Painting the Future by Louise Hay and Lynn Lauber

Title: Painting The Future
SubTitle: A Tales of Everday Magic Novel
Publisher: Hay House, Inc.
Pub Date: February 06, 2012
ISBN: 9781401937812

Source: Netgalley for review

About the book…..

A film made from this book will be available in April 2012 from Hay House! Send an email to publicity@hayhouse.com if you would like to be informed once it is available.

Jonathan Langley’s life took a devastating turn when he lost his eyesight to a rare illness. Once a successful painter and printmaker, Jonathan now lives in complete darkness, rarely leaving his apartment and angry at the world. When he encounters his precocious 11-year-old neighbor, Lupe, the two form an unlikely friendship. Her cheerful presence shatters his hardened exterior, revealing a gentle man struck by tragedy. Lupe leads him to a fresh perspective by showing him the power of kindness, compassion, and love.

Based on the celebrated teachings of Louise Hay, Painting the Future explores the power of positive thinking in healing past struggles and learning to live a joyful, heart-centered life.

Our Two Cents….

This was a very nice book.  The kind of book that makes you laugh and smile.  While my heart went out to Jonathan for the hand that life dealt him with losing his sight, he still made me laugh, even when he wasn’t trying to.  I understood the reasons he was so bitter but also knew that he had to get past these things to really be happy.

That’s where Lupe comes in.   Shw brings the light back into his world, slowly and carefully but she does succeed.  Lupe was too smart for an eleven year old but her maturity made lots of sense as the book went on.  The interaction between Lupe and Jonathan was beautiful.

The only thing that I did not like was the end.  It seemed to just end without explaining some things that were happening.  It felt like there was a chapter or two missing.  This did not take away from the beauty of the story though, it just irritated me.  The book is very simply written and can be read by an older child to an adult.

 

Louise L. Hay, the author of the international bestseller You Can Heal Your Life, is a metaphysical lecturer and teacher with more than 50 million books sold worldwide. For more than 25 years, Louise has helped people throughout the world discover and implement the full potential of their own creative powers for personal growth and self-healing. Louise is the founder and chairman of Hay House, Inc., which disseminates books, CDs, DVDs, and other products that contribute to the healing of the planet. Visit: http://www.LouiseHay.com

 

Lynn Lauber is a fiction and nonfiction author, teacher, and book collaborator. She has published three books of her own with W.W. Norton & Co., as well as many collaborations with other authors. Her specialties include fiction, personal narrative, and self-improvement. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times. She has abridged audiobooks for such authors as John Updike, Oliver Sacks, Oprah Winfrey, and Gore Vidal.  Visit: http://www.lynnlauber.com

 

 

 

 

 

READ AN EXERPT FROM PAINTING THE FUTURE BY CLICKING THIS LINK

Lupe thought it was lucky that she loved old people, since they were the ones with whom she spent most of her time now. Her grandparents were her most constant companions. She played hearts with her grandfather after dinner and listened to her grandmother’s stories late into the night.
She knew them all. There was the story of how her grandparents met on a blind date at a village dance. Her grandfather had walked in, dusty from a long day of road work, and her grandmother wouldn’t speak to him until he went home, changed his clothes and washed his hair.
There was the story about how Lupe’s mother had been born breech, and her labor had taken all one day and night, nearly wearing out her grandmother, who called for the priest and begged to be taken to heaven. There were stories of husbands who strayed but returned home again; when they didn’t, they underwent terrible punishments (from God, her grandmother said), losing a leg or a fortune or going bald overnight. Lupe couldn’t get enough of these stories and their plots full of conflict and honor. The good always triumphed, eventually, in her grandmother’s stories. None of them ever died, except for off-screen, post-story. Lupe liked being left with the uplifting moral. It made her feel better, as her grandmother knew it would.
Her grandparents’ friends were her friends—old maroon-haired Mrs. Gonzalez who tapped over on two canes from apartment 102 to bring them fresh tortillas and neighborhood gossip; Mr. Santana from 109, who had recently lost his wife and came over at breakfast to silently weep into his café con leche. That was the hour he missed her most, he said. Her grandparents had an open-door policy, and Lupe was often the one who escorted in these seniors. She loved their frank manner and wrinkled faces and the way they told the truth.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t pine for friends her own age. Especially in school, where she hadn’t yet found a group that would include her.
The Hispanic girls in her school seemed older than Lupe, who still kept a stuffed animal in her locker and had yet to wear a bra. These girls treated her with contempt when they noticed her at all.
“Lupe’s still a baby in elementary school,aren’t you, Lupe?” asked one of the sassiest, a girl named Rita, when Lupe walked by the group as they snapped gum in the hall
“No,” Lupe said simply and tried to get past them as quickly as possible, so they wouldn’t notice her frayed dress, washed and ironed by her grandmother, but still with a small hole in the back, or her out-of-style shoes, bought from the thrift store.
But Lupe was fascinated by the proud, pale-haired girls who predominated at her school, wealthy daughters of the town’s doctors and dentists, who looked like princesses to her.
These girls had equally beautiful mothers who drove their SUVs right up to the curb, releasing their daughters in clouds of perfumed entitlement. One, named Brie, was so ethereal, so self-assured and beautiful, that Lupe couldn’t help imagining being her friend. Brie was the epitome of social success; in the cafeteria, girls saved a spot for her at the head of a special table. She set the style for the year’s cool clothes—this year it was short black ruffled skirts and tight midriff-clinging T-shirts—as well as the movies, books, and television shows that were favored. She never looked tired or discouraged. Her oval face was always slightly blushing, and her blue eyes were accented with just enough makeup. Lupe had never seen Brie break out in embarrassing rashes, as she herself sometimes did.
One afternoon Lupe gathered her courage and said to Brie, “I love the color of your shirt.” It was a pale blue that reminded Lupe of the sky over her village in Mexico. But Brie looked at her as if she had just said the stupidest thing in the world.
It was all Lupe could do not to burst out crying.
But then she remembered her grandmother’s advice about adversity and the power of positive thinking, and she adjusted her face and smiled at Brie in spite of the girl’s dark and skeptical look.
“What is she smiling at?” Brie asked a friend who was standing next to her, and the two of them laughed as they sashayed off together.

Related articles

• Louise Hay – “You Can Heal Your Life” (health2happiness.net)
• Louise Hay Willing to Change (mysterycoachdsi.wordpress.com)
• Affirmations: Food for the Soul (or the Power of Postive Thinking) (openmindhealth.com)
• Dying To Be Me by Anita Moorjani (senoradukan.wordpress.com)

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