Where There Is Love, There Is God

Where There Is Love, There Is God: A Path to Closer Union with God and Greater Love for Others

About the Book:

Mother Teresa’s relationship with God and her commitment to those she served—the poorest of the poor—is here powerfully explored in her own words.  Taken largely from her private lessons to her sisters, published here for the first time, Where There is Love, There is God unveils her extraordinary faith in and surrender to God’s will. This book is in some way a sequel to Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, in which her own very private spiritual struggles were explained.  Sent to alleviate the sufferings of the poor, she assumed their struggles and pain in the depths of her heart. This led to particularly intense anguish which she lived through with heroic courage and fidelity over several decades.  As important as this aspect of her life is, that remarkable testimony of her life and her words intensifies the need and desire to know more of her thought.  There is much she can teach us as we face our daily struggles or sufferings, which can at times be unusually severe.  Where There is Love, There is God, though not an exhaustive anthology of Mother Teresa’s teaching, nonetheless shows what she believed and taught about important issues that confront all people. Due to her constant interaction with people of diverse backgrounds, no life situation was foreign to her and in this book her role is primarily one of teacher and guide. 

Love is perhaps the word that best summarizes Mother Teresa’s life and message. The title reflects what she proclaimed during her entire life: God is alive, present, and “still loves the world through you and through me”.  Mother Teresa sought to be an extension of God’s heart and hands in the world of today. She was called to be a missionary of charity, a carrier of God’s love to each person she met, especially those most in need. Yet she did not think that this was a vocation uniquely hers; each person is in some way called to be a carrier of God’s love. Through the practical and timely advice she offers, Mother Teresa sets us on the path to closer union with God and greater love for our brothers and sisters.

My Comments:

This book, which I received via the Blogging for Books program, has been on my dresser waiting to be read since before Christmas.  In case you haven't noticed, I've been in kind of a reading/blogging funk.  Tonight I picked it up and thought I'd start reading a biography of Mother Teresa.  I soon found that it wasn't a biography but rather a collection of Mother Teresa's sayings and teachings.  

Generally when I write a DNF review, I'm saying a book isn't good enough to finish.  Today I'm writing a DNF review because it is going to take me a LONG time to finish this book, not because it is extraordinarily long but because it is extraordinarily full of things on which to reflect.  I recommend this book as a prayer aid, as one to be read in small batches as a source for meditation, and that's what I am going to do. 

I'm going to leave you with the saying on Mother Teresa's "business card".

The fruit of silence is prayer

The fruit of prayer is faith

The fruit of faith is love

The fruit of love is service

The fruit of service is peace

May the peace of the Lord by always with you.  

I wrote this review of Where There Is Love, There Is God for the free Catholic Book review program, created by Aquinas and More Catholic Goods. Aquinas and More is the largest on-line Catholic bookstore. I receive free product samples as compensation for writing reviews for Tiber River.

When Summer Comes: My Review

When Summer Comes (Whiskey Creek)

About the Book:

One day, Callie Vanetta receives devastating news... 

She needs a liver transplant. But her doctors warn that, in her case, the chances of finding a compatible donor aren't good.  

Determined to spend whatever time she has left on her own terms, she keeps the diagnosis to herself and moves out to her late grandparents' farm. She's always wanted to live there. But the farm hasn't been worked in years and she begins to fear she can't manage it, that she'll have to return to town. 

One night, a stranger comes knocking at her door... 

He's an attractive and mysterious drifter by the name of Levi McCloud, and he offers to trade work for a few nights' shelter. Callie figures she doesn't have anything to lose. He needs a place to stay until he can fix his motorcycle; she needs an extra pair of hands. The arrangement seems ideal until what was supposed to be temporary starts to look more and more permanent. Then she realizes she does have something to lose-her heart. And, although he doesn't yet know it, Levi stands to lose even more.

My Comments:

This is another story in the Whiskey Creek series.  I reviewed When Snow Falls back in October and both books share the large cast of high school friends.  Several of them get a lot of time in this book so I suspect we'll see them in future novels.  One of the main supporting characters in this book is a closeted gay man who is secretly in love with his best friend--a friend who keeps telling the gay man about his (the friend's) heterosexual exploits.  Other members of the gang include Cheyanne and Dylan from When Snow Falls, a close male friend with whom Callie "slept" a few times, and a woman whose life seems perfect (but who is abused).

