Living With Paradox

One of the authors favorite New Yorker cartoons depicts Charles Dickens discussing his manuscript with an editor. The editor is saying, I wish you would make up your mind, Mr. Dickens. Was it the best of times or the worst of times? It could scarcely have been both. This humorous message captures the concrete, either-or thinking that can cause a person to get stuck while on his or her journey towards living a bigger life. Peter Allman has written a unique, compelling, yet simple collection of paradoxes that invite the reader to unlock the mystery of living a bigger life that includes the both-and thinking of paradoxes. This book helps the reader to integrate paradoxical truths. Each chapter is drawn from the authors personal experiences as a psychotherapist, adjunct professor of undergraduate and graduate psychology classes, sought-after public speaker, co-founder and president of a non-profit, after-school center for disadvantaged adolescents, husband, and father. The Western mind and the left brain have ignored much of the depth of true spirituality--by ignoring its invariably paradoxical character. Peter Allman does an immense service by holding and yet revealing great paradoxes in a very creative tension. This book could change the way you hear spiritual texts and teachers, and the way you will grow from now on! ?Richard Rohr, O.F.M., author of Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer