""When I first discovered the grainy picture in my mother's
desk--me as a towheaded two year old sitting in what I remember was
a salmon-orange-stained lifeboat--I was overwhelmed by the feeling
that the boy in the boat was not waving and laughing at the person
snapping the photo as much as he was frantically trying to get the
attention of the man I am today. The boy was beckoning me to join
him on a voyage through the harrowing straits of memory. He was
gambling that if we survived the passage, we might discover an
ocean where the past would become the wind at our back rather than
a driving gale to the nose of our boat. This book is the record of
that voyage.""" "
When he was sixteen years old, Ian Morgan Cron was told about
his father's clandestine work with the CIA. This astonishing
revelation, coupled with his father's dark struggles with chronic
alcoholism and depression, upended the world of a boy struggling to
become a man. Decades later, as he faces his own personal demons,
Ian realizes the only way to find peace is to voyage back through a
painful childhood marked by extremes--privilege and poverty,
violence and tenderness, truth and deceit--that he's spent years
trying to escape.
In this surprisingly funny and forgiving memoir, Ian reminds us
that no matter how different the pieces may be, in the end we are
all cut from the same cloth, stitched by faith into an exquisite
quilt of grace.
"Simultaneously redemptive and consoling with bright moments of
humor . . . this story is chock-full of sacredness and hope. Cron
is one of only a few spirituality authors who could articulate
these themes as poignantly."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Ian Cron writes with astonishing energy and freshness; his
metaphors stick fast in the imagination. This is neither a simple
memoir of hurt endured, nor a tidy story of reconciliation and
resolution. It is--rather like Augustine's Confessions--a testimony
to the unfinished business of grace."
DR. ROWAN WILLIAMS, Archbishop of Canterbury
"Ian Cron has the gift of making his human journey a parable for
all of our journeys. Read this profound book and be well fed, and
freed."
FR. RICHARD ROHR, O.F.M., author of "Everything Belongs"
"Ian Morgan Cron is a brilliant writer. This is the kind of book
that you don't just read. It reads you."
MARK BATTERSON, author of" In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy
Day"
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Review This Product
Wed, 29 Jun 2011 | Review
by: John T.
I found Ian Morgan Cron’s biography ‘Jesus, My Father and the CIA’ to be a fascinating read (I received a complimentary e-book version from Booksneeze.com to review). Sometimes Cron’s recollection of his childhood living with an alcoholic father is painful but always humorous.
“As the child of an alcoholic, I knew how to smile and work a room like someone running for re-election, even when there was a spear sticking”
Cron’s awe of God as a small child permeates throughout the story with starting with his first communion and his disappointment with God as young boy is heart breaking as his prayers for a better family life are unanswered. Cron unwilling followed his father’s footsteps into alcoholism and became depressed and frustrated with God even as he worked for the church.
“I didn’t want to parse God—I wanted to be swept up in his glory. I didn’t want to understand the Holy One; I wanted to be consumed in his oceanic love. I yearned for heaven, and as long as it remained beyond my reach, my life was tinged with disappointment.”
But Cron comes to forgive his late father and his mother who covered up so much for him and although he still carries the anxiety of whether he can be a good father to his children has come full circle to be the Priest conducting the communion service.
Cron’s is a funny, sometimes irreverent story of a child grappling with God and a dysfunctional family. One of my favourite quotes is from the end of the book were Cron is learning to be less fearful and cautious, a lesson taught to him by his children:
“There is a big difference in life between a jump and a fall. A jump is about courage and faith, something the world is in short supply of these days. A fall is, well, a fall.”
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