Forgiveness, the Passionate Journey: Nine Steps of Forgiving Through Jesus' Beatitudes

Christian Century, April 24, 2002 by Richard A. Kauffman

By Flora Slosson Wuellner. Upper Room Books, 160 pp., $11.00.

Flora Slosson Wuellner was determined to write a book on forgiveness. Her editor agreed that it is a timely subject. Wuellner even had an outline for the book. But then one night she had a dream in which she was told to write a book on Jesus' Beatitudes. In the dream she protested that she was committed to writing on forgiveness first, that a book on the Beatitudes would need to wait. But when she awoke from her dream and read the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, the Beatitudes seemed to track with her outline for the book. Hence, this book: an exposition of Jesus' insights on forgiveness viewed through his nine "blessings." Wuellner writes for both those who are on a journey toward forgiving another and for offenders who need that forgiveness. Who of us doesn't belong to both camps? Here too are Wuellner's trademark "healing meditations"--extended exercises at the end of each chapter to help the reader experience what the book proclaims.

--R. A. K.