Embracing Your Second Calling (Bourke) Book Review

Embracing Your Second Calling by Dale Hanson Bourke provides opportunities for readers to consider what they want the second half of their lives to look like. It provides many opportunities for reflection. It encourages the readers to ask the questions "Who have I been, "Who am I now," and "Who do I want to become."

I determined that some of the exercises will have to wait until I don't have a child in high school, while even more will have to wait until I don't have a teaching job that forces me to go to work each day. But, it did give me many things to think about and to consider doing now.

This is a great read for spiritual groups or women's book clubs. It would be important for the people within the groups to know each other, because I'm not sure participants would feel comfortable doing some of the exercises with people they don't know very well.

Overall, it's a keeper and one I will refer to again and again. Special thank you to Thomas Nelson for providing me with a complimentary copy of this book.

Paving Begins for The Roads We've Traveled

We followed a road to the unknown and it led us to fruitful possibilities.

We submitted a modest grant to the Wisconsin Farmers Union to ask for funding help for our The Roads We've Traveled project. They obliged and will provide The Heartbeat with 1/3 of the funding we need to make the program a reality.

The Roads We've Traveled uses elderly farmers to tell their stories to a group of various artists. After the storytelling hour, artists create their "visions" of the story via visual art, music, or the written word. When the art has been created, we will compile the pieces and put them into a publication of some sort.

We believe The Roads We've Traveled will serve to preserve and document the farmers' stories, and provide new creative fodder for the artists. The opportunities for this program are endless.

Plans, schedules, and Registration for our Fall and Winter (2010-2011) The Roads We've Traveled project will be available soon.