Book Reviews
Sandy Alemian
What Was God Thinking
Balboa Press, Bloomington, IN • 2011 Sandy Alemian doesn’t want to go it alone, and she knows she doesn’t have to. After years of only talking “to” God, she quieted herself, listened, and found God speaking back to her. What was God Thinking chronicles Sandy’s open and humorous two-year conversation with God. Am I lovable enough? Why am I eating too much? What should we do about the dog? God hears it all, and answers. Exploring her desire to reach more people through writing and speaking, Sandy allows God to guide her from a place of fear to one of love and hope. Moving from shame (I should already be there!) to fear (What if it doesn’t ever happen?) to joy (My audience is waiting for me) Sandy ultimately finds peace (It’s not really about me.) By courageously revealing her very personal dialogues with God, Sandy shares her gift of being a “Spokesperson for Spirit.”
Joseph Keon
Whitewash: The Disturbing Truth About Cow’s Milk and Your Health
New Society Publishers, BC, Canada • 2010 Infant puppies drink dog milk, baby rats drink rat milk and newborn whales drink whale milk, so why do humans drink milk intended for baby calves? Whitewash is nutritionist and wellness expert Joseph Keon’s response to the destructive myth that people need to consume cow’s milk to be healthy. Based largely on ignorance, many Americans make food choices that are uniformed and often misinformed. At the mercy of the food industry’s advertising propaganda machine and bureaucratic government agencies who compromise nutritional guidelines for the sake of specialinterest groups, consumers are lead to believe that ingesting cow’s milk is essential 49
Spirit of Change | FALL 2011
for building strong bones and teeth. The public schools and the medical professions have spent the last eighty years supporting this position. Yet the United States, one of the top consumers of calcium in the world, has one of the highest rates of osteoporosis and bone fractures in the world. Dairy is also a possible contributor to type I diabetes, heart disease and even symptoms of autism. In addition to the nutritional propaganda, Whitewash exposes the industrialized mega-farm factories that house up to 20,000 cows who never see a blade of grass. Comprehensively researched and documented, Whitewash kicks over the dairy industry’s bucolic milk bucket as it exposes the true cost to a nation who has “got milk.”
By GAIL LORD massage) Step 5: Use Drugs and Step 6: Break and Enter (high tech medicine including surgeries and cat scans). Throughout, Weed fully explains a comprehensive range of healing options including integrative, alternative, herbal, and orthodox modalities, as well as energy and homeopathic medicines. Personal accounts round out the plethora of knowledge included in this all-embracing guide. Wise Woman Weed started gathering information for Down There back in 1965. It was worth the wait.
guidebook packed with tools to create a vibrant, centered existence for living with an open heart. Lessons from 150 Love Luminaries (love role models who consistently radiate “Higher Love”) range from authors to Ayurvedic practitioners and neurosurgeons, to a woman who gained and lost more than a thousand pounds before learning to love herself. Specialized exercises, such as EFT and mirroring, increase love awareness, while biochemical research validates the heart’s wisdom by confirming that a six-second hug lifts mood, lowers blood pressure and boosts the immune system. The goal is not romantic love (though that may be a juicy side effect!). Instead, Love for No Reason amplifies inner loving capacity by showing: Love is who we are; The purpose of life is to expand in love; and The heart is the portal to love.
Mary Grace
The Wounded Chalice: Celebrating the Divinity of the Womb AuthorHouse, Bloomington, IN • 2008
Susan S. Weed
Down There: Sexual and Reproductive Health the Wise Woman Way Ash Tree Publishing, Woodstock, NY • 2011 Deep-rooted in the oldest healing tradition, Wise Woman herbalist Susan Weed is candid and insightful. She knows, as do all Wise Women (and Wise Men), that wisdom is what works. Down There is a manual of empowerment. While modern preventive medicine consists of unnecessary, often harmful, screening tests that frighten people into believing something is wrong with them, Weed believes in nourishing health by trusting the body’s wisdom and caring for it with loving support. “I want to know all the facts, so I can decide for myself what to do, helped by inner knowing, not lashed by desperation.” Down There provides straightforward information that dispels fear and makes you feel good about your body. Among the topics presented in Part 1 are the pelvic floor; Part 2, for women, includes understanding a healthy vulva and clitoral health (including sex after menopause). Especially for men, Part 3 examines healthy testicles and explains how drugs can ruin a man’s (sex) life. Each area in Down Under is discussed using the Six Steps to Healing. Moving from the health building steps that should be engaged in daily, to fastacting but possibly last-resort modalities the steps are: Step 0: Do Nothing (meditate, listen to inner wisdom), Step 1: Collect Information, Step 2: Engage the Energy (the shaman’s playground), Step 3: Nourish and Tonify (herbal infusions, movement, food) Step: 4: Stimulate/Sedate (acupuncture,
Undergoing the surgical operation of a hysterectomy is a profound event in any woman’s life. For Mary Grace, her uterus represented the Divine Feminine, her children’s first home. She refused to let the removal of her womb be treated casually by the medical establishment. She agreed to the hysterectomy under one condition: she wanted her uterus back. The Wounded Chalice is Mary’s seventy-year journey from little girl in a male dominated society to grandmother honoring the sacredness of her body. The memoir’s nostalgia of mittens drying on the wood stove is balanced with the reality of a life: an abusive father, two divorces, and the horrifying sexual abuse of her daughter by the girl’s own father (who bizarrely tried to justify his own actions). Reflective, though never bitter, The Wounded Chalice contains Mary’s greatest teaching, “You are here because your mom honored the Divinity of her Womb, which contained You.”
Marci Shimoff (with Carol Kline)
Love for No Reason: 7 Steps to Creating a Life of Unconditional Love Free Press, New York, NY • 2011
How do you build a love foundation from within? Love for No Reason is a 7-step
Megan Muckenhoupt
Boston’s Gardens and Green Spaces Union Park Press, Boston, MA • 2011
Boston enjoys a rich history of parks and green space. The Boston Common, the oldest city park in the United States, was originally created for cow grazing. Inspired by the local Transcendentalist movement, other parks were created as a way to find a spiritual connection through direct contact with nature. Boston’s Gardens and Green Spaces highlights these historic places and also celebrates the wonderful Yankee ingenuity of the last two decades that is transforming the landscape and making the city green again. More than one hundred sites are included. The city community gardens are tended to by over ten thousand Bostonians, while pocket gardens tucked between buildings provide room for solitude. The Harbor Walk, rooftop gardens and the new Big Dig parks are also among those featured. With vivid descriptions and inspiring color photography, city residents, visitors, and even arm-chair travelers will find pleasure in exploring Boston’s Gardens and Green Spaces.
Gail Lord is a freelance writer living in Massachusetts. Please send book review copies to 51 North Street, Grafton, MA 01519 or email socbookreviewer@gmail.com.