Ex Libris Fides

Seventy Times Seven

2010-10-28T10:04:00.003-04:00

Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton with Erin Torneo

Wow. We Presbyterians (and other mainline Protestants) talk a lot about forgiveness. In general, I think of myself as a pretty forgiving person. Someone is half an hour late for a meeting with me? No problem, it happens. Someone forgets to meet me when or where they said they would? Hey, I understand. I've done it myself. Someone irritates you because of their inability to say "no" - or their ability to say it too readily? Well, we've all been there at one time or another. If we held a grudge for every glitch in communication or every perceived slight that we ever experienced, we would soon be embittered people with very few friends. Lots of us know someone like that. In an effort to avoid their fate, we step up our own practice of forgiveness right away. Then we come across someone who takes forgiveness to a whole new level.

In the summer of 1984, college student Jennifer Thompson was brutally raped at knife point in her apartment in Burlington, North Carolina. She was shattered by the experience, and really did not receive much help from friends or family in processing what had happened to her. She was full of rage and fear, which is understandable. The Burlington police force wanted to act quickly to put the rapist behind bars, and they believed they had their man. Thompson was sure that she identified the right person, even though the defendant, Ron Cotton, insisted on his innocence. The evidence against him was slim, really, but once the ball was rolling the police and the victim were so sure that they had the right person that they refused to see the other possible suspects or the evidence that pointed away from Cotton. Bottom line: Ron Cotton spent 11 years in prison before DNA evidence finally exonerated him.

It is a tragic story, but its outcome could have been worse. Through the 1970s, rape was a capital crime in the state of North Carolina, so Cotton probably would have been executed if the rape had occurred a decade earlier. Cotton had plenty of time to think during his years in jail, and he used the time to earn his GED. He also sang in the prison gospel choir and began to take his faith more seriously. At the time, he believed he would spend the rest of his life in prison, and he wanted to make that life worthwhile in spite of the terrible situation. When Cotton was released, he set about rebuilding his life. He eventually found work, met a woman, and got married.

Jennifer Thompson was still having trouble moving beyond what had happened. Where she had once been consumed by fear and anger, after Cotton was released she was plagued just as much by remorse and guilt. Finally, in an effort to get some closure to the ghastly event that had defined her life for so long, she asked for a meeting with Ron Cotton to ask his forgiveness. That's when the miracle occurred.

Ron Cotton not only forgave Jennifer Thompson, he wished her well and told her his only desire was that they both have good lives. He explained how he did not really blame her for the mistaken identity, and that they were BOTH victims of the true assailant, a guy named Bobby Poole. Jennifer Thompson writes that "Ron forgave me not because I deserved it, but because I needed it, and that's what grace is all about." Oh yeah.

Improbably, Cotton and Thompson went on to become friends. They found they could talk together about things that others people would not understand. They now appear together at criminal justice conferences and give lectures at law schools. They are both very involved in The Innocence Project, a non-profit group that advocates for other people who are wrongfully incarcerated.

The writing in Picking Cotton is not extraordinary, but the voices of Thompson and Cannino come through with sincerity and earnestness. The story is outstanding enough to make the reader forgive some clunky writing. After all, isn't forgiveness what we are supposed to be about? Hats off to Ron Cotton for showing us the way.

Reverent Reader

Out of the Depths

2010-10-20T14:02:00.008-04:00

Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth
by James M. Tabor

I've never figured out why, but I am inexplicably drawn to books about people with really extreme hobbies or vocations - especially explorer types who push the limits of their physical and mental endurance. Think Into Thin Air by John Krakaeur or Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. When I read a review of Blind Descent in Discover magazine, I knew I had to read it. Tabor's book is about people who explore "supercaves" that stretch for miles underground and often plunge to more than a mile deep. Some of these extreme caves have hundreds of flat face descents that have to be rappelled (and then climbed when the cavers are ready to get out), and many of the rock walls are actually waterfalls. Underground drainage pools called "sumps" block the passageway and have to be scuba dived. The passages are also often blocked by huge clusters of boulders that have fallen. The cavers have to move these, a dangerous process that can take days. Add to this that when cavers reach the bottom of a supercave, the hardest and most dangerous part is still ahead - retracing their steps to get out. Remember that, except for the puny efforts of flashlights and headlamps, this is all done in pitch darkness. And there are all kinds of underground critters flying and slithering and running around. Shudder.

Blind Descent is about the mentality and motivation of supercavers, but also the drive for scientific discovery that drives some of the most determined ones. The cavers have been in competition for years to find the deepest place on earth, and they meticulously survey every new place that they get to. These expeditions are months or years in the planning, and can be derailed by injury, illness, or fatality at any time. The descriptions of getting a severely injured person out of these supercaves are particularly harrowing - not to mention getting a corpse out. I found myself absorbed in the storyline, astonished that people would risk everything (including their own lives) to scratch out a few more feet of depth in some hole in the ground. Bill Stone, probably the foremost supercaver in the United States, sacrificed his marriage and numerous other significant relationships to the lure of the caves. A Russian caver, Peter Klimchouk, who finally established the Russian cave of Krubera as the world's deepest (whew! glad to finally have that cleared up), has had a years long rift with his oldest son over who gets credit for certain cave discoveries in the former Soviet Union.

The reader cannot help but admire the sheer grit of these people, but I felt much the same way I did when I read Krakauer's book on Everest climbers: "Why would someone do that?'' Who would invest millions of dollars and risk their lives on a venture that likely will yield nothing of significance and that may well cost you your life? Cavers write and speak of the breathtaking majesty of massive underground rooms, and the thrill of walking (or swimming or crawling) where no human has been before. Whatever rings your chimes I guess, but I think I'll stay above ground.

Although the book is not written from a spiritual perspective, I kept wondering about the spiritual motivations of the cavers. The words from Psalm 130 "Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord" kept running through my head as I read through this book. I have no desire to get that far down (literally or metaphorically), but I was intrigued by the euphoria that the cavers experience when they make a new discovery or come through a grueling exploration. Is it possible that experiencing such utter vulnerability gives the cavers a more clear sense of the presence of something (SomeOne?) grand and holy in their midst? I have not done extreme caving (and have no plans to), but I can say that some of the most difficult experiences of my life have also been the ones that strengthened my ties to the Holy One. Whether or not the cavers are aware of it or not, maybe that closeness is at least a part of what drives them.

Reverent Reader

Book Blitz

2010-10-05T11:54:00.005-04:00

Ok, here it is. The list and thumbnail review of every other book (besides the ones listed in the previous post) that I have read since mid-June. I've got to find my groove on the regular postings once again, but am doing these annotated lists to get myself current and start again with a clean slate. It was horrible being immobilized for so long with back pain, but I did get an amazing amount of reading done - some of it wonderful, some only so-so. Here goes...

Magic Time - by Doug Marlette. A novel about Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement. Marlette does a good job of weaving real history and people with fictitious characters, making the narrative that much more believable. If you like Civil Rights era stories, you should pick this one up.

36 Arguments for the Existence of God - by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. A satirical novel about academia and the ongoing philosophical and ontological debates about the presence of a Creator/Divine Being. It's a good story, and at times hilarious. However, even as she lampoons the hubris of academia, Goldstein also participates in it (she has a Ph.D in philosophy). There is a "look how smart I am" tone to the writing that eventually grates. But two of her characters (Lucinda Mandelbaum and Jonas Elijah Klapper) encapsulate the insufferable nature of some (not all) academics.

The 19th Wife - by David Ebershoff. A fictional look at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also known as Mormons) and they polygamous lifestyles. Weaves in a juicy murder mystery, but also gives us a lot of history of the FLDS and the twisted, patriarchal theology of polygamy.

Lark and Termite - by Jayne Anne Phillips. This was a re-read for a sermon series, and I loved it even more the second time. Beautiful story about unconditional love, mysticism, and self-sacrifice. A must read.

Every Last One - by Anna Quindlen. Quindlen's novels do not disappoint. Her characters are terribly real. This one deals with a mother and a son groping their way through the days after unspeakable tragedy hits their family. The only disadvantage is that her writing is so smooth and goes past so quickly that I frequently devour her books in a day or so and then cannot remember them very well afterwards. But still very much worth reading.

Songs Without Words - by Ann Packer. A novel about long-term friendship, and how two women handle it when the bonds of their friendship are tested and challenged. How do we cope when life circumstances stretch our patience with the people who are most important to us? Packer shows us a realistic scenario that depicts a rent in a relationship and its fragile, tentative repair.

Hunger and Happiness - by L. Shannon Jung. I actually have a review of this coming out in the Presbyterian journal Interpretation. A thoughtful meditation on how millions of people in the world are starving while the rest of us live in excess. Jung writes convincingly about how the spiritual health and happiness of all of us is inextricably tied to that of our neighbors, and how helping those in need also feeds our souls. Definitely worth reading.

Homer and Langley - by E.L. Doctorow. A moving novel about two brothers who actually did exist in the early to mid-20th century. They were smart men who lived together in a large house in Manhattan, but over time they became isolated hoarders. Raises questions about what constitutes a "good" life, how we care for one another, and when our neighbor's "business" should become our own.

True Compass - by Edward M. Kennedy. Like them or not, the Kennedys are fascinating people. This is Ted Kennedy's memoir, and it is interesting to read his personal reflections on some of the major historical events of the last 60 years, including the assassinations of two of his brothers (JFK and RFK). Even acknowledging that Kennedy no doubt put his own spin on things and of course believed that his views were the correct ones, I was touched by his admissions of his own responsibility for the failure of his first marriage, his being haunted by the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, his candid discussion of his own faith, and his humble acknowledgment of his own ongoing need for redemption and grace. Shows a depth to the man that went far beyond his partying playboy image.

Oh the Glory of It All - by Sean Wilsey. If you had a weird childhood, read this. You will realize that you are not the only one. Wilsey's memoir is funny at times, but also sad. His two incredibly self-centered parents pretty much let him raise himself. The results could have been disastrous, but incredibly Wilsey is a together guy who is now a sensitive, responsible parent.

Prayers for Sale - by Sandra Dallas. A sweet story about the power of a mentoring relationship between an older and younger woman who both have suffered the loss of a child. Full of colorful characters (the quilting group reminded me of the lively cast of How to Make and American Quilt) and poignant moments. Melancholy in places but ultimately hopeful and life-affirming.

Madness Under the Royal Palms - by Lawrence Leamer. Leamer is probably most known for his biographical work on the Kennedy family. This is a non-fiction book about society and snobbery in Palm Beach, Florida. Honestly, those people need to get a life. If Leamer's portrayal is accurate, those are some of the most vapid, self-absorbed, clueless persons on the planet. Completely morally and spiritually bankrupt. Interesting read about boring people.

The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine: by Rudolph Chelmenski. The chronicle of the rise and fall of French chef Bernard Loiseau. Largely self-taught, he became an accomplished enough cook for his out of the way restaurant to earn the coveted Michelin "three stars" designation. However, the pressure of maintaining that status, and the rumor that he might lose it, became too much for him to endure. Loiseau committed suicide in 2006. Thought-provoking look at our need for recognition and adulation that went to tragic extremes in this one man. Also contains lots of fascinating history of French cuisine and its major innovators.

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates: by Wes Moore. Compelling read (non-fiction) about two kids with the same name, close in age, who grew up in the troubled neighborhoods of West Baltimore. One became a Rhodes scholar. The other is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole for murder. Reinforces the need for stable support in young kids' lives, and the power of community to pull someone away from the brink. One sentence stuck with me especially. Moore writes: "The tragic truth is that my story could have been his. The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine." The story inspires the reader to pay attention and to let our young people know we care about them.

The Women - by T.C. Boyle. If you enjoyed Nancy Horan's Loving Frank, you will also like this. It is a biographical novel about the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the series of women with whom he had relationships in his adult life. It covers some of the same ground that Horan's novel did - Wright's long-term affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney and the burning of his mansion Taliesin by a disgruntled employee - but also his subsequent relationships after Cheney.

Unsqueezed: Springing Free from Skinny Jeans, Nose Jobs, High Heels, and Stilettos - by Margot Starbuck. A hilariously true book by a fellow Presbyterian clergywoman about how we as women get too caught up in our culture's idea of beauty. Starbuck challenges us to spend the time and money that we normally spend obsessing about our looks and redirect those resources to living in closer relationship with each other and especially people in need.

The Vagrants - by Yiyun Li. A haunting novel about Communist China in the immediate aftermath of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution. Li has captured the suspicion and fear that people under a totalitarian government must constantly live with, as well as the small acts of kindness and grace that people extend to one another in spite of those fears.

America America - by Ethan Canin. A novel about the political climate of 1972, with a fictional presidential candidate thrown in with all the real ones. Narrated by a young boy who finds himself swept into the maelstrom of a political campaign before he understands the flawed nature of leaders and the contrasts that lie within the human heart. Canin writes some sentences that are hauntingly beautiful and heartbreakingly true, but somehow the pacing of this story dragged for me. It's an interesting story that should be more gripping than it is. I enjoyed it but was also ready for it to end.

Well, this post and the previous one sum up about three months of reading for me. I hope each of you find something in here that interests you. Send me any recommendations that you have!

Reverent Reader

I Really Mean It This Time (I Think)

2010-09-21T15:15:00.001-04:00

Hi there, reading world. Nice to see you again. This has been the longest, most difficult summer of my life, as I have struggled to recover from three herniated discs in my lower back. It has been a roller coaster - I would have a couple of better days and would believe things had turned around, then would crash again, with pain worse than ever. It was truly awful. Now, however, I have had two whole good weeks (after finding a pain specialist who helped me a lot), and am cautiously optimistic that life is returning to normal (whatever normal is).

Three good things about this wretched time: 1) finding out yet again what a truly special guy I married 10 years ago. Ed has been a trooper through this whole stop and start journey. 2) I have lost a pretty serious amount of weight (amazing what chronic pain does for the appetite - "Do I really want to move off this couch and go get that snack? Um, no." Finally, 3) I got a lot of reading done. I'm so far behind on blogging that there is no way I can do separate posts on all the books I have read in the last three months - I would never catch up. So, am going to do a few posts with just micro-reviews of my most recent books. In a week or so, I should be able to get back to doing a full post two to three times a week.

I've missed you guys! Here are the first few books of the "Summer 2010 Back Pain Reading List":

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: Was curious about the whole Stieg Larsson thing. Compelling reading - boy there are some morally bankrupt people out there. Gave me food for thought on topics like isolation, loneliness, and corruption. I plan to read the other two Larsson novels at some point.

The Path to Power - by Robert Caro. This is the first of Caro's Lyndon Johnson trilogy. Excellent bio of Johnson, but also meticulous history of the Texas hill country, Democratic politics in Texas, and some of Johnsons' formative relationships.

Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh - excellent comparison of the personas of Guatama Buddha and Jesus Christ, and exposition of how their teachings continue to live and influence our world today. The writing is kind of all over the map without a whole lot of organization or structure, but I don't think our Buddhist friends are all that big on structure.

Purple Hibiscus - by Chimimanda Ngozi Adiche. Heartbreaking novel by the Nigerian writer who brought us Half of a Yellow Sun and That Thing Around Your Neck. Shows us a fanatical Christian who follows the letter of the law but completely misses the boat in terms of the spirit of the law. If you have enjoyed Adiche's other works, you will like this one as well.

Little Bee - by Chris Cleave. YOU MUST READ THIS. The story of a refugee girl from Nigeria who tries to make her way in England. I don't want to spoil it by saying anything more, but it is a must read novel if you like contemporary fiction that addresses the social issues of our time.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - by Mark Twain. Somehow I had managed to live 43+ years without reading this classic. In spite of the use of the "N" word throughout the story (we have to consider the time and context), I loved the book. Huck copes with a moral dilemma that many who are more "educated" than he would not even recognize as a dilemma. Plus there are places where the story is just laugh out loud funny (always a bonus).

Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian - by Paul Knitter. Read as part of preparation for a sermon I was writing comparing and contrasting Buddhism with Christianity. Very theologically broadening - an exciting read.

My Antonia - by Willa Cather. Showcases Cather's beautifully descriptive writing and traces a friendship between a young man and young woman on the Nebraska plain through late childhood and adulthood. Shows us how relationships and respect can be preserved through all the changes that life brings.

Your Inner Fish: a Journey through the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body - by Neil Shubin. Science writing at its best - a delightful romp through the origins of life to the human species as we know it now. If Shubin is to be believed (and his case is strong) we came not from monkeys (at least not at first) but from the single-celled creatures and the most primitive fish that first came to be called life. Fun reading, and we learn something in the process.

The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine - by Benjamin Wallace. Traces the history of a bottle of wine that Christie's auction house sold for over $150,000 in the 1980s. The bottle was reputed to have belonged to Thomas Jefferson, but that could never be proven. Also gives a lot of insight into the wine culture and history of the industry.

Zeitoun - by Dave Eggers. In this country? Really? Discrimination against Muslims sinks to an unbelievable (yet sadly true) during the chaos of Hurricane Katrina (non-fiction).

Orange is the New Black:My Year in a Women's Prison - by Piper Kerman. Memoir of a year
spent incarcerated. Kerman had a brief stint in the fringes of the international drug trade that came back to haunt her a decade later, after she had long left that life behind. Lots of colorful characters and touching stories about how incarcerated women create community and find ways to grow and change even within a system that does everything it can to stamp out their sense of self worth.

Ender's Game - by Orson Scott Card. I'm not normally into science fiction, but this is REALLY good. It raises questions about war and peace and what we expect from our kids. Sometimes our kids understand our common status as creatures much better than adults do. Too bad we squelch that.

That's all for now, more in the next day or so. Happy Reading!

Reverent Reader

Finally Back...

2010-08-10T16:45:00.006-04:00

Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers
by Thich Nhat Hanh

What a long, strange trip it's been. Six weeks ago tomorrow I injured my back, and that was followed by the worst pain of my life - no exaggeration, much worse than childbirth. Plus it did not end with an adorable baby to take home. In fact it has not really ended yet. The theme of pain has really taken over this summer, and I am working terribly hard at physical therapy to get strong again and not have my back dominate my every thought and motion. Since I have been immobile for the greater part of this summer, I have read A LOT. Given that I would never catch up otherwise, I have decided to do a number of "micro-reviews" of this summer's reading list so that I can begin to get current. Plus, I still cannot sit at the computer long enough to type a multi-paragraph review. So, short and sweet for the next couple of weeks, then hopefully I will be able to be back in full force.

It is interesting (to me anyway) that this summer, while I was fulfilling a promise to a friend to do some reading on Buddhism and preach a " compare and contrast" sermon on Buddhism and Christianity, that a Buddhist monk became an agent of my healing. I was busting my ample you-know-what at physical therapy, and still crazed by pain between appointments and between times when I could stretch at home. A friend recommended that I try acupuncture from a Buddhist monk that she goes to, as a way to offer some relief from the pain while I am in the process of getting stronger. I do not fully understand Eastern medicine, but I think there is something to it. After one week (which included two acupuncture appointments and the beginning of a dose of herbal medicine) I am not 100% pain free, but am certainly better. Moreover, I have not taken any conventional pain medicine for a week (translate: no pills). YAY!

So anyway, this is not the first rambling on Buddhism that you will hear related to the summer of 2010, but I did think it was interesting how the reality of Buddhist practice pervaded my world in conjunction with my reading about some of their beliefs and practices. Going Home is a good place to start if you are curious about the Buddhist faith and how their meditative practices can enrich the lives of non-Buddhists.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes with gentleness and humor about the principles that guided both Jesus and Buddha, and the ways both men lived out those principles. He repeatedly expresses a deep appreciation for the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and introduces us to the Buddhist refuges of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Nhat Hanh suggests that some of our differences are more in the ways we express ourselves linguistically and in our practices, than in principle.

Having said that, there are important differences between the two faiths as well. To begin to explore those, I suggest you read the book, as well as a couple of others that I will post about later.

Hope you have had a good summer! It's good to be back!

Reverent Reader

Not My Family

2010-07-15T10:51:00.006-04:00

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
by Jeff Sharlet

Dang, I just do not have the energy for conspiracies - especially ones that drag on for decades and decades. Sharlet's book goes back over a century, outlining in meticulous detail the plans of fundamentalist Christians to infiltrate the highest levels of government. "The Family" is a shadow organization that forms individual relationships between its members and people in power (some Democrats, but mostly Republicans) here in the United States and in other nations throughout the world. Some of the history of the movement gets a little tedious, but the research is thorough and Sharlet is able to show a deliberate pattern of fundamentalists building their own power by cozying up to the the people who have official, publicly granted power. These were the people who behind the scenes started and continue to orchestrate the National Prayer Breakfast, an event that most pols attend and pay homage to Doug Coe, the group's current leader.

However, these people are not like the biblical literalists, homophobic, politically conservative fundamentalists I have met over and over throughout my life. The Family's unofficial motto is "Jesus plus Nothing," and they avoid taking stances on controversial social issues. That makes it unclear exactly what their agenda is, beyond what they see as saving souls. As far as relationships with foreign countries, they would buddy up to the worst human rights violator in the world if he claimed to have Jesus in his heart. Especially during the Cold War years, "Jesus + Nothing" seemed to really mean "Jesus plus unfettered capitalism. Once again it all comes down to the dollar and pursuing our own economic superiority over the common good. It's just all the more sickening when it is done with such hypocrisy.

I have no doubt that some people in the Family are sincere and believe they are advancing Christ's gospel through their shadowy manipulations. I just happen to think that their tactics leave no room for other Christian perspectives (and that that is their aim), and they certainly do not leave open the possibility that any other faith tradition could possess a kernel or two of truth.

It sounds trite, but I just wish people could learn to trust and love each other. But then you have people out there like these jokers who don't care a thing about love and trust - it's all about their viewpoint winning and subjugating all others. The comforting thing, though, is that they have been at this for a long time. When I get spooked by the attempts of the Religious Right to run the show today, I realize that this is nothing new, and there is a Power greater than they will ever be who will see that love and truth ultimately carry the day. The fundies have no doubt influenced a major number of policies and national stances. But we are still a democracy, not a theocracy, and the voices for justice and truth are not going to shut up.

Reverent Reader

Baby's Got BACK

2010-07-08T11:42:00.004-04:00

Hi reading friends,

Just dropping in to say I have not totally abandoned this blog. I had gone on a family trip to Oklahoma in late June, and did not have consistent computer access in our hotel. Plus, I was solo parenting so the idea of having time to blog was laughable.

Then, two days after we returned from the trip, I had sudden onset back pain which has really knocked me over. Long story, but it looks like a disc problem. An MRI in a couple of days should provide some answers and hopefully an action plan.

Until then, painkillers and muscle relaxants are my friends, and I can only write in short little bursts. I've gotten quite a bit of reading done while flat on my back, though. So once I can write again, I'll have fodder for lots of posts.

Send me any good summer reading recommendations that you have!

Reverent Reader

Lost Childhoods

2010-06-17T10:00:00.007-04:00

Say You're One of Them
by Uwem Akpan

It is so easy to divorce ourselves from the misery on the other side of the world. We go about our busy lives, we raise our kids, we run our households, we go to work every day, and sometimes days go by between the times when we think of the people who do not have households to maintain or jobs to go to or children to feed (because the ones they had have all died in tribal warfare or from malaria or AIDS or starvation). Our blindness is not intentional, but cultural. Occasionally we catch a story on CNN or NPR about ethnic clashes in an African country or a famine or an earthquake or some other type of natural disaster that leaves lives shattered. We feel genuine compassion for our neighbors, but not a personal connection to their sorrow.

Uwem Akpan's collection of stories Say You're One of Them makes it hard for us to keep that level of detachment. Akpan is a Jesuit priest who also is a gifted writer - his writing is really an extension of his ministry. I hope that is true for all of us who both minister and write (often the two are intertwined), but Akpan's book is a deliberate attempt to fill a void that desperately needs filling - the voices of children who are caught in the horrors of African religious and ethnic conflicts He decided to write stories from the perspective of children about atrocities in several African countries - including Niger, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Kenya.

I don't know that I could choose a "favorite" from these five stories - three of which would probably be called short stories and two are probably long enough to be called novellas. Each is well written, but extraordinarily painful to read. Fattening for Gabon, about two children sold into slavery by their uncle, is haunting. My Parents' Bedroom, told from the point of view of the child of a Hutu father and Tutsi mother during the Rwandan wars of the 1990s, illustrates the complexities of ethnic hatred alongside mixed marriages and mixed blood children. Each story takes us inside one of Africa's bleakest conflicts, showing us how the ones who pay the highest price for the violence are usually the ones who had nothing to do with starting it in the first place. The stories are fiction, but drawn from the experiences of children he has met and talked with.

Akpan's stories make it impossible for us to insulate ourselves from what happens in Africa, Afghanistan, Mississippi, or anywhere else. It's not fun reading, but they are stories we need to hear. Akpan reminds us that we are all connected - we may not know each other personally, but there are ways that we can relate to one another. As a parent, I could identify with the anguish of the parents who see their kids' lives being wrecked - even when, as in An Ex-Mas Feast, a young girl turns to prostitution to help feed her family. Her parents behave in inexcusable ways, but their pain is also palpable. Most of us love our children and want a beautiful life for them - we are blessed enough to live in a place where we seldom have to make the agonizing choices that these parents do. For these children to have to make adult decisions and live adult lives at their tender ages is one of the great human tragedies.

Read this, but brace yourself first. It's rough.

Reverent Reader

The Unlikely Emergence of Faith

2010-06-16T11:05:00.005-04:00

Lit
by Mary Karr

Mary Karr is just hilarious. I remember reading her memoir The Liar's Club several years ago and laughing out loud in a number of places. It is about her childhood, growing up in a nutty family in hardscrabble Texas. Her second memoir, Cherry, is about her young adult years and her participation in the drug scene of the 1970s. This latest one takes us through the painful days of her marriage, her battle with alcoholism, and her coming to faith in Christ in spite of herself.

Karr (who is also a poet - she might even call herself primarily a poet) has a remarkable way with words. He writing does not plod in the least, it just zips right along. However, you do not want to go too fast because you might miss some of the stunning images or insightful turns of phrase that pop up all over the book. In describing her withdrawal from alcohol, at one point she says that her skin felt like "sausage casing, with the flesh straining to pop out." Ouch. Karr is not afraid to laugh at herself, and she takes total responsibility for the mistakes that she made and the people whom she hurt when she was under the power of booze. Even when she acts like a brat, the reader wants better things for her. Her need for attention and reassurance is understandable, given the inconsistent way she was parented. Her dependence on alcohol likely had a genetic factor (both of her parents had substance abuse problems), but may also have been related to her feeling like a poser in the intellectual, literary world.

In any case, she was headed for a complete physical and mental meltdown (her marriage was already damaged beyond repair) when she finally began going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. She had always thought that faith in some kind of Supreme Being (or "Higher Power" in AA parlance) was just a bunch of nonsense, and for a long time she was hung up on that acknowledgement of a Higher Power as part of her recovery. Over time, she developed relationships with other people in recovery and found people with whom she could talk frankly about her struggles with the whole concept of belief. She gradually moved from utter disbelief to wanting to believe to finally, deep within the recesses of her heart and spirit, surrendering to the truth that there is Someone who loves and cares for her and wants her to experience life in all its fullness. There is something really powerful about someone embracing faith and making the conscious decision to go through baptism as an adult.

Karr's writing is honest, funny, and moving all at the same time. She still wrestles with some of the doctrinal issues of Roman Catholicism - who among us does not struggle with the abstractness of doctrine at times? But she has grasped the concepts of living relationally with God and with family and friends. She has come to understand that dependence on God and dependence on each other are all part of the same package. She has received and unwrapped that package, and her life is better for it.

Thanks for sharing, Mary Karr. Blessings on your continued journey of faith.

Reverent Reader

Who Is My Neighbor?

2010-06-15T12:01:00.006-04:00

The Tortilla Curtain
by T.C. Boyle

Wow. This book blew me away. I read it several weeks ago (that's how behind I am on my blogging), but I still find myself thinking about the story a lot. Don't know how I missed in in 1996 when it was published, but I guess I was not paying enough attention. No matter - it is at least as timely now as it was then, what with all the public debate on border control and illegal immigration. If you have not read this and are at all interested in those issues, you really should check this out. Boyle has captured the plight of the poverty stricken immigrant, as well as the fear, interior conflict, and hypocrisy of the prosperous native born Anglo.

