Green Leaves for Later Years: The Spiritual Path of Wisdom
"This book is an honest, hopeful word of encouragement. Emilie Griffin makes it abundantly clear that our later years can be a time of creative adventure. We can discover the that friends and gratitude, courage and trust, are truly gifts of God's grace moving us beyond our loss and failure, anxiety and illness. This has been Emilie Griffin's personal experience. She has transcended the constant, crippling pain of rheumatoid arthritis by letting go, being flooded with gratitude, trusting our Heavenly Father anew. Consequently, with a host of others, I have been personally nourished by her. Take and read." (Roger Fredrikson, pastor emeritus of First Baptist Church of Sioux Falls, South Dakota)"Readers of Emilie Griffin's previous meditations on life changes and aging inHomeward VoyageandSouls in Full Sailwill welcome her ever-deepening explorations inGreen Leaves for Later Years. Whether reflecting on her own life or relating stories from the lives of figures as diverse as Nelson Mandela, Ruth Bell Graham, Auguste Renoir and others, she challenges us to see aging as a discipline of attention offering a richness of experience and joy generally unimagined in our youth-obsessed culture. Emilie Griffin has become a wise woman; her books are twenty-first-century wisdom literature." (John Leax, professor of English and poet-in-residence at Houghton College)"Emilie Griffin writes grittily, wittily and transparently. Her green leaves are Edenic, not the result of naiveté but of continued growth despite physical impediments. For Emilie, pain and transcendence live in the same body. Her challenge, like that of others who have lived a long time, comes from not knowing exactly what lies ahead--life as a kind of open-ended novel, the character still in development, the plot not yet tied off neatly--yet a life for which God has an ongoing purpose. Emilie lives out that challenge, that purpose, in this story of amazing grace and faithfulness." (Luci Shaw, author of Breath for the Bones and writer in residence, Regent College)"Part poet, part spiritual director and at least a small part sly humorist, Emilie Griffin is the perfect person to write about how we can draw from Christian faith and wisdom through the journey of life, especially during the later years. The pages turn easily and her wisdom spills out." (Gary W. Moon, M.Div., Ph.D., executive director, Dallas Willard Center, Westmont College)