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How to Begin When Your World Is Ending: A Spiritual Field Guide to Joy Despite Everything
Moving, witty, and probing, Molly Baskette's practical and spiritual perspective will appeal to readers of Lori Gottlieb's Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and Kate Bowler's Everything Happens for a Reason.
As a progressive parish minister, Molly Baskette has been a companion during the most vulnerable, traumatized, and unsettled periods of many people's lives. She has also had a front row seat to remarkable human transformation, as many of the ruptures her people lived through turned out to be the way that God got in. But when she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer at age thirty-nine, with two small children, her theology of and relationship to God was tested more profoundly than ever.
Instead of Instead of becoming despondent, though, she engaged with her faith more deeply—seizing the opportunity to test the seaworthiness of the faith she had been practicing and preaching. In How to Begin When Your World is Ending, Baskette shares the questions that confronted her along the way Is it true that prayer changes things? Does God care whether we live or die—and is there a damn thing God can do about it anyway? How can vulnerability, counterintuitively, be a strength? And the million-dollar question: is there life after death, and just what might it be like?
Weaving together her own story and the stories of those she encountered in her life of faith, Baskette mines joy from all the hardest parts of being human. In doing so she reminds us that whatever you are going through, someone has been there before you, and found meaning in the madness.
As a progressive parish minister, Molly Baskette has been a companion during the most vulnerable, traumatized, and unsettled periods of many people's lives. She has also had a front row seat to remarkable human transformation, as many of the ruptures her people lived through turned out to be the way that God got in. But when she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer at age thirty-nine, with two small children, her theology of and relationship to God was tested more profoundly than ever.
Instead of Instead of becoming despondent, though, she engaged with her faith more deeply—seizing the opportunity to test the seaworthiness of the faith she had been practicing and preaching. In How to Begin When Your World is Ending, Baskette shares the questions that confronted her along the way Is it true that prayer changes things? Does God care whether we live or die—and is there a damn thing God can do about it anyway? How can vulnerability, counterintuitively, be a strength? And the million-dollar question: is there life after death, and just what might it be like?
Weaving together her own story and the stories of those she encountered in her life of faith, Baskette mines joy from all the hardest parts of being human. In doing so she reminds us that whatever you are going through, someone has been there before you, and found meaning in the madness.
215 pages, Hardcover
Published November 15, 2022
33 people are currently reading
201 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 60 reviews
February 23, 2023
There’s that wonderful poem “Hope is not a bird, Emily, it’s a sewer rat” and this book feels like a longer meditation on the same bits. Molly would say it’s a dance. We learn the steps. We move and even step on someone’s toes. I was afraid of that I’m picking up this book. My mom died of cancer in which there was no hope. No positive pop psychology would heal her and so I get nervous about cancer memoirs and mostly avoid them. Molly is, however, a colleague I admire and I admire her more after reading these honest words that take to heart all the hard things and finds joy even still. I’m grateful for this book being in the world.
January 12, 2023
A great story about finding joy and love when times are hard. I laughed and cried and not just because molly is one of my many mothers.
November 30, 2022
A powerful read. Great story-telling, I found each anecdote, whether family or friend or church member was both kindly and honestly told. It gave me as a reader permission to be vulnerable and probe painful experiences in my life. It reminds me there will be a time in the future, when things will turn around for the better. Whether that's in 15 minutes or months and years down the line. And the courage to take steps now to have difficult conversations in the hope that things will be better in the future.
I do have to say, I agree with son Rafe. I prefer the title "God is not an a$$hole". And there is precedent! The "No A$$hole Rule" by Robrt Sutton has broken the prohibition against that word. He makes a compelling argument in that book that asshole connotes a level of behavior above and beyond a simple jerk.
I do have to say, I agree with son Rafe. I prefer the title "God is not an a$$hole". And there is precedent! The "No A$$hole Rule" by Robrt Sutton has broken the prohibition against that word. He makes a compelling argument in that book that asshole connotes a level of behavior above and beyond a simple jerk.
November 8, 2022
The world can feel depressingly dark at this moment in history, with large-scale challenges such as the pandemic, polarizing politics, and climate change creating unceasing anxiety. Closer to home, friends and family receive news of devasting lab results or other calamities. How can we survive the chances and changes of this life, how can we make sense of it? Where is God in the tumult?
