Forgiveness and Other Acts of Love

With an intelligent mixture of personal insight and scholarship, Dowrick, a psychotherapist and author of Intimacy and Solitude, furnishes new seekers as well as seasoned believers a refreshing approach to contemporary spirituality. Her sources, and certainly her readership, range widely in philosophy and tradition. Courage, fidelity, restraint, generosity, tolerance and, especially, forgiveness--six virtues Dowrick says can form and transform us--make up the paths the author has explored in her personal journey. Through thoughtful observations and compelling stories, Dowrick models for the reader an effective way to consider the journey toward love of others and of self. ""Forgiveness lives or dies not on what has been done to us and how we feel about that, but on the deepest and most telling attitudes we bring to... the meaning we find in existence,"" she concludes. The author's spiritual hunger and energy give her writing momentum. That her approach seems unfocused at times can be forgiven, because the writing is clear and lends itself to savoring the material in small portions. Dowrick has extracted and assimilated salient truths from the world's wisdom literature here, and her book should interest those wanting to synthesize the truths rooted in the world's spiritual traditions. (Oct.)