Set in the Los Angeles area, The Tortilla Curtain shares us two parallel stories of people who live near each other and find their lives intersecting in surprising and uncomfortable ways. Delaney and Kyra are white liberals who live in a gated community and initially have a reasonably compassionate attitude toward the Mexican immigrants who are becoming ever more visible. Candido and America (oh, the irony of that name) are illegals hiding in the nearby canyon, picking up work where they can find it, and trying desperately to make a fresh start. Several unfortunate incidents conspire to push Candido and America back into the pit of despair every time they think they are about to get just the tiniest bit ahead. Their frustration and pain is heart wrenching. America is pregnant, and as the birth of their child draws nearer, she becomes more desperate and lonely. The forced isolation of these two people seems so unnecessarily cruel. Yes, they do break a few laws - stealing occasionally to get food being the main one. How many of us would not be driven to do the same if we were starving?

Delaney and Kyra are also pitiful characters in their own way. Due to the power of neighborhood group think, they morph from reasonably good hearted people (although privileged, self-centered, and clueless in a lot of ways) to maniacal, fearful NIMBYs. Delaney's transformation is especially sad, as he begins the story a reasonable person with a compassionate outlook. Like so many of us, as the immigrants encroach on his personal convenience (often through no fault of their own) he takes an ever dimmer view of them. It is fine for them to be hired to build a fence in his backyard, but their visible presence on street corners and in parking lots looking for work he comes to find unacceptable. The hate that infiltrates Delaney's mind as he starts to blame everything that goes wrong in his life on "the Mexicans" is frightening. We think we would never behave that way, but his thought processes and resulting actions are scarily possible. Most of us probably act in these ways every day without even realizing it.

Boyle has included some interesting parallel concerns for Delaney and Kyra that make their dear and hatred of the immigrants even more mysterious and sad. Delaney is an environment/nature writer with a deep reverence for creation (although neither he or Kyra seem particularly spiritual). At one point, Kyra gets into a heated confrontation with a stranger who leaves his dog locked in a car on a hot day. They both totally miss the disconnect between their concern for animals and nature and a lack of concern for fellow human beings living in squalor just a mile or two from their California mansion.

I will read this again, probably several times. It is one of the best narratives of a compelling social dilemma I have ever read. I am planning to preach about it later this summer, so may even post about it again relatively soon. One of the things that moved me the most was the grain of hope found in the final sentence.

Reverent Reader

Painful Growth

2010-06-10T09:58:00.003-04:00

My Losing Season
by Pat Conroy

Conroy is undoubtedly among the best writers of our time (IMHO). I have long been enamored of his novels - ever since I read The Prince of Tides in 1990. This memoir of his senior year at The Citadel, playing point guard for their basketball team, is every bit as insightful and moving as his fiction. It is well known that Conroy's novels are autobiographical - The Great Santini is based on his own father, Don Conroy. The Lords of Discipline is based on his own plebe year at The Citadel. My Losing Season is brutally honest, detailing Conroy's own battles with depression and other demons. In typical Conroy fashion, though, it is also peppered with humor and wit. Conroy is also able to articulate the dark side of any experience while at the same time pointing out the light that pierces through even the worst of circumstances.

My Losing Season frankly discusses the intra-team rivalries of the Citadel's players, as well as the psychological and emotional manipulation that their coach, Mel Thompson, used to keep his players obedient to him. His tactics were successful in that his players were all utterly submissive to his will, but the same tactics kept the players from trusting each other. They did not really develop friendships until long after their playing days were over, and failed to jell as a team as a result. Conroy readily admits that his own basketball skills were limited, but he loved the game and wanted nothing more than to play it. It was basketball that gave him some incentive to survive his own father's brutality, and the sport provided a ticket to higher education for him.

My only complaint about My Losing Season is that the detailed play-by-plays of so many games get old (and I like basketball). The story comes much more to life when Conroy lets us into his own emotional wrestling and eventual growth that came out of that ill fated 8-17 season. Conroy was not the best point guard at The Citadel (by his own assessment), but he played a lot that season and served as co-captain of the team, largely because of some grudge the coach was holding against a more talented player. There were moments of pure magic when Conroy made exactly the right play at the right moment, or when he sunk a beautiful basket at just the right time. Even though the team was not doing well as a whole, Conroy writes that he had "never before felt so alive and so necessary." Who does not need to feel alive and necessary? What makes you feel that way?

Conroy has long had a love/hate relationship with The Citadel. After he wrote The Lords of Discipline, he could not go on the campus for more than 20 years because of death threats. However, My Losing Season brought much needed reconciliation with his basketball teammates and even led to some uneasy truce with the school itself. He hates the degradations and humiliations of the plebe system and refused to participate in it as an upperclassman. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that the school helped him find his way as a writer and as a human being. His statement that we learn more from the losses in life than we do the wins is powerfully wise, and a welcome antidote to the "win at all costs" ethos that surrounds us in our culture.

Reverent Reader

Hidden Person

2010-06-08T11:41:00.004-04:00

Annie's Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret
by Steve Luxenberg

Imagine finding out as an adult that you had an aunt whom you never knew about - or any hidden family member. Wouldn't that blow your mind? About a year ago, I heard an NPR interview with Steve Luxenberg in which he described such an experience, and his quest to find out about this mysterious woman - his mother's sister, long deceased, who had been kept hidden from him and his siblings.

A few years before his mother's death, one of Luxenberg's sisters overheard her mother (named Beth Cohen Luxenberg) say that she had had a handicapped sister who died as a child. The siblings were all incredulous about this, as being an "only child" had always been a major part of their mom's identity. However, due to their mother's failing health and some fear about rocking the boat, they all chose not to ask her about this vanished sister. It was after his mother's death that Luxenberg began pursuing the truth about what had happened to his aunt. What he discovered was stranger than he had ever imagined.

Beth Cohen and her parents had colluded in keeping not a child, but a grown woman, hidden - for over 30 years. With the detailed, meticulous technique of a journalist (which he is) Luxenberg gradually put together the pieces of the puzzle. Beth's sister Annie had been born in 1919, with a deformed leg and some intellectual impairment (the reports over the years varied, giving Annie's intellectual age as anywhere from 5 years to 12 years). As a young adult, she apparently developed some sort of mental illness. Her leg had to be amputated when she was 17 years old. Some understanding that she was not "normal" and could not look forward to living independently and raising a family of her own caused Annie much depression and grief, which probably contributed to the erratic behavior that led to her institutionalization.

Annie became a patient at Eloise Hospital in Detroit, Michigan at the age of 22. Except for a brief stay in a nursing home at the end of her life, she never lived outside the hospital from that time on. Her mother visited her for the first few years that she was there, but after her mother's death, there was really no one to even acknowledge this person's existence, except for the hospital staff. When Annie died, her chart showed that she had not had a visitor in at least a decade.

In addition to finding information about Annie, Luxenberg also probed the question of WHY? Why would Annie's parents and sister keep her existence a secret, and how did they do it for so long without suffering some kind of mental collapse? Luxenberg investigated the immigrant past of both his maternal grandparents, his mother's social and academic history, and the cultural attitudes towards the mentally and physically disabled at that time, trying to understand what prompted them to take such a drastic step. The family lived in the Detroit area both before and after Annie went to Eloise. In an effort to preserve their secret, they moved to a whole new neighborhood and made a different set of friends, severing ties with people who had known Annie.

Luxenberg's book is interesting - the detective work reminded me of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, about a journalist's hunt for members of his family who perished in the Holocaust. The analysis and intellectual chances that he takes are an interesting story in themselves. However, even though Luxenberg was able to find out enough about Annie to give us some idea of who she was and what her life was like, the person who remains hidden is his mother, Beth. Since he did not talk with her about this deep secret while she was alive, he inevitably winds up relying on conjecture to try to figure out what she could have been thinking. I never felt like he came to any firm conclusions about what his mother hoped to gain by hiding her sister, or how she suppressed that information for close to 70 years. All of his digressions about immigrants having to be in good health or risk being turned away at Ellis Island, social perceptions of the mentally challenged, cultural stereotypes about mental illness, and many other avenues that he explored still ultimately leave us with a sense of emptiness.

It is difficult to comprehend shoving a person into a warehouse for unwanted humans and forgetting about them. One astounding thing that Luxenberg discovered on his sad quest is that this happened to a lot of people. "Defective" persons were sometimes seen as the result of parental sin or bad genes - some thought it was best to just erase such individuals from their family history. People like Annie paid the price for that kind of thinking, and I believe that as a society we were diminished for treating our most vulnerable people in such a way.

Reverent Reader

Bleak

2010-06-03T11:55:00.006-04:00

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun
by Peter Godwin

Apparently, in some parts of Africa (including Zimbabwe), when a solar eclipse occurs, folklore says that a crocodile has eaten the sun. Such an eclipse is believed to be a terrible omen. I do not share that belief, but reading Godwin's work has helped me understand how the Zimbabwean people need something to blame for the misery that has befallen them. Eclipses are a natural occurrence, but there is enough tragedy in this one small country to make one believe in supernatural instances of evil.

I wrote a post about Godwin's first book, Mukiwa, at the end of December 2008. It is a memoir of growing up as a white Zimbabwean, trying to straddle the gap between his European ethnic and colonial heritage and the only home he had ever known. Godwin's parents were the rare Anglo expatriates to Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) who supported the end of British rule and the turning over of the country to the native Zimbabweans to run for themselves. When that finally happened (early 1980s), there was widespread optimism, and the new president, Robert Mugabe, managed to raise the standard of living for the native people.

The sad thing, though, is that Mugabe has become one of the most vile dictators in Africa's history. Well into his 80s, he is still in power through the use of torture, intimidation, and countless cold-blooded murders. The man has a record of human rights abuses much longer than a crocodile's tail. Periodically, when the people of Zimbabwe rise up and demand democratic elections, Mugabe loses. The election results have no effect, though, because Mugabe just sends his thugs on a killing spree and no one else ever assumes power. As Mugabe has grown more paranoid and senile, he has thrown the country into an economic tailspin that has made their currency almost worthless. It is a terrible situation with no end in sight.

Godwin's book lets us into his own love/hate relationship with Zimbabwe. As a journalist, he has written material that is critical of Mugabe, and has been banned from the country at times. He lives now in New York City, although he discreetly visits Zimbabwe as often as he can. In Crocodile he tells the recent history of his homeland alongside his changing relationship with his parents, George and Helen Godwin. The elder Godwins elected to stay in Zimbabwe as the nation descended into chaos. Helen Godwin was still a practicing physician until a few years ago, and she did not want to leave her patients. George Godwin had adopted Zimbabwe as his home after he fled Poland during World War II (a secret that only came out in Peter Godwin's adult life), and he had no intention of leaving. Peter Godwin's anxiety and sadness about his parents' health and safety is palpable throughout the book.

Zimbabwe's story is a sad one, but Godwin also does an excellent job describing the beauty of the land, the warmth of many of its people, and the hope that many of them still have for a better life against all odds. He is an excellent writer with an important story to tell.

Reverent Reader

A Really Productive Flake

2010-06-02T11:05:00.004-04:00

Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan
by Greg Mortenson

Perhaps you have read Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson's previous bestseller about his efforts to bring education to some of the most remote areas of Pakistan. I liked that book, but I think Stones into Schools, which chronicles the expansion of his efforts into Afghanistan, is even better. One thought that kept coming to me in Three Cups of Tea, was "This guy is a flake." I don't mean that in a pejorative way, really - just that he was not someone who had a lot of resources at his disposal to begin with. He lived out of his car for a time while he was raising the money to build his first school. He was quite naive about the logistical difficulties of getting supplies to some of these outposts. Everything took a frustratingly long time to get accomplished. His preoccupation with the work "over there" took some toll on his having things all together here.

I think we need more flakes. He may be a bit of a doofus, but his heart is in the right place and he has gotten some amazing stuff done. One aspect of flakehood is to be able to step forward in faith, believing that you can make something happen before all the details are figured out. Mortenson has been able to penetrate some of the most reserved and conservative enclaves of the Muslim world and form relationships with some of their most seemingly inflexible leaders. By working within these relationships, he is providing education and opportunity to hundreds of kids, the majority of them girls. I absolutely believe that education and jobs are the way to address the hopelessness and despair that lead to Islamic extremism. Mortenson is banking on that, and I think we will see positive results from his work sooner rather than later.

Mortenson has gotten more savvy as he has learned "how things work" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has learned to work around some of the most egregious roadblocks, and he is extraordinarily patient and persistent. He does sometimes give in to a corrupt system, and seems to have no qualms about bribing people do what he wants/needs them to do. That part bothers me, but I suppose he has decided that the ends justify the means, and he will do whatever it takes (within reason) to get schools built. The corruption is troubling to me, but I am not sure that in his shoes I would not find myself compromising some of my standards if is meant providing another village with a teacher and a schoolhouse. He is living with and working out some of the ethical dilemmas that for so many of us never get beyond the hypothetical stage.

Stone into Schools is a great read - hopeful and inspiring. It also causes me to prayerfully consider what I can do with my one puny and flaky life for the good of people in need.

Reverent Reader

Art Reflecting Life?

2010-06-01T11:58:00.007-04:00

Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh

I had never read this, and frankly did not know much about Waugh's work, but came across an article in Vanity Fair a couple of months ago about this novel that intrigued me, so I decided to read the book. The novel is about an upper class British family in the years leading up to World War II (with flash forwards to the war itself), and the friendship that a less blue-blooded young man (although certainly not a pauper, kind of a middle class guy) forms with them. Apparently, Waugh really did have a long relationship with a similar family as a young man, and the novel is at least partially based on that experience. Ever since the book was published, Brits have been trying to figure out which pieces of the story really happened and which ones Waugh made up.

Charles Ryder, the narrator of Brideshead Revisited, starts out being friends with the young scion of the family when they are at Oxford together. Charles does not have much family of his own, and Sebastian's family kind of adopts him. Charles and Sebastian both like to party, but it quickly becomes clear that Sebastian's drinking is more than just youthful antics. Charles gets caught in the middle of Sebastian's unacknowledged war with his family. The family is concerned about his alcoholism, but rarely discuss it for fear of being "unseemly." Charles does not want to make it easier for Sebastian to get access to alcohol, but he also does not want to lose his friendship, so he finds himself in an awkward place on several occasions.

Two aspects of the story especially intrigued me. One, when Sebastian does experience a recovery of sorts, he returns to the Catholic church after years of disdaining her practices and doctrines. In fact, he becomes a religious ascetic, although one who still occasionally falls off the wagon. It was at this point in the story that Sebastian became transformed (in my mind at least) from a spoiled playboy into someone with no sense of entitlement who recognized his utter dependence on God. Sadly, he apparently felt he had no other option than to turn his back on his family - it was as if he could not take even tentative steps into a new way of being as long as he was under their eyes.

The other piece that was sad but oddly redemptive to me was Charles's love for Sebastian's sister Julia. Julia is married to someone else, but she and Charles fall in love. They both make plans to divorce their respective spouses and marry each other. Julia is Catholic but has been in a long state of rebellion and estrangement from the church. Charles thinks that all faith and doctrine is utter nonsense. Nevertheless, as Julia's father is dying, she comes to the realization that she cannot separate from her faith, even when there are things about the church that seem absurd to her. "I am not sure what I believe, but I cannot purposely cut myself off from the possibility of God's grace," she says to Charles. The reader aches for them, for their love is clearly real. The book ends with the possibility of Charles coming to faith as well. When he understands how important it is to Julia, he begins to open himself to the possibility that there is something to it after all.

I had some discomfort with the story - being a Protestant, the idea of excommunication is anathema to me, and it was off-putting to me how that threat cost Julia the possibility of happiness. While I do not condone the sin of adultery, I kept searching for some way that Julia and Charles could still be together and be within the circle of the church as well. It bothered me that there was not any room for that possibility. But, I also was touched by the ties that Julia had to her faith that she could not, in the end, relinquish. Because we know we can be welcomed back at any time, I think we Protestants are too quick to walk away. There is a sadness that Julia and Charles cannot be together, but a glimpse of hope that their decision to part might open the way for each of them to find a sustaining (and even fulfilling) relationship with God.

Reverent Reader

A Whole World Out There

2010-05-28T11:05:00.004-04:00

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009
edited by Elizabeth Kolbert

This is the second year in a row I have read the science volume of the "Best of..." series, and I love it. As a kid I loved biology and other life sciences, but shied away from science courses as I got older because I was intimidated by the math tied in with chemistry and physics. It is fun now to read about science just for the fun and learning of it. I'm already looking forward to the 2010 volume, and these compilations have prompted me to subscribe to Discover magazine.

One minor complaint that I had about the 2009 volume is that there was an overabundance of articles about climate change. Of course I am concerned about global warming, and we need to know the latest developments in combating it. However, some of the articles seemed repetitive to me, even though they were all interesting and well written. The gripping thing about the 2008 volume was the depth of topics addressed, and 2009 seemed narrower to me.

Nevertheless, there were some non-climate articles that were good. Atul Gawande's The Itch, is absolutely haunting. Imagine scratching yourself so hard you scratch through your skull and drill into your brain. It is rare, but it has happened. Shudder. Wasteland, which takes the reader through the process of human waste disposal, is gross but oddly fascinating. Walter Isaacson's essay on Einstein's often misinterpreted role in the development of the atomic bomb is informative and heartening. Is Google Making Us Stupid? is an article that raises questions about the possibility that quick reading, in short bursts, is over time actually rewiring our brains and making us less able to think in depth. These are just a few examples of the subjects tackled.

I am increasingly interested in the connections between science and the spiritual life, not to mention the scientific experiments being conducted about spirituality itself. I think part of my fascination with science has to do with an attempt to understand the order of not just our world, but our universe, and possibly glimpse the mind and intentions of God in that order. Plus it is all just really, really interesting.

Reverent Reader

Less Is More

2010-05-27T11:35:00.006-04:00

All the Living
by C.E. Morgan

This is an unpretentious, exquisite story that will worm its way into the reader's consciousness and reside there for a long time. The starkness of the farming landscape coupled with the isolation within the hearts of the main characters is striking and palpable throughout. All the Living is a quick read, written in the spare style of hardworking farm folk, but Morgan manages to convey a host of emotions and dilemmas. Sometimes she does this more by what she does not say than by what she does.

Aloma and Orren, the two protagonists, are lost souls seeking desperately to find their way. For much of the story, it is unclear if they will do that together or apart. Even at the end there is some ambiguity in the midst of the reconciliation. Aloma has grown up in an orphanage, while Orren and his brother are raised by their widowed mother on a farm. It is the sudden and tragic death of Orren's mother and brother in a car accident that prompts Aloma to move to Orren's farm and begin a new phase of their relationship. Aloma and Orren had been "together" before the car wreck, but mostly in a superficial way that did not dwell much on the future or the direction of the relationship. They are both young and lonely people, and it is mostly about the sex.

Orren and Aloma quickly come to realize that sex will only carry you so far in a relationship. Aloma longs for comfort and companionship and tenderness, while Orren is preoccupied with running his family farm alone and getting out of debt. The issues that crop up between them are familiar to most married couples, but it is the desolate way that Morgan expresses them that makes the descriptions so raw and wrenching. Sometimes the pain hanging in the air as Aloma and Orren try and fail to connect is almost unbearable.

Another prevalent theme in the story is the spiritual solace that Aloma takes in music (she is an accomplished pianist). As a music lover myself, I could see how Aloma could get lost in her gift, but her preoccupation with playing does begin to intrude on her relationship with Owen (not to mention her crush on a kind-hearted pastor at the church where she plays piano to earn money). That tension in the relationship brings up another common marital dilemma - finding the balance between the things that feed our own souls and the care and nurture that our partners need. There is obviously no "one" way to find that balance, but Aloma and Orren's predicament shows us (without telling us) how something that starts out to be good for a relationship can gradually start to erode that same relationship if we are not paying attention.

The story ends on a hopeful note - Aloma and Orren decide to make the commitment to get married and ride out the rough patches together. Even in that rapprochemont, though, the jealousies and hurts and griefs are still oh-so-present. The reader senses that those pieces are a permanent part of the story, and that Orren and Aloma will have to learn to work within and around them. All the Living shares with us the message of life in death, as well as possibility in emptiness.

Reverent Reader

Oh Come ON...

2010-05-25T10:03:00.004-04:00

An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England

by Brock Clarke

I get the joke, I really do, but it got old. Literary satire is funny, and Clarke's riff on the ubiquity of memoir was hilarious. It was probably worth reading the book just for those two pages. But the rest of the story tried so hard to be darkly comic that it was nothing short of sad.

Years ago, I remember taking a young friend to see a "Mr. Bean" movie - remember "Mr.Bean?" He's that goofy guy played by Rowan Atkinson who is always getting into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes. But my little friend, about halfway through the movie, just rolled his eyes and said "Oh come on - NO ONE is THAT stupid!" Even though it was a comedy, home of the outrageous, some line had been crossed into the realm of "yeah, right." That is how I felt about Sam, the main character of Arsonist's Guide. A self-described "bumbler," he just gets himself into more and more trouble as the story plays out. And I like comedy, but too much of this involved stuff that just is not funny - losing his marriage because of his inarticulateness and occasional lying, becoming estranged from his children, and parental alcoholism are three prevalent dramas of the story. None of those things is knee-slapping funny to me. Serious topics can be dealt with in a humorous way, but Clarke fails to do this.

The end of the story is supposed to bring about some sort of ironic redemption (if there is such a thing), but I thought it just compounded Sam's problems. When someone is trapped in the web of their own untruths, it is hard for the reader to buy into more lies, even if they are well-intentioned. This novel got a lot of critical acclaim, but except for some well written meditations on reading and writing and the literary life that were woven into the narrative, it did not do much for me.

Reverent Reader

Going Separate Ways

2010-05-17T10:07:00.006-04:00

Happiness Sold Separately
by Lolly Winston

Howdy, blog universe. Nice to see you again. Life has been crazy lately - lots of good family stuff going on (plus G. getting pink eye, that was not so good), and I have not had as much time to write as I would like. I HAVE kept on reading, though, so stay tuned for the next couple of weeks as I write reviews on several good things I've read lately.

Happiness Sold Separately does not set the world on fire, but it is a book that deals with a serious subject without being too heavy handed, and that is worth something. Winston actually manages to make an adulterer into a character with whom we can sympathize, and that is not an easy thing to do. Ted and Elinor are the married couple around which the story evolves. They are forty-ish and at the beginning of the book have just finished a long and unsuccessful series of fertility treatments. Having been through some of that myself, and having many friends who have been through that anguish, I thought that Winston did a good job of capturing the sadness and loss that so many couples go through. She shows, rather than tells, how infertility can become the dominant theme in the relationship before the couple even realizes it. They wake up one day and see that they have forgotten how to have fun together or even talk about normal, everyday things. It is so sad, and Winston expresses it well.

Likewise, Ted seems like a good guy, even though he strays outside his marriage. He does not intend for it to happen, nor is he some kind of calculating predator. He just kind of falls into a second relationship, even though he still loves his wife. Without condoning such behavior, Winston helps us see how it can happen. Likewise, the "other woman," Gina, is not out to wreck a marriage or steal any one's partner - she is lonely and vulnerable and struggling to raise a son on her own. Ted provides a listening ear and a good influence on her son, and pretty soon the relationship has gone too far. It is not right, but no one goes into the scene with evil intentions.

The end of the book is bittersweet. I don't want to be a spoiler for anyone who might read it, so suffice it to say that all parties involved are genuinely invested in doing the "right" thing, but it is less and less clear what that is. Isn't that how life is, though? It may be less satisfying, but the ambiguity is also one of the story's strengths. Thing are not always (in fact they seldom) are as cut and dried as we want to think.

Reverent Reader

Goes Down Quickly

2010-05-05T11:18:00.005-04:00

Have a Little Faith
by Mitch Albom

Have a Little Faith does indeed go down quickly - almost too quickly. I read it about three weeks ago for a book group at my church, and the meeting of that same group had to be postponed. I find that the details of the story have already faded in my mind, and I'm going to have to give the book a skim before the book group meets in a few weeks. The short shelf life of the book inside my mind could say something about my attention span or my powers of retention. In fact, it probably does. It also, though, points to the fact that this is a book that the reader can fly through so quickly that there is not enough time or depth for it to make a real dent int the gray matter. I enjoyed it and was even moved by some parts of the story, but it has just not stuck with me.

I read Have a Little Faith in one evening - that is super fast even for me, and I am a pretty fast reader. It is the story of Mitch Albom's becoming reacquainted with his lifelong rabbi after the retired gentleman asks Albom to do his eulogy. Albom had grown up in the same synagogue his whole life, and retained his membership in that community even when he moved away as an adult. This happened to be a synagogue that kept the same rabbi for over 30 years, and the rabbi stayed on in a part-time role even after his formal retirement. Albom had moved away from his faith as an adult, and was surprised when his rabbi asked him the favor of performing his eulogy.

After Mitch Albom agreed to his rabbi's request, the two began meeting together regularly. Albom wanted to know the man as opposed to the public figure. Their relationship deepened, and Albom felt himself drawn back into a spiritual life. He realized that he missed the sense of community that a congregation can provide. In a similar pattern to his previous book Tuesdays with Morrie, Albom recounted pearls of wisdom that he learned from his rabbi, and his realization (as the older man's health faded) that he would indeed feel a tremendous loss when he died.

As all this was unfolding, Albom was also getting to know a Christian pastor in the Detroit area whose background for ministry was, shall we say, unorthodox. Henry is a recovering addict and ex-convict. He serves a congregation of the truly down and out in a building that is on its last legs. One of the strengths of Have a Little Faith is how Albom depicts his own awakening to the truth that ministry is not limited to the pious or the perfect. He comes to understand that someone who has been in the depths of self-induced despair can offer insights that those who have not experienced the struggles of addiction and poverty cannot.

Albom weaves these two relationships, and the changes that take place within his own heart, together into a pleasing whole. My only complaint is that I would have liked more - further probing into the rabbi's theology and practice, more peeks into the inner workings of Henry's mind and heart, and more self-reflection from Albom. His quick, breezy style seems to work for him - he sells a lot of books. However, I would like him to probe a little more deeply. His readers would benefit - and I suspect that he would as well.

Reverent Reader

Connection Is Everything

2010-05-04T11:07:00.006-04:00

The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World
by Jacqueline Novogratz

How many of us have dropped old clothes off at a local charity, or dumped them in one of those ubiquitous bins, and never given a thought to what happens to them after that? I remember I left a pair of old shoes in the band room when I was in high school. I had outgrown them and they pinched my feet. Somehow they ended up in a jumble of "lost and found" in the band room, and I never bothered to pick them up as they no longer fit, and were (in my opinion) too worn out and shabby looking anyway. It was a real wake up call several days later when I saw a girl (a fellow band member) who was probably two or three years younger than I was wearing my discarded shoes. I didn't mind, and I never said anything to her about it (I never knew if she knew whose they were anyway), but I felt a twinge of shame that something I had jettisoned in such a cavalier manner was obviously usable and needed by someone else. I think ever since then I have tried to be more intentional about what I do with clothes that do not fit anymore, but I cannot say that I have ever put a face to one of my old items - except for those shoes.

Jacqueline Novogratz had the experience of seeing someone (a little boy) wearing her blue sweater in Rwanda, ten years after she had dropped it off at a Goodwill Store in Virginia. She was there working in the area of micro finance, helping women start small businesses to life themselves out of poverty. Some might think seeing that child on the streets of Kigali, wearing their cast off sweater, was just a bizarre coincidence. For, Novogratz, it was a moment that changed her life. She realized how connected we all are, and how our seemingly inconsequential actions do have consequences, often on the other side of the world. She was already engaged in the fight against poverty, but the blue sweater confirmed her sense that we are all part of one another, and the suffering of one affects the whole.

The rest of The Blue Sweater is the story of Novogratz's merging of her concern for neighbor with her pragmatic business sense. The reader learns a lot from her conviction that education and economic opportunity for poor people make much more sense in the long run than traditional charitable aid. She also has started a fund (called Acumen Fund) that invests in entrepreneurial efforts that bring much needed goods and services to people in the developing world at affordable prices. Examples of the projects Acumen fund has invested in include insecticide treated nets to prevent malaria and systems for purifying water. She coins the phrase "patient capitalism," meaning that Acumen's investments may not pay large dividends as quickly, but they are an investment in the human family and its future. Who can put a price on that?

The Blue Sweater is definitely worth reading - it is inspiring to read about projects that make a long term difference in people's lives. For a shot in the arm of hope, pick this up.

Reverent Reader

My Gut Says...

