Boom in Bible, Self-Help Book Sales Soothes the Pain

As people seek spiritual healing or words of wisdom on dealing with grief, loss and anger in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many are finding solace in the printed page. With some booksellers reporting brisk sales in the self-help and spirituality genres, publication dates of new titles are being pushed forward, and some books that have sold well--or now have the potential to sell well--are being reissued or given additional print runs.

Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins, reports that in the week after the tragedy, retailers ordered 750,000 copies of “Where Is God When It Hurts?,” by Philip Yancey, editor of Christianity Today. That’s 110,000 more than it had sold since first being published in 1978. Zondervan is donating all profits from the reissue, marked with the Red Cross logo, to that relief agency.

Sales of the Bible are up more than 25% over the same time last year at Family Christian Stores, a large retail chain. Zondervan shipped 100,000 Bibles to retailers on a recent day--twice the normal daily shipment.

Schoken Books, a Random House subsidiary, printed 10,000 copies of its 20th anniversary reissue of Rabbi Harold Kushner’s “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” A Schoken spokeswoman said the book, released Sept. 4, was doing well and “as of the event, is doing better.” Kushner’s new book, “Living a Life That Matters,” (Knopf) and Anna Quindlen’s “A Short Guide to a Happy Life,” published last year, are among Random House’s nonfiction bestsellers.

Little Brown’s “An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life” by the Dalai Lama had advance orders from major booksellers before its Sept. 25 release, and sales have spiked at Amazon.com.

Morehouse Publishing has advanced from May 2002 to this November the release date for “When Suffering Persists,” by Frederick W. Schmidt, an Episcopal priest and director of spiritual life at Southern Methodist University’s school of theology.

Among books being recommended by Borders/Waldenbooks buyers are “Parenting Through Crisis: Helping Kids in Times of Loss, Grief and Change (Harper Resource, 2001) and “Ten Talks Parents Must Have With Their Children About Violence” (Hyperion, 2000), by Dominic Cappello.

Boston-based Shambhala Publications has denied requests for interviews with Pema Chodron, a Tibetan-born Buddhist nun and author of “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times,” a good seller at Amazon.com. The author is on a 100-day retreat.

Authors of some of the more popular books advise reflection and calm, and a sense of optimism, to begin the healing and get through these unsettled times:

Episcopal priest Schmidt says, “The events of Sept. 11 were not the will of God. God is neither punishing us nor is God attempting to teach us something.” A just response, he believes, will be one that does not “lash out at anyone and everyone. I don’t think I’d advocate an eye for an eye. I think [the terrorists] should be tried as criminals in a court of law” lest America “run the risk of becoming not unlike the people we pursue.”

God is with us, he says, “in the midst of our suffering,” and there is comfort in knowing that those who died “are embraced by God” and thus endure.

Linda Feinberg, a Massachusetts-based psychotherapist specializing in grief and loss therapy, is author of “I’m Grieving as Fast as I Can: How Young Widows and Widowers Can Cope and Heal,” published by New Horizon Press in 1994 and now being reissued.

Her message to those widowed in the attacks: “I’d have them tell people they’re grieving as fast as they can--and to have hope. They will eventually feel better, but it will take a very long time.” The worst thing one can say to a young widow, she cautions, is “‘You’re young, you’re beautiful, you’ll get married again.’ [The widows] don’t feel they can say, ‘Oh, shut up,’ so they keep the anger inside and get even more depressed. You should just say, ‘I’m so sorry.”’ Nor, she says, should young widowers be told how in demand single men are.

Janice Harris Lord, a social worker in the trauma field, is the Texas-based author of “No Time for Goodbyes: Surviving, Coping and Healing After the Sudden Death of a Loved One,” a Pathfinder Publishing book going into a sixth edition.

Her advice to those who lost loved ones: “Don’t expect full and total recovery. You will get better over time. However, those who say, ‘Just get over it, just get on with your life’ don’t comprehend the magnitude of this tragedy.”

It is, she says, not unlike recovering from major surgery. “You rest a while, you regroup and eventually you do feel better” and are glad to be alive and doing normal things. “But you’re still carrying around a huge scar, and every once in a while you look at that scar in the mirror and you touch it and it hurts. Your life is never quite the same.”

