The Heart of Perfection: How the Saints Taught Me to Trade My Dream of Perfect for God's by Colleen Carroll CampbellMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I ran into this book, scanning the options in Google Books, which touches on my interest in the Christian saints and how they can connect to how to live today. Roman Catholics tend to do this well because of their attention to saints in their spirituality and Campbell does it better than most. This book, as the title would suggest, focuses primarily on perfection and what various saint's lives have to say about that. The book weaves in Campbell's life and the lives of several saints and a few not saints.
What I liked about this book is not only the interweaving of the author's life and struggles with perfectionism, but also the empathy that she writes with when she writes about the various saints and not saints. She doesn't try to hid their flaws- in fact, the flaws created by perfectionism is part of what Campbell is talking about. She doesn't hesitate to talk about how perfectionism appears in religious life as judgement and harshness, but also looks to see what saints do to move away from all that. She provides a very human look at perfectionism, not shrinking from the darker sides, but also looking towards how our faith ultimately helps us rely on God, not our own perfection.
This is a worthy reflection on the guidance that the saints can give through their examples, both good and bad.
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