People seeking spiritual grounding during both a crisis and ordinary moments will embrace "How to Begin When Your World is Ending," a gem by the always-engaging Molly Phinney Baskette. Molly is the right voice for these times--a progressive Christian minister who knows how to speak to churched, post-churched, and "spiritual but not religious" folks with equal aplomb. Even more, Molly enters new depths with this book because it is deeply personal. It offers her account of enduring a harrowing medical diagnosis, and finding light in the fear-drenched shadows. Unflinchingly honest, engagingly hilarious and consistently authentic, this book is a must read for anyone who seeking wisdom in navigating the storms of life that inevitably come. Thankful to have this book on my shelf, and grateful to the ever-effervescent Molly for writing it!
People seeking spiritual grounding during both a crisis and ordinary moments will embrace "How to Begin When Your World is Ending," a gem by the always-engaging Molly Phinney Baskette. Molly is the right voice for these times--a progressive Christian minister who knows how to speak to churched, post-churched, and "spiritual but not religious" folks with equal aplomb. Even more, Molly enters new depths with this book because it is deeply personal. It offers her account of enduring a harrowing medical diagnosis, and finding light in the fear-drenched shadows. Unflinchingly honest, engagingly hilarious and consistently authentic, this book is a must read for anyone who seeking wisdom in navigating the storms of life that inevitably come. Thankful to have this book on my shelf, and grateful to the ever-effervescent Molly for writing it!
October 21, 2022
I didn't want this book to end. Molly Phinney Baskette exquisitely holds the AND from her own story and invites us to do the same. She names the devastating AND the deeply hopeful. There is beauty AND pain in the stories she shares. This book made me want to hold the AND in my own life: one can receive a terrible diagnosis AND dance. Life is found in the endings AND the beginnings. Thank you, Molly for sharing your truth and for inviting us into the fullness of our own.
November 10, 2022
Molly Baskette captures the good and the terrible, the frightening and the delightful, the hope and the fears of us all in this work. She offers an honest look at her cancer diagnosis, treatment, and survival. Like most of us she has good days and bad. Yet, through illness, fear, a job change, a cross country move, and wildfires, her faith never wavers. She manages to preach to us about Gods blessings without sounding preach. She is at the same time very real and quite academic. Thank you for sharing your story of new beginnings within frightening almost death so that we can all have the hope and the courage to begin anew whatever our circumstances.
November 12, 2022
This book bears witness to hope in the midst of struggle without sugar-coating life’s challenges for one second. Baskette beautifully weaves the nitty gritty of life with spiritual wisdom. She’s a natural story teller and instructor in what she would call the Love School. Highly recommend!
November 6, 2022
How to Begin When Your World is Ending crackles with humor and faith. As an earthling, Molly is like Job. She "can't stop believing," despite her odyssey through realities that would sink many a ship. It's a God-thing to hold onto imagination, joy, family, and community as you stare down hell. I was right with her as she spun me through her dance with a gnarly-rare cancer, addiction, church implosions, fires, Covid, and death knells of the body politic as we knew it. Along the way, she helps us recognize the best in ourselves. Thank you, Molly, for that and your last chapter, "Dance When You're Broken Open." It's a praise song to everything I know, too, as a dancer, theologian, and InterPlayer. This book is a keeper.
November 29, 2024
Five stars because this book made me weep, multiple times.
(Thank you Hawley for the rec!)
(Thank you Hawley for the rec!)
November 1, 2022
I was first introduced to Molly Baskett in the book Real Good Church. It provided such wise, practical, and encouraging advice about church revitalization I knew I would be in for a treat in reading a book aimed at real, gritty, faith. She shared honest reflections on her own life’s journey and her ministry with others going through hard times. Her writing helped me reflect on my own faith as it has emerged coming out of the pandemic. One of my favorite lines in the book is “Because God is not an asshole. And while God didn’t send the disaster, God for damn sure will use it.” It has been messy to figure out how God is present in the dumpster fire we find ourselves in these days, but Molly’s confident and irreverent summary was a helpful reminder that God is at work alongside us. This book made me laugh out loud and helped me think through my own faith journey. It was realistic, but hopeful. As a pastor, sometimes I need someone to proclaim the good news to me. I appreciated the way Molly testified to God’s goodness without sweeping the hard parts under the rug.
