Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything
About this ebook
“Luminous. . . . A work to both devour and savour, Baird has, once again, written a book the world needs now.'”—Guardian
“The uplift and power of Bright Shining . . . is to be found in the way Baird gives grace fresh currency by bringing this beautiful and elusive condition from the theological margins into the mainstream and showing, with passion and verve, how quietly transformative it can be.”—Sydney Morning Herald
From the bestselling author of Phosphorescence comes a beautiful and timely exploration of that most mysterious but necessary of human qualities: grace.
Grace is both mysterious and hard to define. It can be found when we create ways to find meaning and dignity in connection with each other, building on our shared humanity, being kinder, bigger, better with each other. If, in its crudest interpretation, karma is getting what you deserve, then grace is the opposite: forgiving the unforgivable, favoring the undeserving, loving the unlovable.
Sadly, we live in an era when grace is increasingly rare. Our growing distrust of the media, politicians, and each other has choked our ability to trust, to accept, to allow for mistakes, to forgive.
What does grace look like in today’s world, and how do we recognize it, nurture it in ourselves and express it, even in the darkest of times? In this luminously beautiful, deeply insightful, and timely book, Baird explores the meaning of grace and how we can cut through negativity to find it today.
About the author
Julia Woodlands Baird is an Australian journalist, broadcaster, and author. She contributes to the New York Times and the Sydney Morning Herald and is a regular host of The Drum, a television news review program on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Her books include Media Tarts; a biography of Queen Victoria which was named one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2016; and the multi-award-winning international bestseller Phosphorescence. Julia lives near the sea with two children and an abnormally large dog.
