Bright Shining
How Grace Changes Everything
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- US$12.99
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"A powerful book from one of my favorite writers on something we all need more of...and could give more of." — Ryan Holiday, bestselling author of The Obstacle is the Way and Ego Is the Enemy
"Luminous. . . . A work to both devour and savour, Baird has, once again, written a book the world needs now."
— Guardian
From the bestselling author of Phosphorescence comes a beautiful and timely exploration of that most mysterious but necessary of human qualities: grace.
Grace is hard to define. It can be found when we create ways to find meaning and dignity in connection with each other, building on our shared humanity and compassion, being kinder, bigger, better with each other. If, in its crudest interpretation, karma is getting what you deserve, then grace is the opposite: forgiving the unforgivable, favoring the undeserving, loving the unlovable.
Sadly, we live in an era when grace is increasingly rare. Our growing distrust of the media, politicians, and each other has choked our ability to trust, to accept, to allow for mistakes, to forgive.
What does grace look like in today’s world, and how do we recognize it, nurture it in ourselves and express it, even in the darkest of times? In this luminously beautiful, deeply insightful, and timely inspirational book, Baird explores the meaning of grace and how we can cut through negativity to find it today.
This profound exploration of grace offers a path back to our shared humanity:
Shared Humanity: Discover how moral beauty—the goodness we see in others—is a primary source of awe and a powerful tool to rebuild trust in a fractured world.Forgiving the Unforgivable: Journey through the complexities of forgiveness, from restorative justice with murderers to the personal choice to release the past without forgetting it.Grace in the Everyday: Learn to recognize and nurture grace not as a rare miracle, but as an inner light that can be found in the kindness of strangers and the strength of our connections.A Path to Resilience: Explore how grace acts as a source of grit and strength, offering an inspiring guide to cutting through negativity and finding hope even in the darkest of times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Grace is hiding in plain sight, writes Baird (Phosphorescence) in this effervescent outing. While undergoing cancer treatment during the pandemic, Baird embarked on a search for the phenomenon—which she describes as a fleeting, hard-to-define instance of "undeserved" beauty, kindness, or clarity—and found it in unexpected places: swimming with whale sharks in Australia, the small kindnesses of nurses at treatment appointments, and seeing a luminous pink moon the night after her mother died, which put the author in mind of her mother's "presence... gentle and strong." Taking a broader perspective on grace, Baird describes how Australian First Nations members invited Australians to join a "makarrata"—a "coming together after a struggle"—and how some grieving families forgive their loved one's killers despite the almost unimaginable pain involved (Danny Abdallah, whose three kids were killed by a drunk driver in 2020, notes that "forgiveness is not a single action... it has been more than two years and I must choose to forgive myself and the driver every day—to not retreat into hatred"). Baird's ability to find wonder in the everyday is especially poignant, as when she considers the donor who made a blood transfusion she received after a surgery possible: "When I came to, I felt stronger, and I wondered whose blood it was that was now racing through my veins, injecting me with life." Even cynics will be moved.
