Touching the Edge
A Mother's Spiritual Journey from Loss to Life
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- 14,99 €
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- 14,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
Praise for Touching the Edge
"Touching the Edge is an homage to love, loss, and the rising grace that comes when grief is transformed into peace. Margaret Wurtele's bow to her son, Phil, is a story we can all recognize within the context of each family's dance with death. Her words can heal the fall of a human heart."
-Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge, Red, and Leap
"Touching the Edge is an extraordinary memoir. Margaret Wurtele writes of the most painful events a parent can ever imagine, and yet she writes so honestly, so clearly, with prose as lucid and shimmering as cut crystal, that the book shines with a quiet grace. I too have a single grown child. I read this book and trembled. But I also saw, through Margaret Wurtele's eyes, a glimpse of the light that guided her through the darkness. It was a privilege to read this book."
-Susan Allen Toth, author of Blooming: A Small-Town Girlhood and My Love Affair with England
"I happened to be climbing on Rainier the day that Phil was killed, and I often wondered who he was, what he was like. Now, thanks to this beautifully told account, I have a very good idea. And I have an even clearer sense of what it means to be a parent, and a child of God. This book will choke you up, but the tears will be more than worth it."
-Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously
"The experience of love and loss, when shared, can become the alchemy of a rebirth of the spirit in others. In this journey to the other side of grief, Margaret Wurtele is fearlessly true to her experience of loss and makes herself available to be an agent of transformation for her readers. This is the glory of the human story: we really are 'members of one another' whether we realize it or not."
-Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, and author of Seasons of Grace, The Soul's Journey, and Living the Truth
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a previous book dealing with spiritual growth (Taking Root), the author illuminated her journey to Christianity after a childhood spent within a secular home. In this memoir Wurtele, co-founder of Ruminator Books, beautifully describes how the death of her only child darkened her life and tested her religious awakening. An avid mountain climber, Phil, the author's 22-year-old son, was a summer intern at Washington State's Mount Rainier Park. He was killed with a ranger on a rescue mission to assist an injured climber. Interspersed with moving portraits of Phil's short life, the author's memories of the pain that consumed her during this first year of mourning. She was fortunate to have the love and support of her husband (Phil's stepfather) as well as a good relationship with three grown stepchildren who became even closer to her after Phil's accident. It was, however, Wurtele's commitment to religion that provided her with the sustenance to go on during this difficult time. Wurtele found emotional relief in a retreat that she took at the Episcopal House of Prayer and in exploring the writings of John of the Cross. Ecumenical in her outlook, she also attended another retreat conducted by a Catholic priest who had studied Zen meditation intensively. Wurtele shares the dreams and visions of Phil that came to her during this period as well as the deepening faith that gave her the courage to accept her adventurous son's death.