There is a country song about living like you are dying.  Callie is dying, but hasn't told anyone.  She is spending the summer (which she realizes may be her last) at her late grandparents' farm and one night opens the door to a strange man who is injured.  Maybe knowing death was near made her more open to risks but I can't imagine a single woman living alone in the middle on nowhere doing that.  Still, it does get them together and the story takes off from there.  I liked both Callie and Levi and liked the way they looked out for each other.

I found the large group of friends to be interesting. They live in a small town. They graduated from high school together and are now near 30 but they get together every week at a coffee shop.  They call each other constantly.  I don' know whether to be jealous or feel smothered.  

Physical intimacy happens early in Callie and Levi's relationship and while the reader certainly knows what is happening, it is not described in great detail.  

I enjoyed the story and will read the next book in the series.  Thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy via NetGalley.  Grade:  B.  

The Long Way Home

The Long Way Home: The Chesapeake Diaries

About the Book:

As the only child of a wealthy investment manager, Ellie Chapman has never known anything besides a life of perfect privilege. But her years of good fortune come to an abrupt end when her father is exposed for swindling billions of dollars from innocent investors in a massive Ponzi scheme. And just like that, Ellie loses everything: money, job, home—even her fiancé, who’s jailed as her father’s partner in crime. With no job prospects on the horizon, no cash, and her family name in tatters, Ellie has only one place to go.

Sleepy St. Dennis, Maryland, is hardly where Ellie intends to stay, however. Keeping her identity a secret, she plans to sell the house her late mother left her in the small town and use the proceeds to move on with her life. Unfortunately, her ticket to a new beginning is in dire need of a laundry list of pricey improvements, many of which she’ll have to do herself. And until the house on Bay View Road is fit to be sold, the sole place Ellie will be traveling is the hardware store. But as the many charms of St. Dennis—not to mention Cameron O’Connor, the handsome local contractor who has secrets of his own—begin to work their magic, what begins as a lesson in do-it-yourself renovations might just end up as Ellie’s very own rejuvenation.

My Comments:

I enjoyed this story of love and healing, even if it was a bit on the unrealistic side.  Ellie comes to St. Dennis because she has no where else to go (though she is smart, well-educated and has a close friend who has a lot of connections).  When she gets there she meets Cameron who has been putting a lot of effort into keeping up a house that isn't his.  I liked the fact that the two of them took some time to get to know each other; I didn't like the fact that they ended up in bed before marriage, or even before they were really serious.  I liked  the fact that they realized that overnight visits were not a good idea with a teenager in the house.  While readers were told they were intimate, the act was not described in detail.  

The book is part of a series though I did not realize it until I went to Amazon to get the photo and blurb for this review.  The characters from the other books make brief appearances but I didn't feel overwhelmed by useless characters.  However, Ellie's friend (who is single) discovers that Ellie's ancestor was a renowned  painter who had many paintings in the house Ellie inherited. I'll bet we'll see her in a future book and I'm curious about what will happen to the paintings.  Her gallery-owning friend is eager to show and sell them. Ellie was eager for the money they'd bring, but now that she's decided to stay in St. Dennis, and has learned about her family, will she still want to sell?  How will those paintings affect her relationship with her best friend?  I feel left hanging about those questions, and I'm sure that was the author's intent.  

Another thing I didn't like was that one of the characters mentions speaking to one of Ellie's ancestors via a Ouija board.  Another character saw this ancestor (or a ghost of her) in the house.  I don't think those elements advanced the story and to me they were just creepy.

I'd like to thank the publisher for making a review copy available via Edelweiss Galleys.  Grade:  B.  

Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival

Hello, and welcome to Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival. We are a group of Catholic bloggers who gather weekly to share our best posts with each other. To participate, go to your blog and create a post titled Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival. In it, discuss and link to your posts for the week--whether they deal with theology, Catholic living or cute Catholic kids. I'm mostly a book blogger so my posts are generally book reviews, some Catholic, some not. Make sure that post links back here. Once you publish it, come back here and leave a link below.

We also have a yahoogroup; signing up for it will get you one weekly reminder to post.  Click here to sign up.

I have several posts this week.  I mused about the transitory nature of life.  I reviewed a novel about a small town and a book about a foster child.