2010-04-29T14:02:00.003-04:00

Intuition
by Allegra Goodman

"My gut tells me..." does NOT cut it in the scientific world. That is the overarching message in this page-turning novel by Allegra Goodman. Goodman has managed to take the rigorous protocols of scientific inquiry, the tedious process of replicating experiments, and the politics of grant applications and combine them into a juicy read. I do have an ever-expanding interest in science and the scientific process, so it could be that I just read this at an opportune time in my own development as a reader/writer/pastor/thinker, but I could hardly put it down. It reminded me of some novels I have read about academia and the politics therein (Straight Man by Richard Russo comes to mind, as does Moo by Jane Smiley), only Intuition is less of a satire and more of a workplace drama that raises serious questions. Those questions ultimately have an effect on people in the "real" world outside the classroom or the laboratory who are desperately waiting for the development of new drugs and treatments for debilitating and terminal illnesses.

Intuition is about a researcher who believes intuitively that a certain virus can be useful for treating cancer. He is so blinded by his own good intentions AND ambitions that he cuts corners on scientific process and protocols. In the short term, he gains a lot of recognition for the lab he works in. In the longer term, he and his lab are disgraced when other labs cannot replicate the supposed results of his experiments. At the end of the novel, the skeptics are vindicated, the entire staff is sadder but wiser (also humbled), and most of the players are recommitted to following established processes for testing out their theories.

I am all for scientific rigor, especially when lives are at stake. I do wonder, though, what place intuition has in that process, if any. As a pastor, a lot of my work is instinctual, and I rely a lot on my gut. I have been told that my instincts are pretty good, and I think my intuition is a God-given gift. My guess is that there are scientists out there who have some intuitive gifts that the process squelches. Of course instincts should always be backed by scientific confirmation, but in this competitive environment for grant money, and the pressure on clinicians to publish something "significant" asap, is it possible that there are sound intuitions out there that never get pursued because there is not the time or the money to do so? In the long term, who loses in a process like that?

I don't have easy answers, but I do wonder if there is a place for research that is less of a sure bet but that might have major benefits in the future. Anyway, Intuition will keep you reading, and keep you thinking.

Reverent Reader

No Place to Be

2010-04-28T11:09:00.008-04:00

Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey

by Isabel Fonseca

Duke of Egypt
by Margriet de Moor

My sister-in-law introduced me to Margriet de Moor, and the jury is still out for me. I'm going to read at least one more of her books to see if she is someone whose work I want to follow closely. de Moor is Swedish, but of course I read an English translation of her book. There is a certain cryptic-ness about her writing style that bugged me a bit - there is a simmering anger between one of the main characters and his father-in-law, but the reader has to put clues together to figure out the source of the animosity. That cryptic feel is sort of like William Faulkner, with the added awkwardness of this being a translation, so you wonder if there is just something you are missing because of cultural idioms or subtle nuances that do not come across the language barrier.

Nevertheless, the story itself is good. For many years I have had a certain fascination with the Romany people of Eastern Europe, better known as "Gypsies." Many people have forgotten (or perhaps never knew) that the Roma were also a group targeted by Hitler for extermination. The main story of Duke of Egypt is about a Roma man who marries a non-Gypsy, a woman horse breeder and trainer. There is an interesting storyline about how they raise a family and navigate their different social mores and world views. Joseph, the Gypsy, leads a pretty conventional life, but cannot always tame his wanderlust. Lucie, his wife, is more or less resigned to his hitting the road each summer and traveling with his family of origin. Joseph does not do anything really bad on these extended road trips, but he misses the life of storytelling, singing, extended family, and horse trading in which he grew up. He has to get his annual "fix" if he is to tolerate life on a farm the rest of the year.

Joseph and Lucie are an interesting pair, but I was really more moved by what I would call the back story of Joseph and his people. Through flashback, Joseph recalls the centuries of displacement and mistreatment of his people, as well as his own family's wanderings. There is a certain amount of wandering that is part of the Roma culture, but de Moor depicts very poignantly how a lot of their movement is forced. They might temporarily settle in a place and even set up a camp, intending to stay a few weeks or months, only to be visited by local police and told that they have 24 hours to move on. Apparently, the Roma are not really accepted anywhere, even the ones who engage in respectable work like shoe making, or the ones who travel with appropriate permits and other paperwork. That constant rejection was what haunted me about this book, as well as the evidence of ongoing contempt for the Roma people that goes back generations and continues to be a factor in their wandering even today. It is one thing to move around a lot by choice, and another to live on the move because there is no place for you to be.

Years ago I read a non-fiction history of the Romany people by Isabel Fonseca called Bury Me Standing. I'm going to have to pull that out again, I think. If you have no prior knowledge of Gypsy life, I would recommend reading Bury Me Standing before Duke of Egypt. Both give us insight into this little understood and much maligned group of people who are God's children as much as any of the rest of us.

Reverent Reader

A Missing Piece

2010-04-22T13:26:00.004-04:00

The Lacuna
by Barbara Kingsolver

If you loved The Bean Trees, The Poisonwood Bible, or any other of Barbara Kingsolver's acclaimed novels, you might be disappointed with the first 100 pages of The Lacuna. Stick with it. This novel is different from anything else Kingsolver has written. The characters are tougher to relate to than Taylor Greer from The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven. It is not the glorious meditation on the natural world that she gives us in Prodigal Summer. The Lacuna is more like a historical novel with a lot of artistic license thrown in. The book is difficult to describe, but it picks up power as it moves along, and the last 100 pages are terribly moving.

Harrison Shepherd is the character at the heart of The Lacuna. Other major characters include Mexican artist Diego Rivera, his wife the painter Frida Kahlo, Communist leader Leon Trotsky and (later in the story) a secretary named Violet Brown. Kingsolver took a risk, in my opinion, but making people who really lived major characters in a fiction book. I kept stopping to look things certain events up to see if they were really based in fact or if Kingsolver was making all of this up. As much as I could tell, the historical stuff was amazingly accurate. Leon Trotsky DID live with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo for a time, and he DID have an adulterous affair with Kahlo. Trotsky WAS assassinated by Stalinist goons in Mexico.

Kingsolver takes these historical events and observes them through the eyes of a young boy who cooks in the house of Rivera and Kahlo - Harrison Shepherd. Harrison is a wonderful character, but he has to be one of the most isolated people I have ever read about. I don't want to spoil the story for those who want to read it, but I will say that Kingsolver really makes us think about how the march of time and the unfolding of significant events between nations affect ordinary people who are just trying to live life and maybe form a few lasting relationships. Even though much of The Lacuna centers around political affairs between the United States, Mexico, and the Soviet Union, there is equal time given to the way that Harrison, with his trusting and apolitical nature, gets caught in the middle of forces and conflicts way beyond his control.

The ostracism that Harrison faces in the post-World War II years, when the United States in on an anti-Communist witch hunt, is hauntingly narrated and truly frightening. The McCarthyites take an already lonely human being and tear apart the few fragile connections that he has made with other people. The one person who remains a friend to Harrison is his stenographer, Violet Brown. In his farewell letter to Violet, Harrison (a gay man who certainly had no romantic interest in her) says that they have had "a great love," that no one has been more important to him than she has. That was when I cried.

One definition of a "lacuna" is a missing piece in a historical record, a hole in a traceable chronology. The word as a title for the book makes sense on a couple of different levels, as the reader will see. The book as a whole, though, is possibly Kingsolver's way of gently saying to us that we rarely (if ever) know the whole story. Best not to judge another until the missing pieces are filled in. And maybe not even then - how do any of us know how we would respond to a situation unless we were in it?

Read this. It may not be as lyrical as some of Kingsolver's other writing, but it is a great story told well. This is her first novel in about 10 years, and it was well worth the wait.

Reverent Reader

Eternal Mystery

2010-04-20T14:02:00.007-04:00

Eternal Life: A New Vision
Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell

by John Shelby Spong

I think Bishop John Shelby Spong will be remembered as a man whose ideas were ahead of his time. He has long been revered or vilified (depending on perspective) for his openness to homosexual leadership in the Episcopal church, his liberal interpretation of scripture, and his aggressive challenge of theological orthodoxy. I agree with a great many of Spong's ideas, and find him engaging even when I do not. Eternal Life is likely his last book, as he states in the preface. He is close to 80 years old now, and doubts that he has the time left to exhaustively research another topic and bring a book on it to fruition. I hope he is wrong, though. I would like to continue to hear from him, as so many of his thoughts are liberating and energizing.

Having said that, I do not think Eternal Life is his best work, even though it is clearly the product of much work and thought. One of the issues is that there are several sections that are largely a rehash of the theology he articulated in his previous book A New Christianity for a New World. Friends of mine for whom Eternal Life was their first exposure to Spong were enthralled, but a lot of it felt repetitive to me. Another thing that bugs me is that Spong way overgeneralizes about people, what we believe, and why we believe it. He creates an unassailable argument when he says that humans only believe in the traditional notion of a personal God because we are frightened and insecure and need someone to take care of us. He says that we praise God in order to "manipulate" God and beg God to do what we want. I would describe my theology as fairly traditional, yet flexible and open. Very few doctrines are deal breakers for me - if I found out tomorrow that the physical resurrection of Christ did not happen, I would continue to love God, love Christ, and show up for worship the next Sunday. Likewise for the virgin birth. I am convinced that other faith traditions have at least a portion of the truth. So, I am not a rigid ideologue by any stretch of the imagination. However, I often feel dismissed by Spong's construction. Moreover, he says that all of this human neediness is mostly unconscious, if not entirely so. When I argue with Spong in my head, I practically hear him saying, "See, you really are a mess like I say, you just don't know it." On the one hand. he's right. I'm a mess. We all are. But I don't think it makes me a theological child to think that something/someone out there cares. Maybe that Being cannot solve my problems, and that is part of the way things are. But I trust that Being to sustain me through whatever comes my way.

Spong points out that the West has opened itself more to non-traditional theology and is more willing to jettison our former ideas of a supernatural, theistic God than some of the developing world. That is probably true, but the reason he gives for that is that "the West has engaged the intellectual revolution more than any other part of the world." I think this is a strategic mistake. Whether he intended it or not, such a statement comes across as "We in the West are just smarter than those poor souls in developing countries. Once they expose themselves to our ideas they will see that we are right." This is unfortunate, because many of Spong's ideas are on target and deserve a hearing - but the quickest way to alienate people is to say that they are not smart, or not intellectual.

Spong works as hard in Eternal Life to prove that things like the bodily resurrection of Christ and the virgin birth DID NOT, COULD NOT happen as the most rigid fundamentalist does to prove that they did. He is no more successful in disproving than they are in proving. Spong's greatest strength is that he opens us to mystery. He leads us to consider alternative possibilities, as well as acknowledge that any view of God that we have will naturally be influenced by our own needs and desires. We will never fully know who God is until we meet God face-to-face (a metaphor that Spong would probably abhor!), but we can learn pieces of the truth from one another. Just bringing us to that place is a real gift, and one of the things for which future generations of seekers will thank him.

Reverent Reader

No Place Like Home

2010-04-15T10:35:00.004-04:00

The Four Corners of the Sky
by Michael Malone

My twin sister E. and I have had a couple of conversations about Michael Malone's work. He has written a number of novels, and of the three I have read, Handling Sin is by far the best - way out in front of the others. E. says that the greatness of Handling Sin has ruined Malone's other books for her - they are inevitably a disappointment, because they do not measure up to the masterpiece. To a certain extent, I agree with her. On the other hand, if I can put my love and loyalty for Handling Sin aside, there is still much to be enjoyed about Malone's other books, including The Four Corners of the Sky. Malone has a knack for creating likable characters who are believable even when they get into absurd and unbelievable situations.

The Four Corners of the Sky is loosely (very loosely) based on The Wizard of Oz. It involves a journey in which a vulnerable character discovers strengths that she did not know she had, and also learns the value of relationships. Without being preachy, Malone also causes us to examine pertinent questions such as "What makes a family?" and "What constitutes forgiveness?" Malone does all this in the context of a crime caper/quest/love story hat stretches the imagination but also makes us laugh and occasionally choke up. The blatant references to The Wizard of Oz (much of the story is set in "Emerald," NC) and the extended "aviation as life" metaphor both get a little old sometimes, but that is really a minor quibble with what essentially is an engaging, well told story.

No, it's not Handling Sin. But it is the type of book that it is fun to immerse yourself in for a week or so. Malone has a way of drawing us in and making us care what happens to the people whom he has created. He does it with a healthy dose of humor, which is always good. Definitely worth reading. If you are heading to the beach this summer, save this and read it under an umbrella in the sand, looking up at the waves now and then. It is better than most "beach books," but will relax you and make you smile.

Reverent Reader

Evolving for the Common Good?

2010-04-13T14:56:00.006-04:00

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why Nobody Saw It Coming
by Paul Hawken

If you need a little boost, a hope "shot in the arm," read this. It is several years old, and I think Hawken has even written a follow-up since the first Blessed Unrest was published (if my information is correct, the second one is called Blessed Unrest as well, but with a different subtitle). I for one get terribly discouraged at times by the selfishness of the people in the world, the corruption of the political process, the lack of interest in the common good, and the shocking lack of civility in public debate. These are just a few of the things that get me down, but you get the idea. Hawken is realistic about the world's problems, as well as the sinful nature of humanity that has led to the inexcusably wide gap between the rich and the poor and the possibility of the death of the planet for which we are supposed to care. He does not sugar-coat anything. He also, however, has traveled the world extensively, looking for signs of hope and encouragement.

Hawken raises the possibility that humanity is actually evolving to be more altruistic, less selfish, and more engaged with the wider world. If we believe in Darwin's concept of evolution and the survival of species that have certain characteristics (opposable thumbs? hairy nostrils?), Hawken's idea makes a certain amount of sense. His thesis is that we will evolve (and are evolving) to care more about each other and our planet, because this is the only way the human race will survive. Just the idea lifts my spirits. No matter how hard some of us try to use all the earth's resources now and not think about future generations there just might be a natural God-given process that can save us from ourselves. That does not mean that things won't get a lot worse before they get better, and I suppose there will always be elements of selfishness within each of us, not to mention the possibility of corruption. However, if Hawken is right, over time the "better angels of our nature (to borrow a phrase from Abraham Lincoln)" might win the battle more often than not. Wouldn't that be something?

Hawken also uses the metaphor of the body's immune system to describe the vast number of organizations and networks springing up across the globe to combat every ill from child trafficking to poverty to plant and animal extinction. He spends a lot of time on the analogy, describing how cells in our immune systems "network" with each other, carrying messages about how to heal a body's ailment. Hawken makes the point that the whole connected system of (mostly) nongovernmental organizations operates in much the same way. Small organizations with limited budgets can receive assistance from larger ones, and large organizations can rely on smaller ones to be in direct contact with people in need and find out what is going on "on the ground." In these largely informal and undocumented ways, all who are striving to leave the world a little better than we found it can strengthen one another's mission.

Often I feel like my own puny efforts to provide hope in our community (and the world community) are nothing more than spitting into the ocean of the world's despair. They would be if it were just me who cared. But millions of people care, and are doing what they can, where they are, to heal the planet and each other. Recognizing that our efforts are all connected and part of a larger picture was a lift for me. At some level, we already know that we are all connected. However, the way Hawken expresses that connection is refreshing and will give many who are concerned the juice to fight another day.

Reverent Reader

High Stakes

2010-03-31T10:37:00.005-04:00

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime
by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

Whichever politician you like, you will read this and find the squeaky clean image that you have of that person just a wee bit tarnished. Whichever ones you vilify, you will find plenty here to back up your claims. Game Change is an inside look at the Democratic primary race and the subsequent General Election of 2008. Heilemann and Halperin both covered the election closely at the time, and believed they had enough material to publish a fair, accurate inside account of the race. They have done a reasonably good job of that, without doing a total hatchet job on anyone. Rumor has it that these two already have a contract to write a similar book after the 2012 election cycle.

Game Change is an interesting and juicy read, but there is little here about the issues that we all are concerned with - war, education, economics, health care, etc. It is mostly about the political process itself, and the way all campaigns spin themselves to the media. Even a candidate who makes a sincere effort to conduct an honorable and disciplined campaign gets sucked into the maelstrom of parsing each other to the nth degree. It gets tedious, and (worse) it distracts from the issues themselves. Sometimes Game Change made it seem that the candidates and their staffs sit around at television monitors, just waiting for their opponent to make some stupid gaffe. When that inevitably happens ("Barack Obama will be tested by terrorists early in his term..." "People get bitter and cling to guns and religion to make themselves feel better..." OR, more recently "blue-blooded Americans..."), the other side jumps on it and makes whatever hay they can, often twisting the words and taking them out of context to make the problem even worse. This tactic has been used for a long time, and is not helpful. It brings out the worst in the candidates instead of the best. Except for having a biracial presidential candidate and a woman vice-presidential candidate, I'm not sure the game really changed much at all in 2008. Maybe next time.

What bugs me is, it's NOT a game. The winners of any election make decisions that affect lives other than their own. A president's decisions potentially affect people across the world. Yet we allow the candidates to waste time trying to paint their opponent as an elitist or a hippie or a redneck or whatever they think the electorate will find the most offensive. There is added bonus if you can dig up some dirt on a candidate's spouse, child, or other family members. I believe that this style of election plays some role in the ugly vitriol we are seeing in public life right now. If elections are won on this kind of behaviour, why should we expect elected officials to behave any better once they are in office? We can do better than this.

Reverent Reader

People Are Complicated

2010-03-26T12:02:00.005-04:00

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
by Jon Meacham

I had to talk myself into reading this. Frankly, Andrew Jackson has never been my favorite president. He still isn't, but American Lion is nonetheless worth reading. I had an image of Jackson in my head as the "Indian Removal President." He did force untold numbers of Indians to migrate west, leading to the deaths of thousands and social repercussions that we are still feeling today. He also, though, adopted an Indian orphan and raised him as his own son. He was mercurial and manipulative with his closest family members, but also loyal and warmhearted. He was an unapologetic slaveholder, but loved the Union and fought to preserve it. The qualities and flaws that put together a private person also had great influence on his political life. American Lion introduces us to a man of many facets, reminding us that seldom is a person all good or all bad.

If nothing else, Meacham has provided a slice of American history that helps us understand the context of the Civil War (Jackson was elected in 1828), and the tensions that simmered for decades before it actually came to armed conflict. We get vivid portraits of men like Henry Clay and John Calhoun who never were elected President but who had more influence in shaping our nation than several of the less charismatic men who occupied the White House. Jackson's skillful working with this wide variety of people, and his defiance when threatened, show us a man of uncommon courage and conviction, whether we agree with his positions or not. He also was smart - not the rube that history has often made him out to be.

Jackson's personal life was not without loss and sorrow. Partially due to the Revolutionary War, he was totally alone in the world by age 14. When he met the woman who was to become his wife, Rachel Donelson, she was already married to someone else. Her reputation never fully recovered from the scandal of her divorce and subsequent marriage to Jackson, and he defended her honor throughout their married life. Rachel died just a few weeks after Jackson was elected President, before they made the move from Tennessee to Washington D.C. Jackson and Rachel were never able to have biological children, although they adopted a couple of sons and helped raise many nieces and nephews. Learning these details of his life humanized him for me and helped me realize that, right and wrong, he was a product of the time in which he lived.

A whole book could be written (perhaps it has) on Andrew Jackson's faith alone. He was nominally Presbyterian, although he did not formally join a congregation until after he had retired and moved back to Tennessee. I had to respect this one choice he made: Even though his wife wanted him to, he had not joined the church or made a profession of faith as an adult. When it came time for him to run for President, he confessed to Rachel that he was ready to do so. However, he did not want to appear to be making a profession of faith for the sake of politics or appearance, so he remained unaffiliated until after his political career was over. In this age where just about every decision that politicians make is choreographed according to how it will play in the electorate, it is gratifying that Jackson did not make a hollow or false profession of faith just to woo the voters. It may not have been declared publicly until late in life, but his faith was real and alive and important to him.

Reverent Reader

Gone But Not Forgotten

2010-03-24T11:57:00.003-04:00

Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?
The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music
by Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg

It's interesting how musical tastes change over time. As an adolescent, I scorned any music remotely connected to country/western or bluegrass. Nasal, twangy voices were repulsive to me, as were lyrics that seemed to be all about sorrow, loss, and somebody's cheatin' heart. I still would not put country or bluegrass at the top of my list, but as a young adult I gravitated toward the hope and vision for justice found in folk music. Irish music (especially Celtic) has also appealed to me because of its intertwining of exuberance and pathos. As I got more into folk and Celtic music around two decades ago, I began to pick up on the common roots that these genres shared with some of the types of music I had previously disdained. To my surprise, threads of classical, bluegrass and country/western folk, and "mountain" music could be found interwoven in surprising and beautiful ways. While I am unlikely to purchase music by hardcore country musicians like Tammy Wynette or Slim Whitman, my music library now includes country favorites like Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and the Dixie Chicks (just to name a few).

I don't think I could go so far (yet) as to call myself a fan of the Carter family's music (too nasal, especially the original Carter family recordings), but they are musically (and personally) fascinating people. Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? traces the family all the way back to their immigration into this country, bringing old Scottish and Irish melodies with them. One of the most compelling parts of the story was A.C. Carter's journeying over and over into the mountains of Appalachia going "song-hunting" for new music for him and his wife Sara and their sister-in-law Maybelle to record. Many people knew just snatches of lyrics or tunes, and these fragments later became full songs in their own right, with the gaps filled in by A.C. Carter or someone like him. There is no way to know how much music they preserved and rescued from obscurity. The Carter family also is to be commended for their tenacity in scratching out a living from music during the Depression and being a voice to express the heartache and uncertainty with which so many people were living.

Furthermore, Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? is an interesting story. I find people and their lives endlessly captivating, and Zwonitzer has done a good job in balancing the history of the music industry with vignettes about the Carter family's relationships and lives. What has stuck with me the most about the book, though, is this passing of music from generation to generation, with new twists along the way and offshoots into genres that seem totally new but really are old riffs and styles coupled with innovations that keep the music alive and appealing to new generations of listeners. It is not unlike the way our faith traditions are practiced - we hang onto the basics, but styles and practices evolve according to the times. Even as we embrace change, though, we celebrate our common roots and appreciate the past. We celebrate and give thanks for those who have made us who we are.

So, for anyone who loves just about any kind of music, the Carters have contributed to your listening pleasure. Whether we realize it or not, we do miss them, but their talent lives on in those they inspired. Hopefully that will remain true for a long, long time.

Reverent Reader

Cells for Sale

2010-03-17T13:30:00.008-04:00

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot

If you are into biology and/or science writing, you must read this. If you are into biography, you must read this. If you are into history, you must read this. You get my point - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is interesting, thought-provoking, and powerful on any number of levels. I first heard about the book in early February - I read a printed review and also heard an interview with the author on National Public Radio. There was something so compelling about the story, I knew it was something I would read soon. This is a story that shows us (not tells us) how important it is for hospital patients to have advocates, and (even more importantly) how critical it is that ordinary individuals raise questions about practices, policies, and people. I do not think that anyone involved in this story had evil intentions, but the presumption of those in power caused an injustice to be done.

Henrietta Lacks was a poor black woman who was born and raised in Virginia and moved to the Baltimore area as an adult. A mother of five children, she died of cervical cancer at the age of 30. This occurred in the early 1950s, before the Civil Rights Movement. While coping with a terminal illness, Henrietta Lacks also dealt with the humiliations of a segregated health facility (Johns Hopkins). Not only that, Hopkins was the only hospital within a reasonable distance that would even treat African-Americans. Soon after her diagnosis, Ms. Lacks's doctor removed two dime-sized tissues samples from her body - one from healthy tissue, the other from her tumor. The healthy cells died soon in the laboratory, but (to the surprise of the researchers), the cancer cells multiplied like mad. Called HeLa cells (after the first two letters of each of the "donor's" names), these cells were soon distributed in labs across the world and used in all kinds of experiments. Jonas Salk used HeLa cells in developing a polio vaccine. The cells have since been used to study many other diseases, including Parkinson's disease, AIDS, Alzheimer's, and multiple sclerosis. The HeLa cells have contributed to the development of countless drugs and other treatments and have alleviated the suffering of millions of people around the world.

I am thankful for HeLa cells, as we all should be. The sticky part of the story is that Henrietta Lacks's permission was not sought before the physicians removed the samples from her body. Her family is mostly uneducated and poor, yet they never benefited financially from all the products developed using her cells. In fact, most of her family does not even have access to health care and thus cannot even benefit physically from Henrietta's contribution. Again, I do not think the oversight was deliberate, it is more as if no one thought to ask permission to cultivate the cells because she was poor, black, and could not afford treatment. The doctors could not have known that this one cell line would proliferate, after so many other attempts had failed. Apparently, tissue removal without prior permission was standard practice at the time.

In the past decade, Henrietta Lacks has finally started to get some recognition for the way that her cells altered medical science. Morehouse College hosted a symposium in her honor in 1996, where researchers presented papers about all the things currently being done with HeLa cells. From what Rebecca Skloot was able to uncover for her book, Henrietta Lacks was a tiny woman with a huge heart, a flair for dancing, and a contagious love for other people. I like to hope and believe that she would have willingly donated her cells for the common good. I also believe, though, that she should not have had to. What really troubles me is that no one, from the doctors down to the lab techs, raised any questions about the practice. It was as if Henrietta Lacks was just a collection of cells instead of a person who mattered to many people.

The past is the past, and cannot be redone, but we can take stories such as this one and allow them to raise our consciousness about issues of justice and truth. We can raise questions about how things are done now. We can recognize Henrietta Lacks as a fellow human being and child of God. We can mourn the sad fact that her children lost their mother.

Reverent Reader

Greeeeen Acres (NOT!)

2010-03-11T10:23:00.003-05:00

Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer
by Novella Carpenter

I'm interested in gardening. I really am. At least, I enjoy reading about it, and watching the fruits of others' labors. It pains me that I never get around to actually planting and tending anything. It's not an aversion, really, just lack of time. I will also admit to a certain intimidation. Other people seem to know exactly what to do to make something grow (or at least survive), whereas I have no clue. Would my thumb be green? Purple? Gray (the color of death in apocalyptic literature). I am a wee bit chicken to find out. I do have a philodendron plant that I have kept alive for about 19 years, but it is almost impossible to kill a philodendron.

Novella Carpenter is a gardening rock star. She has managed to grow a vegetable garden in the middle of the grittiest, grubbiest part of downtown Oakland, California. Without being all self-righteous about it, she has used her produce to eat healthier herself as well as provide fresh vegetables for neighbors who do not have easy access to produce. In addition to the gardening, she has raised turkeys, chickens, rabbits, and pigs (although not all at the same time). She is on to something, I am convinced. There is something about raising food and animals that brings people together. The vegetables alone are important for their nutritional value. However, Carpenter's descriptions of neighborhood children coming over to see the rabbits (some of whom had never seen a live animal, let alone held one) and volunteering to help weed the garden are what really grabbed me about this book. She is able to show us the power of community and the difference that a small scale effort like this can make in the lives of kids and adults alike.

If you liked other non-fiction bestsellers like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, or The Omnivore's Dilemma, you will enjoy Farm City. Carpenter's descriptions of some of the neighborhood characters are both touching and hilarious, and the reader can tell that she genuinely cares about both a healthy food supply and the urban poor (and the latter having access to the former). Lots of us have sincere concerns for people living in poverty and in places that are unsafe and that carry the tinge of hopelessness. It is a much smaller number of people who actually will go and live there and structure their own life in a way that makes an ongoing, tangible difference for them. Granted, Carpenter is getting something out of the relationship as well. She is a self described child of hippies, and leans pretty far into hippiedom herself. I doubt that she sees her lifestyle as especially sacrificial - she is where she wants to be. Her story of urban farming helps us to see that there are lots of ways for us to engage with our neighbors. Urban farming is not for everyone, but it is one way to build community and provide a path to healthier living. Good for her.

Plus, Farm City is flat out a good story. Carpenter is a wry writer with a good dose of the ability to laugh at herself. She takes her mission seriously without taking herself too seriously, and that is always refreshing. Who knows? Maybe this is the year I will plant some tomatoes.

Reverent Reader

Slapstickistan

2010-03-09T11:21:00.003-05:00

Absurdistan
by Gary Shteyngart

I know there is a profound message embedded in this critically acclaimed satire, but I found it hard to locate in the midst of all the bizarre plot twists and over the top lunacy of the characters. In a way, Absurdistan reminded me of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, but not as well done. Both books have protagonists who are bumbling to the point of pathetic. Both have large casts of supporting characters that zip into and out of the narrative, sometimes at a dizzying rate of speed. Both story lines have plot twists that are, well, absurd, but in Absurdistan they veer too often into the unbelievable. ("Oh come on. That would never happen.") I know with this style of book, believability may not be the primary goal. However, when it gets too weird, it is distracting.

