A Season of Mystery: 10 Spiritual Practices for Embracing a Happier Second Half of Life by Paula HustonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This really is a lovely book. In it, Paula Huston focuses on ten practices which will make the second half of one's life more fulfilling- listening, delighting, lightening, settling, confronting, accepting, appreciating, befriending, generating and blessing. She weaves in some robust monastic theology, her own experience and just a lot of compassion and humour to produce a book which is beautiful guide to transformation.
What I love about Huston's writing is that it is both deeply personal, but able to connect meaningfully to the deeply wise monastic tradition- a juxtaposition which is not easy to achieve. Those theological passages are intriguing and thoughtful and presented with a clarity which not only make their points intelligibly, but relates it back in a way that one can take it into their own lives. And that is what Huston does as she moves back into the more personal sections of her narrative. Both work together-the theology deepening what we've experienced about God in this time of life, but the experience making the theology relevant to our own lives.
The overall message of this book is a hopeful, but realistic one. The practices Huston explains aren't a panacea, but they are things that, if we do them, will make us better and, hopefully, the world around us. Whatever we face in this second half of life, that strikes me as more achievable than ignoring the realities of what is to come.
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