November 12, 2022
Reading this book, at this time, in this climate, shows that there is hope for civility, care and compassion. Rev. Molly shares the most challenging moments of her life. and at the same time, she frames each of these events against the backdrop of her experiences, relationships and lessons learned as a friend, wife, mother and pastor. Her practice of prayer embodies a spirit of grace and compassion, not expecting miracles to happen, but relying on the community of her 'besties', family and faith to gather around her and care for and with her. As Rev. Molly shares, "(i)t turns out the mystical life is less about control, than surrender." Merely pages after starting to read this book, I was feeling emotional and reflective about the ways that Molly reveals her most vulnerable inner self in order to show us how to begin when your world is ending.
November 5, 2022
From the very first page, I knew Molly was real! She, and we, are survivors. I relearned what is a true emergency. I learned a new appreciation of who God is and who God is not. I was reminded of the importance of sharing our stories. "Resurrection does require a death." None of us are immune to hardship or pain. Society needs to do a better job with mental health issues. "God tells us what we need to hear, not what we want to hear." Molly tells us we are here "to learn how to love." She helped me to know better how to live, but also how better to die. And may we all learn to dance! Thanks, Molly!
November 30, 2022
This book is Baskette at her best. The authenticity of her voice is purified in the many fires of her life, metaphorically and literally, evoking both tears and dancing. One is compelled to invoke the same Spirit that guides, lures, leads, and pulls Molly through the valley of the shadow of death. She didn’t ask for this, but this is her witness to faith and fortitude, two intangibles that take on real flesh in her beautifully woven paean to a life of love. Her stories will draw you in as if you are there, rooting for her, comforting her, and thanking her all at the same time. I thank her for a book that is a poignant, yet triumphant, reminder that joy is not just another theme for Advent. Whether our personal worlds are ending or not, the universe has opened a portal of joy.
November 4, 2022
Rev. Molly generously shares her wisdom, experiences, and wit to help us all through the inevitable valleys that life's path takes us. Her words and insights are the much-needed balm as we try to make sense of the senseless.
November 23, 2022
Can you imagine being a young mom in the midst of a budding career as a pastor and receiving a shocking diagnosis? In this collection of reflections, stories, and spiritual musings, Molly walks us through her journey with cancer—from the moment it comes out of nowhere to the moment she begins to grow her peach fuzz back on her blessedly
bald head. Through earnest questions of faith and why it matters in both ordinary moments and times of crises, she invites us to reflect with her on how God is present in the most difficult and challenging moments of our lives. The book is filled with both heartwarming and heart wrenching stories, doses of Molly’s warm sense of humor, and her infectious spirit of hope, which persists through her experience with surgery and chemotherapy and trickles out of the pages into the reader’s own soul. Perhaps most refreshing is Molly’s honesty. She doesn’t shy away from describing hard decisions, ugly thoughts, and painful conversations. If you’re going through a difficult chapter of life, this book will remind you that you’re not alone. This would also make the perfect gift for someone going through cancer or another difficult illness.
bald head. Through earnest questions of faith and why it matters in both ordinary moments and times of crises, she invites us to reflect with her on how God is present in the most difficult and challenging moments of our lives. The book is filled with both heartwarming and heart wrenching stories, doses of Molly’s warm sense of humor, and her infectious spirit of hope, which persists through her experience with surgery and chemotherapy and trickles out of the pages into the reader’s own soul. Perhaps most refreshing is Molly’s honesty. She doesn’t shy away from describing hard decisions, ugly thoughts, and painful conversations. If you’re going through a difficult chapter of life, this book will remind you that you’re not alone. This would also make the perfect gift for someone going through cancer or another difficult illness.