All this sniping is not to say that Absurdistan does not have something to offer. One cannot read it and not reconsider how the United States is viewed by other nations, especially ones that were once part of the Soviet Union. As we watch Misha struggle to return to the United States, even as he acknowledges the injustices present in our society, we see that (with all our flaws) we are still a beacon of hope for oppressed people on the other side of the world. This is still a place where many people want to be, and for good reason. Our freedoms should never be taken for granted. However, Absurdistan also makes the point that the US tends to put on the "champion of the oppressed" hat when it is convenient for us or shores up our own ideology, and we turn our heads when it is not convenient to fight for the underdog. Sad, but all too often, true.

This was one of those books that I really wanted to like. Shteyngart is making a sincere effort to get us to think about US policy and how that policy affects real people on the ground, without being preachy and "in your face." I'm all for using humor to make a point in a non-threatening way. He is to be commended for the effort. However, I just found the slapstick zaniness wearing - it got in the way of what was really going on with the characters.

Reverent Reader

Pants on Fire!

2010-03-04T10:47:00.004-05:00

Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
by Victor Sebestyn

For starters, this is a really good book. I knew very little about the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Soviet Union, other than that it happened and that the Soviets prevailed. The author has the gift of making history very accessible, and the book reads almost like a suspense novel. The revolution occurred in an organic way, springing up out of peaceful demonstrations with almost no coordination or pre-planning. Leaders emerged from unlikely places, and officers from the Hungarian army defected to help the rebels and give them access to weapons. People acted with tremendous courage and selflessness, sincere in their belief that they could create a better life for their people. As you read the book, you want to cry because the end is already known, and it is not pretty for the Hungarians. Sebestyn is able to still suck us into the hope and euphoria of that brief time, and the reader almost believes that somehow freedom will carry the day.

The amount of lying and other forms of deception that came out of the Kremlin during the troubles with Hungary is absolutely staggering. I mean, I knew that the Russian leadership in the early post-Stalin years was not known for their ethics or honesty, but these guys must have had zero conscience. It was all about jockeying for position and seeing who would emerge to fill Stalin's shoes, so not only were the potential Soviet leaders duplicitous with the Hungarians, they were also constantly stabbing each other in the back and trying to make each other look like buffoons. Names that I grew up hearing (Yuri Andropov, Nikita Kruschev), and associating with the specter of Communism, became even more sinister as I observed their machinations and mad desire for world domination. Not having grown up in the peak years of the Cold War, I have always had a hard time understanding why so many people recoil in horror at the words "Soviet Union." No longer. These were dangerous guys. (Note: I still think it is morally wrong, and irresponsible, to brand anyone with whom we disagree politically as a "socialist" or a "communist." I just understand better now why those are such loaded terms. It really did not have as much to do with ideology or policy as the brutality with which the ideas were enacted and forced upon a people. Those words should not be tossed around lightly. They scare people, and rightfully so, which clouds clear thinking and prevents authentic debate. Getting off my soapbox now...)

However, the United States should not have emerged from this event with a clear conscience, either. It was largely our propaganda, over the airwaves of radio, that incited the Hungarians to try to bust out from behind the Iron Curtain. United States and European rhetoric led the Hungarians to believe that when and if they revolted they would receive weapons, men, and other aid from the West. However, the Hungarian revolution occurred right around the time of Eisenhower's election to a second term, and he did not want to rock the boat too much, with his own people OR with the Soviets. He also was distracted (as were the American people) by a crisis in the Middle East. The assistance that Hungary expected never came, and people suffered and died because of that. That is part of the tragedy that we as Americans have to live with.

Reverent Reader

Seeking North

2010-03-03T10:30:00.003-05:00

Noah's Compass
by Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler is one of a small group of fiction writers (also including Richard Russo and Barbara Kingsolver) who seems incapable of writing a bad novel. I've been enjoying her work for about 20 years now and always enjoy her achingly accurate portrayals of family dynamics and relational ambiguities. Although I doubt that she will ever top her Pulitzer winner Breathing Lessons, which blew me away in 1989, she seems to understand the usually unarticulated (even to ourselves) sorrows that lie within every human heart. That is not to say that we do not love our spouses, our children, our friends - but who has never felt isolated in the midst of a crowd? Who does not long to be understood and forgiven? That is what Anne Tyler seems to "get" and express so simply yet so profoundly.

The protagonist of Noah's Compass, Liam Pennywell, is one of her more poignant characters. I have seldom run into a character in fiction who is this isolated, yet Liam reminded me of a lot of people I know and have known in my own life. He is a twice-divorced man in his early fifties who has recently been "downsized" out of his teaching job and does not quite know what to do with himself. He has three young adult daughters, and as much as he wants to make connections with them, he so often seems to miss the mark. His life is fairly colorless - sometimes this bothers him, but mostly he doesn't mind. He is very much a man of routine, and although he is lonely he often shies away from relationships because he does not want too many demands made on him. He can be a frustrating character, but he is one to whom I was strangely drawn.

The gift of Noah's Compass is that we get to experience Liam's tentative forays into connection with others, and even watch as some of them do not turn out so well. By the end of the story, though, he also has had some small but significant successes in forming new relationships and healing some old ones. It struck me as a realistic portrayal of humanity - we take some risks, and sometimes things go well and sometimes they do not. Regardless, we are usually enriched by having made the effort. Liam has to learn that the hard way.

Noah's Compass is not action packed, and sometimes the reader gets impatient with Liam, who is a bit of a plodder. However, there are several interesting minor characters who liven things up along the way. By the end you will still ache for Liam, but also have some hope for him. We are all redeemable, after all.

Reverent Reader

Mythbusters

2010-03-02T14:14:00.003-05:00

Galileo Goes to Jail, and Other Myths about Science and Religion
edited by Ron L. Numbers

Contrary to popular thought, science and religion are not antithetical to one another. Nor are gifted scientists all rabid atheists, looking for ways to disprove the existence of God. It is fair to say though, that many scientists (both throughout history and in the present) cannot relate to the ultra-personal God who is involved in every aspect of our day each and every day of our lives that some religious extremists believe is the only possible God that could have created us and given us life. Galileo Goes to Jail takes 25 long held myths about conflicts and conflations of science and religion and systematically breaks them down until we can see that they are not the hard bitten truths we have believed them to be.

Each essay is written by a different luminary in the field of either science or history of science, so the writing is a little uneven - some of the pieces are just more accessible than others to the non-scientifically trained person. However, as a whole the book is fun and thought provoking. The de-bunking of certain myths is a bit of a stretch when the writers rely on semantics to make their point. For example, the writer of the essay about whether or not Galileo was tortured at the hands of the Catholic church boils down to "Well, he was not tortured because he recanted his scientific findings. The Church did not torture him because he did what they said. They only threatened torture." OK, fine, but I don't know that that "proves" much. Were they prepared to actually do the deed if Galileo did not give in to their demands? We will never know for sure. And don't even get me started on what constitutes torture, a debate that continues to occupy the minds of ethicists, military leaders, and politicians of our day.

That is a minor quibble, though. The overarching message of the book is that people do not have to be either/or as far as religious faith and scientific discoveries go. Each discipline is searching for a different truth, and sometimes (gulp) they even back each other up! Another gift of the book is that it shows us that neither science or organized religion is entirely free of blame in the "culture wars" that have been going on for centuries now. Each discipline at time as been (at best) dismissive and (at worst) destructive of the other. However, it need not continue to be that way. There will always be extremists from both groups that believe the other is total hogwash. For the vast middle, though, both engaged dialogue and respectful peace are possible. As we move into a new phase of the faith/science relationship, I look forward to the ways that we can strengthen and inform each other.

Reverent Reader

Old Holden. He Kills Me. He Really Does.

2010-02-23T14:30:00.005-05:00

The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger

The death of J.D. Salinger a few weeks ago, at the age of 91, prompted me to get out my old copy of The Catcher in the Rye. I had not read it since high school, and had forgotten most of it. I did, however, remember that I had liked it, and I think I appreciated it more this second time around. Holden Caulfield has to be one of the most realistic literary characters ever created. I remember hearing that the novel was loosely autobiographical, and that Salinger struggled a lot as a teen and young adult.

Holden definitely has his favorite catchphrases (see my title), and Salinger drives that point home in a way that borders on the annoying, except it is so dead accurate. The phrases change from one generation to the next, but all adolescents through young adults have hackneyed sayings that they, like, almost cannot get through a sentence without, like, saying. Beneath Holden's vernacular is a spirit crying to be noticed, longing to connect with other people but so afraid of being rejected that he pushes people away before they can turn away from him. Holden also has noticed the amount of pretending that most of us do, which he acknowledges in his universal condemnation of "the phonies." Reading his story again reminded me to be a little more patient with teens' angst and seeming apathy. Sometimes they are just expressing what a lot of us think but do not have the courage to say out loud. Often they are doing the best they can to figure out how to live and love in this world. I hope I remember Holden when my boys get to be teenagers.

This is one of those books that should be in my canon of being re-read every few years. There are sentences that capture the isolation of adolescence so well that they bring tears to my eyes. Yes, Holden is profane and dishonest and self-indulgent and (occasionally) offensive. He also is (at least for the three days that the novel covers) wasting his potential. But what Salinger did so brilliantly was to make us like Holden in spite of all that, and to identify with his pain. I wish Salinger had written a sequel - it would be nice to find out what happened to this sensitive and misguided young man.

Salinger is rumored to have died with quite a bit of unpublished writing in his file cabinets. Is it possible that Holden's fate may be revealed to us? We can only hope.

Reverent Reader

Thanks Be to God

2010-02-19T14:41:00.003-05:00

Strength in What Remains: a Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
by Tracy Kidder

Deogratias. "Thanks be to God." By some quirk of grace, a mother in Burundi named her child this (he now goes by the nickname "Deo") unique word. Twenty-four years later, that same child survives a genocide in Burundi and lives to tell about it. He witnesses unimaginable horror and several times only narrowly escapes with his life. Strength in What Remains is Deo remembering the atrocities of the 1994 genocides in Burundi and Rwanda, as well as his processing what living through something like that did to his emotional and spiritual health. It is a moving story about a remarkable person.

Through a combination of luck and fortunate human connections, Deo was eventually able to escape the violence in his home country and fly to New York City. The narrative moves back and forth between memories of the wars that began in 1994 and Deo's building a life here in the United States. Something that stuck out to me about the narrative as a whole was the startling numbers of ways that we humans find to dehumanize each other. The Hutu rebels in Rwanda and Burundi called the Tutsis "cockroaches." To diminish the Tutsis in such a way probablymade it easier for the Hutus to slaughter them. Even though Deo was physically safer in New York City, he still endured slights and humiliations and people who seemed to think he had no right to exist just because he was born somewhere else. He also suffered the gradual erosion of his own ambitions and dreams, and began to lost hope that his life would ever include companionship or joy or intellectual stimulation. He thought he was going to work the same dead end job forever, and that if he disappeared no one would notice. I am not equating the busyness and apathy of American citizens with intentional slaughter, but I do think that looking through another person (and other ways of treating them like a non-person) is dehumanizing. If we do not engage with another person, we do not have to bother ourselves about what is happening to them.

Deo was lucky. He made friends with a small group of people who did care about him. They gave him a place to live, helped him get an education, and helped him navigate the labyrinth of becoming a US citizen. Deo has paid that forward by becoming involved with Partners in Health and working in Burundi to build accessible medical clinics. He still struggles with survivor's guilt, questioning of God's presence and goodness, and other issues related to the genocide that he lived through, but his survival story is amazing - as is his ability to move forward in a healing and productive way.

This is a great story, but I am not sure it is Kidder's best - that is probably Mountains Beyond Mountains. Still Tracy Kidder is incapable of writing a bad book. His eye for detail and ability to penetrate the workings of his subjects' minds make all of his books a window into the ways that other people live. What I most took away from Strength in What Remains is a confirmation of the power of relationship in the lives of people who are hurting. One person truly can make a difference in the life of another. We know that, of course, but it is a joy to have it affirmed so powerfully.

The book's title comes from a poem by William Wordsworth, a portion of which I will leave you with now:

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;

Amen.

Reverent Reader

Am I Missing Something?

2010-02-17T09:54:00.007-05:00

Where the God of Love Hangs Out
by Amy Bloom (short stories)

OK, maybe it's just me. I was intrigued by the title of this short story collection, and was very moved by Amy Bloom's novel Away a couple of years ago. So I was very eager to read these, and even suggested them for a book club at my church. That may be the last time I make a suggestion without having read the book first. These are a big disappointment. What I remember about Away is the clear message that life is difficult, and there is a lot of pain and sorrow, but there are also people through whom love is communicated and moments where grace is evident. Those people and those moments give us the strength to endure the pain that eventually comes our way. Where the God of Love Hangs Out has all the darkness with very little of the light.

In a recent interview, Amy Bloom discusses how most writers have a certain theme or subject that finds its way into all of their work. "Whether I chose it or not," she said, "my subject is love." Sadly, I just did not find much love present in these short stories. Bloom's skill at choosing words and constructing sentences is still evident in this collection, but many of the characters behave like fools. There are four interconnected stories about two people named William and Clare. Both married to other people, they are "best friends" who eventually begin an affair that goes on and off for years. In the end, they leave their respective spouses and marry each other. I suppose there is a certain sweetness to them living out their final days together and moving beyond secrecy and deception, but frankly it was hard for me to get past the adultery and their seeming lack of concern for the commitments they had originally made. Plus the two characters are just quite unappealing. As much as I disapprove of adultery in principle, I do think it would be possible to construct a story where the reader at least can understand what has driven the characters to such an act, and where we can sympathize with the characters and even root for them. Bloom has failed to do this.

One of the short stories (unrelated to William and Clare) titled Between Here and Here that was probably my favorite of the collection. It was about a woman who has a difficult relationship with her alcoholic father, who was verbally (and occasionally physically) abusive during all the years she was growing up. In his final years, as his physical and mental health deteriorates, she manages to find compassion for him in his vulnerability. Although he never acknowledges his past behavior (let alone apologize for it), he does seem to develop an appreciation for his daughter. Almost in spite of herself, Allison and her dad come to an uneasy truce. Sometimes an uneasy truce is the best we can hope for.

There is another set of connected stories about a musical, cosmopolitan, interracial family that I was able to enjoy more than the saga of William and Clare. There were some likable characters, and a few touching scenarios. However, much of the energy of the storyline was fueled by sexual tension between a young man and his stepmother. I suppose things like that happen in "real life," but it just left a sour taste in my mouth. Several of the other stories have characters who engage in adultery seemingly without conscience or compunction. Others do equally reprehensible things, and fail to take responsibility for their choices. In most of the stories, I really could not find a God of love hanging out anywhere. It seemed more like the gods of hedonism, self-gratification, and anything goes. Blech.

Reverent Reader

P.S. I'm sorry for the long gap between posts. Our family was caught in the massive blizzard that hammered the east coast starting on February 5. We were without Internet for a week, and are just now resuming some semblance of normal life. BUT, I got a lot of reading done during the storm, so lots of posts will be coming. YAY!!

Remembrance of Things Past

2010-02-02T11:39:00.004-05:00

An Echo in the Bone
by Diana Gabaldon

OK, Diana Gabaldon is no Proust, but I stole the title of one of his best known works for this post, because of Gabaldon's incredibly well researched historical fiction. My friend and sister-in-law, E., got me started on Gabaldon several years ago. She said that the "Outlander" series was about a time-traveling nurse. Frankly, I was not interested. I've never been terribly drawn to science fiction, and thought that the time travel thing would get in the way of the story. Actually, though, the time travel is just a vehicle for drawing us into the narrative of some very good historical fiction.

An Echo in the Bone is the seventh in Gabaldon's "Outlander" series, about the fiery nurse Claire Fraser and her husband Jamie. Jamie and Claire have this passionate love that transcends centuries as circumstances repeatedly force them apart and bring them back together again. The series is populated by lots of other colorful characters as well. Jamie Fraser is a Scotsman who participates in the uprising against England in the 1740s, eventually going to prison for his trouble. When he and Claire find each other again, they emigrate to the American colonies.

An Echo in the Bone picks up the story as the American Revolution is getting going, and Jamie and Claire struggle to remain true to their revolutionary principles while also trying to keep their family safe. Another character, Roger MacKenzie (also a time-traveler), wrestles with his calling to the ministry. His child's illness forced him and his family to leave the 18th century and go back to the 20th century, where medical help would be available for his daughter. He copes with the question "Does a calling in one century carry over 200 years to another?"

If you have not read any other of the Outlander books, you will be lost in this one. The series definitely builds from book to book. One complaint I had about An Echo in the Bone is that the level of detail and having to remember seemingly unimportant things from two or three books back is getting a little tedious. Gabaldon has clearly done her homework - she weaves actual historical characters throughout the saga, and she has a J. K. Rowling-esque ability to pick up threads from book to book and tie them all together.

Gabaldon's books are not great literature, but they are fun and reasonably educational. If you like history, you can get into these. They do have the 18th-century penchant for violence, though. There are some pretty bloody war scenes, as well as some graphic sexual ones. Once you get drawn into the series, though, it's hard to stop. You do feel compelled to find out what happens next. Call it a guilty pleasure, which we all need.

Reverent Reader

An Unlikely Love Story

2010-01-26T11:49:00.004-05:00

South of Broad
by Pat Conroy

I suppose it is too soon to say that something will be one of my favorites of 2010, but my money is on South of Broad. This is Pat Conroy's first new novel in about 15 years, and it is just phenomenal. It is not a love story in the conventional sense of "boy meets girl, love ensues, tragedy strikes, relationship is troubled, eventually they get back together..." South of Broad is something altogether different - richer and better. There certainly are conventional man/woman love relationships woven through the story, but more than that it is a story about the enduring power of longtime friendship, and the lengths some friends will go to to protect one another. South of Broad also movingly depicts the redemption of a disappointing relationship between a boy and his mother, the ongoing tumultuous love between the same boy/man and the Catholic faith, a woman's agonizing choice between marrying Christ or marrying the ordinary human man whom she loves, and the unconditional love of a father for his troubled son. The story is also a love letter from the author to the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Conroy elegantly describes a city of incomparable beauty and grace. It was almost enough to make me want to move there, which is really saying something since I usually can't picture myself living in the Deep South.

Conroy's writing is witty, graceful, and often hilarious. He creates characters who are so real that we grieve their loss at the end of the narrative. I have never read a Conroy novel that I didn't like, but this is one of his best. It is the most overtly spiritual of his books - he sees the Church with all of her flaws and is kind to her anyway. Without beating the reader over the head with it, he shows us how the Church continues to beckon us, to call us home even with all of our anger, imperfection, and disbelief. I wondered if Conroy had ever heard that quote from St. Augustine that "the church is a whore, but she is my mother." He seems to understand the position of those of us who get frustrated with the church and our complicity with the world's sin, but we love her/us anyway. As the protagonist, Leo, describes his own rage and rebellion after his beloved brother's suicide, he says that the family priest told him "that the church was patient and would be waiting for me when I was ready to return. It was, and he was." Amen to that.

As terrific a book as this is, it is not easy to read from an emotional perspective. There are ugly pieces here - classism, homophobia, pedophilia, and promiscuity, for example. The scenes in the AIDS flophouses of San Francisco are among the most graphic and wrenching I have ever read. Conroy's real gift is pointing out the beauty that shimmers in the midst of all the ugliness the world can dole out. The instances of grace are even more powerful against the backdrops of some of the worst human sin we can imagine. Against all odds, this is a lovely, lovely book.

Reverent Reader

Reading Review - 2009

2010-01-15T10:15:00.005-05:00

At long last, I finally get to post my best of/worst of reading for 2009. The total is 78 books, 35 fiction and 41 non-fiction, and one a mix of both.

Here is the list, in the approximate order in which they were read (note - if you do not want to read through this whole list, skip to the later parts in the post. I do this part for my own record-keeping more than anything else):

War and Peace (F) by Leo Tolstoy
I Was Told There's Be Cake (NF - essays) by Sloane Crossley
Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy (NF) by Donald Kraybill, Steven Nolt, and Donald Weaver-Zercher
The World Without Us (NF) by Alan Weisman
Letter from Point Clear (F) by Dennis McFarland
A Mercy (F) by Toni Morrison
Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (NF) by Margaret Atwood
I See You Everywhere (F) by Julia Glass
Reputation: Portraits in Power (NF - essays) by Marjorie Williams
Lark and Termite (F) by Jayne Anne Phillips
The Wordy Shipmates (NF) by Sarah Vowell
At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1963-65 (NF, history) by Taylor Branch
I Survived Cancer But Never Won the Tour de France (NF) by Jim Chastain
The Double Bind (F) by Chris Bohjalian
The Magician's Nephew (F) by C.S. Lewis
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (F) by C.S. Lewis
The Horse and His Boy (F) by C.S. Lewis
Prince Caspian (F) by C.S. Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (F) by C.S. Lewis
The Silver Chair (F) by C. S. Lewis
The Last Battle (F) by C. S. Lewis
Things I've Been Silent About (NF - autobiography) by Azar Nafisi
Same Kind of Different as Me (NF) by Ron Hall and Denver Moore
Christ on Trial (NF) By Rowan Williams
Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood (NF) by Taras Grescoe
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (F) by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The Magician's Book: a Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia (NF) by Laura Miller
Serena (F) by Ron Rash
The Hour I First Believed (F) by Wally Lamb
Redeemed: Stumbling Toward God, Sanctity, and the Peace that Passes All Understanding (NF - memoir) by Heather King
Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground (NF) by Robert Kaplan
Classics for Pleasure (NF) by Michael Dirda
The Power of One (F) by Bryce Courtenay
Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another (NF) by Rowan Williams
What Happened at Vatican II (NF) by John O'Malley
Handle with Care (F) by Jodi Picoult
An Altar in the World: a Geography of Faith (NF - spirituality) by Barbara Brown Taylor
The Eyre Affair (F) by Jasper FForde
Loving Frank (F) by Nancy Horan
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 (NF) edited by Jerome Groopman
Roots (F) by Alex Haley
Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled his Greatness (NF) by Joshua Wolf Shenk
Liberty (F) by Garrison Keillor
The Year of Fog (F) by Michelle Richmond
Acedia and Me: a Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life (NF) by Kathleen Norris
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey (NF) by Candice Millard
The Pillars of the Earth (F) by Ken Follett
Sundays in America: a Year-Long Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith (NF) by Suzanne Strempek Shea
This Child Will Be Great (NF - memoir) by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
The Grail Bird: the Rediscovery of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker (NF - science) by Tim Gallagher
Little Heathens (NF - memoir) by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
Home Safe (F) by Elizabeth Berg
The Help (F) by Kathryn Stockett
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (NF - science/environment) by William McDonough and Michael Braungart
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Mortgaged Heart: a Collection of Writings by Carson McCullers (F and NF) by Carson McCullers
Holy Fools: Following Jesus with Reckless Abandon (NF) by Matthew Woodley
Those Who Save Us (F) by Jenna Blum
Olive Kitteridge (F) by Elizabeth Strout
A Walk in the Woods (NF) by Bill Bryson
Pilgrimage: Exploring a Great Spiritual Practice (NF) by Edward Sellner
The Source (F) by James A. Michener
The House at Sugar Beach (NF - memoir) by Helene Cooper
The Art of Pilgrimage: the Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred (NF) by Phil Cousineau
Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life (NF) by Matthew, Dennis and Sheila Linn
One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life (NF) by Bliss Broyard
The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World (NF) by Dominique Moisi
Blood Brothers (NF) by Elias Chacour
That Old Cape Magic (F) by Richard Russo
Exile (F) by Richard North Patterson
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (F) by Jamie Ford
Seven Types of Ambiguity (F) by Elliott Perlman
The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels (NF) by Janet Soskice
Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don't Seem to Matter But Really Do (NF) by Karen Fingerman and Melinda Blau
The Inheritance of Loss (F) by Kiran Desai
The Meaning is in the Waiting (NF) by Paula Gooden
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope in Africa (NF) by William Kamkwamba
The Toss of a Lemon (F) by Padma Viswanathan

Here are some personal favorites of mine:

Top 5 Fiction:

War and Peace (seriously, it's a great book)
Lark and Termite
The Help
Olive Kitteridge
That Old Cape Magic

Honorable Mention:

The Pillars of the Earth
Those Who Save Us
The Toss of a Lemon
Loving Frank

Top 5 non-fiction:

An Altar in the World
At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1963-65
Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope in Africa

Honorable Mention:

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008
What Happened at Vatican II

Most Hopeful: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Most Inspiring: Blood Brothers, Same Kind of Different as Me
Funniest: A Walk in the Woods
Biggest Disappointment: Sundays in America
Most Frightening: The World Without Us
Surprise Hit: The Whole Narnia series
Most theologically or spiritually broadening: Where God Happens
Authors I want to read more of: Kathryn Stockett, Jayne Anne Phillips, Ron Rash
Book that has had the most influence on my daily life: An Altar in the World
Biggest Dud: The Year of Fog
Most Educational Fiction: The Source

Please respond by sending me your favorite (and/or least favorite) reads of 2009 - I am always interested in what my friends are reading. I've already read one terrific book in 2010 - Pat Conroy's South of Broad. I will post on it in a few days.

Happy 2010, reading friends!

Reverent Reader

Playing Catch Up

2010-01-12T13:54:00.015-05:00

Yowza! I think this is the longest blog break I have taken since Ex Libris Fides was launched in 2007. It was not really intentional, I just got behind on my postings during my Israel trip, and could never seem to catch up before the end of the year. Lately, I've been procrastinating because I want to do my "year-end/new year" post with the best and worst of 2009, but did not feel like I could do that without writing posts about the remaining 2009 books. So, I just kept putting it off. I want to move on in to 2010, though, so have decided to wrap up 2009 with one post containing six micro-posts of the final 2009 books. Then, in the next couple of days, I'll get my New Year's post done and we'll be off to the races.

Here are the final 2009 books:

Seven Types of Ambiguity: (by Elliott Perlman) a compelling novel that shares the thoughts and intentions leading up to a crime, as well as its aftermath, from the perspectives of seven different people involved. Well-written, moves quickly, and reminds us that we never really know the whole story until we hear all sides.

>The Sisters of Sinai: (by Janet Soskice) a history/biography of Agnes and Margaret Smith, two Victorian-era women who devoted their adult lives to the study of ancient languages and to exploring the world looking for old biblical manuscripts. A great read about the joy of discovery and the passion for the study of scripture. Note: I recently submitted a more lengthy review of this book to The Presbyterian Outlook. It will probably appear in an upcoming issue.

Consequential Strangers: (by Karen Fingerman and Melinda Blau) an exploration of the effect of our more casual, peripheral relationships on our quality of life. People like our mail carriers, our baristas, and friends of friends can actually go a long way toward enriching our lives and helping us feel more at home in the world. It is a sociological study, but confirmed a lot of my own instincts about how we are all connected and have the potential to positively (or negatively) affect each other.

>The Inheritance of Loss: (by Kiran Desai) cryptic and forgettable. A novel about the legacy of colonialism in India. Desai poignantly describes the toll that being pulled between British and native traditions took on personal relationships in the decades immediately following independence. A worthwhile aim, but Desai writes with a detachment that makes it difficult to get into the story. I find novels about India fascinating, but liked The Toss of a Lemon much better (see below).

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: by William Kamkwamba) This is a wonderful story. One of the most hopeful and inspiring books I have read in a long time. The story is the narrative of how William, forced to drop out of school because his family could not pay the fees, figured out how to build a windmill to provide electricity for his family. William and his family are from Malawi, and his efforts brought progress and possibility to a people who were recovering from famine. Don't miss this one!

The Toss of a Lemon: (by Padma Viswanathan) another novel about India, and how one family copes with the social changes leading up to independence from British rule. It's a great story, but also very informative about the caste system and how closely tied that system is to the Hindu religion. Great characters, and the information is woven in in such a way that one never feels bogged down in didactic details. Viswanathan gives us a peek into the Indian culture in the early 20th century by letting us into the lives of a traditional Brahmin family. Very, very good book.

Tune in soon for the best and worst of 2009!

Reverent Reader

True Love Knows No Boundaries

2009-12-15T11:25:00.005-05:00

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
by Jamie Ford

If you are looking for a book that will restore your faith in the power of love to overcome barriers of hatred and mistrust, this is one you will not want to miss. Ford's writing style is low-key and fairly undramatic, but its spareness somehow works to convey the intensity of the character's emotions in a powerful way. I had a sense that Ford was holding back, intentionally not writing in the emotional style that we Americans are used to - after all, he was writing about two very reserved cultures. He does a good job in his writing of conveying how young people in the Japanese and Chinese cultures were expected to respect and obey their elders without question, and thus ended up stuffing a lot of their emotions inside.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is set in both the World War II era and in the mid-1990s, as an aging man looks back on his life and wonders what happened to his first love. As children on the verge of adolescence, Henry and Keiko are pulled between the enmity of their people (Henry is Chinese and Keiko is Japanese) and the alliance that develops between them as the only Asian kids at their school. Keiko is mercilessly mocked by the other students after Pearl Harbor. Since no one bothers to get to know Henry, they assume he is Japanese as well and are just as cruel to him. Henry and Keiko become friends as they defend each other from the taunts and occasional physical threats of their classmates.

