Good Family Reading

How many of us try again and again to lay hold of what love seems to promise, only to be thrown back in fear or confusion or pain?

How many give up and sadly accept to live outside the drama of love?

What is the deeper purpose of the work of living together within the embrace of love?

What can we honor in each other beyond the call of passion or habit or momentum or fear?

What is the work of love toward each other that can support the search for unity within ourselves?

Why do we quarrel?

What is the anxiety that so often accompanies the state of being in love and which also often remains as a problem in the work of living together?

What do we really want from each other?

These are just a few questions explored in a book called, The Wisdom of Love: Toward a Shared Inner Life, by Jacob Needleman. On most days, we find the time to read out loud to each other as a way of passing the time up here in the forest, and this is the book we’re reading now. As we all move deeper and deeper into our adult relationships with our spouses and as our children move closer and closer to the time when they will be making committed relationships, its hard to think of a better book that a family might read together. Read it with someone you love.