November 27, 2022
This was the book I didn't know I needed to be reading. In a memoir that is as beautiful as it is familiar, Baskette invites readers to accompany her through searching and finding and making meaning when life hands her a diagnosis no one saw coming. Putting into words what often goes unspoken, Baskette models how to relish and cherish how the beauty of life is inextricably tied to its fragility, its wonder, its tenderness, and even its terribleness. This book is for anyone searching for hope amidst uncertainty, anyone curious about how to retain a sense of awe amidst chaos, and anyone wrestling with what it is to be fully alive and fully human.
November 19, 2022
This is a book for anyone who has suffered a loss, a cancer scare, a life-changing accident, a family emergency -- in other words, everyone. Part memoire, part how-to-find-joy-in-this-messy life, Molly Baskette manages to be simultaneously hilarious and deep, sassy and poignant. In the process she upends religious platitudes and instead offers powerful and common-sense insights that can help anyone find a little more meaning in life. As Molly puts it: "It's a book for anyone who wants to press the bruise of the reality that this sweet, hard, wonderful gig of being human is going to come to an end someday, maybe sooner than we expect." I HIGHLY recommend this book -- I'm definitely recommending it for my book club.
October 24, 2022
We've all been to the places that Molly Baskette describes in her book -Loneliness, depression, cancer, suicide, and losses we can't even imagine. But Molly's words and stories from the front lines of ministry and her own "world ending" situation provides a roadmap on how to make it through these places in one piece, all the while relying on God and the community she provides to us. Anyone who has lived life will find this book engrossing, uplifting and hopeful.
November 21, 2022
How to Begin When Your World is Ending is soul medicine. Weaving in her personal narrative with humor and vulnerability, Molly tells life as it is- with all its beauty and heartache- while offering gem after gem for spiritually-based living! I have so many notes and takeaways written on the margins of the book. Thank you Molly for this spiritual toolkit, written with grace, easy to read, and stirring for the soul!
November 15, 2022
This book was inspiring because it comes from both grounded realism and hopeful faith.
In speaking of her cancer, I appreciate that Baskette does not go to the extreme of be strong and fight or to the other extreme of just be broken and accept it. She embraces vulnerability but does not worship vulnerability. She does not present cancer recovery as a steady straight line, but a back-and-forth journey. She is clear that God is not the author of all disasters in life, yet God is not absent: indeed God gives us joy in the midst of life’s woes.
The gold of the book is Baskette addressing how to go on given that death is inevitable for all of us. Baskette gives a list of ways that Jesus gives us for how to go on. One example: “Pray. As you can, not as you can’t. Don’t wait until you can pray with noble intention. Pray with tears and snot running down your face for what you really want.”
In speaking of her cancer, I appreciate that Baskette does not go to the extreme of be strong and fight or to the other extreme of just be broken and accept it. She embraces vulnerability but does not worship vulnerability. She does not present cancer recovery as a steady straight line, but a back-and-forth journey. She is clear that God is not the author of all disasters in life, yet God is not absent: indeed God gives us joy in the midst of life’s woes.
The gold of the book is Baskette addressing how to go on given that death is inevitable for all of us. Baskette gives a list of ways that Jesus gives us for how to go on. One example: “Pray. As you can, not as you can’t. Don’t wait until you can pray with noble intention. Pray with tears and snot running down your face for what you really want.”
November 21, 2022
Breathtaking courage, authenticity, wisdom, hilarity, tenderness, and ultimately, a gift of hope and love.
November 23, 2022
It is not every day that I finish a book and then immediately buy four more copies to share with others, but I did with this. Rev. Molly Baskette's book speaks to any and all of us who have experienced the difficult parts of life--a dreaded diagnosis, grief, chronic illness, or struggles with family issues. The core of the book is Rev. Molly's story about her own cancer diagnosis and the journey through treatment to recovery, but the book is about so much more. She draws on the people she has met on her life's journey to tell their stories and their struggles, and through it all she focuses on hope and all the ways it can manifest itself even in some of our darkest times. The true magic of this book is that it offers hope and joy while still being real.
November 16, 2022
Wow! I could not put this book down. The people and stories profiled are vibrant, relatable, and very three-dimensional. The theological themes are carefully woven, progressively nuanced, and give an insightful new perspective on the age old questions about suffering. This book is hopeful, accessible, and highly relevant to today's world when so many of us are re-starting and re-emerging. You will laugh knowingly, hold your breath, see yourself, and ultimately be wiser and more grounded and ready to embrace life in all of its messiness having read this book!
