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Jim Ferrell has written an excellent book for the LDS audience called The Peacegiver. I can't recommend it enough. It deals with relationships that may be stained by hard feelings, blame, or resentment.
You can buy it, of course, but it's also available online, free, at Meridian Magazine.
There's not a real easy way to navigate it on the Meridian website, though, so I thought I'd put a clear, chapter by chapter breakdown here. Then you can bookmark this page and come back to it as you read through the book.
It's by one of the guys responsible for the books Leadership and Self-Deception and The Anatomy of Peace, but it takes those ideas all the way, and puts them in their true context: our relationship with the Savior.
The chapters are short--you could read one every couple of days pretty quickly.
Preface and Chapter One: A Storm in the Soul
Chapter Two: Memories
Chapter Three: Marching to Carmel
Chapter Four: Souls at War
Chapter Five: A Peace Offering
Chapter Six: Atonement
Chapter Seven: Forgiveness
Chapter Eight: The Storm Continues
Chapter Nine: The Cause of the Storm
Chapter Ten: Who We Are
Chapter Eleven: What We Deserve
Chapter Twelve: A Merciful Question
Chapter Thirteen: Mercy in the Balance
Chapter Fourteen: Waiting for an Answer
Chapter Fifteen: The Chains of Sin
Chapter Sixteen: The Storm Renewed
Chapter Seventeen: A Beam of Light
Chapter Eighteen: Chains
Chapter Nineteen: Agency in the Balance
Chapter Twenty: Of Sin
Chapter Twenty-One: Of Repentance
Chapter Twenty-Two: Light in the Darkness
Chapter Twenty-Three: An Agony
Chapter Twenty-Four: Recovery
Chapter Twenty-Five: Covenants
And finally, the Epilogue is here.
Why Are We Practicing Social Distancing?
4 years ago
3 comments:
So sad to admit this...but I didn't like this book so much. My Relief Society did a book club on it and most people thought it was wonderful and the message was butI think it could have been great just as a self help book with all the authors thoughts and advice put in a book...or great as just a novel...I felt like the author was trying to mix the two and it didn't work for me as far as getting interested in it goes....that probably made no sense...maybe I should try reading it again...
It actually makes perfect sense.
Unfortunately, this is the style a lot of self-help books are written in. It started with Og Mandino's book The Greatest Salesman In the World, but I think it was The One Minute Manager that really solidified the "stick your message into a barely-held-together-story" style of self-help writing.
I've read so many of them now, though, that I don't even process them as fiction on any level. I just treat it like I'm reading a self-help book, and pay little attention to the characters or the story, but just look for the message. So then there's no conflict between the two--I don't have to worry about getting interested in the novel, I just have to see if I'm interested in the self-help book.
In the case of this one, the message is so important that it's worth it. And the key part of this one (The role Christ plays) isn't in any of the other books they've written about this.
If you'd like to read a lot of the same ideas, though, without the fake novel structure, try Bonds That Make Us Free by C. Terry Warner. You can actually read it free on the same website as The Peacegiver (I think the link is in my earlier post "Free LDS books online.") It's basically the same message without the discussion of the atonement--it was written more for a secular audience.
I just finished reading the book "The Holy Seceret" by the same author. It deals with our desires (or lack thereof) to seek after and all that is holy and to become sanctified. I've enjoyed both books and think the contemplation over the topics presented are worth the read.
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