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Summary
Summary
A noted spiritual writer seeks answers to life's big questions in the stories of the saints
In "All Saints"---published in 1997 and already a classic of its kind---Robert Ellsberg told the stories of 365 holy people with great vividness and eloquence. In "The Saints' Guide to Happiness," Ellsberg looks to the saints to answer the questions: What is happiness, and how might we find it?
Countless books answer these questions in terms of personal growth, career success, physical fitness, and the like. "The Saints' Guide to Happiness" proposes instead that happiness consists in a grasp of the deepest dimension of our humanity, which characterizes holy people past and present. The book offers a series of "lessons" in the life of the spirit: the struggle to feel alive in a frenzied society; the search for meaningful work, real friendship, and enduring love; the encounter with suffering and death; and the yearning to grasp the ultimate significance of our lives. In these "lessons," our guides are the saints: historical figures like Augustine, Francis of Assisi, and Teresa of Avila, and moderns such as Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, and Henri J. Nouwen. In the course of the book the figures familiar from stained-glass windows come to seem exemplars, not just of holy piety but of "life in abundance," the quality in which happiness and holiness converge.
Author Notes
Robert Ellsberg, a native of Los Angeles, became a Catholic in 1980 while a member of the Catholic Worker house in downtown Manhattan. He now serves as editor in chief of Orbis Books. Married with three children, he lives in Ossining, New York
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
It takes a gifted writer to engage readers in a book of insights from men and women commonly understood to have spent their lives so close to God that they were unusual in almost every way. In this eloquent, seamlessly woven and delightfully readable book, Catholic convert Ellsberg, editor-in-chief of Orbis Books, makes the spiritual struggles and triumphs of sanctified men and women accessible and relevant to believers who grapple with the tension between the desire for earthly pleasure and the call to leave all behind and follow Jesus Christ. Giving this series of life lessons a vivid immediacy is the fact that Ellsberg ranges far and wide in his choice of saintly examples, including some non-Catholics and many modern icons of holiness. In the chapter on learning to suffer, for instance, 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich and 20th-century Catholic writer Henri Nouwen fittingly illustrate Ellsberg's point that affliction can become an instrument of grace and transfiguration. What unites all the saints, he argues, is their ability and decision to see God's hand at work in the whole composition of their lives. Interwoven with moments of gentle homage to his mentor, Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, this volume suggests to Catholics and other Christian readers the possibility that happiness can come by using the lens of holiness to illumine their lives, both remarkable and ordinary. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Saints are experts on holiness, but what do they know about happiness? The answer, Ellsberg says, depends on what we mean by happiness and on our understanding of holiness. Saints aren't all that different. They wonder about the meaning and purpose of life, and they feel disappointment and sadness. Some of the saints he discusses are reasonably remote (Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Teresa of Avila), others quite modern (Thomas Merton, Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin). They all share finely developed senses of humanity and compassion, with which they remain ordinary in the best, most expansive sense of ordinariness. They model ideal behavior, setting standards to which we all can aspire. Ellsberg explores happiness through the lives and writings of these remarkable men and women, showing how relevant their stories are today but offering no guidance in the conventional sense. He insists that there is no way to happiness. Rather, there is a way of happiness. --June Sawyers Copyright 2003 Booklist
Library Journal Review
What is happiness? Is it a feeling of contentment, that all is right with the world and that we will live happily ever after? To society in general, probably so. But as Ellsberg shows, most saints would espouse vastly different definitions of true happiness. This book does not provide "ten steps to a life of pure bliss." Ellsberg, who has a doctorate from Harvard Divinity School and is editor in chief of Orbis Books, instead explores subjects such as suffering, pain, disappointment, love, and surviving in our increasingly turbulent world by drawing on experiences of people who lived truly Christlike lives. Some are officially recognized as saints (Augustine, Teresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi), while others are more recent figures such as Mother Teresa, Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day-particularly admired by Ellsberg, who knew her personally at the Catholic Worker. Each saint had a unique outlook about the purpose of life, and their paths provide useful and timely counsel to ordinary people, many of whom may actually be saints unaware. Ellsberg (All Saints) supplies a great deal of food for thought. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-Mary Prokop, Savannah Country Day Sch., GA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. ix |
| 1. Learning to be Alive | p. 3 |
| 2. Learning to Let Go | p. 21 |
| 3. Learning to Work | p. 37 |
| 4. Learning to Sit Still | p. 59 |
| 5. Learning to Love | p. 79 |
| 6. Learning to Suffer | p. 103 |
| 7. Learning to Die | p. 137 |
| 8. Learning to See | p. 169 |
| Conclusion | p. 189 |
| Notes | p. 199 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 213 |
| Index | p. 215 |