November 13, 2022
Part memoir, part spiritual exposition, with a good dose of humor, I was delighted this book arrived in the mail in the midst of my Covid quarantine. I found it accessible, relatable, and engaging, though the author and I don't share all the same theological assumptions or spiritual beliefs. Molly Baskette's conversational tone and wit engaged me as someone who also works in church ministry. She names the joys, struggles, and quirks of life in church leadership including a transition from one congregation to another. Perhaps most moving is the chapter "Random Tuesday Death Wish" which offers an honest and candid exploration of suicidality, something that is too often considered taboo. This book will resonate with progressive Christians and with anyone who has moved through a time of tumult, loss, and uncertainty in life that has led them to reconsider their ideas about God.
April 11, 2023
"How To Begin When Your World Is Ending:
A Spiritual Field Guide to Joy Despite Everything"
Molly Phinney Baskette
Broadleaf Books
November 15, 2022
978-1506481609
215 pages
Spiritual Self-Help
As an untraditional parish minister, Molly Baskette has changed many lives besides her own. When diagnosed with cancer and having to endure the rigors of chemo, she discovers her friends and parishioners are there for her 100%. She discusses her trials and tributes as both a pastor and a woman in a field that men mainly dominate. Her life revolves around her faith and her family, and with her down-to-earth and spiritual prose, she collaborates with those from all walks of life, never judging but always empathizing and looking for ways to help others in any way she can.
Though a spiritual leader, Molly is not an in-your-face holy roller dictating the words of the bible or spouting fire and brimstone. Instead, she is an ordinary woman with empathy for the underdog and accepting of others for who they are. When living in the Boston area of Massachusetts, she became involved with a prison ministry. There were a few whose stories she anonymously retold of those she could commiserate with and those who, but for the grace of God, could have been any one of us thrown into an unspeakable position that caused their incarceration.
With each chapter having a separate and informative topic, Molly delves into such situations as abuse, murder, illness, and death, to name a few. In each case, she demonstrates that we are all humans with deep feelings, problems, pain, and regrets. With her Christian faith, she has the fortitude and compassion to provide solace to those trying to find themselves and make a new life where they can accept their past mistakes while understanding why certain things happened and earning to forgive themselves.
Not even a cancer diagnosis and the horrible suffering she endured through recovery stopped Molly’s quest to comfort and advocate for others. Straightforward and compassionate, Molly also incorporates her sense of humor in differing situations, and her theological insight offers just what one needs.
During her bad days, when she was afraid and feeling cynical, she would question this, though most of the time, she believed it to be true. Though faced with the fear of her possible death and the chance of leaving her husband widowed and children motherless, she yielded to the Lord’s will and embraced the offering of many prayers. One of her church ladies gave her a sign that reads, “Prayer changes things.”
With many praying for her health, she expresses her thoughts about prayer and the question many ask: Does God really care about us?
“There is also the question of what is happening spiritually when you agree to pray for someone. Am I a vessel for prayers—prayers that then get lodged in me permanently, spiritual sludge? Or am I a channel for prayer, a human operator with a thick Jersey accent running wires between God and other humans? Am I a loudspeaker, the “human microphone” developed for activists during the low-tech Occupy movement, repeating the longings of one human at volumes, hoping to catch God’s ear? If so, does that mean more people praying is better?
“And the ten-dollar question: whether praying for ourselves, others, or the world in general, if God knows everything, why bother praying? If God is omniscient, God already knows. And if God is omnipotent, God would have done something about it already. And if God hasn’t, isn’t God really an asshole after all?”
Molly approaches God on a first-name and intimate basis. She does not proselytize her beliefs to others, yet takes them into her heart. Her infectious attitude toward life and her fellow man makes her a shining light in the darkness, as she patiently listens to others, supporting them in their grief or sorrow, yet as an equal. While addressing many human frailties in this book, she also takes away the fear of death. Her prose is fun to read, down to earth as well as insightful, heartwarming, and humorous at times. One does not need to be a believer or in touch with a specific religion to gain from the wisdom this self-help guide displays, yet it opens one’s eyes to many divine inquiries and thoughts, which many of us long to know.
