Unlike lengthy tomes along of the lines of Leo Tolstoy, Maine chaplain and writer Kate Braestrup does not require every ounce of your undivided concentration over the span of weeks. In fact, I was more than delighted to be able to complete her compact little memoir “Here If You Need Me,” copyright 2007, Little, Brown & Company, over a single day.
I wouldn’t recommend doing such a quick read-through however, unless you find yourself in the same distressing shoes this year as myself. Braestrup can and should be savored not hastily swallowed. Unfortunately, this book is only the second of any kind my every-which way but organized calendar has allowed me to complete. You'd never know that I used to be a woman who belonged to not only one but two montly reading groups.
Two books a year is a poor showing by any standard in the literary universe. I was able to complete Joan Didion’s National Book Award Winner “The Year of Magical Thinking”, copyright 2003, back in the spring when I took it along to read on the airplane during the hours of enforced confinement a tourist must endure when flying across the Atlantic. I’m fortunate that the extra effort to read both books proved well worth the time required.
FAVORITE QUOTE:
“IF ANYONE needs proof that God has a sense of humor, here it is: I am a middle-aged mother of four who works primarily with young, very fit men … And I, a famously loquacious person, have a job that requires me mostly to just show up, shut up, and be.”
-from "Here If You Need Me"
by Kate Braestrup.
Thankfully, “Here if You Need Me” is winner from the get-go. It is an easily read, highly authentic account of how the author became a chaplain for the Maine Warden Service. The book as well is a warm, honest, thoughtful, and comfortable 211 page stroll underneath a canopy of trees with someone whose clear and compassionate voice eventually becomes as dear and recognizable as an old friends.
Braestrup was the wife and married mother of four young children who found herself filling out an application to enter the seminary after the unexpected death of her first husband, a brave, kind and dedicated Maine State Trooper with a most special dream, when his patrol vehicle was broadsided by a heavy truck.
According to the couple's plans, her husband would eventually pursue a second career as a Unitarian Universal minister upon retirement from the State Patrol. But following a detour created by his sudden passing, Braestrup discovered that picking up the piece of his dream enabled both herself and the children to mend and patch-up the savagely torn fabric of their lives.
She shares with eloquence and frankness what challenges that follow soon after the news one’s life partner is no longer present in the body, and the journey she has made since to build a new life and future, while attempting at the beginning of her grief to be as fully present as she was able during the examination and healing that must often take place when working through the crooks and crannies of the past.
Whether dealing with life or death, Braestrup the writer conveys how the chaplain’s inquiring mind and active, still evolving exploration of faith has been readied or not to take her through this transformation while illustrating related impacts it has had upon the multiple roles she assumes each day as a: mother, daughter, daughter-in-law, young widow, neighbor, co-worker and friend.
The author is a person with whom it takes no trouble to imagine how she can find a comfortable interval with a perfect stranger and share a glimpse of a universe where it is understood that God’s understanding, love, acceptance and connection quietly wait to be invited into the space between them.
No comments:
Post a Comment