Marriage and Other Acts of Charity

In Kate Braestrup's latest book: Marriage and Other Acts of Charity: A Memoir, she offers wisdom and commonsense advice. She discusses the three types of love eros, philos, and agape. She uses examples of couples that have sought her counseling. Braestrup is an ordained minister in the Unitarian Church. She entered the ministry after the death of her husband. However, this is not a religious book. She was very careful to keep an unbiased perspective. This book is not one that common laymen will pick up and breeze through. The vocabulary is a bit difficult for most. I find Braestrup to be very honest when it comes to herself. This is an enjoyable read.

As a minister, Kate Braestrup counsels people on marriage: how to start one, how to enrich or endure one, and how to leave one. In this memoir, she also draws upon her own experience with two marriages and a serious relationship between those two weddings in a series of illuminating essays that are by turns thoughtful, heartbreaking, joyful and hilarious. As readers who enjoyed the author's previous memoir, HERE IF YOU NEED ME, know, her first marriage to Drew, a state trooper, ended in tragedy. Before Drew died in a car accident, their marriage was a bit of a roller coaster. Crazy in love, they married young, had four children and bought a dilapidated fixer-upper. While their kids seemed content, the couple became less and less satisfied with their marriage as time went by. In fact, Braestrup tells us, when she and Drew went to see a marriage counselor, she knew the marriage was a total disaster --- and she also knew exactly where the blame lay. As she told her husband during their counseling session: "I have made a thorough and I think I can say dispassionate examination of our marriage, its structures, its sexual politics, and its relationship to the social order...It is clear to me that the problem in our marriage is --- not to put too fine a point on it --- you." Braestrup is refreshingly frank about how temper fueled the discontent in that marriage. Both partners damaged property by slamming doors, squealing cars out of the driveway and crashing dishes. She even destroyed a coffee table she loved by throwing and breaking it. Their anger escalated. And then a true miracle happened that turned their marriage around. Only to have it end. Braestrup muses on the fact that all marriages inevitably end (death, she reminds us, will part marriage partners...when that marriage works). Yes, she tells us, we will lose our loved ones, which is one reason it takes incredible courage to choose to love someone. After the loved one is gone, she offers a cut-to-the-chase and unique plan of how to proceed. In the book, readers meet a game warden whose marriage is unraveling. We also encounter a young couple planning their wedding. And we thrill to (and sometimes laugh at) Braestrup's own two delightful love stories. After she meets Simon, who is destined to become her second husband, she ponders the shortcomings she would bring to a new relationship. For example, Simon shaved his beard between their first and second dates --- and Braestrup didn't even notice. She also briefly considers her breasts (although once lopsided, years of nursing have rendered them even, but they "now dangled in comfy symmetry on either side of my navel"), and she is more concerned about the absent-minded way she has melted five teapots by wandering away from them as they simmered. MARRIAGE AND OTHER ACTS OF CHARITY is frequently laugh-out-loud funny, as when Braestrup is guilted into teaching sexual morality to a pack of snickering 13-year-old kids. Yet it manages to have con

As a Mainer, I particularly enjoy Kate's writings. I know the places that she's talking of and I think that helps the book to be more "real" and applicable to my own life. I must say I really enjoyed this book. It didn't focus so much on her marriage (s) as it did the institution of marriage. Yes she uses some "big" words and faith to get her point across, but it isn't over done. As many poignant moments are in this book, there are just as many funny ones. My personal favorite was her children's pronounciation of her second husband's name. (You'll know it when you get to it!) This is an excellent Sunday afternoon book, soft and quiet, deep and insightful.

What a wonderful and different book about love, its true meaning, how to enact it! With a telling of her past, Kate Braestrup, takes us on her own personal journey and growth to the present. As a minister and chaplain for the Maine Warden Service (search, rescue, support, and comfort), she nonetheless continues to embark on loving more and and giving more. Not a goody goody, there are quick and wonderful humerous vignettes, as well as powerful tear jerking realizations of love and blessings and reaching out. I felt as tho I wanted to know her better and visited her bio. Just like her book, she is just one of us. Years ago, reading, Gifts from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindberg, I was moved by her insight. Somehow, this book reminds me of Anne but goes further in the dimension of finding agape and caritas, love and charity. This is a book I will reread, share and encourage others to read. It made me love more!

***** I read Kate Braestrup's award-winning first memoir "Here If You Need Me" as background before I read this--her latest book--and I'm so glad I did, because she is someone I wanted to know more about. It was helpful, but certainly not necessary, as this memoir stands alone. Together, the two are a wonderful read. Marriage and Other Acts of Charity is about the author's experiences with not only marriage, but life, love, God, parenting, organized religion, motherhood, grief, spirituality, and creating meaning when it seems impossible. I found this a beautiful book, another stunning memoir filled with poignant stories and hard lessons learned. The author has keen insights and a fresh way of looking at the world. She also has a great sense of humor. Although the author is a minister, this is not really a religious book. No matter what you believe, you will be comfortable with this book. Rev. Braestrup works in the Unitarian Universalist church, a denomination that is known for being tolerant and inclusive; reading her memoir made me really like Unitarians. It made me feel like there is maybe even a place for me in a church that is devoid of mean theology. This is a peaceful and loving book for people of all faiths or no faiths. It is about love and where and how you find it. And about the challenges that looking for it everywhere poses. You'll find the stories unforgettable. Highly recommended. *****