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Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed

Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed
Kathleen Willis Morton
$31.95
In stock, will ship in 2 – 3 business days
ISBN / SKU
9780861715657
Format
Paperback
Pages
192
Dimensions
150 x 225
Description
After the death of her six-week-old son, Liam, Katie Willis Morton embarks on a courageous search for solace and understanding. The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed invites readers to share in her voyage as she travels the world and the landscapes of her own experience. Interweaving what she witnesses - simple rituals like children's baths and picnics, and rites of passage like birth and death - with her own recovery and growth, she discovers that the pain she has experienced is both unavoidable and necessary, a pivotal part of the process of healing that can lead to "a victorious kind of joy, of acceptance." In discovering herself, Morton's story speaks to readers suffering similar tragedies, and indeed to all of us, in an intimate and inspiring story about enduring world-shattering pain and coming out whole.

The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed helps us confront the universal truths of love and loss that we all will eventually and inevitably encounter. This book will be a comfort to anyone who has faced a tragic loss, but not only that, it takes us all on a rich journey, through joy, suffering, and ultimately to hope, in a way that is quietly beautiful and, above all, utterly life-affirming.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kathleen Willis Morton holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of New Orleans. A practicing Buddhist since age 17, she lives in Cambridge, MA with her family.

PRAISE
"This is an extraordinarily moving, beautiful, and compassionate book about the universal subject of loss and how one couple came to understand why the Buddha's request to bring him a mustard seed from any household where no-one had ever died could never be fulfilled. Totally life-affirming."
—Mandala

"The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed is courageous and graceful, a redemptive story of love, compassion, and the need, sometimes, to go a great distance before finding our way home. This is a marvelous jewel of a book!"
—Dinty W. Moore, author of The Accidental Buddhist

"This extraordinarily moving book describes journeys: one a child's life and death journey that no parent would want to tread, and one a journey of self-discovery to far-off places. Liam, astonishingly beautiful like the mythical Tibetan blue poppy, lived in this world for a mere six weeks but the impact he had on his parents remains indelible. His short life was a tough Dharma lesson for a brave couple whose relationship and beliefs were tested. Morton's keen and sympathetic eye for detail makes their healing travels after Liam's death to places like China, Nepal, Tibet, Frankfurt, Prague and Venice come alive. This is a beautiful, compassionate book about the universal subject of loss and how one couple came to understand why Buddha's request to bring him a mustard seed from any household where no-one had ever died could never be fulfilled. Sad, but totally life-affirming."
—Nancy Patton, editor of Mandala

"Katies journey of grief is deeply informed and guided by her Buddhist faith, though it provides no easy answers, and it does not exempt her from the pain of her loss, nor should it. It does give her a means to return again and again to a wider view of her personal experience, to a place of compassion for herself, her young husband, and for the human condition….. We can be grateful for the courage in sharing her story and her hard earned wisdom."
—Kate McCandles for The Pacific Rim Review of Books

"Like Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, this book presents an intimate portrait of seeking peace of mind in the midst of the unthinkable. Kathleen Willis Morton shows us her struggle to let go while still holding on, and to find beauty in a world that has seemingly all at once turned terribly ugly. This wonderful book holds important life lessons for us all." —David Tolin, director, Institute for Living and author of Buried in Treasures

"Kathleen Willis Morton writes of the loss of her infant child from the depth of the heart's own truth. The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed reveals in unflinching detail the way in which pain summons its own healing and restores one to one's own natural life again. Morton has written a book of immeasurable value to anyone who has known, or will ever come to know, loss of a comparable kind."
—Lin Jensen, author of Together Under One Roof

"Kathleen Willis Morton's story shows us how a compassionate heart can help us face even the most painful of situations. Truly, the Buddhist path and mind of enlightenment bring comfort to not only ourselves, but to all around us."
—Anyen Rinpoche, author of The Union of Dzogchen and Bodhicitta

"A book well worth reading—wrenching and beautifully written."
—Kate Wheeler

"Morton has written an honest and deeply observed testament to the greatest loss of all. A poignant telling of a grieving mother's spiritual task – to bear it all and then let it go. A comforting and necessary read."
—Karen Maezen Miller, author of Momma Zen.