Tulku Thondup of Cambridge, Mass., a Vietnamese-born Buddhist and former visiting scholar at Harvard University, is author of “Boundless Healing” (Shambhala Publications, 2001). His advice to those seeking healing: Meditate and pray.

“The most important thing to understand in situations such as this is that the main source of healing really is the mind,” Thondup says. He tells those who meditate to visualize the terrible images of Sept. 11 and “let that tragedy wake us and shake us. Usually we live in a cozy kind of feeling, half numbness. Out of this kind of tragedy, we should feel compassion for those who died, for the families who are suffering.

“Suffering changes us, wakes us up. If we meditate, we all can build a support system for the deceased.”

Thondup tries to help people reject feelings of anger and hatred toward the perpetrators, knowing “the truly evil will go to hell.”

Colorado-based Barbara Coloroso, a parenting educator and author of “Parenting Through Crisis: Helping Kids in Times of Loss, Grief, and Change” (HarperResource), speaks of the importance of TAO--her acronym for time, affection and optimism. She says, “I keep hearing people say, ‘We have to get closure.’ I think that’s the wrong word.

“We may feel guilty feeling happy and laughing, but it’s so important for our children. I’m not talking about rose-colored optimism,” but just “getting up in the morning, fixing our kids’ breakfast and saying to them with conviction, ‘We’re going to make it through this.”’

Encourage children to do good deeds, she counsels, to help their healing. “Can they donate money, a toy? It might be something like helping out Habitat for Humanity. It doesn’t just have to be related to this incident.”

And, says Coloroso, instead of talking about “good” and “evil” people, parents should talk about good and evil deeds. “It’s important that we take the weapons out of our kids’ heads and hearts, as well as their hands.”

Jane Middleton-Moz, a Vermont psychologist, is author of “Boiling Point: The Workbook (A Hands-On Approach to Solving the High Cost of Unhealthy Anger),” a 2000 Health Communications title. As anger is triggered by a feeling of helplessness, she says, there is a powerful lesson in how people came together Sept. 11.

“Somehow over the years we’ve just become massively disconnected from each other, within families and between families. Many of the things we used to do have been taken away and handled by multitudes of different agencies. In New York, people found they have the power to help each other.”

Middleton-Moz, who conducts interventions for troubled communities, says, “It’s amazing what people can do when they begin to realize they can start talking” and shed that pervasive “just take care of yourself” attitude.

Parenting consultant Cappello, author of a series of books on talking to children, says what happened Sept. 11 “really expands the talk. This is a time when parents have to talk about their own value systems, how they feel about war, retribution, justice, who fights wars, the draft. If there’s a clash of values, parents have to find a way to compromise.

“Dad may be saying, ‘I think we should be blowing up Afghanistan,” while Mom might be saying, ‘We have to have justice, but I don’t want to see any more people killed.”’ And teenagers may be questioning both government policies and their parents’ beliefs.

Once parents have agreed on a compromise, Cappello says, they should initiate talks about violence, and find out how much their children know. It’s OK for a parent to acknowledge, “Yeah, it scared me a little bit,” he says, but that should be balanced with a message of reassurance. “We’re here for you. We’re going to make sure you’re as safe as possible.”

Dr. Edward Hallowell, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, is author of “Human Moments: How to Find Meaning and Love in Your Everyday Life,” a September release from Health Communications. He, too, speaks of a vast human “disconnect.”

“The tragedy of Sept. 11 has brought people together in a wonderful way, but, of course, that energy will necessarily dissipate.” He hopes people will “recommit to making space in their hearts, as well as in their timetables, for these human moments,” which, he says, are “abundant, they’re free and they’re everywhere.”

He says, “As you’re able to lead your life one step removed, behind a computer screen or behind closed doors, there’s a temptation to do that.” And we let daily obligations take over our lives. “But when the worst happens, people turn to one another. [On Sept. 11] they didn’t run off to their banks to count their money. They didn’t batten down the hatches.”

He sees some good in the tragedy and “a way to keep that silver lining from tarnishing: “Don’t say, ‘Oh, well, it’s over now’ and revert to anonymity and rudeness. Let’s keep this thing going.”