Searching for a Mustard Seed : One Young Widow's Unconventional Story

by Sagan, Miriam

• ISBN13: 9780971316034
• ISBN10: 0971316031
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-08-01
• Publisher: Quality Words in Print

Summary

There is a Buddhist teaching story about a woman whose only child dies. The desperately bereaved woman comes to Shakyamuni Buddha, asking for a miracle, asking, "Please bring my child back to life." The Buddha agrees, but only if she will bring him a mustard seed from a household that has never known death. And so the woman goes out seeking. Miriam Sagan's search for a mustard seed begins with the death of her husband Robert, a thirty-six-year-old Zen Priest. She approaches her grief in what she calls a "typical baby boomer fashion": as an extreme state to be experienced. Her unconventional approach takes her to Korea in the middle of winter ("Seoul was frozen by cold dry Siberian winds. It was polluted. It was ugly. It sounded perfect to me."), to weightlifting classes ("'I'm a widow!' I yelled by the machine that strengthened my arms, 'I'm a widow!'"), and through her search for new romantic relationships ("I made a mental list of everyone I knew who might qualify as a potential lover. My list was undiscriminating, it included people who lived thousands of miles away, the perhaps about-to-be divorced, those with bad reputations, and some I hadn't met."). Intimate, poignant, and at times even comical, this piercingly honest memoir takes the reader along a journey during which one woman attempts to unravel the mysteries of grief and death. Miriam Sagan knocks on doors, and, with her vivid prose and beseeching voice, begs for consolation, understanding, and miracles. She finds, instead of a mustard seed, the appreciation that she is not alone in her loss, and that she is surrounded instead with continuity, with community, and all the beauty that is "life." Book jacket.

Author Biography

Miriam Sagan's most recent books of poetry are Archeology Of Desire (Winner of the Red Hen Chapbook Contest, 2001) and The Widow's Coat. She teaches writing on-line for UCLA-Extension and Santa Fe Community College, and is the Writer's Digest poetry columnist. She lives in New Mexico with her family

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. 5
The Sick Man: an Introduction	p. 9
Coma	p. 19
Smoke	p. 40
Bardo	p. 61
Asia	p. 88
Boyfriend	p. 110
Canyon	p. 135
Ocean	p. 157
Ceremonies	p. 178
The Mustard Seed	p. 200
Bibliography	p. 208
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