A Guide on Several Levels

With six weeks of Lent ahead, some may still be looking for a direction or focus. Joyce Rupp’s Jesus, Guide of my Life, (www.avemariapress.com, 800-282-1865) points out a “path that is a person.”

Disclaimer: Joyce has been a friend and mentor for over 25 years, and I still believe her Foreword to my first book, Hidden Women of the Gospels, accounts for most of its success. In her usual way, she compacts profound substance into short bits. After praying these Lenten meditations daily for over five weeks, I can attest that in a brief time, they provide prayer prompts and thoughtful material for the day.

One thing that has made Joyce’s work enormously popular is how quickly readers can identify with her. By the second day, I was saying, “she’s so like me—quick to judge, wanting to see immediate results of good deeds, easily blinded by ‘decoys’ on the Way.” She doesn’t write from lofty seclusion in a convent, but clearly gets what it’s like to live with the tensions and contradictions of a complex life, filled with work, relationships, stresses, joys and the quirky ways childhood hurts and roles resurface. Sometimes when we’re tired and life looks blurry, it’s a relief to have such a crystalline reminder of Jesus’ “wise insights and compassionate mentoring.”

They may seem small details of style, but as one sensitive to the way authors present content, I was grateful for Joyce’s innovative use of language: for example, anxieties “slurp up your precious daytime energy” (73) and forgiveness “lifts the lid off coffined love.” (83) Like the “99 Beautiful Names for God” in Islam, her prayers are addressed to names for God we might not have used before: Disrupter of Complacency, Source of Easing Burdens, Storehouse of Promises, Awakened One, Companion in the Dark, Beloved Foot-Washer. It’s worth the $13.95 price of the book for its unique spin on Jesus’ wild  inclusivity. In his day, that meant hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors. The tired translation is often, “be nice to an unhoused person on the street.” But Joyce convincingly describes “conversation with a pony-tailed, leather-garbed, heavily bearded motorcyclist.” (86) Who woulda thought of that?

The trifecta: the book is a guide, Joyce is a guide and Jesus is a guide. We who benefit three ways can learn much from this author who has walked in sync with Jesus for many years, clearly has a deep, close relationship with him, and generously shares creative guidelines for the journey.