Ultimate Concerns

By: Diane K. Lavett

Narrated by: Shelley Wade

Ultimate Concerns is a collection of 27 short stories that focus on those states and events of life that are universal and of immense importance. Love, the growth of a child, relationships within and between the generations, relationships with God, the humanness of God, finding one's place in the world, the role of pain in the world, illness, and death are all addressed by these stories.

These stories all take a strong stance. Meaning flows from the importance of what is discussed and from the underlying assumption that there is purpose to all aspects of life. Thus, God has tears in his eyes with the realization that he has made a world in which death occurs yet says "L'Chayim." A man, pushed to the wall by the circumstances of his life, still insists that there are rules to be followed in life that work. A woman who yearns to be free of the burden of her adult children learns that the burden cannot be discarded.

Many of the stories are modeled on the Hasidic tale, which tends to be short and humorous while making an important point. Most of the stories make the abstract concrete. "Why?" sits on the desk of a rabbi, musical notes bounce off a person's nose, pain leaps onto a child and crushes her, chaos originally made by God through error bounces off God's limitless limits and destroys the universe while he watches helplessly.

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