MSI Press Blog

  What is a book jewel? A sometimes-overlooked book with remarkable insight and potential significance. Starting in August, we will share near-daily, as possible, reviews of the monthly book jewel - short, succinct reviews that can be read in 1-2 minutes with links to the reviewer by reviewers whose words are worthy of being heard and whose opinions are worthy of being considered. Sometimes a couple of minutes contains more impressive thought than ten times that many. We will let you decide that. This month's book jewel is  Blest Atheist  by Elizabeth Mahlou. Amazon review by Debra Gaynor - Elizabeth Mahlou grew up in an abusive home. She tells of her mother stabbing her brother with a knife in the buttocks, and her father throwing a pitchfork and stabbing him with it. Taking an airplane ride had a whole new meaning in this family. The abuse was physical, emotional, and sexual. "The wounds were in the heart and mind and covered parts of the body." Like most bullies, their...

  Elizabeth Mahlou’s Blest Atheist unsettles some readers because it refuses to obey the moral binaries that secular storytelling depends on. She recounts childhood experiences that today would trigger immediate CPS removal: physical abuse, emotional cruelty, and sexual violation ignored by the adults who should have protected her. She describes her own resistance — embarrassing her parents publicly, striking back physically, refusing to be cowed. That fierce ego likely saved her life. And then, later in the memoir, after her conversion, she writes a chapter in which she sees her parents not as monsters but as overwhelmed, under-resourced, emotionally limited people raising eight children in poverty. She does not excuse them. She does not soften the truth. But she sees them through a different lens. She names their fear, their incapacity, their brokenness. In essence, she forgives them — though she never uses the word. For many religious readers — Christian, Jewish, Muslim — thi...

  What is a book jewel? A sometimes-overlooked book with remarkable insight and potential significance. Starting in August, we will share near-daily, as possible, reviews of the monthly book jewel - short, succinct reviews that can be read in 1-2 minutes with links to the reviewer by reviewers whose words are worthy of being heard and whose opinions are worthy of being considered. Sometimes a couple of minutes contains more impressive thought than ten times that many. We will let you decide that. This month's book jewel is Blest Atheist by Elizabeth Mahlou. Amazon review by Brendan Howard - Elizabeth Mahlou's autobiography and tale of coming to believe in God has a lot going for it. Her candid descriptions of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of relatives gripped this reader in a flood of sympathy and horror. Mahlou's great reserve of optimism and compassion as child and adult seems initially boastful. But in light of her life of childhood trauma, physical...

  Dr. Elizabeth Mahlou is our most reclusive author. she  wishes to remain anonymous because she speaks candidly about her childhood abuse while avoiding naming names in order to shield the innocent from more emotional harm. However, using her pseudonym, she is willing to communicate with readers who enjoy her books,  A Believer-in-Waiting’s First Encounters with God  and  Blest Atheist . She is now hard at work on a follow-up book,  Raising God’s Rainbow Makers .  Dr. Mahlou maintained two blogs for several years. 100th Lamb  and Clan of Mahlou are still available, cached, on line. Dr. Mahlou knows our author, Sula, Parish Cat at Old Mission , and she wrote a story about her,   “Cat with a Divine Mission,”  that  appeared in   Guideposts Magazine   in December 2015.  Dr. Mahlou has often used a tiger, a kindred spirit, as an avatar . You can read more posts about Dr. Mahlou and her books and blogs HERE .

  People often use pleased and proud as if they mean the same thing. They don’t. And the difference matters. To be pleased is to feel satisfaction — a gentle, inward acknowledgment that something went well. It’s a momentary warmth, a sense of harmony between effort and outcome. You’re pleased when a plan works, when a child behaves kindly, when a project turns out right. It’s gratitude mixed with relief. To be proud , though, is something larger. Pride carries identity. It says, this achievement reflects who I am. Pride ties the result to the self — to strength, perseverance, or principle. It’s not just “that went well,” but “I did that.” Pride can be noble, when it honors integrity and effort. It can also turn dangerous, when it forgets humility and becomes self‑inflation. The two feelings often overlap, but they point in different directions: Pleased Focuses on the event or outcome Has a gentle, grateful tone Fades naturally once the moment passes Proud Focuses on the self an...