Rev. Danny Fisher

Welcome to another new feature here at the blog: book reviews. As a way of inaugurating this new series, I would like to offer my review of author Jerry White‘s new book I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis. I was recently invited by Dani Sevilla of Survivor Corps to do this, and, because I was aware of and interested in White’s work, I accepted.

White is co-founder of the aforementioned Survivor Corps (formerly the Landmine Survivors Network), an NGO dedicated to “helping all those who have suffered from global conflict and its lasting effects.” He is also a leader in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which was a co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. As a young student, White lost his leg and was nearly killed when he stepped on and activated a landmine during a camping trip in Israel. Since then, he has dedicated his life to teaching others the art of survivorship. I Will Not Be Broken is a culmination of his work.

The book is unique among others written by Nobel Peace laureates and/or those who have helped to lead movements and organizations honored with the prize. Usually, books by these authors can be put into one of two categories: “autobiography” (like, for example, His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Freedom in Exile, Wangari Maathai’s Unbowed, or Shirin Ebadi’s Iran Awakening) or “mission statement” (Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s No Future without Forgiveness, Jody Williams’ Banning Landmines, Muhammad Yunus’ Creating a World Without Poverty). White’s book would more appropriately be classified as “self-help”; his aim here is to assist those affected deeply by crisis.

White writes that he does not set out to answer the question of “why bad things happen.” Instead, his goal is to present methods for “overcoming/absorbing blows.” It’s about “determination,” he says–”choosing” to find happiness. Though he’s the founder of an organization called Survivor Corps, he makes it clear that I Will Not Be Broken is about more than just survival–it’s about “growing stronger.”

White lays out five steps for surviving and growing stronger, and devotes a chapter to each:

1. Face facts
   
2. Choose life
   
3. Reach out
   
4. Get moving
   
5. Give back

He intersperses the (very accessible) philosophizing with his own personal stories as well as those of the people he’s met in his work and travels. The result is a very readable book filled with useful tools and reflections on their practical applications by real people.

I Will Not Be Broken succeeds brilliantly at being what it sets out to be: a thoughtful, sensitive, and useful guide along the path of survivorship. I found it inspiring in all the right places, well-reasoned, and down-to-earth. Being able to discover more about White’s own journey and where he looks for guiding lights is also a valuable aspect of the book. Near the end, he writes:

We don’t always have to look for larger-than-life heroes. We can be heroes for each other. We are just ordinary folks wanting to endure and live life well, even during the rough patches. But we can all benefit from role models who not only overcome adversity, but find the wherewithal to give back and serve the broader community.

White is certainly one such role model–one who has, to borrow some of his rhetoric, “completed the cycle of survivorship.” We have much we can learn from him.

I highly recommend I Will Not Be Broken to you, and I thank Dani for bringing it to my attention.

This from WeCanSolveIt.Org:

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Add your name to the petition here.

If you’re a regular visitor to this blog, then you’ll know that I’m a great lover of films. I see significantly fewer as I age, though. This is to some degree deliberate. Time is fleeting, and the medium quite powerful–as a Buddhist practitioner, I’ve become something of a discriminating viewer. I’d really rather see a film that’s going to teach me something, or one that the critics I appreciate tell me with some consensus ought to be seen (as in the case of Pixar’s Wall-E, which I saw last week and thought was really something). I hope to avoid potently manipulative “entertainments” that send me (let’s be blunt here) samsaric messages. I suppose I could articulate this more clearly, but the venerable joke magazine Cracked has done the job for me: take a look at their wonderfully funny, mostly right-on-the-money assessment of “5 Terrible Life Lessons Hollywood Loves to Teach You”. (OK, I don’t agree with all of them and I might add a few others, but you get the idea.)

Via Tibet Will Be Free: Jane Macartney reports for The Times on the tightened security in and around Tibet’s main monasteries and capital city in the lead up to the 2008 Summer Olympics’ opening ceremonies in Beijing.

Dozens, possibly several hundred, have been arrested or are detained and under investigation for their roles in the anti-Chinese demonstrations and riots that hit Lhasa on March 14. This, however, does not account for the empty halls in the three great monasteries, Drepung, Sera and Ganden, that lie near the city. Several hundred monks are believed to have been living in each of them before the violence erupted.

Now Tibetan sources have revealed that most of the monks, more than 1,000 in total, have been transferred to many prisons and detention centres in and around the city of Golmud in neighbouring Qinghai province. The detained monks are all young ethnic Tibetans from surrounding regions who had made their way to Lhasa, their spiritual capital, to study and pray in the most prestigious spiritual centres on the Roof of the World.

Their detention is part of a policy to rid the monasteries of any monks not registered as formal residents of the administrative region, known as the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

Family members say that the monks have been told they will be incarcerated in Golmud only until the end of the Olympic Games in Beijing. The policy is part of a campaign by the Chinese Government to ensure that the Games, opening on August 8 and lasting for two weeks, pass off without a hitch and without protests from the restive Tibetans, they told The Times.

Read the whole piece here.

With less than a month until the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the BBC’s Allan Little looks at China’s record on human rights. Take a look at his report here.