Henry is heartbroken when Keiko's family is forced to move to an internment camp, and he keeps in touch with her for awhile. However, his controlling, Japan-hating father intervenes to put an end to the relationship. Both characters move on with their lives, but neither forgets the other.

I won't say any more about the plot, because I do not want to be a "spoiler." This is more than a typical romance novel - romance is certainly a part of it, as we see in the tender gestures that Henry and Keiko each make toward the other as they enter their teenage years. The novel also speaks a truth about the power of love beyond the initial giddy romantic feelings. Commitment and steadfastness are the factors that make love last, and the reader will be cheering for Henry and Keiko to find each other and find that happiness again.

Reverent Reader

All Viewpoints Present

2009-12-10T15:21:00.005-05:00

Exile
by Richard North Patterson

If you pick up Exile and read the first couple of chapters, you may be tempted to write it off as an "airport thriller," the term my husband and I use for the types of books that used to be available in airports. Not the highest quality of material - something you could plow through on a long flight or an afternoon on the beach and then promptly forget. Really that is no longer true in airports - some of them have great bookstores, and I end up adding a couple to my carry-on while I am browsing and waiting for my plane. Having said that, Exile initially feels like literary junk food, and I thought I would tire of it long before I reached the end.

I still would not place Patterson in the ranks of the great prose magicians of our time, but his book has more depth than I initially gave it credit for. It is not one that I normally would have picked up, but it was recommended for our group that traveled to Israel. I took it with me to read on the plane (but I did not buy it in the airport! I got it used on Amazon.com for a penny!). Exile is about a nominally American Jewish lawyer and political hopeful (David) who is asked by his former lover Hana Arif (who happens to be Palestinian) to defend her when she is accused of assassinating the Israeli Prime Minister. The Prime Minister character clearly is modeled on Yitzhak Rabin - he is someone who is trying to find a way to peace in Israel, much to the chagrin of both Israeli and Palestinian extremists. The jurisdiction of the case is complicated by the detail that the murder takes place in San Francisco.

Much of the book unfolds like a typical detective/trial story, and those parts dragged a bit for me. The book's great strength is that it s clear that Patterson has done his homework. He delves deeply into the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and develops believable characters who integrate all perspectives into the narrative in a very natural way. There was not much of the educational part of the story that was new to me, as I have read quite a bit about the Middle East, but Patterson's book would be a place for a beginner to start. Sometimes the academic works on Israel/Palestine take the human tragedy out of the picture and only focus on policy. Patterson was able to provide a lot of content while keeping a human face on both sides.

I found the ending of Exile unsatisfying, but maybe that is the point. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who may be interested in reading it, so I will just say that there were enough ambiguities left to make the reader wonder if the situation would ever be resolved in a satisfactory way. Kind of like Israel/Palestine and her ongoing struggle for security and justice.

Reverent Reader

Just Wait

2009-12-09T13:14:00.005-05:00

The Meaning Is in the Waiting
by Paula Gooder

As we move through Advent, I have been making an effort to be intentional about how I observe the season this year. My problem is that I preach and believe a message of "slow down, contemplate, listen for the voice of the Spirit, make room in your heart for the birth of Christ," but those words get crowded out in my own life by the busyness of this time at work. There are extra worship services to be planned (and extra bulletins to be written and printed), special activities, and usually some pastoral care situations that are made all the more intense by their juxtaposition with the season of merriment.

Then there are the personal, family activities - decorating the tree and the house, the baking, shopping, wrapping, etc. The issue is, I love all these parts of the season. For four weeks a year, I am a Christmas junkie. I WANT to have time for prayer and writing and reflecting, but so often find that these disciplines get crowded out by the activity. The season of waiting becomes the season of hurry up. I can do my best to do all these things with a calm and unhurried spirit, and that does help. But, that only gets us so far - at some point it becomes too much, and Advent has passed in a blur and we wonder where it went. We might be "ready" for Christmas in that our gifts are wrapped and delivered and the festive food is prepared, but we are not spiritually prepared. I am sure I am not the only one with this problem.

So this year I'm doing things a little differently. I have dropped a couple of major holiday season projects and am trying to focus on mental and spiritual preparation. The Meaning is in the Waiting is helping me with this. Gooder's book looks at waiting as a spiritual discipline, and reminds us why we need to wait for Jesus' birth, contemplating its meaning, before we jump into the celebrations. She looks at the waiting that took place in the lives of Abraham, the Old Testament prophets, John the Baptist, and Mary. The book is strengthened by her extensive knowledge of not just the Bible, but also of biblical history. Gooder ties the threads of this common theme of waiting together in an articulate and meaningful way.

The Meaning Is in the Waiting is a great resource for Advent, and I find it is helping me keep my own "freneticness" at bay. I have already used it in one of my Advent sermons, and have some ideas for ways that some of Gooder's more poetic passages could be woven into a liturgy for our Advent wreath lighting next year. Read this one if you are seeking to deepen your Advent experience this year.

The book's title comes from a poem by R.S. Thomas titled "Kneeling." Google it. You'll be glad you did.

Reverent Reader

Feelings...Nothing More than Feelings

2009-12-08T12:18:00.005-05:00

The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World
by Dominique Moisi

First of all, my title for this post is hyperbolic. Of course geopolitics is about more than how people "feel" about each other, but Moisi makes a strong case for the truth that we ignore the emotions of a people at our peril. To think that people and nations form and break relationships with each other only on the basis of policy, culture, and economics does not tell the whole story. Human beings are creatures of emotion, and (whether we realize it or not), our attitudes toward other nations or large groups of people who are different from us are affected by our most visceral feelings and emotional reactions. Individuals at the highest levels of diplomacy, as well as ordinary people living in a diverse society, would do well to remember the importance of emotion in our interactions with each other.

Moisi focuses on three emotions that are prevalent in our world today: hope, fear, and humiliation. He writes that "the reason I have chosen these three emotions is that they are closely linked to the notion of confidence, which is the defining factor in how nations and people address the challenges they face as well as how they relate to one another." He looks at different nations with a preponderance of one of these emotions and describes how that particular emotion is affecting their political, economic, and diplomatic behaviors. Two countries that are experiencing a great deal of hope at this point are India and China, largely because they are becoming much more significant players on the worldwide economic scene. Many countries in the Islamic world, including Iran and Pakistan and Afghanistan, have experienced such humiliation in recent decades that their relations with "first world" countries are clouded by these experiences. Surprisingly for some, the United States, Japan, and France are countries that are fearful at this time, as they face having to share the prime spots on the world stage with more ascendant nations.

Moisi ends his book with some hopeful ideas for what can be done to repair tense and fractured relationships in the world. Because he is French, he can offer advice to the United States (at least to some of us) without having his own patriotism questioned. It helps, I think, if we can at least be aware that emotions are a factor in all relationships, from the simplest (dealing with the fewest number of people) to the most complex (those between cultures and/or nations). I also would love to see a study done on the tie-ins between spirituality and emotion, because these two are so interconnected that one surely must influence the other in ways that we are only beginning to grasp.

I close with a quote from the book that makes a great deal of sense to me: "The interdependent, integrated world in which we live is simply too difficult to grasp and understand fully. It is a question of both quantity and quality: We humans have never been simultaneously so numerous, so diverse, and so varied in our lifestyles, values, and circumstances. It is tempting to try to escape such complexity by simply choosing to ignore it. Hence the appeal of fundamentalist religions and extreme ideologies, both of which reduce the world's complexity to the simplicity of slogans, catchphrases, and inflexible commands." God help us all, and may we teach our children to move from fear of "the other" to tolerance and even love and respect.

Reverent Reader

That Old Russo Magic

2009-12-03T10:28:00.005-05:00

That Old Cape Magic
by Richard Russo

This guy just does it over and over again. I was first enchanted by his book Nobody's Fool in the early 1990s, and have read everything he has written since. He is just a wonderful writer, with observations about the human condition that are dead on. His comic scenes are hilarious without being slapstick, and his tragic ones can bring you to tears.

At its most basic level, That Old Cape Magic takes us into the heart and mind of a lonely little boy who feels like a stranger in his own household. As a grown man (the story is told largely through flashbacks), he grapples with the alienation he felt (and continues to feel) from his parents, while at the same time longing to understand them and feel connected in some way. The story also is about the roads not taken and the regrets that we may have in hindsight while at the same time gaining an appreciation for the gifts and graces that HAVE occurred due to the roads that we DID take. It is about a marriage that is faltering and (for a change) two people who care enough to patch it up.

The story also is indicative of the power of place in one's spiritual and emotional well-being, but also how we have to make an effort to cultivate our own well being even when we are not in our "best" geographic place. The main character (Griffin) is the child of parents who had an awful marriage, one characterized by infidelity, constant cutting remarks towards each other, and eventually divorce. Both of these people are truly morally and spiritually bankrupt. The only place where this couple felt happy together was on Cape Cod. Griffin looked forward to their summer visits there as the best times of his childhood. Later, of course, he came to realize that even the beach visits were plagued by his parents' problems. While it is true that they loved the Cape, they also wouldn't let themselves be happy anywhere else. Even their love for the Cape was clouded by their bitterness that they could not afford to buy their own home there and live there permanently.

That Old Cape Magic does not have the emotional impact of Empire Falls or the gut-splitting humor of Straight Man, but it is a wonderful book just the same. It is more understated than some of Russo's work, but takes us inside the sorrows and joys, regrets and thanksgivings, that people develop when they have decided to go the distance together. If you are a Russo fan, read it - you won't be disappointed. If you are not, this latest of his novels is a good place to start.

Reverent Reader

Who Are We?

2009-12-01T13:33:00.004-05:00

One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life, a Story of Race and Family Secrets
by Bliss Broyard

The author of this book was interviewed on NPR a couple of years ago, and I was immediately interested in her story. Bliss Broyard's father was a nationally known literary critic, Anatole Broyard. Shortly before he died in the early 1990s, Bliss and her brother learned that her father was not of Italian descent, as he had always claimed. It turned out that he was part black, that his family was descended from New Orleans Creoles. His heritage was mixed, and her extended family turned out to be a diverse bunch with skin tones as varied as the proverbial rainbow. Bliss Broyard was not upset about her father's race, but she was bothered that he had hidden this truth from his children. One Drop is the story of her tracing her family history, meeting many of her father's relatives, and discovering more of her own identity in the process.

The most interesting parts of One Drop to me were the explorations of the Broyard family's past - she had to do a lot of detective work to figure out the complicated history of the family and how her father got the coloration that was ambiguous enough to allow him to "pass." Broyard also effectively explores the phenomenon of passing - when a "black" person slips unnoticed into the "white" world, usually leaving behind friends and family. Anatole Broyard effectively cut himself off from his entire extended family and had only sporadic, clandestine contact with his family of origin. In making the decision to cross over, he effectively deprived his children of the gift of family. Bliss Broyard's examinations of race relations in America, especially before the Civil Rights movement, cover ground that has been covered many times before. The information is no less wrenching, but it was not new to me. The book's great strength is its exploration of how much race plays into a person's identity. Broyard also effectively raises the question of how much we can ever really know about another person, if that person chooses to hide major pieces of who they are, be it race, sexual orientation, or any other piece of our makeup as a human being.

Her scrutiny of her father's public and private lives in many ways left his daughter with more questions. If he was Creole, didn't that make her part Creole as well? Was it too late to embrace that part of her heritage? How could she do so without seeming like a poser? She also learned that a number of her father's close friends and colleagues had known about his racial identity, and it troubled her that he had felt freer to share that part of himself with them but not his children. Some of One Drop got a little tedious, but overall I thought it was a thoughtful, touching, honest look at the question "Who are we?"

Clearly, Anatole Broyard was a complicated person, and his struggles with racial identity were likely all the more stressful because during his lifetime he was a well known public persona. But anyone could face these questions - how much of who we are is our ethnic background? What exactly IS race when the lines are so blurry that some people cross them several times during their lifetime? Will we reach a time when race is not even a factor in someone's identity because we are all so mixed? Would it be a good thing or a bad thing for us all to be so racially intertwined that we do not have a sense of distinct groups anymore? I do not have answers to these questions, but I am grateful to Bliss Broyard for raising them.

One of Bliss's aunts, when Bliss was struggling with the question of who she was, responded "You're Bliss. That's it. That's all." I would disagree - that is not all there is to it. In the midst of all these ambiguities and questions about who we are, we can all take comfort in WHOSE we are. We all belong to God, and I pray the day will come when we treat each other as such, so people like Anatole Broyard do not feel they have to hide.

Reverent Reader

Contemplating Gratitude

2009-11-24T10:50:00.007-05:00

Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life
by Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and Matthew Linn

This is a simple, easy to read book that will put you right in the mood for thanksgiving - and not just the fourth Thursday of November, but all the time. Sleeping with Bread is a look at an old spiritual practice known as the examen. The examen is a discipline wherein people share with each other in an intentional way the things for which they are most thankful, as well as the things for which they are NOT thankful. The idea of the examen is to help us keep track of the parts of life that are enriching and renewing and strengthening, and also the parts that are draining and wearying. If we can identify what it is that truly gives us life (and what does not), ideally we can focus more on those parts and not allow the draining parts to take over our day. The examen can help us set priorities and make choices.

Sleeping with Bread is yet another one of the books that I read in preparation for my Israel trip, and I practiced it on the trip by writing my gratitudes (and sometimes my ingratitudes) into my journal. I have continued to practice it in writing since my return. At some point I would like to practice it orally with my family, or perhaps some other small group. Journaling is a good spiritual discipline, but something tells me that the examen works best when articulated out loud. Our family (without knowing it) has often done an informal version of the examen at the dinner table, when we all check in and share highs and lows from our day. As our children get older, though, I would like for them to get into the habit of daily spiritual practice. I did not have much of a contemplative life growing up, something that is not really anyone's fault (certainly not my family or church), I just did not know how rich the interior life could be. I would like to model a life of prayer and reverence and gratitude for my kids, while at the same time leaving them room to develop their own ways of relating to God. Probably a dilemma faced by countless parents!

Sleeping with Bread is a simple but profound discussion of a simple but profound practice. I can see it being used in small group ministries in congregations, or as a family devotional practice. Its focus on thankfulness and expressing gratitude make it a worthwhile book to read to prepare for the secular holiday of Thanksgiving or the upcoming church season of Advent.

Happy Thanksgiving, reading friends! I am thankful for each and every one of you.

Reverent Reader

Chickens Come Home to Roost

2009-11-19T11:01:00.005-05:00

The House at Sugar Beach
by Helene Cooper

Given that several Liberians are members of my congregation, and that the former Liberian ambassador to the United States was a member of E.'s congregation (she passed away a couple of weeks ago after a battle with cancer), I was interested in this memoir as soon as it came out. The more I learn about the strife in Liberia during the last decades, the more I realize that the violence and hatred coulld have been prevented. The seeds were planted in the country's founding. Given that the free blacks and former slaves sent to (the place that became) Liberia were practically given permission by the American Colonization Society (ACS) to displace the indigenous Liberian people and to think of themselves as entitled elites, the country was set up to undergo civil war and ethnic tension for generations.

Helene Cooper is a member of the class of Liberians known as "Congo people" - she is a descendant of the American blacks who were sent there by the ACS to become the ruling class. She had a privileged childhood, and her family was very comfortable materially. The House at Sugar Beach tells the story of her childhood and early adolescence in Liberia, and her emergency move to the United States and separation from her mother that occurred when she was barely a teenager. Although Cooper is now a journalist and makes her home permanently in the US, she has never lost her ties to Liberia. She still grieves about the atrocities that took place during the nightmare years of Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor, the two military dictators who claimed that they were restoring power to the ethnic Liberians, but actually were corrupt monsters who would resort to awful violence to win and keep power for themselves.

What struck me about Cooper's memoir is her 20/20 hindsight about her own naivete as a child. She writes about how it never occurred to her that there was inherent injustice in the fact that her family lived in a beautiful home on the beach, and her parents owned property and had easy access to government jobs, while native Liberians were barely scratching out a living. The schools did not teach the privileged children about how many of their ancestors had moved in a century before and begun treating the native people with the same contempt that white Americans had heaped upon black Americans. When the class and racial tensions finally erupted in the 1980s, many of the "Congo people" had no clue what it was all about.
They too paid a price for an unfair system - some lost their lives, and many lost their homes and ties to their family and country.

I really don't blame Cooper for her cluelessness, and I admire her honesty in acknowledging it. We all have parts of our lives and our collective past that we would rather not think about. Society enables the privileged in our denial of history's tragedies (and our own complicity in those tragedies). Books like The House at Sugar Beach call us to examine our own lives and ask ourselves some hard questions. Upon whose back do we build our comfortable lives? What injustices are lying beneath the surface? Are there things we should see that we make an effort (conscious or unconscious) not to?

This is an engaging read that reminds us of the tragedy that befell Liberia, but also reminds us that we all had a hand in that terrible situation - Liberians did not just wake up one day and decide to start slaughtering each other. There is hope in the book, too - hope that the world can learn from what happened in Liberia take steps to prevent such a thing from happening again. There is a new day dawning there - most Liberians are excited about the democratic election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as their president. I hope US policymakers will support her efforts to restore Liberia to peace and economic viability.

Reverent Reader

Details, Major Details

2009-11-17T13:36:00.004-05:00

The Source
by James Michener

This was yet another of the books that I read in preparation for my Israel trip (yes, I am aware that I am hideously behind on my blogging). The Source is a bit of a slog, but I ended up being really glad to have read it. It is the story of an archaeological tell, but so much more than that. Michener introduces us to the present day characters (well, sort of present day - the book was published in 1964), and a few artifacts that they find on a dig in Israel a short distance north of Jerusalem. Then, he takes us to the bottom of the tell and works us up through the 15 strata that the team has uncovered. He tells the story about the fictional town (Makor) at the time of each layer, and helps us see the way things developed in the cultural, religious, and intellectual evolution of the town and its inhabitants.

Michener must have employed a small army of researchers, because his historical novels are rich with minute detail. I randomly fact-checked a few things on the Internet, just to see how much the historical research could be trusted, and was pleased to find that he is amazingly accurate. The Source is not only a good read for the history to be found there, but also a reminder that there have been times in history when Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived together peacefully, and there is reason to hope that it could happen again. Likewise, all three groups have been capable of outrageous brutality to one another at some point in history, and have no room to be self righteous when dealing with the other. Humanity's treatment of those who are different, as well as their horrific creativity in finding ways to hurt and kill each other, never fail to astound and sadden.

The Source is based on the real tell of Megiddo, which we visited on our pilgrimage. Michener is very explicit about the conception and engineering of an elaborate water system that enabled the residents of Makor to have access to water from a well outside the city walls even when the city was under siege. At Megiddo, we got to see the real thing, and even walk to the bottom of the water tunnel. That was an amazing experience, and as I walked those steps I silently thanked James Michener and his team for bringing the site to life before I ever set foot in Israel.

Reverent Reader

Amazing Man

2009-11-13T06:50:00.005-05:00

Blood Brothers
by Elias Chacour

I had read this book about six years ago, but reread it just before my trip to Israel, when I found out that our pilgrimage group was going to get to meet Elias Chacour. Chacour's story is a real tribute to the power of faith to keep us from hating, and a source of hope for eventual reconciliation between Israeli Jews and Arabs. Chacour's family are Palestinian Christians who had lived in a Galilean village called Biram for several generations. In 1948, they were among the thousands of Palestinians who were thrown off their land when the state of Israel was formed. Chacour followed the beliefs and advice of his father, a simple Christian man who stuck wholeheartedly to his faith in the power of love and forgiveness. His father always said that Jews and Arabs were "blood brothers," because of their mutual ancestor Abraham. He (and now his son) maintain that they are called to love each other and live together in peace. Chacour has suffered at the hands of the Zionist movement, but nevertheless also recognizes the suffering of the Jewish people and wants for the two groups to find a way to live together in peace. He sees the humanity of his Jewish brothers and sisters, and is able to recall a time when they lived together in peace with their Palestinian neighbors. Against all odds, he sincerely believes this could happen again.

Blood Brothers is the story of Chacour's personal journey from refugee to peacemaker. He was fortunate enough to escape the refugee camps and be sent to an orphanage to study. He later went to Paris to prepare for the priesthood. It is a narrative of hope as well as realism. The original version of the book was published in 1984, but an updated version came out earlier in this decade (around 2003, I think). In light of some of the horrific events that have happened in the past 10 years, the book is worth reading again even if you read its original version. In the middle of all the demonizing of "the other" we must heed the voices of those who recognize the humanity of all people and who sincerely want all cultures and faiths to thrive. Dr. Chacour is one of these people.

A little over a week ago, our pilgrimage group met with Dr. Chacour at his school, the Mar Elias Educational Institute, in Ibillin. He founded the school to bring together Christian, Jewish, and Muslim children in hopes that they will grow up knowing and understanding one another and help bring an end to the tragic cycle of violence that has characterized Jewish/Muslim relations for so long. In addition, Chacour is an incredibly brilliant man - he speaks 11 languages fluently! In 1995, he was named Archbishop of Israel. He has become an internationally recognized voice for peace and justice. The two hours that he spent with us were among the most inspiring and hopeful of my adult life.

In spite of his accomplishments and renown, Dr. Chacour is a quiet and gracious man with a gentle sense of humor. With tremendous humility, he acted like he had all the time in the world to sit and talk with our group, when there are endless demands on his time. He is one of those persons who, when you are in his presence, you feel as if you are in the presence of grace itself. There were two things he said that especially stuck with me. One, when a member of his group asked him how he keeps "the fire" for peace going in his own heart, especially in the face of so much opposition and discouragement, he responded "I do not possess the fire. The fire possesses me." In other words, he cannot NOT continue to work, pray, and agitate for non-violence. Secondly, as he closed his remarks to us, he looked each of us in the eye and said "I believe in every one of you. I spend this time with you because I HAVE to believe that each one of you can make a difference in this world."

Wow. I hope he is right. I've thought a lot about that and will continue to pray that I find my own way to make the world a better place. We need more like this man.

Reverent Reader

All My Bags Are Packed...

2009-10-22T15:52:00.004-04:00

The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seekers' Guide to Making Travel Sacred
by Philip Cousineau

OK, OK, my bags are not packed yet, but I AM ready to go. The laundry is not done, the cash is not withdrawn from the account, the notes to the kids have not yet been written. BUT, in spite of some persistent worries about things over which I have no control, I do feel spiritually prepared for my trip to Israel, which begins in six days. I have read (and am reading) the suggested materials, am praying for wisdom and openness along the journey, and am meeting early next week with one of my spiritual mentors for a blessing. I'm ready.

The more I read about pilgrimage, the more I realize that I have never experienced anything remotely like it. I'm so grateful that our group had an orientation retreat at which we got to discuss and internalize some of the spiritual dynamics of this trip. I have participated in numerous trips that were meaningful in terms of learning a lot, countless relaxing veg-out vacations, and multiple mission trips that altered the way I look at life. Never before, though, have I traveled specifically to enhance my own contemplative life. I can't wait.

Cousineau has made a career out of pilgrimage. The Art of Pilgrimage is a more serious, more focused version of the blockbuster bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. Not totally, but there are parallels. Cousineau has traveled all over the world, visiting sacred sites, guiding others to those sites, and doing what he can to make the experience of pilgrimage more meaningful for those who choose to participate. The Art of Pilgrimage is, in my opinion, a helpful read before ANY trip. Even one that is not specifically a pilgrimage can be made more joyous and spiritually significant if the traveler is intentional about how he/she participates. Cousineau uses anecdotes of his own travels (and those of others) to illustrate his points, and he is full of practical suggestions for the ways we can make ourselves more open to the presence of the sacred.

One of his admonitions is to be in the moment - to not get too riled up about delays or unexpected changes of plans. Instead, he suggests that we see every twist and turn as an opportunity to spiritually stretch ourselves and perhaps to make connections with someone whom we ordinarily would not notice or pay attention to. This struck home with me. Too often, I am just in too much of a hurry. I am too busy getting to the next place to be where I am right now. So, my commitment to myself for the two weeks of this trip is to do my best to be there. I know I will miss my husband and kids, and the things that I am worried about will not magically disappear. I understand, though, that this trip is a gift, a series of gifts. I intend to unwrap the presence!

Reverent Reader

Walk this Way

2009-10-20T14:00:00.003-04:00

A Walk in the Woods
by Bill Bryson

I swear, Bill Bryson could write about the mating habits of fruit flies and make the finished product interesting and hilarious. This one of his has been on my list of things to read for years and I finally got to it. Interestingly, I read it just before immersing myself in a lot of writing about pilgrimage and journeying, but in retrospect I see that Bryson's adventures on the Appalachian Trail have a lot of the characteristics of pilgrimage. His desire to hike the trail certainly did not come from a need for a relaxing vacation. The yearning seemed to come more from a hope to experience something that would move him and restore his spirit in some way. He also used the seemingly endless miles that he hiked (many of them with his out-of-shape buddy, Katz) as a chance to test his own endurance and consider what is truly important (especially when making decisions about what to carry in a backpack).

Bryson pokes fun at other hikers (especially know it alls), but reserves his most wry observations for his descriptions of himself. The ups and downs that he and Katz go through in their relationship are indicative not only of the tensions that develop between participants in an intense physical experience, but the inevitable gratings and irritations that we are going to go through with anyone with whom we choose to hike the long-term path. It is also significant that the two guys work through those moments - rifts do not have to be permanent and irreparable.

I started the book under the impression that Bryson was one of the few who had hiked the whole Appalachian Trail - a feat very few accomplish. It turned out that Bryson and Katz opted out of a major chunk of the Tennessee trail, and they also did not make it to the northernmost point, located in Maine. In the end, though, that did not matter. They did what they could. They experienced something that enriched their lives and their relationship to one another. Bryson went on to write a book that educates anyone who cares to read it about the history of the AT, the need to preserve it, and the necessity of pushing our bodies and stretching our spirits if we are to be fully alive. Pick this one up and read it. It's worth the trip, and may give you impetus to pull those hiking boots out of your closet.

Reverent Reader

Howdy Pilgrim

2009-10-16T13:23:00.004-04:00

Pilgrimage: Exploring a Great Spiritual Practice
by Edward C. Selzer

This was recommended at the orientation retreat that we had a couple of weeks ago for my upcoming pilgrimage to Israel that I have told some of you about. The retreat was great - the 20 participants had a chance to get acquainted, and we also got to know our two leaders a little bit. There was some planning for the trip and some travel tips - what to take, how much luggage is acceptable, etc. Thankfully, though, a major portion of the time was spent looking at pilgrimage as a spiritual practice and discussing how we can make the experience more meaningful.

The orientation made me more excited than ever about the trip, and as soon as I got home I dived into this (free!) new book. Pilgrimage is not great literature, and it is not the definitive writing on the topic, but it is a good way to become familiar with pilgrimage as a discipline and as a mindset. The book's bibliography also suggests numerous other resources for those seeking spiritual growth in a journey to the unknown place.

Pilgrimage looks at the history and practice of sacred travel in all of the major faith traditions. That was fascinating - I knew that it was important in the heritage of the three monotheistic faiths, but loved learning how pilgrimage takes such a major place in the spiritual lives of Buddhists and Hindus as well (plus many others). The book is more than a travel guide - it made me want to expand my horizons even beyond Israel. I'm already thinking of how I can someday get to some of the other renowned pilgrimage sites.

Pilgrimage is also a great resource for movies and novels that have a pilgrimage theme. The closing two chapters are basically annotated lists one is a list of 40 famous pilgrims, where they went and why their experience was important. The other lists 40 major pilgrimage sites - why they are important, who tends to go there, and what one can expect upon arrival. I found myself just wanting to start at the top of the list and work my way down, backpack over my shoulder.

I feel blessed by the Israel pilgrimage already, namely because I am gaining a sense of travel as a spiritual experience that can transcend ordinary life, rather than as a vacation, an educational opportunity, or a mission trip. Those are all good things, but travel for pilgrimage is different. I am so excited to experience it! Stay tuned...

