The heart is too much a mystery for us to approach its healing as a simple matter of finding and fixing the problem. Methods alone cannot meet the deep, aching need of souls that cry not for solutions, but for connection.

'The Beautiful Risk' encourages us to trade cure for care, expertise for partnership, and mastery for love. With perspective-shifting insights and examples, Dr. James Olthuis helps us -- both counselors and those who come for counsel -- to move beyond control and technique and join in a risky but glorious dance of relationship, love, and healing.

James Olthuis gives us a new covenant of care that is long overdue. Whether you are a professional counselor or a seeker of healing, you will find richness in this book that is sure to guide you on your quest for an authentic life.

Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott
authors of 'When Bad Things Happen to Good Marriages'

I have thoroughly appreciated 'The Beautiful Risk'. It is an excellent book for anyone recovering from inner wounds. It explains that healing occurs through loving relationships that involve care, compassion, and connection rather than fixing, cure, and control. This is a risk well worth taking!

Dr. Arlys Norcross McDonald
Clinical Psychologist (specializing in healing from trauma) and author of 'Repressed Memories: Can You Trust Them?'

James H. Olthuis is Professor of Philosophical Theology Emeritus at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. His publications include I Pledge You My Troth (1975) and Keeping the Troth (1986). He is also co-editor of Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition (2005), and editor of Religion With/out Religion (2002), Toward an Ethics of Community (2000), and Knowing Otherwise: Philosophy at the Threshold of Spirituality (1997). Jim is a grandfather who rollerblades to work.