When Eloise Aitken Farren says, in the introduction to this book of tales from her life, that her only aim is to bring a smile to your lips, you’d better believe her. If you make your way through these ninety tales, ranging from the first five years of her life to the latter years of her work and residence as a Franciscan Sister in her forties (stories of leaving the convent and marrying the love of her life are not part of this memoir), you most likely will have increased your well-being by laughing out loud many more times than you thought possible! And it’s not just the funny things that Eloise did, or said, or that happened to her (although they all truly did). It’s also her gift for seeing the humor in things—all the mishaps that come to human beings, even those with a sacred vocation—and how rich and magical the ordinary world can be when this joyful, caring, and humorous perspective is the guiding principle for living.
But just because she became a nun, don’t for a moment think that this made her some kind of goody-goody. Her human foibles, inventiveness, audaciousness, and sheer love of the adventure of life are all chronicled here. An appetizer of examples includes:
- Exulting to her mother that she had won second prize in the third-grade race, but neglecting to mention that there were only two contestants (“The Race in Third Grade“);
- The slippery soft-ice-cream mess that piled up on the floor of Zesto’s Drive-In after the handle of the spigot broke off in her hand, a la “I Love Lucy” (“Another Zesto’s Drive-In Story”);
- Enjoying kissing a handsome stranger on the train that was taking her to the convent for the first time (“Oops! The Last Tale Was Not the Last Fling”);
- Hauling a lamb that was due onstage at a Christmas pageant into a station wagon (“The Lamb That Stole the Show“);
- Taking the wrong road to the airport and ending up on a private Air Force base, where a distraught military man kept shouting, “I have orders to shoot you, but how can I shoot a nun?” (“You Crashed My Gate!“);
and many, many more tales.
If anything, Eloise’s tales teach us that when life offers difficult raw material (a cranky, critical superior; an awkward situation; an enthusiasm gone awry), you can always turn it into a story that will bring on tears of healing laughter. Just encountering the feast of tales chronicled in this gem of a book may be enough to switch on your “Eloise” channel, the next time an opportunity to see compassion and humor in a situation comes around.
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