Book Review - Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen

I have been involved in helping youth at the local juvenile detention center for over eight years now.  I have spent a lot of time wondering about the best ways to approach the problems these wonderful youth face.  How can we help them?  How can we assist them to find solutions and healing?  What are the best resources for facilitating this progress?

I also spent several months living in the wilderness with troubled youth.  I despised the model that program used.  While "the mountain" had its healing powers, because it was far away from drugs and influences, completely distant from privileges and possessions; it could have been so much more.  This wilderness program made the mountain merely a tool for isolation.  They could have done that in a warehouse.  In Touching Spirit Bear, the wilderness, in this case the island, was so very much more.  That "more" was what was entirely lacking in the wilderness program and is hardly even sought in our current judicial system.

Ben Mikaelsen's book provided many of the answers I've been seeking.  There is wisdom here and great risk.  I think we will never see this kind of method commonly used because of the risk.  We don't take those kinds of chances with our youth and the consequence is, we don't get this kind of results.  I think life in general was designed by God to be just this risky, but lawyers and hand wringers have taken much of the potential out of life and consequently out of the lives of our youth.

Reality therapy is pretty simple, as one character, Garvey, tell his young friend Cole:

"Go ahead and try it.  Try manipulating a storm or lying to your hunger.  Try cheating the cold."

There is more to the process this book reveals.  It is not only about being exposed to reality.  It is also about being, exposed to love.  This is another ingredient that seems quite lacking in the institutional setting.  The powers that be, in an honest effort to protect, have even sheltered these kids from love.  Human contact is prohibited.  Perhaps that's risky too. This is not to say that the staff at these institutions lacks love for their charges.  Quite to the contrary, most are under paid and under appreciated and stay precisely because they love these kids.  But at the end of the day, if because of societal fears and institutional rules, these kids don't experience individually focused love, don't connect with others who deeply care about them, don't feel healthy, safe human contact, they won't be getting better and we'll continue to see many of them behind bars again and again.

So I hammer on about the details, while Mikaelsen just tells a story.  And what a wonderful, heart rending, uplifting and inspiring story it is.  Some kids will get the message vicariously through the story.  I did.  You see, I'm not appreciably healthier than they are.  It is clear though, that Cole's experience living it will be infinitely deeper than my experience reading about it.  And Cole's recovery will be correspondingly sturdier than mine has been.  As I note this, though, I realize that reality and love can be had right here where I am.  I don't have to isolate myself to an island or a mountain.  Reality and love are everywhere. The difference is that here I have access to the tools I use to avoid them.

*****

Book Review - Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz

Two Odd books in a row!  I am indeed working on my ODD.  My appreciation for Odd Thomas grows and grows.  I love his simple, unassuming ways.  I thrill at his optimism and at his thought provoking philosophical approach to life.  While my imagination falls far short of Dean Koontz's there is a familiarity and  and brotherhood that warms me every time I read his work.

Here are a few philosophical gems:

"Without faith to act as a governor, the human mind is a runaway worry generator, a dynamo of negative expectations.  And because your life is yours to shape as you wish with free will, if you entertain too much anxiety about too many things, if you place no trust in providence, what you fear will more often come to pass.  We make so many of our own troubles, from mere mishaps to disasters, by dwelling on the possibility of them until the possible become inevitable."

"Narcissists are everywhere in this ripe age of self-love, which amazes me because so much in life would seem to foster humility." 

"Knowing the names of things is a way of paying respect to the beauty of the world that sustains me and keeps my sorrow in check."

"I have witnessed others demonstrating by their addictions that chemically induced euphoria is subject to something quite like the law of gravity:  What goes up must eventually come crashing down." 

"You can't stand an idea up against a wall and execute it.  Neither can you wrap in up in a tissue of your better judgement and tuck it in a box of forgetfulness.  An idea can be the most dangerous of all things, especially if it is an idea that promises you the most paticular and exquisite happiness for which you've long yearned." 

"Maybe it's just that before anything came the word, and words are the roots of everything that our senses perceive.  Nothing can be imagined, nothing can be visualized in our minds, until we have a word for it.  Therefore, when I give myself to the free flow of any words that trip off my tongue without predetermination, I am tapping in to the primal creative power at the heart of the cosmos." 

"But if there can be a change for the worse, there can be a change for the better." 

