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Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-57131-283-9
Pages: 320
Publish Date: Dec, 2006
Genre: Nonfiction
The Love of Impermanent Things
A Threshold Ecology
BY Mary Rose O'Reilley
“How does one follow a logic of images? I invite you not to work but to rest. Stare and ponder. What you find out, I hope, will not be the story of my life, but of your own.”—From The Love of Impermanent Things
"Read this book and you will see shards of your own life come into focus through O’Reilley’s observations and confessions. She will help you see your own spirituality as a creative force that melds contemplation, action, prophetic outrage, and intuitive energy."—Spirituality & Practice
At midlife, Mary Rose O’Reilley writes, we are called to an “archaeology of memory”—turning over a potsherd here, a fragment there—to assemble something whole out of the messiness of experience. O’Reilley’s purpose is to find the vocabulary for a different kind of story, in which the narrative of daily life opens to admit the holy and its corollary, the comic. She wants to continue the dialogue between grace and failure that kept Martin Luther pondering in the outhouse. To encourage all of us to contemplate our own deep story, she calls hers a demo-life, in which the facts of personal history ground a narrative of consciousness and perception. Whether working with injured animals, gardening, throwing pots, or walking through the doors of a church in a strange town, O’Reilley cultivates a threshold ecology. We have, she writes, a chance to recover our daring in midlife. Nobody is paying attention, anyway. Why not head for the artistic edge and find your true calling?
OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR:
The Love of Impermanent Things
At midlife, Mary Rose O'Reilley writes, we are called to an “archaeology of memory”—turning over a potsherd here, a fragment there—to assemble something whole out of the messin
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The Barn at the End of the World
Deciding that her life was insufficiently grounded in real-world experience, Mary Rose O'Reilley, a Quaker reared as a Catholic, embarked on a year of tending sheep.
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