Reverent Reader

An Unforgettable Character

2009-10-14T11:10:00.003-04:00

Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout

This collection of short stories won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction several months ago, deservedly so in my opinion. I like short stories, but have to admit that I have difficulty retaining them. With the exception of a few of Tolstoy's, I usually read short stories, enjoy them, and promptly forget them. For some reason my memory does not hang onto them like it does a novel or some other narrative. My theory is that there is just not enough time to bond with the characters of the short story before it is over. The reader just forms an idea of who each person is, and the narrative ends. If we are reading a collection, we are immediately on to something else, a whole other story with different people. Strout has dealt with that problem in a clever way by having Olive Kitteridge be the common thread that runs through each of these stories. Sometimes she is a principal character, other times she is peripheral, but she is always there. Her presence ties the whole collection together and gives it an anchor. It's a stroke of genius.

Olive is a complicated person - sometimes you love her and sometimes you want to smack her. She is caustic and sarcastic with her gentle spirited husband, Henry, but when he is debilitated by a stroke in a later story, she tends to him with fierce loyalty and devotion. She can also be unexpectedly compassionate with other characters, such as the anorexic girl in "Starving," and Marlene in "Basket of Trips."

There are times when , in spite of her mean streak, the reader feels empathy for her. I wanted to cry in "Little Bursts," when she is so proud of the dress she has made for her son's wedding, until she hears her new daughter-in-law whispering about how hideous it is. Also in "Security" when she totally screws up the visit with her son - she knows it but somehow cannot stop herself. There is something about Olive - her desire to connect with other people combined with her inability to do so, that makes us forgive her mistakes and recognize ourselves in them. One has the sense throughout that she is trying - she desperately wants connection and relationship, but seems to sabotage herself just when things are looking up. At the same time, her perceptiveness and way of discreetly reaching out to hurting people reminded me of my dear grandmother Omie. In "real" life, Omie did not have Olive's edge, but I could see her playing Olive in a movie.

The last story, "The River," leaves us on a hopeful note, but the book is certainly not all sunshine and happiness. Instead, Strout has done an amazing job of balancing the moments of despair with the instances of grace that characterize all of life. This is a short story collection that I will likely return to over and over again. In addition to creating this compelling character, Strout just writes well. She creates sentences and descriptions that are dead on. This collection is worth savoring several times.

Reverent Reader

Belated Blog Birthday!

2009-10-13T09:14:00.003-04:00

Many apologies to my Ex Libris Fides friends - I have not posted lately for several reasons. My dad has been seriously ill and I made a quick trip to Oklahoma last week to spend some time with him and my mom. Also, have been busy preparing for a pilgrimage to Israel that will take place from October 28 - November 11. I'm sooooo looking forward to the adventure and its potential for spiritual renewal. The good news is, I've read some great stuff about Israel and also about the ancient practice of pilgrimage while I've been getting ready, so stay tuned.

And today I get to take a three-year-old to the doctor with a juicy nose and goopy eyes. Sigh. But, I'll probably be able to get back into the swing of blogging in the next couple of days. There will be another hiatus while I'm away, but will give you all a heads up about that.

Anyway, somewhere in all the chaos I missed my own blog birthday! It passed quietly by on Saturday, October 10. Welcome to the "Terrible Twos," Ex Libris Fides!

Reverent Reader

Done Better Elsewhere

2009-10-01T11:40:00.005-04:00

Holy Fools: Following Jesus with Reckless Abandon
by Matthew Woodley

Holy Fools is a look at the early desert mystics and the way faith permeated their entire existence, rather than being a dusty, boring faith that sits on a shelf until Sunday morning. It's worth reading, but Rowan Williams covers quite a bit of the same material in his book Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another. It's not that Woodley doesn't have good information, but he seems to have a little more personal ego involved than Williams does. Sometimes a writer protests too much, if that makes sense. He refers over and over again to his own brokenness, and makes the point with tiresome repetition that even as a clergy person he is constantly in need of grace (duh). I am all for humility, but the paradox is that when someone overdoes it, it becomes it's own kind of ego thing. "See how I flagellate myself...see how humble I am...truly I am prostrated at the foot of the cross." Really? Also, Woodley just is not the writer that Williams is. His sentences are not poetry disguised as prose. They do not sing.

Having said that, and in spite of that, Holy Fools has got some good stuff in it. His chapters on surrender and discernment are especially engaging. I like his summation of the early desert fathers' approach to discernment: "Their sense of discernment was informed by two very earthy qualities: God-given common sense and humane balance." Hear hear. Sometimes I encounter people who seem to think that the option that fills you with the most dread and despair must be what God is calling you to do, because after all aren't we supposed to surrender our desires to God's? While I would agree that the road to which God calls us is often not the easiest one, or the one that is initially the most attractive, I also do not think that God wants us to be miserable. We need the balance that Woodley writes about to find the middle ground between our own gifts and affinities and the place where God needs those gifts and affinities. Where those two things intersect is probably the point to which God is calling us.

Woodley's writing is characterized by a gentle humor, which reminds us that joy is supposed to be a major piece of this journey. Lots of his material has been covered before, but some messages bear repeating.

Reverent Reader

The Legacy of Shame

2009-09-25T13:00:00.005-04:00

Those Who Save Us
by Jenna Blum

First off, let me apologize for letting my blog get outdated. I have been away for a few days at an orientation retreat for a pilgrimage that I will be taking to Israel in a few weeks. One of the emphases of the pilgrimage is for pastors to unplug and take a couple of weeks to renew ourselves at the sacred sites of our faith. I can't wait! In the spirit of that breaking away, I did not try to blog while on the retreat. Since I don't have a laptop or a Blackberry, it's not as hard for me to unplug as it is for others. I'll remind my readers when the time comes, but Ex Libris Fides will go dormant while I am on the pilgrimage. We will be staying in hotels that have some computers, but the time to use them is apparently very expensive. Our travel group is going to have a blog about what we are doing each day. If you are interested in following the trip, let me know and I will send you the link when I have it.

Those Who Save Us is a disturbing story to read. It's the second book I've read in the past year about the holocaust time from the German perspective - how terrified many of them were of the Nazis, and the desperate measures that some of them took to survive. The moments of grace are apparent when Germans risked their own lives to help the persecuted Jews. Not all Germans resisted the Nazis, of course. They would never have come to power if there had not been plenty of people who were willing to let them do what they did, and many eagerly participated in the atrocities. There was always, though, a remnant of people who held on to their sanity and who did what they could to help their suffering neighbors.

The relationship around which the whole story turns is Anna's relationship with a high-ranking SS officer names Horst. She becomes his mistress so that she can get more food and stave off starvation for herself and her daughter. The officer also provides a small amount of protection from the madness of the Nazi forces. However, once the war is over Anna has to live with what she did, and the shame never relinquishes its hold on her. She is so consumed with self hatred that she believes herself to be unworthy of love, and she closes herself off from meaningful relationships with her daughter, the man she married, and even potential friends.

How high a price do we pay for our sins? How long do we have to bear the burden of them? I suppose by almost any definition Anna committed sins in her struggle to get through World War II alive, but she also risked her own life over and over again to carry bread to Jews in a nearby concentration camp. Does one offset the other? Unfortunately, Anna had no sense of the possibility of redemption to be found in Christ or in any kind of faith tradition. She initially became disgusted with the German Protestant church for their complicity with the Third Reich (with a few notable exceptions like Bonhoeffer), and never returns to faith or relationship with God.

I realize that Anna is a fictitious character, but I wonder how many of us do what she did. She felt justified in renouncing faith and never going back to it, but I wonder how many people use that renunciation as a way to avoid having to face their own shame before God. If Anna turned her back on God, she did not have to deal with what she had done in the context of who God asks us to be. Sadly, she at the same time forfeited the experience of grace and the possibility of lifegiving reconciliation. That, to me, is what makes the book so sad.

Those Who Save Us is worth reading, but it will stay with you in uncomfortable ways. Sometimes that is a good thing.

Reverent Reader

She Gets It

2009-09-17T11:05:00.003-04:00

The Mortgaged Heart: A Collection of Writings
by Carson McCullers

As a kid, I read a children's historical novel called A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver (anyone remember it?) by E. L. Konigsberg. It was about the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and began with Eleanor and a couple of other figures from her life sitting on a cloud in heaven discussing their pasts. They also talk about watching other people get admitted to heaven. One says "They just let an English teacher up. He made a beeline for Shakespeare." Another says "They all do." The response then is "I know, but it's still fun to watch." Of course I doubt that this is really how one's entry into heaven really is, but if it did turn out that way, when I got through the gate I would first drop by Carson McCullers' cottage for a cup of tea. There's a lot I would like to talk about with her.

A few years ago, a St. Matthew friend recommended Carson McCullers' debut novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, published when she was only 22 years old. I read it and was moved by McCullers' articulation of the interior loneliness that so many people experience. I mean, she just nailed it. She especially seems to understand the angst that adolescent girls have to live through. She understands them, which is also evident in her later novel The Member of the Wedding. Lonely Hunter is on my short list of favorites, and every time I read something by Carson McCullers, my esteem for her and her work grows.

The Mortgaged Heart is the title of a poem that McCullers wrote, and also of this collection of short stories, essays, and magazine articles that her sister Margarita put together after Carson's death in 1967. Carson McCullers had a life that was in many ways tragic. Her health was always fragile - she began having strokes in her 20s and by the age of 31 was paralyzed on her entire left side. She married the same man twice, a fellow writer named James Reeves McCullers, and their union was apparently a turbulent one. In one of her essays, McCullers describes the primary theme of her writing as "spiritual isolation," and reading through these short stories shows that theme to be pervasive. Again, she just seems to understand the sense of waiting and wanting to be heard and understood that we all feel at times (if we are honest enough to admit it). All the short stories are good, but "The Haunted Boy" just killed me. "Who has Seen the Wind?" was another gut wrencher.

McCuller's essays on war and peace, the writing process, and the meaning of Christmas are all excellent as well. In one of her Christmas writings, she describes the momentary deflation of learning that her parents were really Santa Claus. She says that at first this was sad for her, but then she began to see the bright side of it "At first I had, in my childish mind, thought that Santa Claus and Jesus must be related because they were so intertwined in the holiday. But if my parents were Santa Claus, then that must mean that they were related to Jesus, and that was wonderful too." Amen to that.

Reverent Reader

He Still Belongs to the Ages

2009-09-15T14:32:00.004-04:00

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Honestly, these boneheads who call themselves leaders today could take a lesson from Lincoln (are you listening, Joe Wilson?). The more I read about Lincoln, the more obsessed I become with him, and the more I want to read about his life and character. Team of Rivals is not a traditional biography, although it spans Lincoln's life. Instead, it is a thorough, well-researched look at Lincoln's relationships with his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860. The book show us Lincoln's young life and development, but also that of William Henry Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates. Goodwin does an amazing job of giving us mini-biographies of each of these presidential hopefuls, and each one was an interesting and brilliant person in his own right.

The book also devotes a lot of attention to Lincoln's relationship with Edwin Stanton, a rather arrogant man who had looked down on Lincoln and majorly dissed him when they were supposed to work together on a court case in the 1850s. In spite of that shaky beginning, Lincoln eventually appointed Stanton to the vitally important position of Secretary of War. Stanton developed tremendous respect for Lincoln and the two became close friends. When Lincoln drew his last breath in the boardinghouse across the street from Ford's Theater early in the morning of April 14, 1865, it was Stanton who uttered the now famous words "Now he belongs to the ages."

Lincoln possessed an incredible capacity to be magnanimous to those who were uncharitable toward him, and he was able to rise above the sharp elbows of political life. He seemed to almost never take criticism personally, and would listen if someone challenged his point of view. When he assumed the office of POTUS, he gave his three closest rivals important positions in his Cabinet, because he believed they were the best ones for the jobs. Henry Seward was made Secretary of State, Edward Bates Attorney General, and Salmon Chase was Secretary of the Treasury. Lincoln had his hands full not only with developing his own relationships with these stubborn and (sometimes) arrogant men, he also frequently had to referee between them and soothe the ire brought about by their competition with one another. He steered the ship through one of the worst periods in our history, and brought out the best in each member of the team.

The person who had to have been the most major challenge for Lincoln was Salmon P. Chase. Chase felt entitled to be POTUS, and believed that the prize should have been his, even though he had made enemies in his career because he was so ruthless and unforgiving. While serving as Lincoln's Treasury Secretary (which he did most capably), he began a bid to unseat Lincoln in the 1964 election. Lincoln dealt with all this with an enviable amount of equanimity and good nature. He seemed to sense that Chase would hang himself on his own rope, but still if it were me I would have a difficult time not responding in anger. Lincoln not only did not get angry, he recognized Chase's abilities and appreciated them. After all of Chase's shenanigans, Lincoln appointed him to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the beginning of his second term. Talk about gracious.

Team of Rivals helped me to understand even more the mystique that surrounds Abraham Lincoln. He was a truly unique person and president. He was not without his personal ambitions and ego issues (but is any of us, really?), yet was somehow able to remain focused and clear-headed under unbelievable pressure. The grace that he showed to his Cabinet members also extended to his military generals (even when they undermined him and the war effort, as General George McClellan did for several months), his family, and even random people stopping in at the White House to seek his help (clearly, things were different then). I believe (as I have written elsewhere) that the process of Reconstruction would have gone so much more smoothly if he had not been assassinated.

It seems serendipitous that there is so much material available about Lincoln right now - we could benefit from our leaders taking a page from his playbook. President Obama displayed some similar magnanimity when he appointed his former rival Hilary Clinton to be Secretary of State, but his example has yet to be picked up by his political opponents. Moreover, his detractors are pulling out all the stops to undermine his work and lower the level of civility in public discourse. I am dismayed by the fear mongering and outright manipulation of the truth that is supposed to pass for dialogue and debate right now. I wonder if Lincoln watches what goes on and shakes his head in sorrow. I imagine him thinking "They can do better than this. They are all Americans." He would be right.

Reverent Reader

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, REDESIGN

2009-09-08T11:16:00.006-04:00

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
by William McDonough and Michael Braungart

"This book is not a tree." That's the title to the Introduction of this interesting, thought-inducing, and ultimately hopeful book that calls us to consider how we can move as a people from being "less bad" in terms of our relationship to the environment, to a state of actively promoting its health. Cradle to Cradle contains no wood or cotton fibers. Instead, it is printed on a synthetic paper made of plastic resins and is considered a "technical nutrient" - meaning that its materials can be broken down and used over and over again in an infinite industrial cycle that does not cause any chemical damage to the environment.

William McDonough is an architect, and Michael Braungart is a chemist. They have both devoted their careers to figuring out how to design and produce products that promote the planet's health - they were both involved in a completely "green" building at Oberlin College that has gained worldwide attention. What came clear to me me when I read Cradle to Cradle is that the old mantra of "reduce, reuse, recycle" will only get us so far, and not very far at that. McDonough and Braungart point out that recycling substances like plastics and cardboard usually results in a less durable, inferior project from the original. Likewise, reusing something only postpones its eventual destination of the landfill. Reducing the amount of trash we produce, trees we cut down, and chemicals that we release into the atmosphere also only delays the day of reckoning.

McDonough and Braungart make a persuasive case for going back to square one - creating products that are either "biological nutrients," (meaning that they easily reenter the water, soil, and air without depositing toxins), or the previously mentioned "technical nutrients" that continually circulate and remain useful. Some of their proposals seem a little far fetched, but I am not an engineer, and architect, or a chemist. They are probably no more far fetched than an automobile was 150 years ago. I am glad there are people taking the long term view regarding how we can do better and leave the planet better than we found it.

On the one hand, Cradle to Cradle is overwhelming and scary. It wigs me out to think about the chemicals in clothing, furniture, cars, and food. But the book also makes me optimistic. There are phenomenally bright and creative people who are dedicating much of their energy and time to designing and making things that will lead to a brighter, healthier future for all of us. That is something to be excited about, and I look forward to learning more about their work.

Reverent Reader

P.S. I will say that the synthetic paper does not absorb the ink from highlighter pens as well as wood based paper, and it doesn't take ink from regular pens at all. So it is hard to make note of the best parts, but that is a small price to pay for saving some trees.

Bicentennial

2009-09-03T11:51:00.005-04:00

The Help
by Kathryn Stockett

First, about my title for this post - this is the 200th posting for Ex Libris Fides! I actually wish I were able to post a little more often - I hope at some point to go back to occasionally writing reflections on articles that I read, instead of only books. But, we do what we can, and I still think 200 is a milestone to be celebrated, so YAY!!

Anyway, if you are a reader of fiction, and if you like thought-provoking, moving, socially aware novels that make a point without getting preachy and that also tell an amazing story, then you MUST READ The Help. It is a compelling, honest, wrenching look at the relationships between white women and their black housekeepers in Mississippi just prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Stockett has drawn believable characters, and they mirror the complexity of real life human relationships. Not everyone is the same. There are some racist white characters who are truly repulsive, but some are just clueless and some are every bit as appalled by racism and Jim Crow laws as the black people. In different ways, everyone is caught in this unworkable system that demeans the black people and in the long run does not benefit anyone. The sad part is that some of the well-intentioned people do not know how to envision society differently, they are trapped in the way things have "always" been.

What The Help does so well is make the reader aware of some of the cognitive and spiritual dissonance that accompanied segregation. Some women required their housekeepers to eat on separate dishes, and use a separate bathroom (one built outside that no white person would use). At the same time, these same women would trust their black servants with the sacred task of raising their little white children. One character, Aibileen, describes the pain of loving these kids and knowing that the time will come when the children realize the difference between black skin and white skin and will no longer relate to their caretakers the same way.

Two of the main narrators in The Help are black character, and Kathryn Stockett is white. In an afterward to the book, Stockett describes the trepidation with which she wrote. She did not want to presume to describe the thoughts, experiences, and feelings of black people, but she believed this was a story that needed to be told. Stockett also lovingly describes the black woman (Demetrie) who raised her when her own mother was unavailable, and says that it was her relationship with Demetrie that made her want to look more closely at these complicated interactions between Southern whites and blacks. Posthumously, she thanks Demetrie for taking care of her and for forgiving her whole family for the way things were at the time. The combination of the novel and Stockett's personal reflections is really powerful.

This is one of the best novels I have read this year. I hope many people will read it, give thanks for the progress we have made, and think hard about what still needs to change.

Reverent Reader

Big House on the Prairie

2009-09-01T11:40:00.002-04:00

Little Heathens:Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression
by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

If, as a child, you were captivated by the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder, my bet is that you will enjoy Little Heathens. It is a memoir of a young girl who grew up on an Iowa farm in a large, single mother family. The family was cash poor, land rich, and phenomenally wealthy in terms of resourcefulness, humor, and the community of extended family. When I was a kid, I loved the descriptions in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books about "how to do stuff." Kalish's book is equally full of homegrown wisdom and resourceful solutions to everyday problems.

Kalish's childhood was characterized by hard work, but she writes with no self-pity. Instead, she has fond memories of the way the kids made their own fun and even made work fun. Without being overly preachy, she conveys a security and sense of well- being that she developed on the farm and that have obviously sustained her well into her old age. There is a little bit of the "kids today don't know what real work is" stuff, but she really keeps that to a minimum. Mostly she just makes observations about how different those times were and how some values like thrift, resourcefulness, and commitment are worth hanging onto.

Even though her memories are mostly happy ones, Kalish does not idealize her childhood or adolescence. She acknowledges that her mother was fairly closed, not affectionate or tender. Children were expected to do as they were told and not to question why or to explore things on their own. She sometimes felt isolated, even in the midst of a large and boisterous family. One thing that really came home to me was the sheer amount of work it took to prepare hearty meals for a large family three times a day. There was no running to the Safeway for a roasted chicken or pre-made potato salad. The women of the family spent most of their time just keeping everyone fed and keeping the kitchen ready to start the next meal. It sounds exhausting to me, and I'm someone who likes to cook.

Little Heathens is a fun read - lots of good information but also a great deal of humor and wisdom. It's like sitting down with your favorite grandmother and hearing her stories of the way things were. I can remember hearing similar stories from my grandmother on long car trips. This depression generation (sometimes called "The Greatest Generation") is a valuable resource, and they will all be gone before too much more time goes by. Thank goodness that some people have preserved their memories for us to enjoy again and again.

Reverent Reader

Get a Grip, Girl

2009-08-25T10:47:00.007-04:00

Home Safe
by Elizabeth Berg

Elizabeth Berg is a wonderful writer - she has some turns of phrase that are breathtaking. However, this is not her best work. Home Safe is a pretty good story, but the problem is that I found the main character really irritating. Helen is a writer whose husband, Dan, has died unexpectedly. A year after his death, she is still mired in the loss. Now, I know that I would still be grieving a year after losing my spouse, but Helen comes across as someone who misses her husband as a handyman and person who took care of her more than as a person, friend, or companion. At one point she recalls her Dan saying to her "Do I have to do everything?" Perfectly seriously, she responds "Yes." She believes that as an artist she brings her imagination to the relationship, and that he should be responsible for everything else (household repairs, finances, etc.). Barf.

I know that there are divisions of labor in any household, and there are things that E. takes primary responsibility for - lots of them (E., darling, let me officially thank you for all you do). But geez I hope if something happened to E. (God forbid) I would pull myself together and not let my house, career, and family fall into decay. I know that for the sake of our children E. would do his best to carry on if I were to suddenly disappear. Maybe I am unsympathetic, and I certainly acknowledge that there is lots I don't know about home maintenance, but this woman has trouble even calling a repair person. Makes me want to shake her. She also seems really whiny, hardly a quality that endears the reader to her problems. I also get irritated with her husband (in the flashbacks of their relationship) for putting up with her infantile behavior. He's not doing her any favors, which is shown by her downward spiral after he dies.

Loss is an inevitable part of life, especially when we invest ourselves heavily in the relationships that are most important to us. Berg does a good job of painting a picture of deep love and trust between Dan and Helen. I know that people grieve differently and cope differently with the difficult times of life. Perhaps I should not judge Helen until I have walked a mile in her shoes, which I pray is not for a very long time.

Reverent Reader

The Quest

2009-08-20T10:08:00.006-04:00

The Grail Bird: The Rediscovery of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
by Tim Gallagher

"The earth is the Lord's, and all that is in it...(Psalm 24:1)." That was the verse that kept circling through my head as I read this fascinating story of a few ornithologists who continued to seek proof of the existence of a beautiful, rare bird that most scientists had believed dead for more than half a century. Ivory-billed woodpeckers lived at one time in the deeply forested areas of the American south. They feasted off the larvae and grub worms found in the bark of trees. Most of us know the story of how their habitat was decimated by the logging industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When I read stories or articles like this, I get sad. Most of these situations of extinction could have been prevented if industry had just exercised a little restraint and carried out their operations in a more sustainable way.

Nevertheless, there were rumored sightings of the ivory bill now and then from the 1940s through the 1970s. The scientific community was dismissive of these claims, usually assuming that the birder who spotted the ivory-bill had actually seen a pileated woodpecker (which is similar to an ivory-bill but with some obvious differences that an expert birder would notice). Even distinguished ornithologists who thought they had spotted one were usually laughed at, and their peers would start thinking that they were crackpots. One can see how someone would become reluctant to make a claim of having seen one if it would be detrimental to his/her career. Ivory bill sightings came to have about as much credibility as sightings of Bigfoot or Elvis.

Nevertheless, there was a small group of bird enthusiasts who still believed in the existence of the ivory-billed woodpecker. This small community put themselves through a tremendous amount of discomfort, gave up a lot of time, and incurred quite a bit of personal expense to follow up on rumors of ivory-bill sightings. Finally, in 2005, their efforts bore fruit. Gallagher and several of his credible colleagues finally spotted the bird deep in the swampy forests of Arkansas. The emotion that they describe when they finally saw this rare and magnificent creature is very moving.

Gallagher, who works for Cornell University editing their bird magazine, was able to get the resources and staff of the Cornell Ornithology Lab to get behind the search, and eventually they gathered enough visual and acoustic evidence to release the information to the public that at least a small number of ivory-bills still exists. The scientists had mixed feelings about this information getting out - they knew that it was important that people know the bird is still around, but they were concerned for the safety of the few that remain if thousands of birdwatchers descended on their habitat in hopes of seeing one. So far, the birding community (while thrilled that the species may yet survive) has been fairly measured in its response, and has not overwhelmed the forest searching for the ivory-bills.

Sometimes we get a second chance, an opportunity to make things right. It is still uncertain that there are enough ivory-billed woodpeckers remaining to form a viable breeding population. But if we can hold ourselves back and not chop down every tree and drain every swamp in existence, the bird and thousands of other endangered species will at least have a chance to survive. I am not some Luddite who thinks we should all go back to living in caves, but I do think we can do better. If we applied our intellect and creativity to preserving our planet and harvesting the world's resources in a way that allows all of creation to thrive, I have to believe that we would be inching closer to God's hopes for us.

Reverent Reader

Disappointing

2009-08-19T13:51:00.006-04:00

Sundays in America: A Year Long Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith
by Suzanne Strempek Shea

This one of those books that I thought sounded really engaging and interesting, and I looked forward to reading it for several months. I had read Shea's memoir of working in a bookstore (titled Shelf Life) and enjoyed it a lot. However, Sundays in America falls short of the mark. It's not that the book is so bad, it's just that it could be so much better. She undertook an interesting project. She visited a different congregation every Sunday for a year. She had grown up Catholic and had it drilled into her that all other congregations were going to hell. She decided to see for herself what the similarities and differences were between a variety of congregations and the faith that she remembered from childhood.

Sundays in America is, frankly, boring. Now right here might be the place where you expect me to go off on a big rant along the lines of "Well OF COURSE it's boring because CHURCH is so BORING and that is why we don't have any young people and we are all circling the drain....blah blah blah." I don't think church is boring although I can see where some people would. The problem with Shea's book is that she spends way too much time describing the physical space of each congregation she visited, as well as the demographics of each group ("Of the 54 adults present, 47 are White, 3 are Asian, 3 are African-American, and 1 is Hispanic. There are six children between the ages of 4 and 10, and three bored looking teens slumped on the back row.") Seriously, I think every chapter had some version of this sentence, and after the first few my eyes started to glaze over. I suppose the information is important, but there has to be a better way to present it - maybe a simple graph at the beginning or end of each chapter. Likewise with the lengthy descriptions of each congregation's worship space - yawn. She needs to change it up a bit.

I am more interested in how a congregation feels to the person visiting. Are the people friendly? What is the predominant theology? Are all types of people made to feel welcome, or just certain ones? It would be unfair to say that Shea does not address any of these questions, because she does. It just seems that her emphasis is more on the visual and quantifiable. I wondered if she was uncomfortable delving too deeply into the theology and stayed on safer ground that was less open to debate or interpretation.

Shea does make some astute observations along the way, and she visited some interesting places. She visited Joel Osteen's church in Houston and Rick Warren's in California. She experienced a wide range of faith traditions, including Church of the Brethren, Quaker, Baptist, Mennonite, Pentecostal, and Episcopalian. The only Presbyterian Church that she visited was a PCA congregation that was founded in 2006 in the Gulf Coast area to help with the rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Katrina. However, the denominational background that she gave for the congregation was PCUSA. Somehow she had missed that the PCA group is separate from the PCUSA - and very different. That was disappointing for a Presbyterian reader.

Shea seems like she could be a kindred spirit, because a lot of the things that turned her off about certain congregations are the same things that would make me head for the door. She is uncomfortable with exclusion, especially the congregations who constantly grind the anti-homosexual axe. She responded most positively to the congregations that were diverse in terms of race and socioeconomic levels, and that put forth a message of hope and forgiveness. She quickly recognized that the sermon that Joel Osteen gave (the topic was weight loss) was theologically thin. So there was much potential here for a stimulating read, but it lacked a certain something that I can't quite name. It also was way short on humor. A sense of humor would have helped a lot in some of the situations in which she found herself. Still, I give her credit for undertaking such a project and for keeping an open mind throughout. She approached all congregations and traditions with respect and a genuine desire to engage - this is important since so many people are so dug in to the way they have always thought and believed. Her willingness to consider other alternatives is to be commended.

Reverent Reader

A Big Fat Read

2009-08-18T10:12:00.003-04:00

The Pillars of the Earth
by Ken Follett

This is one of my favorite types of books - a great big story that covers several decades and which the reader can just sink into and get lost in for a couple of weeks. I read this on our vacation the last two weeks of July and was completely absorbed. I had never read any Ken Follett - he is normally a thriller writer - but this book had received so much acclaim that I was curious about it. It would hardly qualify as your basic forgettable airport page turner, but in my opinion it is much better. There is enough action and excitement to keep things moving, but also lots of interesting writing about architecture, monastic life, and church history.