"The best part of a Mr. Goodbar is not the wrapper, is it?  No, and the best part of a Coke is not the can.  On those nights when you lie awake, either man or boy, wondering about yourself, peeling away one layer of oddness after another, you should remember and always be grateful that the woefully imperfect person that you are, with all your contradictions and unworthy desires, is not the best of you any more than the wrapper is the best part of a Mr. Goodbar." 

And the story is interesting and a lot of fun too!

The second biggest thrill from reading this book is the promise, which comes at the end, of yet another book in the Odd Thomas series, Deeply Odd.  Can't wait!

*****

Book Review - Odditude by John R. Powers

The sub-title of this little volume says it all:  Finding the Passion for Who You Are and What You Do.

This is a great bathroom book.  Each chapter is short succinct and wonderfully clear about what one might to to enhance one's uniqueness.  In a world that increasingly seeks to homogenize the population.  Dr. Powers makes a strong argument for maintaining and developing our own individuality, our ODD.  ODD is where happiness, growth, excitement and opportunity are found. 

I loved the book and intend to spend time reviewing it often.  I hope to establish my ODD and to foster the ODD in those around me.  I have seen raw milk that was 75% cream.  All of the cream rose to the top.  Surely some became butter, some was poured over peaches, some was frozen into ice cream and some, whipped, topped a wonderful pie.  The point is, it rose above the ordinary, because it wasn't homogenized.and made EVEN with the milk.  There is ODD in each of us and fostered will make each of us better and consequently, the world will be a better place.

No doubt we'll get resistance from those who'd make us EVEN, but the effort and consequent persecution will be worth it.

I highly recommend this one.  Share it with your kids; unless you're a parent who'd rather make them EVEN because you're a control freak.  In that case, I'll share it with them.  :-)

*****

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Book Review - The Healing Code by Alex Loyd and Ben Johnson

This one came highly recommended so I dived into it with earnest intent.  I loved it...that is until I got to the actual code.  Then I got pretty squeamish about the whole thing.  The idea of the book is that all of our maladies, be they physical or emotional, are the direct result of stress.  By stress they mean something deeper more non-nondescript that the pressure of deadlines and rush hour traffic. Loyd and Johnson conclude that this deep "cellular" stress shuts off our immune system or at least slows it down.  So, the key to health is in figuring out a way to fire the immune system back up.  I buy that.

The authors explain in depth that our memories are stored at the cellular level and throughout our entire bodies.  The brain is just the central processor.  I can also buy into this.  We once had a Shetland Sheep dog we raise from a pup.  His name was Pepper.  His mother had given birth to him in an urban apartment and we took him home to live in a city house and it's back yard.  He had most certainly never seen a sheep.  One day when he was about 9 or 10 months old we took a family drive on the mountain.  Pepper was in the back seat with the kids.  We were driving slowly through the mountain woods on a dirt road.  The windows were open and we were enjoying the cool mountain air.  Rounding a bend we encountered a grazing herd of sheep in a pretty meadow.  When Pepper saw the sheep he bolted out the window, sprinted into the herd, cut out about six head of sheep and separated them from the rest.  We apologized to the sheep herder as we called the dog back to the car.  He didn't want an apology; he wanted the dog!  Pepper had never laid eyes on a sheep but encoded in his DNA was all the memory he needed to know exactly what he was bred for and how and what to do with that knowledge.  It was astounding to say the least.  If that much memory can be stored in a dog's DNA, it isn't much of a leap to think the same and more could happen for us.

So, Loyd and Johnson make a case for the possibility that lies, fears and misperceptions are stored in us at the cellular level and that this "programming" not only controls us subconsciously, but causes us unhealthy stress.  I'm quite comfortable with all this.

Their solution though, is another matter.  They are Christians and include prayer as part of the process, but they also include some rather hocus pocus Chakra type energy alignment type stuff that gives me pause.  I can't quite see how "shining" my finger tips on my Adam's apple while thinking good thoughts is going to reprogram my cellular memory.  On the other hand, I suppose it couldn't hurt, so I've been taking it for a spin.  They have case studies of instant results after just one "shining."  Not so with me.  But, as I am not a quitter and am trying to be open minded instead of empty headed, I think its only fair to give it a good serious try before making my final assessment.  So, when I'm satisfied, one way or the other, I'll come back and let you know what I think.