By Karen Thoms, Grand Rapids Public Library, Main

Sue Bender has written a timeless book. Five years after her New York Times bestseller Plain and Simple, Bender admits she drifted away from what she had learned living with the Amish. In Everyday Sacred she chronicles how she got back on track again.

Bender, a deeply spiritual person, draws on various religious traditions to light her path away from her internal harsh judge to her gentle “enough”. Her journey begins with a phrase everyday sacred and an image, a begging bowl. She does not know what either mean; yet from the beginning of the book the reader understands that she is going to trust the process of finding their meanings.

“All I knew about a begging bowl was that each day a monk goes out with his empty bowl in his hands. Whatever is placed in the bowl will be his nourishment for the day. I didn’t know whether I was the monk or the bowl or the things that would fill the bowl, or all three but I trusted the words and the image completely.”

She had hoped to find a straight path but hers led in circles. 

“So it helps if you listen in circles,” said a Jewish friend. And listen Bender does. She listens to “the opening ceremony of my day”—the smiley face her barista swirls into her cappuccino. She listens as a friend with a hurt knee tells her all the things she discovered on her walk because she had to walk slowly. When feeling overwhelmed, she remembered a friend telling her to “phase things in.” She pondered her physical therapist’s statement that she had “self-corrected in the wrong direction.” Her friend Helen, who lost everything in a house fire, said the fire “fine-tunes my attitude about the remainder of my life.” Bender listened, watched and acted her way back to her center.

Each day Bender presented her empty begging bowl and daily an experience, or a statement, or a feeling appeared in the bowl. By the end of the book Bender has slowed. 

“Being empty is a beginning.” 

“Good deeds have echoes.” 

Instead of judging her inabilities and flaws, clarity dawns.

“Our imperfections are a gift, the very qualities that make us unique. If we make the shift to see them that way—we can value ourselves… just as we are.”