Posted December 4, 2012 Book: Still Point: Loss, Longing, and Our Search for God Author: Regis Martin Ave Maria Press. Notre Dame, IN. 2012. pp. 95 An Excerpt from the Jacket: Franciscan University professor, popular speaker and prolific author Regis Martin tells how the deaths of his mother and brother pushed him to revisit all he knew and felt about God and his own deepest desires --- and how he came to reconcile the theology he teaches with the lived experience of faith. He offers us wisdom for confronting the greatest mysteries of life, suffering, and death. Along with profound insights, you will find encouragement and hope, coming from the God of mercy through the cross of Christ. An Excerpt from the Book: I think of that magnificent line from Franz Kafka, found on the very last page of Luigi Giussani’s The Religious Sense. Giussani cites this line as evidence of the greatness of humans: "Even if salvation does not come, still I want to be worthy of it in every instant." Only someone alive with longing, galvanized by an obscure yet persisting hope, could say that. It is the virtue of remaining stubbornly rooted in the belief that reality is forever open to something --- indeed to someone --- infinitely more. This someone is so determined on securing an indestructible joy and happiness for those he loves that to be the recipient of such love cause one to rise each morning with a lightness of spirit, a spring in the step, wonderfully reminiscent of the "tiny girl" in the famous poem by Charles Peguy, "The Portal of the Mystery of the Second Virtue," whom he enshires as the very centerpiece of hope. He tells us, "She rise every morning," her heart radiant with the promises of God. Similarly, the little child whom G.K. Chesterton extols sees the world in the light of an "eternal morning . . .which has a sort of wonder in it as if the world were as new as the child herself." What is so wonderful about childhood, Chesterton tells us, "is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world." Table of Contents: Introduction: The state of being lost --- what does it mean? A mother’s death How to cross an infinite sea on a finite bridge: C.S. Lewis and A Grief Observed Going in search of the lost: the lesson of Orpheus and Eurydice The fate of those untouched by tremors of an ultimate bliss Once more, the sheer thrust of human longing Lost and found: the experience of little Luigi (Giussani) Life understood as search The high school years I never remembered, save for a single event I have never forgotten Assessing the cynic’s dismissal: how can a mere mood vanquish death? Conclusion: My brother’s illness and death