A Spiritual Field Guide to Joy Despite Everything"
Molly Phinney Baskette
Broadleaf Books
November 15, 2022
978-1506481609
215 pages
Spiritual Self-Help
As an untraditional parish minister, Molly Baskette has changed many lives besides her own. When diagnosed with cancer and having to endure the rigors of chemo, she discovers her friends and parishioners are there for her 100%. She discusses her trials and tributes as both a pastor and a woman in a field that men mainly dominate. Her life revolves around her faith and her family, and with her down-to-earth and spiritual prose, she collaborates with those from all walks of life, never judging but always empathizing and looking for ways to help others in any way she can.
Though a spiritual leader, Molly is not an in-your-face holy roller dictating the words of the bible or spouting fire and brimstone. Instead, she is an ordinary woman with empathy for the underdog and accepting of others for who they are. When living in the Boston area of Massachusetts, she became involved with a prison ministry. There were a few whose stories she anonymously retold of those she could commiserate with and those who, but for the grace of God, could have been any one of us thrown into an unspeakable position that caused their incarceration.
With each chapter having a separate and informative topic, Molly delves into such situations as abuse, murder, illness, and death, to name a few. In each case, she demonstrates that we are all humans with deep feelings, problems, pain, and regrets. With her Christian faith, she has the fortitude and compassion to provide solace to those trying to find themselves and make a new life where they can accept their past mistakes while understanding why certain things happened and earning to forgive themselves.
Not even a cancer diagnosis and the horrible suffering she endured through recovery stopped Molly’s quest to comfort and advocate for others. Straightforward and compassionate, Molly also incorporates her sense of humor in differing situations, and her theological insight offers just what one needs.
During her bad days, when she was afraid and feeling cynical, she would question this, though most of the time, she believed it to be true. Though faced with the fear of her possible death and the chance of leaving her husband widowed and children motherless, she yielded to the Lord’s will and embraced the offering of many prayers. One of her church ladies gave her a sign that reads, “Prayer changes things.”
With many praying for her health, she expresses her thoughts about prayer and the question many ask: Does God really care about us?
“There is also the question of what is happening spiritually when you agree to pray for someone. Am I a vessel for prayers—prayers that then get lodged in me permanently, spiritual sludge? Or am I a channel for prayer, a human operator with a thick Jersey accent running wires between God and other humans? Am I a loudspeaker, the “human microphone” developed for activists during the low-tech Occupy movement, repeating the longings of one human at volumes, hoping to catch God’s ear? If so, does that mean more people praying is better?
“And the ten-dollar question: whether praying for ourselves, others, or the world in general, if God knows everything, why bother praying? If God is omniscient, God already knows. And if God is omnipotent, God would have done something about it already. And if God hasn’t, isn’t God really an asshole after all?”
Molly approaches God on a first-name and intimate basis. She does not proselytize her beliefs to others, yet takes them into her heart. Her infectious attitude toward life and her fellow man makes her a shining light in the darkness, as she patiently listens to others, supporting them in their grief or sorrow, yet as an equal. While addressing many human frailties in this book, she also takes away the fear of death. Her prose is fun to read, down to earth as well as insightful, heartwarming, and humorous at times. One does not need to be a believer or in touch with a specific religion to gain from the wisdom this self-help guide displays, yet it opens one’s eyes to many divine inquiries and thoughts, which many of us long to know.
