For many years, author Paula Huston had been in a faith struggle. Having returned to Christianity and converted to Catholicism, she realized one morning that God was calling her to a deeper experience of holiness, which would require of her arduous work that led to the simplest surrender.
By Way of Grace is Huston's artfully written account of what she learned during her struggle to grow in faith and to accept God's grace. The book contends that the spiritual life firmly rests on saints and virtues, and each chapter focuses on how a great saint of the mystical Catholic tradition explains and exemplifies one of the traditional Christian virtues. For anyone stuggling with how to move forward in his or her faith, this book demonstrates how to know, love, and serve God in holiness.
For anyone who feels like they've hit the ceiling in their life of faith, this book reveals how to break through and rise to new and unimagined spiritual heights.
One morning, in a hermitage nestled in California's lovely Big Sur country, Paula Huston read a Scripture verse that she had read hundreds of times before: "Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink." This time the verse penetrated her heart as never before. Much had happened to her in the preceding years: a return to Christianity, conversion to Catholicism, a choice for a radically simplified life, an increasing hunger for prayer and the Eucharist. Now, Huston understood that all of that was just the beginning. God was calling her to a deeper experience of holiness, which would require of her arduous work that led to the simplest surrender.
By Way of Grace is her artfully constructed, gracefully written account of what she learned. The book contends that the spiritual life firmly rests on saints and virtues, and each chapter focuses on how a great saint of the mystical Catholic tradition explains and exemplifies one of the traditional Christan virtues. Intertwined with this material is Huston's personal story of her struggles to respond to Jesus' invitation to "come to me and drink." By Way of Grace discloses the essential simplicity of holiness and encourages people of faith to soar to new heights on the wings of God's amazin love.
About the Author
Paula Huston, a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, has published fiction and essays for more than twenty years. She was co-editor and essayist for Signatures of Grace: Catholic Writers on the Sacraments. Her life in a rural setting and travels in the Third World provide the background for her book The Holy Way. Visit her Web site at www.PaulaHuston.com.
(Author Photograph by Dennis Eamon Young). Paula Huston, the eldest of five children, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1952. Her Norwegian Lutheran family moved to California when she was only two; she grew up in Long Beach, married at nineteen, and relocated to San Luis Obispo county on the Central Coast in her early twenties. About the time her children, Andrea and John, were born, she began writing short stories; in her early thirties, she divorced and spent several years as a single working mother, which convinced her that she really needed to complete her college education. After remarrying and becoming a stepmother to Kelly and Greta, she returned to school for a B.A. in English, and went on for a Masters in English and American Literature while continuing to write and publish fiction.
She began teaching at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo after completing the Master's degree. While still matriculating, she took a class in ethics that helped spur a return to the Christianity she had abandoned years before. This time, however, she came back to the church as a Catholic, and in the process, shifted to writing spiritual non-fiction. Eventually, she became a Camaldolese Benedictine oblate, a lay associate of a contemplative Catholic hermitage on the Big Sur coast, which means she does her best to live by two ancient rules written primarily for monks and hermits: the Rule of St. Benedict and the Brief Rule of St. Romuald of Ravenna, Italian founder of the Camaldolese. For many years, she and her husband Mike have lived on four acres in the country where, in the spirit of St. Benedict, they produce much of the food they eat, including fruits, vegetables, olive oil, eggs, honey, and wine. She has two small and beloved grandsons, and is currently anticipating the birth of yet another little boy this fall.
Huston is the author of four books and a co-editor and contributing essayist for a fifth, SIGNATURES OF GRACE: CATHOLIC WRITERS ON THE SACRAMENTS. Her essays and short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines over the years, including AMERICAN SHORT FICTION, STORY, NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, IMAGE, AMERICA, THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY, and GEEZ. She is a National Endowment of the Arts Fellow in Creative Writing, and a founder and faculty member for a low-residency California State University Consortium Master of Fine Arts program in fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. Her work has been honored several times by BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES and will appear in BEST SPIRITUAL WRITING OF 2010. She has taught at the Glen Workshop at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and is a frequent retreat leader and speaker at churches and campuses around the country.
This review is from: By Way of Grace: Moving from Faithfulness to Holiness (Hardcover)
In her earlier book The Holy Way, Paula Huston mapped the landscape of a conversion. She charted her way--and illumined ours--with honesty, intelligence, and self-deprecating wit. In By Way of Grace, Huston shares her continuing journey, inviting us to join her as she delves deeper, climbs higher. Some of this way "from faithfulness to holiness" leads inevitably over steep and stony ground, as PH disarmingly admits. But for those of us who are in our own lives of faith seeking a way to the mountains, PH is an invaluable guide. She deftly weaves together personal experience with traditional theology and the wisdom of the saints. She has in fact reclaimed the virtues as powerful practices for our lives toward God, and reintroduced some of the giants of the faith as luminous companions on the way.
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This review is from: By Way of Grace: Moving from Faithfulness to Holiness (Hardcover)
The book is a very well written and interesting spiritual biography that follows a format of chapters on the virtues. She discusses a particular virtue and relates it the the struggles in her life. Along the way she tells mini biographies of a saint that relates to the chapter and uses quotes form various Catholics throughout history. St. Thomas Aquinas and his writings are often used to explain the virtues and other points.
Her spiritual journey entails being raised a Christian and then like so many others losing her faith as an adult and became a self-proclaimed atheist. A spiritual reawakening brings her back to Christ and a conversion to the Catholic Church. Though within this journey was also paths through Cafeteria Catholics and bits of Eastern religions and then visiting a Camaldolese Benedictine Monastery and an event at the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem that moved her forward in the fullness of the Catholic faith.
I could really relate with her with she describes the period of a a converts zeal where you really feel out of phases with others especially your own relatives. You come to think that everybody should be at the same point of the spiritual journey as you are and you just can't understand while they are not also on fire for God. The silliness of this demand on others does not immediately dawn on you or that just a short time ago you were just as spiritually lax.
You can easily remember a list of virtues, but actually seeing where you are lacking and what to do about it when you do start to glimpse this is another thing. This is what I most enjoyed about this book was her frank discussion of her own struggles and the path to slowly overcoming them. The mini saint biographies are also very well done and even though I was mostly familiar with the saints mentioned, I still learned something from them.
Paula's Huston is obviously well read and was able to draw on the treasury of the Church for examples and quotes to use. I do think at times that some of her explanations were lacking a little bit of rigor. Like for example saying that faith is "a theological one, because it comes through grace", when it fact it is theological because its immediate object is God. Though these minor problems don't distract from the overall value of the book. One part I could certainly have done without dealt with the enneagram. When she first brings it up she announces skepticism about it and then writes about the values of the insights they gave her into her own personality. Doubtless good can come from even problematic things, but when she describes St. Teresa of Avila as "St. 3." I found that quite annoying and I almost put the book away after that. This though was the exception to an otherwise fine book.
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This review is from: By Way of Grace: Moving from Faithfulness to Holiness (Hardcover)
This book weas just what I needed at this time to help me with personal problems which had arisen this Lenten season.
Through reading and reflecting on the chapters, I was able to discover more about what was happeneing to me .
It was a perfect guide .
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