Review: Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything

I loved Julia’s first book [b:Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark|52541673|Phosphorescence On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark|Julia Baird|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1581416196l/52541673.SX50_SY75.jpg|73666224], giving it to everyone for Christmas the year it was published. So I was excited by the release of her new book exploring ‘how grace changes everything’. I attended her launch in Sydney and was deeply moved by her personal anecdotes relating to grace.

Grace is a slippery sucker - impossible to define. And although she tries, this book doesn’t have the cohesiveness of Phosphorescence, because its central premise is so elusive. There were moments when I was left wondering what the point of a particular story was, and where she was heading.

But there are many moments that resonated with me - Julia often mentions empathy, and she certainly has it in spades! She refers to John Koenig’s book [b:The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows|56897474|The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows|John Koenig|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1634748607l/56897474.SX50.jpg|67540172] and the word he coined: ‘sonder’. The definition of ‘sonder’ is

the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own…in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background…

This is in direct contrast to the prevailing trend of ‘main character energy’ where everyone puts themselves first, ‘acting like the star of their own show’.

There is a chapter entitled ‘Restlaufzeit: In the Time We Have Left, We Must Dance’ where she writes about the time we waste (particularly women) on striving for a ‘perfect’ body. But she points out that

our bodies, our misshapen, lumpy, wobbly, birth-marked, uneven, scarred, imperfect bodies are our vessels. If only we were more gracious towards them. They won’t last forever, they will eventually grow frail, we will miss the strength and vigour of our younger selves. But, for now, when alive, when upright, when walking through days with purpose, without pain, they are vessels for adventure, for sleep, for song, for dance, and a place where we experience joy.

This quote alone made this book worth reading.

This is a positive book, and god knows we need more books like this: books that point us in the right direction, towards empathy, kindness, and ultimately, grace.

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Review: Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things that Sustain You When the World Goes Dark

Thank you Better Reading for the opportunity to review an advance copy of this book.

‘Is there anything more beautiful than living light?’ Julia Baird asks the reader in the Prelude to Phosphorescence. This is, in her view, a rhetorical question, as she had discovered in her early twenties the joy and abandon of swimming ‘under the moon, watching a silvery, sparking ribbon of phosphorescence trail behind [her] limbs.’ In Phosphorescence, Baird explores wonders in nature, and connections to family and friends that can sustain and uplift us in the face of an uncertain and, at times, frightening world.

Baird has cast her net wide, quoting scientists, astronauts, Indigenous leaders and psychologists. She refers to her own experiences and then expands her view to look at the bigger picture, often through a feminist lens. In particular, she looks at how women can waste so much energy on their appearance, rather than on what truly matters to them. She remembers hiking through the Himalayas and being so fascinated by everything she saw that she forgot herself and ‘rediscovered joy’. She can’t wait ‘to let herself go’, wearing what she wants, ‘hair askew, unkempt but cheerful’ and feeling ‘dangerously liberated’. Sounds most appealing!

Her two chapters addressed to her children are sublime and eloquent. She celebrates her friends, referring to them as ‘the crossbeams of [her] resilience’. And she reminds us that the greatest antidote for loneliness is to help another ‘and in doing so you may happily forget yourself for a while.’ Baird has found comfort in her faith and explains that ‘it’s a kind of unfathomable magic’ and if you can ‘let your life be your witness to whatever it is you believe, grace will always leak through the cracks’.

Baird says she wrote this book ‘in the hope that it might be a salve for the weary, as well as a reminder of the mental rafts we can build to keep ourselves afloat, the scraps of beauty that should comfort us, the practices that might sustain us’. When I finished this book, I felt an enormous sense of peace, and found that I approached the world with a renewed sense of optimism, awe and wonder.

This review is based on an advanced reading copy which contained no bibliography. Baird uses a lot of quotes and references, so I hope the final edition will supply a list of these books.