There are times in our post modern society that I get irritated with organized religion. I believe that we are too quick to capitulate to cultural pressures and not courageous enough when it comes to repairing societal inequities. However, one only needs to read The Pillars of the Earth to appreciate how far we have come. The corruption and hubris of some of the medieval bishops and higher church officers is just astounding. I have read enough church history to know that although this is a work of fiction, the self promotion and downright evil of some of the leaders in the church during that period of time was all too real.

I was struck by the hypocrisy of the 12-century church. Bishops would court kings for their own gain, and would conspire in murders and other brutality to advance their own agenda. By contrast, the laws for common people were terribly rigid, and the theology centered around an angry God who was quick to punish and slow to forgive. Clearly, such a theology was a way of controlling people's lives and forcing them to conform to the church's view of how the world ought to be. The Pillars of the Earth is set about three centuries before the Reformation, so there was still a lot of waking up to be done before people could start to determine some of their own beliefs and practices.

The Pillars of the Earth made me think about heavy subjects, but it is extremely readable and entertaining. I loved the discussion of architecture as an art form, and the way the early cathedrals were built to focus people on the heavens. Whenever you are looking for a book that you can sink into and immerse yourself in for several days, consider picking this one up. You will not regret it.

Reverent Reader

Rio Roosevelt

2009-08-13T10:42:00.005-04:00

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
by Candice Millard

There were several key words and phrases that rolled through my mind as I read The River of Doubt. These phrases included the following: "Yikes!" "Holy %^$##! and "Shudder." There were also frequent variations on the theme "There is no way I would do that in a million years." If you read (and enjoyed) Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage, which was about the Lewis and Clark expedition, chances are you will like The River of Doubt. I have always found Theodore Roosevelt to be a fascinating figure, so I was drawn to this book.

The River of Doubt (renamed the Rio Roosevelt after the famous expedition described in the book) is a major tributary of the Amazon river and it runs nearly 1,000 miles through Brazil in the Amazonian rain forest. T. Roosevelt loved to physically challenge himself, and he also was an amateur (but quite accomplished) botanist and ornithologist. He loved to travel in previously unexplored places, have a part in discovering new species of plant and animal life, and see places that no human had seen before. Those are all admirable things to do, but the expedition on the River of Doubt nearly proved too much for him. In fact, Roosevelt's health never fully recovered and he died just five years after the trip.

The River of Doubt describes the trip from the moment a much tamer version of it was conceived in the mind of the curator of the American Museum of Natural History, Frank Chapman. Millard acquaints us with the major players who planned the trip, and the mistakes that led to its near tragic outcome. The scientists and wilderness "experts" were operating sight unseen and really had no idea what they were getting into. Plus, they were acutely conscious that they would be traveling with a former President of the United States. They thought that TR would be accustomed to traveling in a luxurious, lavish style and they brought along many items that were impractical and ended up getting left in the jungle as they men kept having to lighten their loads.

The River of Doubt is absolutely harrowing. The expedition slogged nearly 1,000 miles, often progressing as little as 3 or 4 miles a day, facing dangers all the time. On a daily basis they dealt with terrifying rapids, a real possibility of starvation, untold number of insects, poisonous snakes and other creatures, and the constant threat attack from indigenous Indians. Most of the men suffered from malaria for most or all of the trip. At one point, Roosevelt suffered a crippling leg injury and he discussed with his son Kermit his plan to commit suicide rather than slow down the group's progress. He knew their food rations were running out and any delay could be fatal. My brief description cannot do justice to all that these men endured. Three men in the group died on the trip, including one who was murdered by another crew member. Roosevelt himself very nearly did not survive.

As a reader, I found myself asking "Why would anyone put themselves through that?" I certainly wouldn't. Apparently there are people for whom wanderlust is so strong that they are willing to risk their own lives to see and experience new places. The River of Doubt is a thrilling story. The descriptions of some of the most remote places in the world are breathtaking. I wonder, though, if the sacrifice in lives and health was worth it. Not only did Roosevelt come back from the trip an old and broken man, but his son Kermit (who went on the trip to try to protect his father from harm) descended into alcoholism and eventually committed suicide. If that happened now, he would probably be diagnosed with PTSD.

The River of Doubt has whetted my curiosity about TR even more. I'm going to have to eventually read a broader biography of him to get a greater sense of who he was. I know there are several major books out there about him. Anyone have any recommendations?

Reverent Reader

The Deadly Couch Potato Bug

2009-08-11T11:08:00.004-04:00

Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life
by Kathleen Norris

It was only about a year ago that I learned about the spiritual condition known as acedia. The desert monks of the first few centuries knew all about it, but for reasons that Norris articulates in her book, acknowledgment of acedia and frank discussion of it went out of fashion for several hundred years. Acedia is loosely identified with the "deadly sin" of sloth. Formal definitions go on and on, but some of the common ones are listlessness, apathy, despondence, indolence, and (for me the scariest one of all) an inability to care.

A fellow writer, when Norris admitted that she was writing a book about acedia, said to her "when you take on acedia you have taken on the devil himself." The descriptions that Norris writes of acedia, and the personal examples taken from her own life of when she has struggled with it, are helpful in illuminating the characteristics of this temptation. However, even though Norris devotes a lot of words to describing the spiritual condition/temptation of acedia and how it differs from the clinical illness of depression, I still found it difficult to distinguish between the two. While I understand that acedia can be combated with prayer and scripture and physical activity, I would want to be very careful about implying that someone who is coping with mental illness is succumbing to sin and should just pray his/her way out of it.

Norris herself acknowledges this slippery slope, and is clear that psychotherapy and psychotropic drugs help a multitude of people who are coping with depression. She also raises the possibilities that we are too quick to medicate, that some people who believe themselves to be depressed may really be overcome by acedia, or that their depression is a result of their acedia. For me the book's primary strength was its reminding the reader that there are resources available to help us through gloomy times that are right at our fingertips: psalms, hymns, consistent prayer, journaling, and other monastic disciplines. These practices, possibly undertaken in conjunction with medical assistance if necessary, can go a long way toward helping someone move from an inert state (both spiritually and physically).

This is not Kathleen Norris's best book. She has clearly done years of research on the topic, and really knows her stuff. However, there are places in the book where several pages read like an endless string of quotes from Evagrius, St. John of the Cross, and other early monastics. I appreciate that Norris has done her homework, and a few quotes to back up her points are fine. But she is a persuasive enough writer in her own right, she does not need to back herself up with every word ever written on acedia. The final chapter, consisting only of quotes and definitions of acedia, is repetitive and feels like a weak finish.

Nevertheless, there is good information to be mined here. Norris's candor is refreshing and her perspective as someone who struggles with acedia but who has come to the other side of it many times is hopeful. Reading Kathleen Norris always helps me be more consistent in my own practices and disciplines, and inspires me to nurture my own inner poet. If you have never read her, you really should, but I would recommend starting with Dakota or Amazing Grace.

Reverent Reader

She Rocks

2009-08-07T11:42:00.004-04:00

This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President
by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

I'm trying to figure out when/how I could get to Liberia and if I could get a meeting with this extraordinary woman. She is truly charismatic, and I would love to meet her sometime. Not only is her book a compelling account of her own life, it is a helpfully concise history of Liberia. She takes the reader on a journey that reveals the heritage of tension and strife culminating in 14 years of disastrous civil war beginning in 1989 (as well as an earlier bloody period beginning when Samuel Doe assassinated President William Tolbert in 1980). The fraudulently elected Charles Taylor (a dictator, really) was removed as President in 2003 with the help of the United Nations, and Sirleaf was elected President in 2005 in the first truly democratic elections ever in Liberia.

Sirleaf writes with a lot of humility (and even occasional gentle humor) about her rise to posts of prestige in the Liberian government, her American education, and her eventual speaking out against corruption and nepotism in the Liberian government. She spoke against the brutal leaders Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor at tremendous risk to her own life. These guys were not messing around - hundreds of people were executed for "treason"and "sedition" during those horrible years. There was virtually no rule of law to protect dissenters. She still is not sure what saved her from the same fate (and at times it looked as if death was surely coming for her), except the providence of God. I think "Mama Sirleaf," as she is called in Liberia, is a prophet for our time.

Having said that, she made her share of mistakes along the way. It seems that her deepest regret is that she cautiously supported both Doe and Taylor when they initially seized power. In both cases, she thought they would be better than their predecessors and she was willing to overlook that they had been part of assassinations to gain power for themselves. It makes me respect her more that she acknowledges her regret about those mistakes in her book. A Liberian friend tells me that she has also publicly apologized to the Liberian people for her unintentional part in bringing about what they call "the dark years." Perhaps the mark of true leadership is the ability to admit mistakes, learn from them, and move forward.

I hope and pray that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf can help Liberia turn things around and become a peaceful, productive land. She certainly seems to have the will, the energy, and the faith for the task. Most press accounts indicate that she also has the support and goodwill of the Liberian people behind her. She and Liberia and all its people deserve our prayers and support. This is a moving, inspiring book that helps the reader understand not just the situation on the ground in Liberia, but in all of West Africa as well.

Reverent Reader

Utterly Forgettable

2009-08-05T12:46:00.005-04:00

The Year of Fog
by Michelle Richmond

OK, surely every parent can identify with the panic of not being able to find your child, even for a few seconds. I have a distinct memory of "losing" Samuel in the National Museum of the American Indian. He was hiding behind a sculpture, and it was only for a few seconds (seemed much longer), but it was an awful feeling. The Year of Fog deals with this nightmare in a situation of child abduction. This is not a bad story, and you will want this family to be reunited, but this territory has been covered much better in Jacquelyn Mitchard's The Deep End of the Ocean.

There is also a ring of Jane Smiley's A Map of the World here, because the person who loses the child is not her mother - it is her soon to be stepmother, her father's fiancee. In A Map of the World, a woman accidentally lets the child of her best friend drown. In both cases, the person who was watching the child feels awful guilt and shame about having made such an egregious mistake, and understandably so. Again, though, Smiley's book is far better than The Year of Fog.

The book raised a question for me, though. Abby, the fiancee who is watching the child, Emma, berates herself to no end for looking away from Emma (the child) for just a few seconds to snap a picture. In that tiny span of time, the little girl disappears. That would be awful, there is no doubt. But what kind of expectations are we setting up for ourselves as parents if we are expected to NEVER take our eyes off our children? I am a pretty vigilant mommy, but have witnessed and been part of enough playground scrapes, lighting quick disappearances (and findings), and the occasional more serious injury to realize that things can happen in literally the blink of an eye. Do we let that make us always fearful? Do we lock our kids in the house and never let them go anywhere "dangerous" or have any new experiences? I don't think so. We have to find the balance between appropriate attention and attentiveness to our kids and letting them stretch themselves a bit, even if that involves some risk. I did not sense that balance in The Year of Fog. Abby just condemns herself (and her fiance does too, although he makes an effort not to) for turning her head. That sets up an expectation that none of us can reach, and I'm not sure that we should.

Also, the extended photography metaphors and the intertwined psychological theory on memory were both overdone in this book. It just got really old - I wanted to say "OK, OK, I GET IT!"

Even though I have read and liked other novels (see above) that deal with variations on this same topic, that was years ago. To be fair, I may have had a bias against this book from the beginning that I think has to do with being a mom myself now. When I read A Map of the World (in the late 90s), I had no children yet. I could appreciate the work for the fine piece of writing that it was, but keep a distance from the horror of the topic. That is no longer possible. I think losing one of my sweet boys to death or kidnapping would be more than I could bear. So, not sure I will be seeking out these types of books anymore. It's just too frightening, and there is enough to be scared of in the non-fiction world around us.

Reverent Reader

Let Freedom Ring

2009-08-04T10:48:00.003-04:00

Liberty
by Garrison Keillor

Hello, reading, blogging, blog-reading friends! After two weeks away, it is nice to be finding the groove again of working, reading, hanging out with the fam, and of course blogging. We had a week in North Carolina visiting family (which included a two day getaway for E. and I to celebrate our 9th anniversary alone!), then a week of "staycation" here at home. We did lots of fun things that we don't normally get to do when all caught up in the busyness of daily life. We went to the International Spy Museum, the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Imagination Stage, Brookside Gardens, and Woodley Gardens Park. We also had a picnic with family members who came through town and stayed overnight. All in all, a relaxing time!

Needless to say, I am frightfully behind on the blog, so stay tuned over the next few days as I try to catch up. I read Liberty over 4th of July weekend, which shows that I am exactly a month behind on my posts. Liberty was a good choice for that holiday weekend and in fact I had saved it for just that occasion, because it is about the 4th of July festivities in a small Midwestern town.

Liberty is raucous, fun, and witty - vintage Garrison Keillor. It has a lot of small town humor and no one is spared Keillor's gentle ribbing. Lutherans, Norwegians, Latinos, Republicans, Democrats, you name it. Everyone is fair game for Keillor's observations and insights, which is as it should be. Equal opportunity busting keeps the book from being mean spirited. Keillor also has a keen eye for local absurdities - his book is true enough to be familiar to anyone who grew up in a small town and absurd enough to be just beyond what really might happen. However, E. read it and was sure that "cow-pie bingo" was a made up game. I assured him it is not, for I have seen it played. Don't ask.

There is nothing in Liberty that is going to change the intellectual history of our nation, but sometimes we just need a good laugh. Keillor provides that. Moreover, the message at the end of the book (although it takes awhile to get there) is that what matters most are family, friends, and looking out for each other. Amen to that.

Reverent Reader

Looking Up from Down

2009-07-16T10:50:00.005-04:00

Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness
by Joshua Wolf Shenk

One would not think that this would be an uplifting book - how can a book about depression be anything but a downer? Amazingly, Shenk pulls it off. This is an informative, interesting, and (yes) hopeful book for anyone who has ever suffered from depression or know someone who has. One of the book's great strengths is that it does not constantly stay in the past - Shenk pulls in current thought on depression and mental illness and artfully weaves it with writings from the time of Lincoln's life on the subject. Some of the most moving material comes from Lincoln's own writings as well. It is clear that there were periods of his life during which Lincoln was truly tormented, and it appears that he always carried with him an aura of melancholy.

Shenk makes a convincing case that Lincoln's love for humor and wit was at least in part a defense against the depression that dogged him for most of his life. It is reassuring to see that even someone who faces down the demon on a daily basis can still experience moments of joy and laughter. I think humor is one thing our society is losing touch with. We take ourselves way too seriously. Lincoln showed how one side of his nature could balance out the other, and that balance was part of what kept him sane and functioning at the level that he did.

Lincoln had a least two major depressive episodes in his young adult life - during one of them his close friends even placed him on suicide watch. An admirable characteristic of Lincoln's that Shenk believes came from his depression was his determination to do something of significance with his life. He had been stuck in the pit of despair, and asked himself whether he would live or die. Having determined somewhere inside of himself that he wished to live, he needed some thing to work toward, something to live for. That purpose turned out to be ending the moral evil of slavery, and Lincoln worked toward that goal steadily and efficiently until the premature end of his days.

There is no doubt that Lincoln experienced loss and sorrow - his mother died when he was still a young boy. One woman who was possibly a great love of his (Ann Rutledge) died when he was in his early 20s. He lost two sons while he was still living, and only one of his four sons survived to adulthood. His marriage was troubled. And through it all he had this malaise of melancholy to contend with. Yet he was able to turn that affliction into a motivating force in his own life and in the life of our country.

It is perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of history that Lincoln's life ended when it did. There is no doubt that he changed our country for the better, and I think Reconstruction after the Civil War would have gone much more smoothly and been a more conciliatory process had he been leading it.

Reverent Reader

Common Heritage

2009-07-15T10:25:00.004-04:00

Roots
by Alex Haley

The television movie of Roots came out when I was in third grade. I did not watch it, as my parents thought (probably correctly) I was too young for the brutality and violence. Nevertheless, I have always thought it would be an important book to read, and am glad that I finally got around to it. One caution: I read an edition of the book released in 2007 in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the first release. If you are going to read Roots, get an original edition. I do not know if the anniversary edition was made on the cheap or what, but it is riddled with grammatical errors (especially misplaced commas) that have nothing to do with dialect or changes in vernacular. It was horribly irritating and distracting, and a great disservice to the late Alex Haley and our common cultural heritage. I can't imagine that the original has so many misprints.

However, I am glad that I read Roots. It is a story that humanizes the evil of slavery and illustrates the spiritual bankruptcy that could lead to such a practice in the first place. What chilled me was how the "massas" would make these pronouncements that their slaves were "part of the family," yet at the same time had this "business is business" outlook that led them to sell other human beings and treat them like animals. I do not know how the white slave owners could live with themselves. Even more awful were the slave catchers who sailed to Africa and captured human cargo to be transported to the United States and other places. The story of Kunta Kinte's voyage from Africa to Annapolis, MD on several occasions almost made me physically ill.

What struck me while reading Roots was that in some ways the story of the slaves is all of our story. I would not presume to claim that my ancestors suffered like the African slaves did, but now, in retrospect, we see that our nation was largely built by slave labor. Even whites who were not slave owners had their lives changed by the practice and in some cases benefited economically from it. I doubt that anyone who has read Roots would tell today's African Americans to just "get over it." Atrocities were committed that affected families for generations. There can be no moving forward until sin is acknowledged, and Alex Haley is to be commended for sharing his family's history so we could all begin to consider our place in the larger history of our nation and of the larger world.

I do not know how we heal the communal wounds wrought by slavery and racism, but I do know that understanding the institution of slavery for the moral evil that it was (and still is) is a place to start. It is NOT OK to say "Lots of slaves were really happy" or "White and black children played together and were the best of friends." There can be no genuine relationship when one human being owns another. The relationship between Missy Anne and Kizzy in Roots painfully illustrates that truth. The more white people try to act like slavery was not so bad after all, the more we slow the reconciliation that can be brought about by confession, truth-telling, and forgiveness.

This is a difficult book to read (not literarily, but emotionally), but one that has a place in our cultural and social history. It still has much to teach us.

Reverent Reader

Best of the "Best Of"

2009-07-08T11:00:00.006-04:00

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008
edited by Jerome Groopman

A couple of years ago I became interested in science writing, largely because my understanding of some of the hard sciences, such as physics, is so pitiful. In school I always liked life sciences like biology but ran from things like chemistry and physics - mostly because they involve math and I never had any confidence in math. I love science writing, though. I feel like I can read something from almost any of the many branches of science and (even if I do not fully understand it) have a slightly more complete grasp of how this whole marvelous that world that God gave us fits together.

This "Best of..." series is a really helpful resource. A friend gave me The Best American Spiritual Writing a couple of years ago and now I buy it every year. There is no way I have the money to subscribe to all those magazines, let alone the time to read them all, but the "Best of..." compilations (which are edited by a different person each year) pull out the top 20 or so articles from a wide variety of magazines. It's like sitting down to a 20 course meal and every course is good - no junk. I also have given E., at various times, The Best American Food Writing and The Best American Non-Required Reading. Great books to read an article or two, put aside, and come back to it another time.

Did you know that some scientists think that as many as 1/2 the deaths in the whole world, since the beginning of time, have been caused by malaria? Did you know that linguists are coming close to cracking an ancient language that was not written, but consisted of various colors and sizes of knots tied in different colors of string? There is also a language currently used by a tribe in northern Brazil that has only three vowels and eight consonants. There is a whole Internet community developing of "scam-busters" - people who scam the scammers. These are just a few of the interesting things I learned from The Best American Science and Nature Writing.

Magazines represented in this compilation include The New Yorker, Outside, and Discover, just to name a few. I was completely absorbed in the book while reading it. Each essay was fascinating - the topics were diverse, yet some thought and attention revealed many connections between the seemingly unrelated subjects. I'm definitely going to put The Best American Science and Nature Writing on my January shopping list each year.

Reverent Reader

A Cad By Any Other Name...

2009-07-07T10:57:00.015-04:00

Loving Frank
by Nancy Horan

Nancy Horan pulls off a remarkable feat here - she makes you feel sorry for a narcissistic philanderer. Loving Frank is the story of the relationship between famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his long time mistress, Mamah (pronounced MAY-mah) Borthwick Cheney. Of course Mamah is not blameless in the whole scenario, but somehow she comes off as more of a lost soul, whereas Wright often seems like a sleazy predator.

There is no doubt that Wright was a man of phenomenal talent, but if Horan's biographical novel is to be believed, he had a sense of entitlement that in the long run was detrimental to his career. He would rack up amazing amounts of debt on luxurious items, justifying it by saying that he had to be surrounded with beautiful things so that he could think properly and experience true artistic vision. He would fail to pay contractors and apprentices, saying that the "privilege" of working with him should be pay enough. What a jerk.

Nevertheless, if Horan is to be believed, there was genuine love between Cheney and Wright, and the early 1900s were not a friendly time for them. Between them, they had nine children, and the judgements of society on people who would leave spouses and children were harsh. They seem to have been worse for Cheney, but there is no question that both Cheney and Wright paid a high price for their love. One wonders if it was worth it. They had to move around Europe for the first several years of their cohabitation, because they were so ostracized in the United States. When they finally did resettle in the United States, Wright built his showplace home, Taliesin. Sadly, just as people were moving on to the next juicy bit of news and moving on from their outrage, the couple was finally settling into what promised to be a rich life together when a self-righteous lunatic brutally murdered Mamah Cheney and her two children. A tragic ending to a sad story. I was surprised how saddened I was by that part of the narrative - Horan did an excellent job of conveying the horrible loss that Wright (and Mamah's former husband Ed Cheney) had to endure, and the reader truly gets a sense of the world that Wright and Cheney had created for themselves crumbling to the ground.

A couple of things about the story that I have wondered about - one is the ever present double standard. Both of the protagonists were judged harshly but in the early 1900s Cheney definitely had the more difficult burden to bear. Not only did everyone assume she was some kind of a whore, but she had very few options as far as supporting herself if her relationship with Wright did not work out. She picked up some work as a translator, as she was very gifted with languages. Not to excuse or condone adultery, but she seems to have married her husband only because she did not know what else to do with herself. Then, many years later, she realized that she was living a terribly hollow life. One has to wonder if Mamah Borthwick Cheney lived today would her life turn out differently simply because she would have other opportunities.

The other thing I wonder about is the accuracy of Horan's portrayal. The book is very well-written and it makes a great story, but is it truthful historical fiction? For the most part, Cheney is cast as Wright's great love, the one who came closest to saving him from his worst excesses. There are a couple of allusions to possible other women, but usually it seems as if their relationship was exclusive. I really need to read a non-fiction bio of Wright to see if that is the way things actually were. I know T.C. Boyle recently published a novel called The Women, in which Cheney is only one of several of Wright's paramours. So what is the real deal? Anybody know? Or have suggestions for further reading about this couple?

Reverent Reader

The Go To Book

2009-07-04T10:38:00.003-04:00

An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith
by Barbara Brown Taylor

So far, for 2009, this is the book for deepening the spiritual experience. It is readable, practical, wise, and beautifully written. I have given this book as a gift to a couple of friends already, and foresee giving it to many more. I also gave it as a graduation gift to our congregation's 10 high school seniors a couple of weeks ago. The title is a little misleading - rather than a "geography of faith," I would probably call it something like "Faith in Everyday Experience" or "Finding the Spiritual in the Ordinary." What Barbara Brown Taylor is really getting at is the integration of spiritual practice into the most mundane of tasks - washing dishes, walking, peeling potatoes, reading, writing, whatever.

What appeals to me about An Altar in the World is its accessibility. So many books about spiritual practice imply that we must give up the pleasures of this earth, or that the ordinary (some would say boring) tasks that are required of us every day are obstacles to experiences of the divine presence. Often, books about spiritual practice seem to require that we move off into a tent somewhere and light a candle and forget everything else. Most of us cannot do that. Taylor's perspective, however, is that moments of connection with the divine are ours to be had all the time, everywhere, if we only cultivate our own souls to perceive and receive those moments. That possibility is gift for someone like me who has never been terribly good at the solitary, meditative aspects of the contemplative life.

Taylor structures her book around various spiritual practices, most of which date back to our ancient ancestors in the faith. Rather than coming up with a bunch of newfangled stuff, she is taking us back to our roots, when faith and life were not so compartmentalized. With the right spiritual outlook, our faith can permeate every aspect of our day and night. Potentially, we can find every experience infused with meaning and grace. Some of the chapters in the book include "The Practice of Paying Attention" (one of my favorites), "The Practice of Walking on the Earth," and "The Practice of Living in Community." As someone who is making a conscious effort to live a more integrated life, I found An Altar in the World to be full of smart suggestions as to how to do this in ways that are not completely disruptive to the life of a mom with two young children. Taylor reminds us that people and situations that initially can seem like an obstacle to our contemplative life (kids, talkative strangers, unexpected delays) can actually be opportunities for us to experience more unity with God and with each other. We only have to be looking at situations through the right kind of lenses.

Get it. Read it. Give it to someone else. It's a book that reads easily, but that you will return to again and again.

Reverent Reader

Paint By Numbers

2009-07-01T15:31:00.004-04:00

Handle With Care
by Jodi Picoult

OK, Jodi Picoult can tell a good story, and I give her credit for tackling serious issues in a way that is readable and humanizing. But seriously, she needs to move out of her comfort zone a wee bit. I have read about five of her novels now, and they all go the same way. Here's her basic outline:

I) Family trouble, usually of a medical/legal nature
II) Period of uncertainty wherein major characters align and dis align according to the unfolding of the presenting problem.
III) Legal trial
IV) Some strange twist in the trial, supposed to be a surprise. However, now that she has done this so many times, it fails to be much of a surprise.
V) Ambiguous resolution

In addition to this basic format, there is always some bizarre connection between major characters that would hardly ever happen in real life. In Handle With Care, for example, a woman sues her obstetrician for malpractice because the OB failed to diagnose a case of osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease) in time for her to terminate her pregnancy. The connection is that the plaintiff and the defendant are "best friends," which I never could fully buy. I just don't think someone could sue their best friend for malpractice and then be surprised when that physician does not want to be her friend anymore.

Another piece of a Picoult book is that there is usually a side plot involving a vaguely troubled female attorney working out some issue of her own. Often, this situation gets resolved when the female attorney finds her own true love. Always a smooth, good-looking guy. Of course.

Picoult's novels are full of pop culture references that are fun right now, but will date them within a decade or so. She must be doing something right, because she cranks out runaway bestsellers. The books are entertaining, and she does gently force her readers to confront their opinions on various issues of medical ethics. She certainly does her homework - the issues she raises are well-researched. However, she is getting less entertaining with every subsequent book because she is so formulaic. I think she has enough talent that she could experiment with plot and character more and people would stick with her. Maybe she thinks if something is working why mess with it, and one can hardly blame her for that. I believe, though, that people will start to get bored with her work if she does not. I, for one, have already.

Reverent Reader

Just Go With It

2009-06-25T11:08:00.004-04:00

The Eyre Affair
by Jasper Fforde

Sometimes we just need a good yarn, a reason to suspend disbelief. For this reason, I have been casually interested in the Fforde books for awhile. The Eyre Affair does not disappoint, but neither does it set the literary world on fire. The book is set in Great Britain in the mid-1980s. The protagonist, Thursday Next, investigates crimes in the world of books and writing - usually frauds and forgery. In The Eyre Affair, though, her vocational life gets more exciting when she winds up trying to prevent a literary homicide.

Clearly, we have to open our minds in a major way to even get through this. Thursday's uncle, a mad scientist inventor type, figures out a way and builds a device that will transport people into works of fiction. If a person gets into a first edition copy of a book, that person has the chance to change the plot. The story involves time travel and other mind benders that make it highly confusing. I finally quit trying to take it literally and just enjoy the clever allusions, interesting puns, and repartee between the witty characters. That's when it got fun. If you are a fan of Jane Eyre, as I am, you will like the recreations of some of its more famous scenes.

For people planning summer vacations, this is a good beach read. I will probably read more of the Thursday Next series later, but am not rushing out to buy the boxed set (I doubt there is one). This is an airport mystery with a dash of intellect thrown in. Nothing wrong with that, but not a diet that would sustain us for long. If you're looking for a snack, pick this up.

One of the best parts of The Eyre Affair is the funny names of the characters - some examples are Paige Turner, Braxton Hicks, and Acheron Hades. Hilarious.

Reverent Reader

My Theology Hero

2009-06-23T11:33:00.003-04:00

Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another
by Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams is just great. Not only do I admire his thoughtful, measured leadership of the Anglican Communion, but he is a wonderful writer. Where God Happens is a quick read, but it is packed with spiritual wisdom. On a personal level, I am making an effort right now to pay more attention to the contemplative side of life, so perhaps I am especially receptive to what Williams has to offer in this book.

