The Light of Conscience
How a Simple Act Can Change Your Life
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
AN INSPIRATIONAL MEDITATION ON THE POWER OF CONSCIENCE—HOW A SIMPLE ACT, A MOMENT OF PURPOSE, CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE, YOUR COMMUNITY, EVEN THE WORLD
We all struggle at times to know what to do to seek and abide our conscience—when right and wrong are not black and white, when heart and head speak with different voices, when our intentions and interests are not aligned. If you believe that the outcome of these struggles affects the course of your life, and the lives around you, then this book is for you.
If you believe that there are times and places when the choice an individual makes to speak or be silent, to eat or fast, to remain seated or to stand up in a crowd, to stare and remember or to walk on by and forget, can be as powerful as a president’s command, a congressional appropriation, or a military incursion, then this book is for you.
This book is for you if your profession is rewarding financially but not spiritually, or if you’re ever worried that your career and conscience conflict.
This book is for you if you are a parent whose love of your children never wavers with the anxiety they cause you but sometimes leaves you wondering whether they will grow up to do the right thing even if no one is watching.
This book is for you if you question whether the countless small decisions you make each day add up to a larger judgment about your life’s meaning.
Finally, this book is for you if you believe that quiet, often solitary acts of conscience have echoes louder than the original sound; that individual acts have the potential to trigger large public consequences and continue to inspire others from generation to generation; that such acts bring rewards to the individual, that unforeseen benefits accrue, that one gains more than was sacrificed, and that there is a transformative power and richness to a life so lived.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shore, director of the antipoverty organization Share Our Strength and philanthropic consultant, has previously written about social entrepreneurs who introduce capital-generating techniques to the nonprofit sector (The Cathedral Within). Here he offers a variant on the concept in the form of moral entrepreneurs, people who "do what it takes to bring morality to places where it hasn't been before." Offering several prominent examples, he observes that such people often do the most through the simplest of actions, like the gesture of friendship Pee Wee Reese offered Jackie Robinson in front of racist baseball fans and teammates. Each of us is likewise capable of following our conscience, he claims, using his son to demonstrate the principle. After a strong early emphasis on the boy's flair for "obfuscation and deception," a proud father recounts his son's attendance at a rally shortly after 9/11. That tragedy underscores Shore's belief that we can no longer afford to focus solely on our immediate surroundings, but must strive to raise the quality of life throughout the world; injustice allowed to fester elsewhere, he warns, will eventually play out to our own detriment. Readers will likely perceive an intuitive validity to his suggestion that the major news coverage of recent scandals involving corporate fraud and sexual abuse by priests is "directly related" to 9/11, because our reaction immediately after "spawned a new premium on conscientious and ethical conduct." The theory might not hold up to scrutiny, but this and other doubts about the book's grasp on the big picture are abated by Shore's sincere passion and attention to the small details that make life worth living.
