Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope
by Joan Chittister
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joan ChittisterEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-03-15
ISBN: 0802829740
Number of pages: 125
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Book Reviews of Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope
Book Review: hope from jacob's struggle
Summary: 5 Stars
The myths of Superman and Superwoman are alive and well in our culture, but also in our churches. As I sit in the pew week after week, I am told that the Christian life is one of miracles, growth from strength to strength, joy and celebration. "It's just that simple," I heard from the pulpit recently. But when I took inventory of my own life, nothing felt simple.
Like our culture at large, believers celebrate wealth, power, strength, bravado, and confidence. We abhor weakness, failure, struggle and doubt. Vulnerability, fear, discouragement and depression are construed as signs of immaturity or lackluster faith. In real life, for most people, this naïve optimism and rhetoric of idealism is a recipe for deep disappointment, for sooner or later reality catches up with most of us.
In contrast, the Benedictine writer Joan Chittister offers what she describes as a "spirituality of struggle" which takes as its paradigm the narrative of Jacob's struggle with the angelic visitor (Genesis 32:22-32). Jacob had swindled his brother Esau and then deceived his blind father in order to steal the family blessing. He fled in fear. At the river Jabbok he then wrestled all night with the angelic visitor who somehow was God himself. The result? God blessed this cheater and liar, but the blessing came with a crippling touch to the hip. He limped the rest of his life.
Frederick Buechner described this same text of Scripture as the "magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God." Chittister calls it a "spirituality of struggle". The apostle Paul spoke of being "harassed at every turn---conflicts without, fears within" (2 Corinthians 7:5, NIV). In the Jacob narrative Chittister finds eight elements of the struggle---change, isolation, darkness, fear, powerlessness, vulnerability, exhaustion, and scarring. But these are not the end of the story, for in response to each struggle there is a divine gift---conversion, independence, faith, courage, surrender, limitations, endurance, and transformation.
"Jacob does what all of us must do if, in the end, we, too, are to become true. He confronts in himself the things that are wounding him, admits his limitations, accepts his situation, rejoins the world, and moves on" (p. 87). This is not an easy path, but it is one with Biblical warrant: "When I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:10).
Summary of Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope
Everyone goes through times of pain and sorrow, depression and darkness, stress and suffering. It is in the necessary struggles of life, however, that we stretch our souls and gain new insights enabling us to go on. Building on the biblical story of Jacob wrestling with God and on the story of her own battle with life-changing disappointment, Sister Joan Chittister deftly explores the landscape of suffering and hope, considering along the way such wide-ranging topics as consumerism, technology, grief, the role of women in the Catholic Church, and the events of September 11, 2001. We struggle, she says, against change, isolation, darkness, fear, powerlessness, vulnerability, exhaustion, and scarring; and while these struggles sometimes seem insurmountable, we can emerge from them with the gifts of conversion, detachment, faith, courage, surrender, limitations, endurance, transformation, and (perhaps most important) hope. Each of these struggles and gifts is discussed in a chapter of its own. Meant to help readers cope with their own suffering and disappointment, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope is, in Chittisters words, an anatomy of struggle and an account of the way hope grows in us, despite our moments of darkness, regardless of our regular bouts of depression. It is an invitation to look again at the struggles of life in order that we might remember how to recognize new life in our souls the next time our hearts turn again to clay. Neither a self-help manual nor a book offering pat answers, but supremely practical and relevant, Chittisters Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope will richly reward those readers seeking solace in the empathic, wise, and accessible meditations of a fellow struggler.Christian Living Books
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