I recently ordered Beth L. Hewitt’s Grief on the Road to Emmaus.
I read a lot of books; I am finding this one to be a book that is both readable and experiential. Given that I spent years keeping my mind and emotions separate, I now appreciate a book that engages both mind and heart in a life-engaging, reflective manner.
Beth Hewitt observes in this book that not only do we need to grieve the loss of our loved ones who pass on (or move out of our lives, I suppose), we have to grief life’s pathways that don’t go the way we would have preferred. Lost a job? Grieve. Lost a limb? Grieve. Got robbed? Grieve. Got seriously injured in an accident? Grieve. I’ve probably heard this before, but it didn’t sink in. “Just move on” is the motto many of us expect shall get us through life’s challenges. Wrong. We need to grieve. When we don’t grieve, we don’t heal. When we don’t heal, we don’t really move on.
Further, Hewitt’s instructions on how to be present with people who are grieving has application in daily life. If we were to start treating everyone with the approaches described in this book – such as # – life would be less transactional, more interactional.
Something I didn’t know when I ordered this book is that Beth Hewitt wrote this book from a Benedictine view. Wow, added bonus. I am a parishioner at a St. Benedict parish and, as such, have learned some Benedictine lessons from this parish in recent years; this book is complimenting those lessons in helpful and meaningful ways. Loving the book!
