BOOK REVIEW BY LORRAINE LIPSON

Lorraine has worked as a social worker and

I have read your memoir with much interest and very struck by how much detail.   I see now that we were on parallel journeys toward individuation and that in the subsequent 40 odd years living with the Focolare Movement , we have each journeyed separately toward a deeper individuation with touch points of sharing directly with each other.

 

I’ve attached a writing of Patriach Athanagoras (Chiara visited him on a number of occasions for Pope Paul VI ) which speaks very much to me. He captures his journey toward individuation in his mature years)

 

You’ve given me the impetus to get going on writing my own memoir

 

Patriarch Athonagoras I of Constantinople was an important figure in promoting dialogue and making steps to promote communion between Orthodoxy and the Catholic Church.

 

We need to succeed in disarming ourselves

I have fought this war. For years and years

It was terrible. But now I’m disarmed.

I am no longer afraid of anything,

Because “love drives out fear”

I am disarmed of the will to overcome,

To justify myself at the expense of others.

 

I am no longer on the alert,

Jealously grasping my riches

I welcome and I share.

I am not attached to my opinions, to my plans.

If other better proposals come to me,

I accept them willingly.

Or rather, not better, but good.

You know, I have given up comparisons…

That which is good, true, real, wherever it is,

It is the best for me.

Therefore, I am no longer afraid.

When you no longer possess anything,

You no longer have fear.

“Who can separate us from the love of Christ?”

But if we disarm ourselves,

If we divest ourselves,

If we open ourselves to the God-man

Who makes all things new then it is he who cancels our evil past and gives back to us a new time where everything is possible.

 

Patriarch Athenagoras – Quoted in article on prayer by the late Bishop Hemmerle

 

librarian.

 

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