"[Her travels have]...reinforced my conviction that I am not only a child of God ...there was still work for me."
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On Being Born, Again and Again by Margery McManus Leach Trafford Publishing
book review by Mina R Raulston
On Being Born, Again and Again tells the story of the author's life journey from a tortured childhood, through two memorable marriages, and her life after being widowed in her fifties. Leach speaks in detail of her Christian faith and how it defined her life. The rebirths she speaks of relate to multiple reinventions as she traveled through her life insisting on living a life filled with purpose.
The author began traveling at mid-life and became involved with political and human rights organizations. She became what she called a Mission Interpreter, traveling to other lands to record the struggles of those people and bring that information back to other Christians and government officials in the United States to change public opinion and government policies.
Over a period of nearly thirty years Leach traveled to the Marshall Islands, China, Korea, Mexico, and Central America, putting her own life in danger to travel to the areas where human rights were restricted and Christianity outlawed. She stayed in small towns and villages, hiked hills and mountains, slept in a myriad of host homes and sometimes under the stars to get the real story of the experiences of Christians in these areas. Then, she brought her stories and slide shows home to the United States and went on a lecture tour to make known the true plight of Christians in these countries.
Leach had a fondness for inventing words such as itinerating and itineration to describe her travels and for relaying much daily, sometimes hourly, detail. Although the book reads more like a daily journal than an actual memoir, Leach clearly expresses her journey from the traditional role of daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother to new births as itinerant lecturer, newsletter and memoir author, peace and human rights activist and finally to poet. Her story is enlightening and challenging for women of her generation and the generations that come after her.