Where God Happens is a look at the desert mystics and their approach to relationship with God and with each other. I especially like Williams' comparison and contrasting of the spiritual conditions of "staying" and "leaving." Both have their moments when they are the necessary and spiritually healthy thing to do, and both can be done internally whether or not external conditions correspond.

It is difficult to do Archbishop Williams' work justice, so let me just share a couple of my favorite quotes from the book. The following is the first sentence of the first chapter, and is a great response to those out there who think we can live a spiritual life all by ourselves:

"One thing that comes out very clearly from any reading of the great desert monastic writers of the fourth and fifth centuries is the impossibility of thinking about contemplation or meditation or 'spiritual life' in abstraction from the actual business of living in the body of Christ, living in concrete community. The life of intimacy with God in contemplation is both the fruit and the course of a renewed style of living together." Those words make a lot of sense to me. Since reading them, I find myself doing a little bit better about being patient and compassionate. Maybe it is an age/maturity thing, but I am better at "zenning" (my own made up verb) my way through moments of irritation with my fellow travelers than I was 10 or 5 or even 2 years ago.

And here is another thought from the chapter "Silence and Honey Cakes" that felt like Williams was speaking directly to me:

"Deep down we are attuned to God, but we have jarred the harmonies in various ways. We are out of tune. The trouble then is that we often listen to this out-of-tuneness, the habits of self-protection and self-regard. If that is what listening to the heart means, forget it. That is just canonizing what we think is going on in us. We have a lot of self-knowledge to acquire before we can truly listen to the heart."

I've been considering this idea of "jarring the harmonies" and wondering what habits and practices I have gotten into that are actually counter-productive to my hope of hearing God's voice in the midst of the chaos. A recent article that I read (I think it was in The New Yorker, but can't remember for sure) talked about how proud we all are of our multi-tasking. We think it is great if we can "listen" to music, read, have the TV on, send or receive a text message, check our email, and talk on the phone all at the same time. The article that I read talked about how this kind of mixing is actually bad for the brain's ability to process information and retain it long term. Williams' book makes me wonder if multitasking also is detrimental to our processes of discernment and meditation. All of these things that we do with the help of our electronic devices, are good things - or at least they are not inherently bad. I think, though, that we need to slow down and only do them one at a time. When we are wading through a jumble of messages from such a variety of input, it only makes sense that the disharmony to which Williams refers would occur.

My only complaint with Where God Happens is the weak ending. The last chapter is just a compilation of sayings from the desert mothers and fathers. Most of the quotes are a little opaque for my taste, and I would have preferred that Williams choose a few of his favorites and share his own thoughts on them, instead of just a listing. Still, there is good stuff to be mined here, and Where God Happens is a good addition to the library of any fan of Williams.

Reverent Reader

Where Did the Week Go?

2009-06-14T18:38:00.003-04:00

Sorry, friends - once again I have fallen behind on my blogging. Last week Samuel graduated from kindergarten, which turned out to be much more of an "event" than I had anticipated. There were a couple of other unexpected twists that put me a little behind at work, and suddenly I realize I have not posted in a week. Ouch.

To top it off, "Ex Libris Fides" is taking an already scheduled break beginning tomorrow. S. and G. and I are flying to Oklahoma to visit family, returning on Saturday, June 20.

So, tune in around June 22 for some updates, and send me summer reading recommendations!

Reverent Reader

Same As It Ever Was...Or Not

2009-06-05T12:01:00.003-04:00

What Happened at Vatican II
by John O'Malley

I never thought I would describe a book about Vatican II as a page turner, but here we are. Reading this book was an interesting experience in that other people would see me reading it and want to engage in conversation about it. One afternoon I grabbed some time and was reading and drinking an iced tea at Starbucks. Within a 45-minute period, three different people spotted the title on the cover and wanted to talk about it. The each immediately asked if I was Catholic. When I said "no," they would want to know why I was reading What Happened at Vatican II. That is a fair question. In each case I responded truthfully that a) I am interested in history for its own sake, and b) the Catholic world is so intertwined with the Protestant that I was curious about the repercussions that Vatican II had on Christian faith in general.

What struck me about this very readable history of the Second Vatican Council was how much courage the man who convoked it (Pope John XXIII) had. He was old already when elected pope, and he could have just coasted through a papacy leaving things the same. However, he knew that there were important issues brewing beneath the surface of the church and that it was important to get them out into the open and have them debated as openly and fairly as possible. After John XXIII died, Paul VI took over the papacy and the responsibility of the council. He was more of an interventionist than John, and also more easily swayed by warring factions, so the council had a few more bumps in the road after he took over. However, it was Paul VI who left Italy (as pope) to visit the Holy Land, India, and later the UN. He broke a tradition of over 100 years that the pope not leave Italy while in office. So, Paul VI gets a lot of credit for becoming a unifying figure for Catholics across the world.

Most of us know that Vatican II was the council at which the bishops voted that priests who chose could conduct Mass in the vernacular language where they served, and that after Vatican II Catholic priests encouraged their people to read and study the Bible (which before had been the purview only of the priests). However, many of the items on Vatican II's agenda are issues that Protestants have struggled with and still do. All Christians (and I suspect people of other faiths as well) debate the authority of scripture, the sources of revelation other than scripture, and appropriate conduct for clergy. I realized while reading the book that we are all more alike than different. We see only through a glass darkly, and are just doing our best to be faithful.

Of course, Vatican II had much of the same infighting and behind the scenes maneuvering that we see in our Protestant Assemblies and Conferences and whatever else we call them. O'Malley's account, though, is very even handed. He does not demonize any faction or person, instead assuming from the outset that each was following his conscience and doing his best to act with integrity. He never even uses divisive labels like "liberal" and "conservative," sticking to the neutral "majority" and "minority." This book gave me an appreciation for where Christians have been, how far we have come, and how far we still have to go if we are to be the church that God envisions.

We should be grateful to the participants in Vatican II. The council produced groundbreaking documents on the church's role in the world and the necessity for the church to speak plainly, frequently, and unambiguously for justice and human rights. Vatican II intentionally reached out to our Jewish sisters and brothers and made an attempt to repair some of the damage caused by two millenia of Christians thinking of the Jews as those who killed Christ (a tragic mischaracterization that was one of the bricks in the foundation of thought that led to the Holocaust). Although there is still much repairing to be done, Vatican II also at least acknowledged that Protestants had some legitimate complaints leading up to the Reformation, and opened the way for dialogue between Catholics and their Protestant neighbors and friends.

The tone of Vatican II was different from any other previous council (O'Malley's brief history of the prior councils, going all the way back to Nicaea, is most helpful). Rather than taking a top down, threatening, punitive approach, Vatican II was focused much more on collegiality, dialogue, and mutual understanding - both within the council and in the development of relationships between the Catholic church and the rest of the world. As someone who has participated in many conferences, meetings, and assemblies where this is the tone that we at least try for, I see that the seeds for this type of church were planted at Vatican II. There are still things about Catholic policy, theology, and hierarchy that do not resonate with me and likely never will. However, What Happened at Vatican II gave me a deeper understanding of their history and a greater sense of our connectedness as Christians and children of God. We are all muddling through, doing our best to be faithful. God bless us every one.

Reverent Reader

The Power of (More Than) One

2009-06-03T10:57:00.007-04:00

The Power of One
by Bryce Courtenay

Not being a big fan of boxing, I am surprised that I enjoyed this book so much. Boxing is one of its major themes, as this lonely little boy, Peekay, finds his center and gains confidence because of his talent in the ring. The story goes much deeper than boxing, though. Courtenay, through the trials and perspective of Peekay, helps us understand the history of South Africa. I had not been aware of the tensions between Dutch South Africans (known as Boers) and South Africans of Bristish descent. Courtenay's appendix, which summarizes the wars between these two factions in the 19th and early 20th centuries, is helpful to the reader. We can understand Peekay's isolation when he is the only English South African at a primarily Boer boarding school. Sadly, it was mutual hatred and fear of the black population that eventually united the British and the Boers.

As Peekay matures, he begins to see the racism between blacks and whites in South Africa, and to understand that this racism and its resultant apartheid are every bit as unjust and illogical as the persecution he has endured from his Boer peers. The story takes a mystical turn as Peekay's boxing prowess and his kindness to blacks combine to give him a reputation as some sort of savior of the South African blacks (known as "kaffirs"). Peekay's childhood and adolescence unfold over a period of 17 years, and one of the delights of the book is observing his growth and insight and the relationships that enrich his life.

Early on, when Peekay is only about six years old, he stands up to some bigger, meaner kids who are bullying him. Even though he takes a beating at their hands, he discovers an inner strength and focus that he begins to rely on and comes to call "the power of one." Peekay certainly does have a strong core, but I still find this an unusual concept and not exactly an accurate title for the book. In my mind, much more than the power of one, Peekay's story is about the power of relationships to sustain us and lead us down paths we might never travel on our own. Even though Peekay is a loner from the beginning, he always has at least one or two friends who believe in him and provides companionship. For approximately the first 100 pages of the book, that steadfast friend is a chicken, which makes for some funny situations.

Courtenay provides a cast of delightful characters who become a surrogate family for Peekay and end up shaping his life. Hoppie, Doc, and Geel Piet play major roles in his formative years. When Peekay is a young man, working in the mines to earn money to continue his education, one man who has come to care about Peekay even sacrifices his own life to save Peekay in a horrible accident. It is one of the most heartrending scenes of the whole story. It made me think of the sacrifice of Christ for all of humanity, and I considered the possibility that whenever anyone sacrifices his/her own life so that another might live, Christ's death and resurrection are played out all over again.

What struck me throughout the book was Peekay's lack of a family in the sense that we are used to thinking of family. We never know who Peekay's father is, he is a non entity. Peekay's mother is a peripheral character - we never even learn her name. She is a religious fanatic to whom Peekay is unable to connect beyond polite courtesies and the interactions necessary when sharing a house. Peekay and his mother care for each other, but can hardly relate at all. Peekay's grandfather (another nameless character) is a little more present to him, but he is still not one of the major influences on Peekay. Peekay has no biological siblings, but his close friends at boarding school become his brothers. As sad as the lack of biological family is, his resourcefulness in his choice of surrogate family is hopeful. Peekay shows us that it is not always blood ties that create a family, and that life-giving relationships can come from places we would never expect.

I loved reading The Power of One, as it is always satisfying to immerse myself in an interesting narrative with colorful characters. However, I have to say that I was deeply unsatisfied with the ending. After being "the bigger person" throughout the book, and becoming an advocate for South African blacks, Peekay seizes an opportunity to take vengeance on someone who bullied him years before. He takes that vengeance in a particularly brutal way. The ending seemed to me to work against the whole message of the book, and I was disappointed and disturbed. Has anyone else read this? If so, how did you react to the ending? Did I miss something?

Reverent Reader

So Many Books, So Little Time

2009-06-02T11:25:00.005-04:00

Classics for Pleasure
by Michael Dirda

Michael Dirda is my literary hero. This guy has to be the most well read person on the planet. Many of you may be familiar with his work as a book reviewer for the Washington Post. I look forward to his reviews every week, and thoroughly enjoyed his memoir An Open Book several years ago. It was his review of the latest translation of War and Peace that inspired me to take on that challenge, and now I have a deep love for Tolstoy's work. So, even though I have never met Michael Dirda, I feel like I owe him a lot for expanding my biblio-horizons.

Classics for Pleasure is a collection of essays about the works of various treasured writers, some more obscure than others. The point of the collection, as Dirda expresses in the brief introduction, is to help the reader to see that there is great joy to be found in reading the classics. Many of us run from them, because our only association with serious literature is a teacher making us read it and cough up a paper on it. It takes us awhile to get it that classics have gained that label for a reason, the reason most often being that it is really good stuff. Dirda's essays give us a foretaste of the works themselves, but also biographical tidbits about the authors, the culture in which the books were written, and each particular author's relationship with and influence on the other literature of the time. It is all really interesting, and Dirda's writing is so beautiful he could write directions for microwaving frozen food and the words would sing. It is impossible to relate all the writers whom Dirda discusses, but they go all the way back to antiquity and reach mid-to-late 20th century. The list includes Sappho, the Bible, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Voltaire, and Willa Cather. There are scores of others who are less well known. Many many of them I want to read on my own and explore further. Others, not so much.

In his introduction, Dirda encourages the reader to pick up Classics for Pleasure and read a couple of essays at a time, and to skip around. I read it straight through, but I think the way he suggests would be better. It is the type of book meant to be enjoyed in small doses, and the reader should take time to reflect on the essays afterward. Otherwise, Dirda's excellent information and inspiring literary canon get all jumbled up in the reader's head. I can see myself going back to this collection over and over again, but just one or two essays at a time, the better to enjoy and retain them.

Reverent Reader

A Different Perspective

2009-05-29T12:38:00.008-04:00

Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground
by Robert Kaplan

I highly doubt that I would ever have picked this up to read on my own. It just is not the type of book that would normally grab me. A church member had read it and thought it provided some useful insights. I also had read Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts several years ago and knew him to be a clear writer who presents information well, so I decided to give Imperial Grunts a try.

I'm glad I read this, although I don't think it is one that I will read over and over. I have very ambivalent feelings about the military. I deeply appreciate their service to our country and am fully aware of the sacrifice that our servicemen and women make to preserve freedom and promote democracy. I pray for their safety on a daily basis. However, I am also against war in principle and pray just as fervently for the day to come when world leaders find ways other than violence to work out differences. Wouldn't it be great if the military (as we know it anyway) were rendered obsolete? I think it is possible to support the troops and be grateful for them while at the same time hoping that the world changes to the point that we put them out of business.

Kaplan's book is great for giving us the larger picture of life inside the military. He spent time embedded with American military units in a variety of places including (among others) Colombia (fighting drug lords), the Philippines, Camp Lejeune, Djibouti, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He got to know committed soldiers as individuals and human beings, and observed their day to day lives in an intimate and honest way. His excellent writing conveys their hardships and frustrations, but also their fervency, fear, dedication, and desire for excellence.

I am not one who normally rags on the supposed liberal media or who believes that newspapers and television journalists intentionally present information that is not true. I do see from Imperial Grunts, though, that there is a lot that goes on under the radar that is either unreported for security reasons or under reported because scandals like Abu Ghraib take center stage. For every serviceman or woman who engages in questionable interrogation tactics or other abhorrent behavior, there are probably 100 who want to forge a peaceful world and who make relationship with the local people, wherever they are serving, a top priority.

It was gratifying to read about the efforts that our military makes to win the hearts and minds of the people in the places where our military maintains a presence (whether in a wartime, combat location or a peacekeeping detail). The American military provides a lot of personal health care, builds a lot of schools, distributes a lot of food, and gives a lot of kids gum that it does not get much credit for. Some of this is because the American military works in a low key and gives the credit to the local military in a sincere effort to build credibility and indigenous leadership.
Most of these women and men do not want to engage in violence, and see combat as a last resort. However, it is unfortunately part of their jobs and that will not change anytime soon. It was nice to read about other more positive things that they do.

Imperial Grunts also describes some bloody combat operations in great detail, and it is clear that there are some guys who relish it (shudder). My guess, though, is that they are a minority. Most just see it as part of their responsibility, a price that has to be paid for a more peaceful world. I remain unconvinced that war is the way we should go, but after reading this I have a greater appreciation for the breadth of activities that the military personnel engage in. Given my theological objections to war and my personal commitment to peacemaking, there were parts of Imperial Grunts that were hard to read, but I am glad I did. Without radically changing my views, Kaplan's book did round them out a little, and that is almost always a good thing.

Reverent Reader

Work in Progress

2009-05-27T14:24:00.004-04:00

Redeemed: Stumbling Toward God, Sanity, and the Peace that Passes All Understanding
by Heather King

Sorry, friends, that my blog got a little outdated. We got away for some Memorial Day fun with longtime friends. The kids played, the adults relaxed, and everyone had a great time. I became interested in Heather King's writings when I came across one of her essays in the 2008 Best American Spiritual Writing. The essay published in that anthology is called "The Closest to Love We Ever Get." It is a really moving piece of writing.

That introduction caused me to investigate what else of Heather King's is out there, waiting like a gift to be opened. Turns out she has written this memoir, as well as an earlier one called Parched. Her earlier book is not as readily available, but am sure I will find it and read it at some point. King reminds me of a Roman Catholic Anne Lamott. She has a sharp wit that she is not afraid to turn on herself, but she is basically kindhearted. She is relentlessly honest about her own ups and downs, especially her years lost to alcoholism. In this memoir alone she endures the death of her father (which she describes with tremendous poignancy), a scary career change, a painful divorce, and a bout with breast cancer. She also discusses, among
other things, her relationship with money. Most of us do not like to admit our petty or stingy feelings about money - it is one of our least acknowledged sins, but King confronts it head on in a way that is refreshing and (in the end) hopeful.

I do not think that Heather King would describe herself as "done" - meaning there is still room for growth and further movement towards the peace and reconciliation that is God. But, if we are truthful with ourselves, we know that none of us is done. It might not be all that fun to be fully enlightened - if we were, what would we have to seek and aspire to? I liked King's book because she both challenges us to seek God and affirms who we already are as children of God. I find myself incorporating some of her suggestions for prayer and mindfulness into my own daily routines, and have been pleasantly surprised at a heightened sense of awareness of grace, beauty and Presence. Her prayer "Bless ( insert name of whoever is bugging me), change me" has become one of my frequent mantras, and, amazingly, when prayed consistently, it really does help.

Heather King has experienced the lowest places in life, and survived to tell about them. She has done more than tell about them, though - she has integrated all parts of herself - the good, the bad, and the ugly - into a whole that is always growing into the person God created her to be. Her book has some rough spots because she does not sugar coat the awful places she has been, but she is a beautiful writer and person. I'll be eager to read more of her work.

Reverent Reader

All Over The Map - In a Good Way

2009-05-20T12:25:00.006-04:00

The Hour I First Believed
by Wally Lamb

A couple of reviews that I read of this latest by Wally Lamb complained at the breadth of issues that he takes on in this weighty book. It is true that The Hour I First Believed delves into many intense topics. A few of the prevalent ones are school shootings (especially the Columbine, Colorado 1999 shooting), marital communication, alcoholism, child abuse, adultery, vengeance, homosexuality, faith (and adversity's impact on it and vice versa) prison reform, drug addiction, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, unwanted pregnancies, troubled teenagers, and family secrets. However, I disagree with the reviewers who saw this as a weakness in the book. Lamb ties all these themes together amazingly well.

All of these things are part of life - they do not all occur in every life, but every life has its share of pain and sorrow. There certainly are times when things pile one on top of the other and weigh an individual down (and/or tear a family apart). Sadly, this is the way life can be - there can be a snowball effect of awful things that lead to more horrible consequences. Some people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time don't ever recover. There is a progression to Lamb's narrative that makes sense - it never seemed like he was flitting around. Layer by layer, he constructs Caelum and Maureen's story in a way that is not just readable, but compelling. He also brings in the ancillary characters and their issues with a logical flow - these characters contribute to the books whole. He has created an improbable family of wounded people trying their best to help heal each other.

I have read all three of Wally Lamb's novels, and have enjoyed them all. I believe this is his best so far, though, perhaps because it seems the closest to his own heart. The prison story line is based at least partially on his own work with the inmates of a Women's Correctional Center (he has edited two volumes of the women's writings, which I am eager to read). Many of the parts of this story are dark, there is no question, and things do not wind up tidy or "fixed" at the end. Amidst all the sadness, though, there are consistent threads of hope and redemption. There were times when the characters disappointed me, and times when I wished that things would turn out differently, but at no point did I cease to care what happened to them. I even found myself hoping that Lamb would write a sequel to this one at some point. I don't know, though, some sequels really crash and burn. Perhaps best to imagine the rest of their lives for myself.

Lamb's writing is not as poetic as some other novelists' (Anne Tyler and Jayne Ann Phillips come to mind), but he writes a darn good story. His ear for dialogue is strong, as is his grasp of detail. He is able to pull all these threads together into a coherent whole that reminds us of the varied forms that love can take. And the title - it all comes together on the last page in a way that I found extraordinarily moving. This is a good one - read it.

Reverent Reader

Mixed Reaction

2009-05-15T12:02:00.006-04:00

Serena
by Ron Rash

This book is hard to describe as "good" or "bad." The writing is absolutely gorgeous, it flows nicely, the story moves, and the descriptions are mesmerizing. The story itself is spellbinding, to use an old fashioned word. I definitely want to read more of Ron Rash's work - he's been around for awhile, and I have heard him do readings on NPR. I hope this book puts him on the national stage, because he certainly deserves to be there. I would give my eyeteeth to write even half as well as he does.

Having said that, the book will creep you out (from the small amount I have heard, I don't think Rash's other books are as gothic as this one). The main characters are despicable, absolutely pure evil. Personal gain (wealth, power, control) and vengeance are the two motivating forces in Serena and Pemberton's lives. Pemberton seems to be a reasonably decent human being until he links up with Serena, and she is really awful. It's not long before she almost completely ruins him. When he retains the tiniest shred of conscience, she exacts the ultimate revenge on him. She gave me, to quote Owen Meany, THE SHIVERS.

One of the blurbs on the back of Serena describes the novel as "an Appalachian retelling of Macbeth." That characterization led me to flip through my old copy of Macbeth (from my junior year of college) and look for the parallels. The similarities certainly exist - just as Lady Macbeth pushes Macbeth into malevolent deeds that he likely would not have done on his own, Serena lures her husband into actions that go against his better judgement. However, I also saw some similarities with Wuthering Heights, only with the roles reversed. Serena is Heathcliff, demanding nothing less than total obedience and allegiance from Cathy/Pemberton. Beware.

I was really into the story as I was reading it - could hardly put the book down, and devoured it in just a couple of days. I can appreciate the craftsmanship, and I definitely was lost in the story in that way that happens with truly good writing. However, it is difficult to love a book where the characters are so hideous and evil retains the upper hand throughout. Rachel is a good character, though. She is tenacious and determined to save her child. You will root for her, and she needs all the help she can get against the crafty Serena and her wimpy husband.

Reverent Reader

Magical Mystery Tour

2009-05-12T19:05:00.010-04:00

The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia
by Laura Miller

The Magician's Book is literary criticism at its best - readable, fun, and intellectually stimulating. So much criticism strikes me as the writer showing the reader "Look how smart I am. I know more about (insert book's title) than the person who wrote it." The Magician's Book does not come across that way. It feels like talking about a book you love with someone who loves it as much as you do. For that reason, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Some of you may remember that I plowed through the entire Narnia series a couple of months ago when I had a back injury. Reading The Magician's Book forced me to slow down and appreciate some of C.S. Lewis's subtleties, rather than just tearing through the stories in a codeine induced fog to see what happens next.

Having said that, I am not without ambivalence about some of the places the book takes us. A major part of what led Miller to write the book was her own experience of the Narnia Chronicles. She began reading them as a young child (around age seven or eight, if I remember correctly), and adored them, couldn't get enough. But then when she was verging on adolescence, someone pointed out the Christian symbolism in the books. Miller goes on and on about how betrayed she felt by this revelation, and how for many years the books were "ruined" for her. Later in her life, she picked them up again and loved them all over again, but in spite of their Christian themes, not because of them. She calls The Last Battle, the most obviously Christian of the books (with the exception of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe) a "weak finish" to the series, and is really quite belittling about the final scene, which is clearly meant to depict the heaven of C. S. Lewis's imagination.

What is with the anti-Christian bias of the literary world? I don't want to sound all right-wing here (if you know me, you know I am anything but), but it is as if literary critics have decided that all Christians are the same, and Christian themes in a book automatically make it suspect and in some way inferior. Laura Miller's religious upbringing clearly was a less than happy one, and I get that. But to assume that all Christian books are exclusive and doctrinally rigid and narrow minded? That just does not make any sense to me - one critic wrote in a blurb on the back of The Magician's Book that Miller has "rescued Aslan from the Christian imagination, and restored him to his rightful place in the human imagination." As if something that captures the Christian imagination cannot ALSO enchant the human spirit. As if many "Christian" themes are not also basic parts of what it means to be human.

Granted, there are "Christian" themed books that make my teeth itch. But just because Tim LaHaye's stuff is out there (and yes, I have read Left Behind just to see what all the fuss is about) and Frank Peretti's (ditto for This Present Darkness) does not make all literature with overtly Christian themes bad. In fact, we need literature like the Narnia series to balance out the crazy millenialists. I found Miller's dismissal of anything and everything Christian annoying. I think I understand her perception of our faith, and regret that whoever gave her those perceptions are her only exposure to Christians. But to dismiss Christian themes in literature because you have had negative experiences with a relatively small number of Christians is just as narrow-minded as the most tunnel-visioned fundamentalist could ever be.

Having gotten that off my chest, there is much about the book to be enjoyed. Miller shares a lot of biographical information about C.S. Lewis (and his close friendship with JRR Tolkien), and has obviously explored the way his theology shaped his writing. Her exploration of Lewis's own literary favorites is lots of fun as is her close look at all the fantastical, mythical archetypes that Lewis puts together to produce the unique and delightful hodgepodge that is Narnia. Miller shares the discomfort I mentioned in my post on the Narnia series with the racial stereotypes of the Narnians and Calormenes. These are only a few of the tangents that she journeys, but you can see that she has exhaustively researched her book. It makes for worthwhile reading for any Narnia fan. Get past her distaste for Christianity, and you will find much to enjoy in The Magician's Book.

Reverent Reader

Literary Links

2009-05-07T12:16:00.007-04:00

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Initially, I resisted this book because I was turned off by the title. Can't really say why, but something in me thought it would be one of those dorky books about a book club or knitting club. However, a church friend recommended that I read it, and it was an excellent suggestion. This is not classic literature, but it's an engaging story - perfect for curling up with under an afghan on a rainy afternoon (and we have had plenty of those lately!).

This novel is written entirely in letters, which makes it zip along. The characters are eccentric in a likable way. The plot is not all light-hearted, though. We learn about the real British island of Guernsey, and how its occupants suffered during the German occupation of World War II. A small group of the islanders form a book club to help pass the time and occupy their minds during a grim and fearful time. Through that book club, unlikely people become friends and eventually they form an extended family to look after an orphaned child. Guernsey shows us, rather than tells us, the potential that literature has to connect human beings. Also without the authors getting on a soapbox, we see how a diverse and seemingly unconnected group of people can become a family.

Guernsey is funny and in some instances quite thought-provoking. We see a human side of some of the Germans who fought in World War II, and at the same time come to see how war dehumanizes all who participate in it. What struck me most about this story, though, was the pervasive nature of hope. People can rebuild when their lives have been blown apart. Relationships that sustain us can emerge when we least expect them. Love is stronger than hate, and life ultimately prevails over death. Really.

Reverent Reader

Those Who Try Us

2009-05-05T11:30:00.006-04:00

Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles Our Judgement
by Rowan Williams

Some may remember that I read and posted on this book about a year ago. I recently re-read it - my congregation used it for our Lenten Book Study, and I liked it just as much the second time, if not more. Williams presents ideas that call us to look at WHY we have faith in the first place and what effect our relationship with God has (or should have) on the choices we make in day-to day life. In his chapter on Mark, Williams argues that a relationship with God is useless - that is, if we are applying the world's vision of "useful." Reminds me of Thomas Currie's book Ambushed by Grace: The Virtues of a Useless Faith. I read that years ago, and Williams may have spurred me to find a copy of it (when I read it before, I borrowed KB's copy) and think some more on this idea.

The main idea that I have been mulling over is the one from Luke where Williams essentially says that God is to be found in the connections that we cannot make with one another. As I considered that idea in light of his background idea of Trial - Christ's trial and the trials that we face from moment to moment, I realized that the very people who "try" my patience and who are the most difficult to understand may be the ones to whom I need to pay the most attention (oh really? do I have to?). The connections that we cannot make, and the barriers that stand in our way, may take a variety of forms. The most obvious is geographical, but there are also cultural barriers, as well as theological and ideological. Plus let's face it, there are people who look like us and think like us but for amorphous reasons STILL get on our nerves. In fact those personality dividers may indeed be the most difficult to overcome. Perhaps those people who try us in this way are the ones who (whether we like it or not, or whether or not we realize it in the heat of the moment) in some unexpected way can be a pathway to the experience of grace. Wow.

It's too soon to tell if it's "working" or not, but in the last couple of weeks I have been intentionally trying to be open to this possibility of encountering the Divine through people who (for whatever reason) get under my skin. I find myself praying a brief prayer that I learned from Heather King's book Redeemed (more about that book in a few days): "Bless her (or him), change me." I've been surprised by how difficult it can be to pray those words. I've also been surprised by how freeing it is once I say them. Hmmmmmm.

Reverent Reader