A Woman After Augustine’s Own Heart
THE THRILL OF THE CHASTE
by Dawn Eden
Thomas Nelson, 2006
224 pages, $13.99
Available in bookstores
Today’s popular culture pushes
young single women to believe that, if they don’t make themselves sexually
available, they’ll never find husbands. It also seduces them into concluding
that a sure path to pre-marital fun, freedom and fulfillment is the one marked
For Manhattan-based editor Dawn Eden, the challenge was to see if she could leave each party with a handsome guy who, after a no-strings night of instant intimacy, just might turn out to be Mr. Right. She played this game for years until she realized that the happiness she sought couldn’t be found in the hookup game.
In this, her first book — subtitled Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On — Eden tells how she went from living “Sex and the City” to living out Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body.
It was
One aspect she might have explored in more detail is her discernment process, as the book assumes that marriage is every young woman’s goal. Did she ever pray about a possible religious vocation? How did she come to know she was called to the married life? We don’t know, but she makes up for this oversight by turning her readers away from obsessing over husband-hunting and toward trying to follow God’s will.
“The time God gives you to be single is precious, and not merely because you have more freedom than a married woman to do what you want to do when you want to do it,” she writes. “It’s precious because you have a unique opportunity to bring all your spiritual graces to full flower — and to do so in a way that will bear fruit for the rest of your life.”
A warning: This book is not for
everyone.
Also,
Ultimately, if you are not among
those who struggle to resist the “Sex and the City” lifestyle, you probably
can’t relate to
Robyn Lee is the Register’s
editorial assistant.
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- December 10-16, 2006