Memoir Monday... with a Kate Bowler kind of Twist

 

Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day by Kate Bowler...

Witty, honest, and wise spiritual reflections that invite readers to embrace the bad, not just the good— from the three-time New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved)

Kate Bowler believes that the cultural pressure to be cheerful and optimistic at all times has taken a toll on our faith. But what if we could find better language than forced positivity to express our hopes and our anxieties? 

Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! is packed with bite-size reflections and action-oriented steps to help you get through the day, be it good, bad, or totally mediocre. This is a devotional for the rest of us—which is to say, the people who don’t have magical lives that always work out for the best. As she composed these meditations during a season of chronic pain, Bowler understands how every day can be an obstacle course. She encourages us to develop our capacity to feel the breadth of our experiences. The better we are at identifying our highs and lows, the more resilient we become.

Like modern-day psalms, Bowler’s spiritual reflections look for the ways we can expand our capacity for courage, love, and honesty—while discovering divine moments with God. With bonus sections to use during the seasons of Advent and Lent, this is an easy book to read along with other people too. 

If you want to build your daily habit of spiritual attentiveness, this book is here to say: May all your days be lovely. But for those that aren’t, have a beautiful, terrible day!

I first heard about Kate Bowler when someone I knew reviewed her book Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved. At the time of writing that book, Kate was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer and wasn't expected to live. It was a book "tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live". Kate went on to survive and is now cancer free. This book, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day!, is a book of daily meditations, "small reflections and blessings" that Kate hopes will help in our daily struggles. The table of contents is broken down with descriptive labels so we can flip to a specific reflection that hopefully targets what the day is bringing to us. She meant this book to be flipped through as needed. I look forward to flipping through and starting my day or ending my day or just living the day with words that can put what may be going on in perspective. 

Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! by Kate Bowler will be published January 23, 2024 by Convergent Books, an imprint of Random House. And I was lucky to be sent a eBook for review by the publishers! Look for my review coming soon...

Memoir Monday...

Everything Happens for a Reason And Other Lies I've Loved by Kate      Bowler...   Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son.

Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.

The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before.

Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live.

Someone I know gave a rave review of this book and its' author. I can't even recall who it actually was right now, but it was so good I immediately bought the book. The reviewer had described Kate as a brutally honest and hilarious writer among other things. This book is not an aim at humor, but a heartfelt message to those who are suffering with something and those who are trying to support someone. Follow along Kate's journey to learn from her experiences. This is next on my nightstand to be read. Published by Random House Books in 2019.