Journey to the Heart: Daily Meditations on the Path to Feeding Your Soul, by Melody Beattie.
Reviewed by Douglas M. Stienbarger.
This book looks at individual spirituality from a Judeo-Christian perspective. While not directly related to leadership, the book does promote individual reflection and personal growth which comprise elements of being a leader. Perhaps intended, the book really has no definitive beginning or ending, but rather reflects the "journey" of self-discovery, which Ms. Beattie would surely describe as a constant process.
The author structures her musings in the form of a daily dairy with 365 entries for each day of the year. Unfortunately, I found this structure disjointed and often repetitive, which distracts the reader from her major themes. The 365 little snippets reminded me of the pearls of wisdom dispensed in fortune cookies in that they also demonstrate no cohesion.
Ms. Beattie uses a country-wide car trip as an analogy for personal growth while also using incidents during the trip to make her points. For example: "I arrived at Oregon's Willamette National Forest after dark. Suddenly, I found myself at a fork in the road. To the right was a chained gate marked 'Foot Travelers Welcome.' To the left was an open road marked 'Nature Sanctuary, Authorized Visitors Only.' I stared at both signs, then headed to the left. I didn't see anything that looked like lodging and I began to fell uncomfortable, like one of the unauthorized visitors the sign warned about. I backed the car out to the fork, turned around, and left. Two hours later, I still hadn't fount the retreat. I was tired and worried about running out of gas. I tried to remember what I'd been learning - that desperation attracts more desperation. I relaxed and visualized myself finding the retreat, being given a key to a room, and going to sleep in a bed. I visualized it until I could see the scene clearly in my mind. Before long, I found myself back at the fork. I mean no harm, I thought. So I'll just drive down that nature sanctuary road again, the one for authorized visitors only. I drove as far as I had been before, then decided to push ahead a bit more. I rounded the bend and there it was - the parking lot, the night office, and a man who could give me a key to my room. Within twenty minutes, I was in bed for the evening. Sometimes we need to go further than we thought we could. We need to go past our fear, past our uncertainty, past the bend we can't see beyond. If we stay on the course, give it that extra push, and go round the bend, we may find what we are looking for."
Major themes presented by the author include: