Ordinary Grace: An Examination of the Roots of Compassion, Altruism, and Empathy, and the Ordinary Individuals Who Help Others in Extraordinary Ways - Hardcover

Brehony, Kathleen A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1573221082 ISBN 13: 9781573221085

Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover, 1999

Synopsis

A psychotherapist explores the origins of compassion, grace, and altruism through studies of religion and science, showing the deep motivations of selfless behaviors and demonstrating how the good can cast out the bad. 12,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Kathleen Brehony, a Jungian clinical psychiatrist, refuses to believe that acts of kindness are exceptional or even random. Instead, she offers testimony to the instinctual human desire to be compassionate, forgiving, merciful, and tolerant. Brehony offers real-life stories to demonstrate the tenacity and pervasiveness of ordinary grace and altruism. She takes us into the homes of everyday heroes, such as a New Jersey couple who adopted four HIV-infected children from a Romanian orphanage. We enter inner-city neighborhoods and small-town high schools and find out that the plight of today's youth is not all doom and gloom, as the media would suggest. In fact, many teens are spiritually thriving as a result of their own acts of kindness--the tutoring they offer younger children or the food they deliver to their elders.

If you're looking for an antedote to the daily barrage of cynical and pessimistic claims about human nature, this will do the trick. There's even a chapter devoted to showing readers how to create more grace in everyday life. Through strong storytelling supported by extensive research, Brehony makes a convincing case for the inborn and sacred goodness of humanity. --Gail Hudson

From Kirkus Reviews:

A heartening inquiry into why ordinary folks routinely go the second mile for others, by clinical psychologist Brehony (Awakening at Midlife: Realizing Your Potential for Growth and Change, 1996). What causes altruism in some people? Is it nature or nurture? The author makes a strong case for nature here, drawing from research on newborns and primates to argue for an innate, biologically based compassion. Such instincts are either reinforced or quelled by life experiences, though Brehony says that in some people, even truly horrifying childhood traumas only intensify the impulse to be kind to others. The quiet strength of this book lies in its storytelling, as Brehony draws upon field research, follows up on media stories, or even employs members of her own family to demonstrate that people can and do carry out tremendously empathic actions every day. We meet a New Jersey couple who have adopted four HIV-positive Romanian orphans, and a doctor who sacrifices all of his free time to procuring computers so that terminally ill children can communicate with one another in cyberspace. Brehony devotes a whole chapter to organ donation, describing incidents with both deceased and living donors (in two instances, people felt moved to donate a kidney to a casual friend). Another chapter explores how a couple who lost their child to a degenerative illness raised tens of thousands of dollars to design and build a ``wheelchair-friendly'' playground where all kids can play together, regardless of physical ability. Brehony writes that those who exhibit this kind of ``ordinary grace'' classically show an optimism about the fundamental goodness of humanity (``Anyone would do what I did''), as well as a conviction that they are the ones who have been blessed by the giving. A restorative tonic, more than mere chicken soup for the soulbecause it may well inspire readers to go out and do something good for somebody. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1573221082
• ISBN 13: 9781573221085
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 242