December 26, 2022
Touching, inspiring and fun -- this book is about Molly's, and also many other people's spiritual journeys through suffering, grief and hope. I spent around a month reading and it was such a wonderful experience. In this book, Molly tells her story about going through cancer treatment and recovery, interwoven with many other people's touching stories that she encountered over years as a progressive Christian pastor. She wrote about topics involving grief, life/death, and love, and how to make sense of the world when everything seems like a mess. These stories are about many spiritual journeys -- how we humans navigate through such a messy world, with diseases, mental illness, and wars. It is less of a formal theology and religious discussion, but more like a memoir, with her soft and personal touch to these topics through storytelling. The writing feels to me a bit like "Call the midwife". One of My favorite lines of the book is:
"But surviving didn't mean I needed to go on a grim-lipped campaign of self-improvement. All I needed to do was notice what makes me glad to feel alive, and do that, because, in the words of Howard Thurman. "what the world needs is people who have come alive"
Some part of the book is touching and moves me to tears. Overall this book is extremely "light" and fun to read, with many good jokes and anecdotes. Molly's language flows beautifully. There is some part that feels sad to me, but the stories always end with hope. When I read through the end I feel a sense of hope and joy, very light and gentle, like the warm sunlight in winter.
This book would be a good read when you lie down on the sofa on a rainy day, or sit in an outdoor coffee shop on a lazy weekend afternoon. For those who are going through emotional or spiritual struggles -- diseases, mental illness, and just the messiness of everyday life, hope this book will bring you some wisdom and peace along your journey.
"But surviving didn't mean I needed to go on a grim-lipped campaign of self-improvement. All I needed to do was notice what makes me glad to feel alive, and do that, because, in the words of Howard Thurman. "what the world needs is people who have come alive"
Some part of the book is touching and moves me to tears. Overall this book is extremely "light" and fun to read, with many good jokes and anecdotes. Molly's language flows beautifully. There is some part that feels sad to me, but the stories always end with hope. When I read through the end I feel a sense of hope and joy, very light and gentle, like the warm sunlight in winter.
This book would be a good read when you lie down on the sofa on a rainy day, or sit in an outdoor coffee shop on a lazy weekend afternoon. For those who are going through emotional or spiritual struggles -- diseases, mental illness, and just the messiness of everyday life, hope this book will bring you some wisdom and peace along your journey.
November 29, 2022
To Molly Baskette’s considerable skills, we must now add her ability to skateboard on the razor blade between hope and despair, reverence and irreverence, the holy and the mundane. As she does, she takes her personal story and lifts it up as a universal experience. Even when her experiences seem extreme (and they are — from the what-are-the-microscopic-odds Ewing’s sarcoma to the church burning down), she uses her gentle humor and big heart to bring them down to being relatable. “Surely,” she seems to say, “you know, or will know, something like this. And when you do, it is okay to lose your sh-t.”
In this time when Christianity is undergoing a profound change, besieged by right-wing absolutism on the one hand, and the disintegration of the mainline church on the other, this is a Very Important Book. It is a book that all Christians who are trying to figure out where this is all leads should read. It doesn’t rely on absolutes; and it contains an overabundance of joy, exuberance, and love of the miracle of life that, unfortunately, got lost in the dust of mainline churches.
Of the many passages that I marked, I will keep this one so I can return to it often: “We know, wordlessly, that there is a deeper reality, that Someone is, if not strictly in control, at least in some kind of possession of all these worlds. We can rest.”
That may, in the end, be all we know. Or need to know.
In this time when Christianity is undergoing a profound change, besieged by right-wing absolutism on the one hand, and the disintegration of the mainline church on the other, this is a Very Important Book. It is a book that all Christians who are trying to figure out where this is all leads should read. It doesn’t rely on absolutes; and it contains an overabundance of joy, exuberance, and love of the miracle of life that, unfortunately, got lost in the dust of mainline churches.
Of the many passages that I marked, I will keep this one so I can return to it often: “We know, wordlessly, that there is a deeper reality, that Someone is, if not strictly in control, at least in some kind of possession of all these worlds. We can rest.”
That may, in the end, be all we know. Or need to know.
February 10, 2023
“How to Begin When Your World is Ending”
By Molly Phinney Baskette
Review by Joanne Griffith Domingue, First Congregational UCC, San Jose, CA
Molly Bisquette’s new book, about her “cancer year” is engaging. It’s poignant. It’s endearing. It captured my heart and brought me along with a theology that feels real. No pretention or, as Biskette calls it, “swirley thinking.”
For me, there are five best things about Bisquette’s new book.
5. She’s funny. To be funny when you are almost dying of cancer and its treatment is a gift. She calls misguided thoughts as “stinkin’ thinking.” They include those decolonizing their faith from fundamentalism.
