Customer Reviews

Marriage and Other Acts of Charity: A Memoir

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My husband took a look at the cover of this book and laughed, as he thought the title said "cruelty" rather than "charity". When I corrected him I realized that, in fact, it is a bit of both.

Kate Braestrup had some excellent points to make in this memoir, lessons she has learned from experiencing and observing the male/female relationship. One that stuck with me was that "100% of relationships end". We are lucky if they end after a long, happy life together, but the fact is some relationships are cut short. Whether it be through untimely death, divorce or things beyond our control we should learn to appreciate every moment. We should focus on the happiness, not the frustrations of a relationship if we want it to thrive.

Unfortunately for Kate, she learned some of her lessons the hard way. Fortunately for us, she shares her learned wisdom and sprinkles it with some faith filled touches.

I would not consider this a "religious" book, though she is a minister and faith is obviously important to her story. What I can say is that this felt a bit like a series of parables with a very neutral point of view. There may be meaning to each of her chapters, but nothing that felt as if she was leading the reader to a biased conclusion.

The only complaint I have about the book is that it can come off as a bit intellectual because of the language. For example, most of us do not use the following words in everyday conversation(at least not in my New England town): imprimatur, salvific, palimpsest,inchoate,construal, cosseted and extracanonical to name only a few. I would have preferred that this be written in a lighter tone. It's very down-to-earth in theme, so the "big words" felt out of place.

That said, this was an interesting read and provided some thoughtful insight which I enjoyed and I think you will,too.

As a Mainer, I particularly enjoy Kate's writings. I know the places that she's talking of and I think that helps the book to be more "real" and applicable to my own life. I must say I really enjoyed this book. It didn't focus so much on her marriage (s) as it did the institution of marriage. Yes she uses some "big" words and faith to get her point across, but it isn't over done.

As many poignant moments are in this book, there are just as many funny ones. My personal favorite was her children's pronounciation of her second husband's name. (You'll know it when you get to it!) This is an excellent Sunday afternoon book, soft and quiet, deep and insightful.

*****
I read Kate Braestrup's award-winning first memoir "Here If You Need Me" as background before I read this--her latest book--and I'm so glad I did, because she is someone I wanted to know more about. It was helpful, but certainly not necessary, as this memoir stands alone. Together, the two are a wonderful read.

Marriage and Other Acts of Charity is about the author's experiences with not only marriage, but life, love, God, parenting, organized religion, motherhood, grief, spirituality, and creating meaning when it seems impossible. I found this a beautiful book, another stunning memoir filled with poignant stories and hard lessons learned. The author has keen insights and a fresh way of looking at the world. She also has a great sense of humor.

Although the author is a minister, this is not really a religious book. No matter what you believe, you will be comfortable with this book. Rev. Braestrup works in the Unitarian Universalist church, a denomination that is known for being tolerant and inclusive; reading her memoir made me really like Unitarians. It made me feel like there is maybe even a place for me in a church that is devoid of mean theology. This is a peaceful and loving book for people of all faiths or no faiths.

It is about love and where and how you find it. And about the challenges that looking for it everywhere poses. You'll find the stories unforgettable.

Highly recommended.
*****

I know that the author is a very well respected member of her community and that her late husband was truly beloved. I am from the area she lives in, and I well remember hearing about his death and the shock that came from it. I've talked to people who have heard her preach and know her, and I must say all this so I don't sound like I am criticizing HER when I say this book was just a little too "quirkier than thou" for my taste. By this I mean it that it seemed almost every sentence was designed to point out how Kate came from a more wacky background than you could imagine, that her first marriage was both more difficult and more passionate than any marriage you might know about, that her children are more interesting and that she herself has had a more unique journey of faith than anyone else. All of this might be true, but this book is said to be about MARRIAGE, not about her. I didn't see much about her marriage that I recognized as universal truths, or much about her faith that would comfort me. That's not to say that she doesn't have a strong faith, or she doesn't understand marriage---it just didn't come across her for me. I was more struck by her tales of her wacky mother the bird lady, or her wacky son peeing in popsicle trays, or her daughter named Woolie. If you like reading interesting and unique tales of families and friends, this is well-written enough so you should like it, but I wouldn't turn to it for marriage insight.

