SECRETS FOR A GOOD LIFE

About the Book

The purpose of this book is to give you ideas that can help make your life better. They are thoughts that can bring clarity and even add some fun to life. The secrets are meant to empower you to build a good life, even to find a little more peace and happiness along the way. They can help get you through some of the storms and dark valleys we all experience. Each secret is in a bold print, one-sentence statement that can easily be remembered. To better grasp the secret there is a story or two, brief explanation, and a few questions to get you going. Pick up a secret and use it in whatever way you want. They are tools for your own life, to use the way you think, feel, live and act. Apply these secrets using your own values, morals, faith and relationships. They are not formulas to follow, but tools to help you find and live your own good life. This started out as a humorous book to entertain and enlighten. Perhaps a few secrets might stick a needle in that one could not quite get out, that is might just get through the epidermis of prejudice, absoluteness, or blindness of many kinds of which we all have a little. What happened along the way is that serious secrets showed up, that could not be dressed in humor but seemed important to include. There are different kinds of secrets in this book…and I won’t define secrets any more than stating that a secret is something that provides some insight for the journey of life. Some are so obvious that we wonder how we ever missed them or realize that we have heard them but went right on by and didn’t stop to take them to heart or to mind. Still others are counter-intuitive and so we have to stop and read them again…and perhaps turn our thinking to a new direction. After you read awhile, you will notice some redundancy. Similar secrets are found in different sections.

About the Author

Jack Elliott was born in Detroit, Michigan. At age nine he attended a military boarding school followed by an east coast prep school. Jack was graduated from high school at an American boarding school in India but spent his summers in Mexico with his mother. He met his wife, Ruth, at Hope College, in Holland, Michigan. They have been married for 48 years, have two children and three grandchildren. Jack began his career in the business world in marketing but soon realized he had a higher calling. Jack attended seminary and became a minister, he later received his doctorate degree with the focus on building heterogeneous communities. He served as pastor to a number of churches in New York. Jack served the Greenville Community Church in Scarsdale for 26 years, before he retired and moved to Tucson, Arizona with his wife Ruth. They enjoy gardening, wine, cribbage and great mountain views. Jack has served on various national boards of The Reformed Church in America (the oldest protestant denomination in the country). He is presently the moderator of The Chicago Invitation, a fellowship for reformed renewal and reflection, composed of denominational theologians, pastors, and elders who meet to discuss the implications of present issues on protestant theology. Jack is presently working on his next book: Someone Ought to Tell the Truth!