Book Review
Title: Making Waves And Riding Currents: Activism And The Practice Of Wisdom
Author: Charles Halpern
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler, Raincoat Books
Pages: 290
Released: January 1^st 2008
ISBN-10: 1576754421
ISBN-13: 978-1576754429 

4 Stars

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey (Ontario Correspondent - Canada) 

Charles Halpern became a lawyer at a fascinating and compelling time in history. During the civil rights movement and early on in Halpern's career he was drawn to the public interest law movement. Throughout his life, Halpern would evolve from a low-on-the-rung lawyer to founding his own public interest legal firm, to integrating spirituality into post-secondary education under the title of Dean, to representing a philanthropic organization on a grand scale, to writing his memoir. Making Waves And Riding Currents is a memoir of one mans' evolution and change within his often angular and corporate surroundings.

As most of Halpern's colleagues within the legal profession seemed to aim towards lives of discontent, exhaustion, tedium, corruption and self-indulgence, Halpern took a journey of wisdom, contemplation and growth throughout the years, with his wife, every step of the way. Halpern is a testament that life can be enriching, if you choose it to be. Along the way Halpern has learned some powerful and engaging life lessons that led him to some wonderful and constructive paths along his journey. One such example the book gives is Halpern's affiliation with the Sara Lee Foundation that would give away $15 million a year to charitable and worthy causes; running the foundation was a way to put his years of meditative growth and beliefs into practice. The Foundation thrived under Halpern and the money extended to many out-of-the-box but worthy causes. Halpern's influence also touched the family who owns Sara Lee as many of them went onto their own spiritual journeys.  

Being a Dean of a progressive University in New York, which taught future generations of lawyers not only the legal system, but a way of ethics was a groundbreaking and noteworthy element of Halpern's evolution. Halpern reflects "I was intrigued by the idea that the practice of wisdom could make a different kind of law practice possible - a wisdom practice. It is not so long ago that wisdom was considered the highest virtue for lawyers and judges....Yet the word wisdom has virtually disappeared from the legal classroom." 

I must admit that I did not think the book was a memoir by the title Making Waves And Riding Currents: Activism And The Practice Of Wisdom. I thought I was in for a discussion on the ways a reader could implement the virtues of activism and wisdom in their own lives. Reading Halpern's life journey was interesting and his stories about his own growth did have a lot of merit, and even at times he dipped into an internal dialogue that expressed some valuable wisdom, but overall, that element of integration from his story into practice in the reader's life of wisdom and activism was amiss. Perhaps Making Waves And Riding Currents is Halpern's starting point on his journey and future books will be about integrating wisdom and meditation into everyday life.