What a wonderful and different book about love, its true meaning, how to enact it!
With a telling of her past, Kate Braestrup, takes us on her own personal journey and growth to the present.
As a minister and chaplain for the Maine Warden Service (search, rescue, support, and comfort), she nonetheless continues to embark on loving more and and giving more.
Not a goody goody, there are quick and wonderful humerous vignettes, as well as powerful tear jerking realizations of love and blessings and reaching out.
I felt as tho I wanted to know her better and visited her bio. Just like her book, she is just one of us.
Years ago, reading, Gifts from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindberg, I was moved by her insight.
Somehow, this book reminds me of Anne but goes further in the dimension of finding agape and caritas, love and charity.
This is a book I will reread, share and encourage others to read.
It made me love more!

Kate is constantly telling the couples remember their wedding vows and love each other even when it isn't easy. She is an ordained minister and wants to let everyone know that there are three different kinds of love.

Kate has known her own marital heartache, mourning her husband who was killed in a car crash. Her marriage wasn't perfect, she and her husband actually went to a marriage counselor. Sometimes you need someone on the outside looking in to give you a clearer picture of your relationship.

As a woman who loves her husband, I have to say that this is one of my favorite memoirs. Kate's views are a breath of fresh air. I want my husband and I to have a healthy and loving relationship. I will definitely be using some of Kate's knowledge in my own marriage.

Heard MARRIAGE AND OTHER ACTS OF CHARITY; A MEMOIR,
read and written by Kate Braestrup . . . she's a minister, as well as
author, who candidly shared her experiences in this book that's apparently
a follow-up to her earlier HERE IF YOU NEED ME.

I have not yet read that first title, but did not find it necessary to have done so
to enjoy her second effort . . . parts of it were funny, for example when she
describes how she got to teach sexual morality to a group of snickering
13-year-old kids . . . I also got a kick out of her dating experiences, including
her tale of not noticing her future husband's new "look" after he shaved his beard.

Yet other parts of the book were quite moving . . . I could feel her pain as she
described her fights with her police officer husband that eventually led them
both to seek counseling . . .they both stayed together, though, jolted by the thought
that they might lose each other . . . shortly thereafter, he died in a car accident, so
Braestrup had to start all over and managed to do so with the help of family and
friends who rallied to support her and the couple's four children.

She brings these examples into her story, along with those involving other
couples she has counseled including a game warden and his wife-to-be and a
soon-to-be divorced couple.

The key, as the author points out, is to keep in mind that one hundred percent
of marriages end . . . so the only recourse is Jesus' message: Love more.

Author Kate Braestrup knows a lot about marriage. In her job as chaplain to the Maine Warden Service she counsels her law enforcement colleagues, and she's certainly had her own troubles, raising four children after her state trooper husband was killed on the job. Now remarried, she and her second husband share six children.

Braestrup's 2007 memoir Here If You Need Me: A True Story introduced readers to her quirky, brave take on life. In this follow-up, she covers more ground and focuses on what it takes to make a marriage work through good and bad. She shares many details of difficult times with her first husband, when two strong-minded people sometimes lost sight of the fact that they loved each other and were committed to the relationship. I honestly found these passages a bit troubling in their sometimes stark honesty, but they do form the cornerstone for Braestrup's message: Love...is. Commit to it, take it into your heart, keep it as a presence in your relationship.

This message is reinforced in the author's stories of other people's relationships, some of which had very painful ends. Braestrup tested her understanding of this message when she overcame her own fears about opening her heart again and married her second husband, Simon.

Marriage and Other Acts of Charity: A Memoir is a bit more loosely put together than Braestrup's first memoir. There are many passages, some drawn from her work in the woods, that serve the theme only loosely; this is not a bad thing. In places it becomes a bit academic, while other parts are very light and quirky. Overall this book is more memoir than message as the author lets her life speak. A good solid sequel to her first memoir, and I'd recommend that new readers start with her first.

