Seasons of Death and Life Reprinted
I am happy to announce that my book Seasons of Death and Life: A Wilderness Memoir by Maggie Ross has been reprinted by Wipf and Stock. It is now available from Wipf and Stock customer service. In two weeks it will be available from www.wipfandstock.com, and in 6-8 weeks will be available from Amazon.
From the Flap Copy:
"Weary and wounded, yearning for deep solitude, Ross takes a job as caretaker in a place of luminous—sometimes terrifying—beauty on the northwest coast of the United States. Here she meets a local woman called Muskrat who becomes her companion and teacher. From a hard and unforgiving life, Muskrat has distilled impressive wisdom and an extraordinary, unselfconscious spirituality. Living out a generosity and loving-kindness born of suffering, she helps Ross find healing from damage inflicted by the abuse of power—damage that culminates in a life-threatening illness.
"Muskrat is not her only teacher. There are the dogs, Pomo and Kelly, and the bird, Raven, whose joyous play, tender and violent affection, mischief, and fidelity reveal a new vision of life during a long, slow convalescence.
"Ross receives healing, too, from the land, from the work necessary to its seasons, from the wildlife, which appears strangely unafraid, and from the small and large kindnesses of her rural neighbours. Like Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard, she describes landscapes of rare beauty that reveal the true meaning of sacrament, 'in the smallest wood orchid and the vast wildness of the sea....the last flimsy boundaries between sacred and secular melted away.'
"We emerge from this near-mythic tale—from its frustrations, its tragedies and epiphanies—illuminated, refreshed, with a new a vital perception of the sanctity of our common humanity, and of the importance of wildness as a context for the transfiguration of pain."
From the Flap Copy:
"Weary and wounded, yearning for deep solitude, Ross takes a job as caretaker in a place of luminous—sometimes terrifying—beauty on the northwest coast of the United States. Here she meets a local woman called Muskrat who becomes her companion and teacher. From a hard and unforgiving life, Muskrat has distilled impressive wisdom and an extraordinary, unselfconscious spirituality. Living out a generosity and loving-kindness born of suffering, she helps Ross find healing from damage inflicted by the abuse of power—damage that culminates in a life-threatening illness.
"Muskrat is not her only teacher. There are the dogs, Pomo and Kelly, and the bird, Raven, whose joyous play, tender and violent affection, mischief, and fidelity reveal a new vision of life during a long, slow convalescence.
"Ross receives healing, too, from the land, from the work necessary to its seasons, from the wildlife, which appears strangely unafraid, and from the small and large kindnesses of her rural neighbours. Like Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard, she describes landscapes of rare beauty that reveal the true meaning of sacrament, 'in the smallest wood orchid and the vast wildness of the sea....the last flimsy boundaries between sacred and secular melted away.'
"We emerge from this near-mythic tale—from its frustrations, its tragedies and epiphanies—illuminated, refreshed, with a new a vital perception of the sanctity of our common humanity, and of the importance of wildness as a context for the transfiguration of pain."
posted by Maggie Ross at 3:48 pm
3 Comments:
Maggie it is good to see a post from you again. Perhaps you are emerging a little from your necessary silence.
Your "Seasons odd Death and Life" is one of those enriching and grounding companion books that has blessed my life. I hope the reprinting of it will bring that blessing to many others.
Maggie, that's great news. I haven't yet read this book so will get a copy. Lovely to hear from you on the blog again but understand that there are times when we all need to stand back from the things that have taken our time and energy.
Go well, Alison
Demanding as these lines are, but how else, like asking "to whom shall we go," to make sense of life's absurdities amidst the so-called technological and economic progress but to behold the open-ended face (or facelessness) of faith: "to trust even when everything conscious points to not trusting; to know that God is at work under the apparent level of absurdity, as long as I'm willing" (176); to regard everything as "a living mirror of the Love that sustains the whole fabric at every moment." (95).
The lines must un-settle our linear thoughts on what Sacraments or Liturgy are - that they are not gadgets that easily dispense grace like coffee dispensers (or in academic setting - degrees that mechanically make one wise) because "every moment" has its darkness, every speech has an un-spoken dimension, signs pointing to some un-graspable silence, knowledge but also "knowledge of mercy beyond sensibility." (107)
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