4. She brings God close. “God,” she writes, “ like an empty nester, loves it when we call. We don’t need to use God as the excuse for not praying.”
3. She’s sassy. She lost three friends to a traffic accident on their way home “from a week at effing church camp volunteering with teenagers.”
2. She is in the moment. While in cancer treatment, “I was intensely grateful for the dozens of ways every day that having young children forced me to stay in the present, grounded and enfleshed.”
1. She’s clear. “Not everybody gets a happy ending. But prayer can make the right now more bearable.”
By Molly Phinney Baskette
Review by Joanne Griffith Domingue, First Congregational UCC, San Jose, CA
Molly Bisquette’s new book, about her “cancer year” is engaging. It’s poignant. It’s endearing. It captured my heart and brought me along with a theology that feels real. No pretention or, as Biskette calls it, “swirley thinking.”
For me, there are five best things about Bisquette’s new book.
5. She’s funny. To be funny when you are almost dying of cancer and its treatment is a gift. She calls misguided thoughts as “stinkin’ thinking.” They include those decolonizing their faith from fundamentalism.
4. She brings God close. “God,” she writes, “ like an empty nester, loves it when we call. We don’t need to use God as the excuse for not praying.”
3. She’s sassy. She lost three friends to a traffic accident on their way home “from a week at effing church camp volunteering with teenagers.”
2. She is in the moment. While in cancer treatment, “I was intensely grateful for the dozens of ways every day that having young children forced me to stay in the present, grounded and enfleshed.”
1. She’s clear. “Not everybody gets a happy ending. But prayer can make the right now more bearable.”
June 5, 2025
I’ve had this book on my shelf for several years now. For some reason, I was under the strong impression that I had already read it. And I must’ve read the first few chapters because as I began reading it a second time I thought, “I HAVE read this otherwise why would I know she has the same cancer as my child?” However, by chapter 3, I was in new territory, so I’m glad I took time to read this book for the first or second time. 😃
The author is diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma. A super rare type of cancer in general and very deadly in adult populations because the treatment protocol is so incredibly gruelling; and yet, she’s writing this book 10 years or more after her cancer experience. She’s considered cancer free! And this gives me so much hope for my own child’s survival.
The author is a liberal Christian minister that is deeply grounded in theology and the real world of suffering. I just really enjoyed reading her story, hearing her challenges, and seeing the mindset that helped her move through it all. Cancer, work challenges, troubled teens…. You know. Life.
I recommend this book if you have cancer or someone who has cancer. I recommend this book if you’re interested in Christianity and how it can be a force for love and inclusion.
The author is diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma. A super rare type of cancer in general and very deadly in adult populations because the treatment protocol is so incredibly gruelling; and yet, she’s writing this book 10 years or more after her cancer experience. She’s considered cancer free! And this gives me so much hope for my own child’s survival.
The author is a liberal Christian minister that is deeply grounded in theology and the real world of suffering. I just really enjoyed reading her story, hearing her challenges, and seeing the mindset that helped her move through it all. Cancer, work challenges, troubled teens…. You know. Life.
I recommend this book if you have cancer or someone who has cancer. I recommend this book if you’re interested in Christianity and how it can be a force for love and inclusion.
January 29, 2023
The world needs more people like Pastor Molly. As a progressive Christian, I read every word of this book and I found it spiritually refreshing to my soul. The book does not sugarcoat problems with toxic positivity, nor does it depress you with hopelessness and fear. This book honestly talks about people's lives, their struggles and their triumphs, their hopes and fears. There is a loving God who is threaded throughout the entire book. After growing up with a punitive God who punishes sinners all day, I found it comforting to talk about a loving God who walks beside people and their struggles. The best part is that Pastor Molly is so funny! She is a breathe of fresh air and has a great personality, along with a soulful presence. I think that people of all ages would be more open to their faith if there were more people like Molly. She talked about her cancer struggle with such candor and openness, during the good times and the really difficult awful times. Rather than dualistic black and white thinking, this book shows that there is a spectrum of understanding the nuances of all topics. It was also refreshing to hear a woman's perspective. I recommend this book to everyone.
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