Spiritual Focus on Books June 18, 2012 Issue

A fresh look at happiness

Kim Shippey, Senior Editor

Writer, sociologist, and lecturer Joan Chittister has done it again!—this time with her book Happiness. But a word of caution. This is more a self-improvement book than is her spiritual memoir, Called to Question (Sheed & Ward, 2004), or her reflections on aging, The Gift of Years (Bluebridge, 2008).

Called to Question is centered on a series of conversations with spiritual writers featured in Chittister’s private journal. By sharing the doubts and questions in her own heart, she examined the heart of faith itself and pushed us to unimagined exploration of our hearts, too, always befriending our uncertainty. Her main call was for spiritual growth, which she described as “an exhilarating process” in which we come to “awareness of the life within and the God within that life.” She said, “It is the discovery of the freedom that comes with beginning again, with finding new truth, new ways of being alive, new moral standards that are broader and deeper and more liberating than any amount of disciplines or rituals or negative asceticisms can ever be.”

In The Gift of Years, Chittister boldly tackled human fears of aging, calling upon her peers to “live this new, unscripted time with joy.” Then, she said, “Life will come pouring into us, almost more fully than we can sometimes bear.” This is “the time for melting into God. . . . the culmination of all the learning of all the other years.” As some have suggested, it’s a book that makes readers sorry they’re not older!

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