Unplanned is one of recent years' most striking witnesses to truth. Abby Johnson, a former director of an abortion clinic, recounts her pathway from abortion to the fight for life. This book is highly valuable thanks to the author's first hand knowledge of, and long-standing complicity in, what she takes care to describe Planned Parenthood's abortion industry. Her concern for women, children and family brought her to work for this organisation, led her to profound shock and disillusionment in the ideas about women and life which it promotes, and drove her to a choice for life. Abby witnesses to both the good intentions of many who work for the abortion of children in the mother's womb, and to the culture of false compassion which offers death as a solution. She now consecrates her time and energy to offering women real and constructive options with regard to unwanted or traumatically concieved children. A gripping and enlightening read!

"Abby Johnson quit her job in October 2009. That simple act became a national news story because Abby was director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas who, not long after assisting in an actual abortion procedure for the first time, crossed the line to join the Coalition for LIfe. What happened in that clinic to cause this Planned Parenthood leader and Employee of the Year to take such drastic action? And how did Planned Parenthood react to her abrupt departure?

Join Abby as she reveals her full story in Unplanned: a heart-stopping personal drama of life-and-death encounters, a courtroom battle, and spiritual transformation. Abby's unique vantage point from both sides of the abortion clinic property line shines light and compassion into the political controversy that surrounds this issue. For anyone who cares about the life-versus-rights debate and helping women who face crisis pregancies, Unplanned is a must-read."

(Unplanned, Abby Johnson, Saltriver 2010)

John Bradburne is one of Great Britain's most recent figures of holiness. He died in 1979, killed by guerilla fighters in Zimbabwe whilst caring for leppers. A convert from the Anglican Church, his love of Christ in the Eucharist and Our Lady was immense. The following book is a biography written by a friend and priest, Father John Dove. Here's the back cover resume, and one of his poems.

"John Bradburne's life was a remarkable spiritual odyssey. After wartime service on the Indian subcontinent, he became a perennial pilgrim, never at home in the world, not even in his native England. Restless wanderings lead him through Europe to the Holy Land, to a succession of religious communities, and ultimately to Africa where he met a violent death during the Zimbabwean war of independence. This deeply sympathetic biography, written by a personal friend, is enriched by extensive quotations from John Bradburne's poems and diaries, offing a rare insight into the mind and character of this quite extraordinary man. In particular, the account of his life among the lepers, and the astonishing happenings during his funeral service, make it clear that here was a man singled out for sanctity, marked with a special charisma. In the twenty years since his death, a devotion to his memory as sprung up in sothern Africa. Poet, mystic, hermit, and vagabond, John Bradburne's strange life was a ceaseless quest for God."

(Strange Vagabond Of God, Father John Dove, s.j., Gracewing 1997)

From John Bradburne's poems:

Strays and WAIFERS:
To a wandering jew (all my eye is set on fancies....)

Strange vagabond, who knows not what to seek!
The rest you lack flies not thus far afield:
Much babel tumult renders hearing weak,
And, so replete with sights, your sight is sealed!
Far out you stray to find your Inmost Soul,
While souls His Eloquence in stillness find
Be still then! let God's Silence make you whole,
For He Alone can calm your troubled mind:
Your soul's Desire is nearest though unseen,
Your Haven of Perfection's close at hand,
And that wide wandering was fevered dream:
God's love within you is your Native Land!
Then seek none other, never more depart -
For you are homeless save God keeps your heart.

The Joy of man's desiring is the Lord,
And where the Treasure is, there is the Heart:
What then, if having wandered far abroad
A man finds God at Home? will he depart
Again? to seek his Treasure far and wide,
When he has found the House where it is safe:
Will he reject his Saviour Crucified?
The Risen Christ lives (like a little waif')
Hidden, unheard, uncared for by the World
Which passes busily His Sacrament,
In quest of treasure which must soon be furled
(With all the perishable firmament)
And put away for ever, by that KING
Who hides our folly in His Suffering!

Roger Scruton, an English philosopher, has recently published a book formed from the Gifford Lectures he gave at St Andrews University, Scotland, in 2010. He adresses the question of the existence of God in what I think is a highly pertinent way - the posited absence of God being not a triumph of humanity but rather modern man's most tragic crisis of meaning... a meta-crisis! He explores what most people admit to be a gradual destruction of man in our society and argues that this is, through being a destruction of man, also a gradual loss of our natural discovery of God.

"Roger Scruton explores the place of God in a disenchanted world. His argument is a response to the atheist culture that is now growing around us, and also a defence of human uniqueness. He rebuts the claim there is no meaning or purpose in the natural world, and argues that the sacred and the transcendental are “real presences”, through which human beings come to know themselves and to find both their freedom and their redemption.

In the human face we find a paradigm of meaning. And from this experience, Scruton argues, we both construct the face of the world, and adress the face of God. We find in the face both the proof of our freedom and the mark of self-conciousness. One of the motivations of the atheist culture is to escape from the eye of judgement. You escape from the eye of judgement by blotting out the face: and this, Scruton argues, is the most disturbing aspect of the times in which we live. In his wide-ranging argument Scruton explains the growing sense of destruction that we feel, as the habits of pleasure seeking and consumerism deface the world. His book defends a consecrated world against the habit of deconsecration, and offers a vision of the religious way of life in a time of trial."

(The Face of God, Roger Scruton - Continuum 2012)

For more works by Roger Scruton: www.roger-scruton.com

Another thought provoking read, this time less recent and by V. M. Axline, a child psychotherpist. Through this impressive story of a boy she names "Dibs", Axline shows clearly and beautifully how a child is an entire person just beginning to open, develop and grow in uniqueness, and what a delicate, sensitive and profound reality that is. Both heart-wrenching in its revealing of how such vulnerability can be so easily trampled, this day by day description of the steps the author took with this child also astonishes the reader with the strength and depth of even a young child's will to live, love, fight for truth in his life and even to forgive. 

“He would not talk. He would not play. Judged mentally defective, he was suddenly oblivious both to other children and to his teacher; in reality he was a brilliant, lonely child trapped in a prison of fear and rage, a prison from which only he could release himself.”

...Dibs had had his dark moments and had lived for a while in the shadows of life. But he had had the opportunity to move out of those dark moments and discover for himself that he could cope with the shadows and sunshine in his life.

Perhaps there is more understanding and beauty in life when the glaring sunlight is softened by the patterns of shadows. Perhaps there is more depth in a relationship that has weathered some storms. Experience that never disappoints or saddens or stirs up feelings is a bland experience with little challenge or variation in colour. Perhaps when we experience confidence and faith and hope that we see materialise before our eyes this builds up within us a feeling of inner strength, courage, and security.”

 (Dibs, In Search Of Self - Penguin Books 1990)