Taking a Long Road Home: A Memoir - Inspirational Journey of Self-Discovery and Personal Growth | Perfect for Book Clubs, Travel Enthusiasts, and Memoir Lovers

Finding your Way Home Eugene Bianchi gives us a road map for his own life journey in his memoir but also describes one for many of us who grew up during the Vatican II era of Roman Catholicism. His beautifully written autobiography, Taking a Long Road Home (Resource Publications: 2011) contains many illustrations of how to face and surmount the interior and exterior challenges of our post-modern and pluralistic era. Bianchi addresses many of the critical Issues that he encountered as he emerged from the cocoon that typified American Catholicism of the 1950's and his life as a Jesuit seminarian and Catholic priest. Much of the early part of the book Is taken up with Bianchi's early life in Oakland, San Francisco as a student and then his life as a Jesuit seminarian and priest. His book portrays the profoundinfluence of his Italian American background and family heritage. His memoir interweaves the complex structure of these familial relationships throughout his adult life. Among the other major influences upon Bianchi were the relationships hedeveloped within the Jesuit community. Many of these Jesuit friendships have been central to his life and several became life-long friends and spiritual fellow travelers. One of the most poignant sections of his memoir are reflections upon the death of several of his close friends who spent their whole life in the Society of Jesus but also maintained a close friendship with him.Bianchi continued his keen interest in the Jesuits throughout his life and wrote a study of American Jesuits with Peter McDonough, Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuits (University of California Press:2002). Like most Jesuits, Bianchi pursued higher studies and enrolled in a joint PhD program at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary. He was the first Catholic priest to enroll in this program and it symbolized his own development outside the cloistered halls of his seminary and priestly training. During his studies at Columbia and Union Seminary Bianchi joined the staff ofAmerica magazine and wrote frequently for it. He had returned to the United State from Europe In 1962 after completing his graduate studies in Louvain, Belgium and just prior to the start of Vatican II. He was already beginning to experience doubts about church authority and church teaching. "How much was I caught up in conceptual theology distant from my real needs? How could I adhere to the authority of a church that proclaimed unchanging doctrines in the light of my new understanding how culture had molded these ancient abstractions about the doings of God?" (Bianchi, 48-49) After completing his studies at Columbia and Union Seminar and earning his PhD Bianchi returned to California imbued with the spirit of Vatican II's desire to update (aggiornamento) and modernize the Catholic Church. One of the most important intellectual influences upon Bianchi were the writings of Teilhard de Chardin. Chardin's evolutionary Christianity based, in part, upon evolutionarybiology and process theology, provided a new context for understanding his Christian faith. It brought into question many of the traditional teachings about Original Sin, the nature of Christ and the institutional church. Many of us who studied theology in this era faced many of the same questions which Bianchi raises. His memoir can help the reader to reflect upon the questions he raises and use them for one's own personal s understanding and clarification about what is essential or peripheral to a faith journey. While Bianchi was completing a book during a summer recess period in New York, he had an epiphany. "If Ignatius could start a new religious order, why couldn't I. He lived in a critical period at the start of the modern era. Vatican II seemed to be a similar watershed for the church. I saw a newreligious order of married and unmarried Jesuits joined with single and married lay people who would also be fully members." (Bianchi, 59). Shortly after this vision of a new order in the church Bianchi left the Jesuits and became the first president of the Society of Priests for a Free Ministry which was founded in 1968. The later successor to SPFM was the Federation of Christian Ministries which continues many of the ideals that Bianchi held back in 1967. The succeeding sections of Bianchi's memoir deal in great part with intimate female relationships that led to marriages that he entered and then left.These relationships did help him eventually find a stable and meaningful relationship with Peggy, his present wife. This section of the book illustrates well how many if not most of the priests in the Vatican II era had little preparation for intimate relationships based upon their seminary training andthe teachings of Catholicism about sexuality. Bianchi's journey through multiple relationships conveys the depth of his own search for a fulfilling and profound intimate relationship that took several decades for him to fully realize in his present marriage. Bianchi's teaching and writing career as a professor of religious studies at Emory University in Atlanta take up much of the remaining portion of his memoir. Two of the most interesting and Important sections of these chapters deal with Bianchi's understanding of Christology and his writings upon spirituality and aging. In regard to Christology Bianchi proposes what he calls a low or earthly view of Christ which tends to view him more in his humanity than his divinity.Bianchi's beliefs about Jesus seem to be influenced by the scholarship that has emerged from the Jesus Seminar and the writings of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. Bianchi portrays Jesus as the leader of a movement of human liberation. According to Bianchi, our understanding of him should not be limited to the abstract and dogmatic constructions that occurred when the Churchemerged into the Roman world at the Council of Nicea in 325. Bianchi would allow for a pluralistic understanding of the Jesus event that could include some of the insights that we find in the Gnostic Gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas from which Bianchi quotes. Bianchi's understanding of Jesus fits well also into the present dialogue of Christianity with Islam which accepts him as a great prophet but not co-equal with God or Allah. The final chapters of Bianchi's memoir reflects the growing importance of Christianity's dialogue with eastern religions. Bianchi's discusses his own faith journey which now includes elements from Buddhism and Daoism. Bianchi has also written extensively on spirituality and aging in Aging as a Spiritual Journey (Crossroads: 1993) and in other works as well. I did find this part ofBianchi's memoir to be the most compelling and poetic aspect of his personal narrative. As he confronts his own mortality he draws upon his own Jesuit contemplative tradition of contemplativus in actione (contemplative in action) as well as the inward and more mystical aspects of eastern religions.Bianchi mentions Thomas Merton as a precursor in this quest to unite East and West. "Yet Catholic teachers writing about "going East" have had a hard time with authorities. Thomas Merton (Zen and the Birds of Appetite) was a precursor for me. He seemed to be moving closer to Eastern spirituality when he died in Bangkok at a conference on such inter-religious topics." (Bianchi, 157-158) Bianchi's indicates that his spirituality, like his life, has evolved toward amore profound understanding of God's mystery that transcends any doctrinal formulation. "God is the greatest mystery, not in the sense of mystification, but in the way the Tao Te Ching opens: "The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao." Saints and mystics in all traditions express such views of the divine." (Bainchi, 163-164). Bianchi's post-retirement years from Emory University have also been filled with many creative endeavors including his literary work as a novelist, artist (painting) and organizer of activities for retired faculty at Emory University and founding of a national organization for retired university faculty. He also shows that he has come to a greater peace within himself and forged a wonderful relationship with his wife, Peggy, and his prior relationships with family and lovers. "This dual feeling of thanksgiving and disappointment runs through all my closest relationships, from family to friends to former wives. By a happier alchemy, Peggy and I over two decades have been able to come closer, to contribute to our mutual "selving." But this, too, is a work in progress that requires daily self-assessment and mutual listening." (Bianchi, 167-168) Eugene Bianchi has made a unique contribution to American Catholicism over the past five decades through his leadership in Church reform, articulation of a new way of being Catholic in the post-modern world and through his willingness to share his spiritual journey with us in a very honest and humble way. In one of his closing paragraphs he presents us with a profound way of listening to theworld of Mother Nature. "This listening posture is one of not-knowing in the presence of mystery. I'm especially drawn to the nature mysticism of Francis and the Tao Masters. This seems to be in accord with the environmental crisis around us. Or to put it in New Testament terms, I'd like to be among the vigilantvirgins when the bridegroom returns." (Bianchi, 169)Bianchi does teaches us how to find a way Home through his own spiritual journey.Gerald Grudzen, PhDSan Jose, CA