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"Wolf is a master at converting the ordinary into the extraordinary. Drawing from a rich vocabulary to express herself, she explores each subject like a miner panning for gold, extracting the essence of a lesson or truth, then presenting it almost matter-of-factly. Whether she is writing about a personal betrayal, the aftermath of her abusive marriage or how a friend's life was shattered by the Oklahoma City bombing, Wolf invites self-reflection. Although she gazes inwardly, she does not stay there, always moving on to some new place in her spiritual journey." —Publishers Weekly Molly Wolf is no longer afraid of suffering. Though it makes her flinch, she insists on diving into the wreckage -- of her abusive marriage, the Oklahoma bombing, the Rwandan genocide -- ever searching for redemptive meaning. "Suffering and joy are really only two sides of the same coin," she writes in this brave and deeply moving collection of essays, "the coin of love, pure gold, not the brilliant fool's stuff with its peacocky sheen. I'll have it this way, thank you." This sort of plainspoken profundity is a hallmark of Wolf's writing. Her career began with weekly musings that she posted on the Internet several years ago. Eventually, her audience grew to thousands who looked to her "Sabbath Blessings" for solace, as well as beauty and theology. While this collection is more eclectic than her others -- the pieces range in tone from memoir to parable to homily -- it all feels like a letter from a good friend. Wolf is one who, as she says, has lived through "Interesting Times," though she never goes into the details. We know that she has struggled with depression and an abusive marriage, that she suffers from a moderate cast of post-traumatic stress disorder. But Wolf is less interested in the specifics of her victimhood than in what it teaches. In "Snow Pile," for example, she talks about the hypersensitivity that accompanies her condition. An ordinary trip to the supermarket is overwhelming, and the mild sunlight makes her "eyeballs feel fried." But soon enough she's praying to God to "take this @#$%# hypersensitivity and make something of it." The gifts she receives are the muddy snowbanks on the side of the road. She discovers in them a depth of beauty that would have been inaccessible to her in a normal state. But Wolf is always looking at the ordinary in unusual ways. As she's writing, a green bug walks across her computer screen, which prompts an entire chapter on this normally overlooked creature. "If the green bug matters, so do I," she writes, uncovering, in her typical way, the layers of meaning beneath things. In spite of her training as a biologist, there is much she doesn't understand about this creature, but she takes comfort in her ignorance. "If I choose to believe in God, as I have done again and again, than I can trust that God knows not only what I haven?t learned about yet, but what I can never possibly understand." Perhaps the most memorable essays are the "Portraits, Somewhat Fictional" in the middle section. Here Wolf's gift as story-teller pulls us into a world of modern-day parable, with psychologically complex characters (whose problems and failures all too often resemble our own). Other essays on general themes such as forgiveness, anger, and dignity veer into the abstract, but Wolf makes up for it with the force of her unconventional wisdom. She looks at the underbellies of these typically one-dimensional topics to find, again and again, the intertwining of evil and good, and how messy goodness can be. How do we find acceptance but not complacency? True love without selfish motives? A just forgiveness? No easy answers exist, but fortunately there are books such as this that dare to ask. And though it tackles such huge, dark topics, we turn the last page and somehow we feel enlightened, strengthened, even blessed. —Catholic Digest |
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