"Kathleen Willis Morton has created a unique, tender-hearted, and elegantly-written memoir. As I traveled with this brave and honest woman on her braided journey - across the globe, into Buddhism, and through grief - I found sights I didn't know I was missing, wisdom I didn't know I was needing, and solace I didn't know I was seeking. Thank you, Kathleen, for letting me walk beside you."
—Rachel Simon, author of Riding The Bus With My Sister

"The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed is a beautiful, painful and necessary book. Katie Willis Morton's chronicle of her struggle to live with the death of her first child, Liam, invites readers to know, intimately, her sorrows and joys. She writes, "When Liam was here, I simply loved, unstrained and easily, without reservation, without discernment, without judgment. It was a sacred experience to live in love and to gratefully accept the world with all its awful, unspeakable blessings." The Blue Poppy testifies to those many blessings.
—Annie Dawid

"The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed is a tribute to all mothers who struggle with the enormous grief that follows devastating loss. A thoughtful, honest, and hopeful book."
—Anne Hood, author of The Knitting Circle

"The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed is the tragic story of Kathleen Willis Morton and her husband, Chris having a longed for baby boy who dies seven weeks later. The story is extraordinarily difficult to read sometimes because it's so painful. It's also a very tender book, so you don't want to rush it.

It's hard to write about grief well. In writing The Blue Poppy, Morton joins a canon of grief and bereavement literature that has some real heavyweights in it — and she can hold her head up. In the 1960′s Simone de Beauvoir wrote about her mother's death (A Very Easy Death) and CS Lewis penned a Christian classic, A Grief Observed, following the death of his wife. Another spiritual classic, Grace and Grit, written by Ken Wilber in 1991, courses his five year journey with his wife, who was diagnosed with breast cancer within weeks of their marriage. More recently Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking won critical acclaim and became a one woman show on Broadway and in London's West End. Her husband dropped dead at the dinner table. "Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant."

Just occasionally Morton overdoes the description. And occasionally she tells, rather than shows –- which must be very tempting with a book like this. But mostly she's PDG (pretty damn good). If you want to know, or remember, how raw grief is, or can be, or if you need to have your current terrifying/chaotic/deadening/etc experience of grief articulated, read this.

It's such a new life and tiny body dying. It's so poignant. We grieve in relation to how we've loved. And they say the death of a child is the worst. "I had books on my shelf that were heavier than he was in the end." When Liam dies they quit their jobs and book a trip around the world. "I wanted to walk away forever going nowhere, and lie down and die at the same time." The travel stuff is interesting, but the basic material is the same. Like Jon Kabat-Zinn says, "Wherever you go, there you are."

Anyway, she pulls through, of course. It takes her nine years to feel kind of OK at his death anniversary, and to wake up one morning feeling happy. Morton began practicing Tibetan Buddhism when she was 17 and had Liam when she was 27. She had ten years of practice under her belt by the time of his death, then. Practice helps, it definitely helps. "In the darkness I had the stars to look up to." But it's not a magic wand: "wave this and avoid suffering."

I would have liked more about the "end" of her process. It's too short and "wrapped-up" a bit too soon for me. Maybe she hasn't had enough distance from the end yet? I dunno. There's a sense of a publicist wanting to write on the back-cover that this is an "uplifting memoir about enduring world-shattering pain and coming out whole." That is part of the story, of course, and I'm glad Morton feels like that.

But sentences like "I had to die in my mind to wake up to my life. In letting go, samsara is nirvana" don't do her justice somehow. I wish she'd done a little more work there, but maybe that way of expression is not her forte. It doesn't feel like her voice. The very last sentence of the book is more her voice, and is much more interesting. "Sometimes powerful reasons to hold on are not yet known to us." Given the age old ping pong in Buddhism between attachment and renunciation, and the manifold ways we rationalize, opine and actually behave, I wish she had explored this apparent contradiction more. In a sense, she's writing about that all the time, not knowing how to go on living without Liam, yet somehow keeping going, fumbling. It's a paradox and a koan this bereavement business. What do we hold on to and what do we let go of? There's the whole of the Dharma in that question. And what exactly is it we are doing when we do hold on and/or let go? I look forward to seeing other Buddhist writers keep Kathleen Willis Morton company in this genre. She's made a fabulous contribution, from the experience of a practicing Buddhist as well as a mother – and there's still plenty left to say."

— Reviewed by Siddhisambhava @ www.wildmind.org
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