing about...
...Although this slim volume suffers from several of these problems, five of the essays make it a book worth buying, reading, and thinking about...
...Devotional books can slip easily into the abstract, other-worldly, sentimental, judgmental, or overly prescriptive...
...they can float on slogans and quotations, false piety, false prophets, and unargued assumptions...
...Take Juli Loesch [Wiley's] model for"the persecuted": anti-abortion protester Joan Andrews, whose absolute refusal to cooperate with the criminal justice system landed her a five-year jail term, mostly in solitary confinement...
...His essay, which merits rereading, demonstrates how suffering can be redemptive...
...Readers may not always agree with the positions espoused or the personal examples described here, for many are extreme...
...One may question whether such a witness is commendable, yet it is difficult to imagine Andrews as a dangerous criminal or her sentence as just...
Vol. 116 • September 1989 • No. 16
