Rating: 
Summary: Outer Wool, Inner Light
Review: The calm, witty, and down-to-sheep insights offered by Mary Rose O'Reilley are a wonderful antidote to hectic days. I read a bit each lunchtime and am transported to college days of Zen meditation and current deepening involvement in Quaker worship and testimonies. When I can't get to Quaker meeting on Sunday, I look forward to meeting this simple testimony on Monday. Quakers usually do not proselytize, having a horror of trying to persuade, but this Friendly book makes a most convincing account of the abiding appeal and basic truth of the Inner Light. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Outer Wool, Inner Light
Review: The calm, witty, and down-to-sheep insights offered by Mary Rose O'Reilley are a wonderful antidote to hectic days. I read a bit each lunchtime and am transported to college days of Zen meditation and current deepening involvement in Quaker worship and testimonies. When I can't get to Quaker meeting on Sunday, I look forward to meeting this simple testimony on Monday. Quakers usually do not proselytize, having a horror of trying to persuade, but this Friendly book makes a most convincing account of the abiding appeal and basic truth of the Inner Light. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Great for book clubs
Review: Thoughtful, honest insights into personal journey with Quakerism and Buddhist teachings. A good laugh, this book is well suited to being passed hand to hand, traveling by word of mouth. Wish it was a book on tape. We need to stock this at our Quaker retreat center in West Virginia. Complements the writings by Tara Brach on Buddhism and spiritual healing.
Rating:
Summary: A Honest (and Very Funny) Quest
Review: While I own a few books with both "spiritual" and "quest" in the title, I confess that I've not been able to finish many of them. They get too dry, weighty, or ascetic. O'Reilley is the antidote. Like her earlier book, The Peaceable Classroom, she takes a wry, sincere cut on the journey to find the "we in me". This book reveals the power of a light touch to heady matters. If you've read Thomas Merton, Thich Nat Nhat Hanh or other heavier religious voices, you'll appreciate O'Reilley's keen insight into matters of the heart and soul. She brings the wit of H.L. Mencken to the subject matter of St. Augustine.
Rating:
Summary: A good gift for the older, adventurous woman...
Review: Who could resist the title, along with the beautiful cover? The chapters are short, and the content is a fascinating mix as our heroine, Mary Rose O'Reilly tells us what is going on in her true life. Her sons are grown and she's decided to work in a barn, with a young man named Ben and a lot of sheep. She moves from the day-to-day workings of sheep work - it isn't at all what you might think, the lovely young shepherdess herding the sheep through the meadows. Aside from sheep sheering, there is more than some of us need to know about sheep - I can't go into details here, but there is something about rubber bands and the rear-end of the sheep that can only be described within the context of the book. In addition, she moves from her days as a Catholic novice to her life as a Quaker and a Buddhist, to her trip to England to sing with a musical group, Sacred Harps. This is definitely not a deep read, not the answer to a spiritual quest. If you like well-written books which meander a bit (this IS a book by a woman going through the some changes in her life), you will probably enjoy this one. I've nibbled my way through this book, a chapter here, a chapter there. It is a beautiful book to give as a gift, perhaps to a 50-something woman with an interest in spirituality, music and nature! Might be great in paperback, but that's a year away...
Rating:
Summary: A good gift for the older, adventurous woman...
Review: Who could resist the title, along with the beautiful cover? The chapters are short, and the content is a fascinating mix as our heroine, Mary Rose O'Reilly tells us what is going on in her true life. Her sons are grown and she's decided to work in a barn, with a young man named Ben and a lot of sheep. She moves from the day-to-day workings of sheep work - it isn't at all what you might think, the lovely young shepherdess herding the sheep through the meadows. Aside from sheep sheering, there is more than some of us need to know about sheep - I can't go into details here, but there is something about rubber bands and the rear-end of the sheep that can only be described within the context of the book. In addition, she moves from her days as a Catholic novice to her life as a Quaker and a Buddhist, to her trip to England to sing with a musical group, Sacred Harps. This is definitely not a deep read, not the answer to a spiritual quest. If you like well-written books which meander a bit (this IS a book by a woman going through the some changes in her life), you will probably enjoy this one. I've nibbled my way through this book, a chapter here, a chapter there. It is a beautiful book to give as a gift, perhaps to a 50-something woman with an interest in spirituality, music and nature! Might be great in paperback, but that's a year away...
Rating: 
Summary: I must have missed something!
Review: You would expect a book written by a Catholic raised Quaker college teacher who studied Buddhism and celebrates "animal creation" to be well written, theologically intriguing, and life affirming. And you would be mistaken if that compelled you to buy this book, as it did me. The subtitle "The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd" is the first misdirection in the book's myriad difficulties. There is little acceptance of others as you find with Quakers, and no ability to accept the present and live in it as you find with Buddhists. I am sure shepherds would find her use of that term equally incorrect; certainly animal lovers would be disappointed, as I was. O'Reilley's style is laborious at best, irritating at times, and tedious for the most part. Some chapters are, mercifully, very short; others should be as short, for they ramble with disconnected thoughts, bits of quotations, and ponderous musings about life. Perhaps someone might actually enjoy her illustration of her pained, scattered, at times rude meandering along the spiritual path. Most troubling is the section on her encounter with Buddhism, which she evidently now claims as a self-description. Her experience at Thich Nhat Hanh's retreat reads as a painful illustration of the First Noble Truth: That life is filled with anguish. Unfortunately she doesn't get beyond that perception to discover the roots of her negativity, why she clings to familiarity, and her coldness toward others and their differences. Instead, we are barraged with her petulant resistance to experiencing the present, and a callous rejection of what could have been for her some very profound teachings (e.g., a blunt dismissal of the Heart Sutra without appreciating it fully). She is referred to as a Buddhist who allows herself "to resent her roommates and crave French pastries," but it is through daily practice, not attendance at a retreat, that qualifies one as a Buddhist. Early on, I felt a tremendous cognitive dissonance between her credentials and her style; I tried to reduce this discrepancy by telling myself that she was using poetic narrative and existential metaphor to illustrate personal spiritual struggles. Sure; whatever. In the end, I realized my dissonance was not about accepting that she was a worthy writer, but that I had made a worthy purchase. As O'Reilley concludes the book: "What we write about is what we do not understand." This was the only line that rang true in the over 300 pages.
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