Linda Bulger, 2010

Kate Braestrup is an ordained minister and serves as the chaplain for the Maine Warden Service , which means she ministers to game wardens and others at the site of any outdoor accident that the wardens are called to respond to. Kate wasn't always religious and in fact was quite vocally against organized religion at one time. Her first marriage was pretty rocky and seemed to be headed for divorce, so she and her husband went for counseling and she came to realize that she really loved her husband but wasn't doing a good job of showing it. In fact, she was acting on her fear of losing him (he was a police officer) rather than letting her love show.

Marriages (hers and those that she has performed for others) made Kate think about love a lot and in Marriage and Other Acts of Charity, Kate Braestrup tells her story and reflects on love. She says there are three kinds of love - eros, which is romantic and sexual love; philos, which is affection and friendship; and agape, which is love that "earnestly desires the wholeness and happiness of the one who is loved." In this touching memoir, Kate intersperses the story of her adulthood with reflections on marriage and other types of love.

When I started Marriage and Other Acts of Charity and discovered that Kate Braestrup is a minister, I wondered if it was going to be a book for me, since I don't enjoy "preachy" books. I'm happy to tell you that I didn't find this book to be at all preachy. Instead, it is a quiet, reflective story of someone who is trying to live the best life she can by showing love to others. This book is thoughtful, introspective, funny, and inspiring and it made me cry a bucket of tears. It felt like I was reading a book by an old friend. It made me reflect on what I value in life and think about how I want to treat the people I love. In case you can't tell, I liked this book a lot!

Kate Braestrup is the chaplain for Maine's forest wardens, and wrote about the moving situations and horrors she encounters daily in her previous memoir, "Here if you need me." That book established Braestrup's narrative voice: realistic, deeply loving and kind, yet with an undercurrent of humor and at appropriate times irreverence that keeps the sometimes grim topics she writes about from sinking of their own weight. (Note: many of the situations Braestrup describes involve drowning -- the previous line was not meant as a pun.) Braestrup has a deft, light touch with her prose. A theist Unitarian Universalist minister, she calls on God for aid in the many situations she's faced in life that would cripple those without a faith to fall back on. Yet, she is honest about the natural skepticism in her makeup, and honest about her failings in the most brutally human way,

In this book, we learn about Braestrup's life, and in particular her married life, before she studied for the ministry. Over the course of several chapters, and intertwined with ongoing story threads connected to her work counseling wardens, Braestrup reveals the deep love story of her first marriage to Drew, the father of her four children. With a degree of self-deprecation rare in even the finest memoirists, Braestrup gently mocks her own extreme self-satisfaction with her own feminist ideas at the time of her marriage, and is startlingly revealing about her part in creating the daily strife that nearly tore that marriage apart. Daily verbal battles were the norm in Drew and Kate's home, and only after Drew was killed in an automobile accident while on duty as a Maine state trooper does her oldest son have the bravery to accost her for it: '"You and Dad fought,' Zach said to me. 'Every day....It was scary,' he remembered. 'I'm sorry, Zachie,' 'And then one day, you just stopped. You stopped, and you never did it again. That's what happened.'"

"What happened" was a revelation that led Braestrup to stop arguing with her husband and to "love the one I love." As the book makes clear over time, that revelation on a Sunday in church was a first step on the religious journey that led her to the seminary and the ministry after she was widowed.

Braestrup's examination of her own grief and the tenacity she needed to be a committed single mother to four young children is deeply engaging, perhaps the more so since she does little to pat herself on the back for the good job she did/is doing. She writes with understanding and humility about, first, the failed relationship (in which she was betrayed by a philandering boyfriend) she had with a man after Drew's death and the devastating effect the breakup had on both her and her children; second, about the counseling she gives a warden whose own marriage is splintering because of a faithless wife; and, third, about the trust she needed to regain in love before she could establish a serious relationship with the man she marries at the end of the book.

Braestrup never presents herself as heroic -- often, she presents herself as comic -- but at the end of the book, we see her as a hero nonetheless for seeing herself for who and what she is, and for being a person who is both lovable and charitable.

There are memoirs, and then there are books like this, that offer not just life stories but inspiration, lightly if seriously given, about how to live well and gently, how to regain courage, and how to love with a whole heart even though your heart has been broken.