Our Picks

Blood River

2009-07-18T07:47:00.000-07:00

It has been a couple of months since I finished Blood River,
but I keep thinking about the tragic picture it paints of the Congo. Subtitled A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart, Tim Butcher's book tells the story of his trip down the length of Africa's Congo River, from deep in the continent to the Atlantic. Along the way, Butcher bears witness to the deterioration caused by decades of war and neglect in the DRC. Trains and highways are swallowed up by the jungle. Sunken steamships clog the river. A transit worker still reports to work daily, but has not seen a bus—or had anything to do—for nine years. Villagers tell stories of long lost technology to grandchildren who may never experience it for themselves. And all the while, foreign soldiers and armed militias guard the mines from which they continue to extract wealth. The book does not suggest solutions, but it is a fascinating journey and a deep lament.

2008-01-07T20:56:00.000-08:00

HARD WORK

I saw the movie, "The Kite Runner", last night with Tim. I am probably the only person in my circle of friends who has not read the book and had no idea what the movie was about. Two young boys forge a friendship in Afghanistan before the Russian invasion. One boy brims with courage and one with cowardice. A horrific act by neighborhood bullies tears the boys apart as the coward looks the other way instead of intervening.

The movie brings redemption through the next generation. It shows the hard work of making amends when you could choose to walk away. The cancer of unforgiveness against yourself and against others spreads until it is routed out by the discipline of reconciliation.

Go see the movie. Rejoice in grace. Joni

GAZE: An excerpt from Lifespace

2007-10-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

Here is a gift from us to you—an excerpt from LifeSpace: the Practice of Life with God. It is our first chapter, entitled "Gaze."

Click on the image below—the ripped up masking tape will make sense shortly—to read the chapter. Enjoy!

LifeSpace: The practice of life with God

2007-06-14T10:40:00.000-07:00

The book is now available ! If you would like to be the first on your block to have a copy, now is the time to order!

Grief and Hope in South Africa

2007-03-29T15:18:00.000-07:00

Our South African friend, Leani, expresses her passion for people through warm relationships, unrelenting enthusiasm, and an abiding concern for social justice. She recently recommended some videos that are well worth watching, and we pass them on to you.

"Red Dust" portrays the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the difficult path toward wholeness after apartheid. The dust has been made red with human blood, and now the victims, their friends and families are asked to grant amnesty to those who will confess to the crimes. After the stories are told and forgiveness is excruciatingly extended, one of the victims states simply, "We still have the right to say that it hurt." Indeed.

"Tsotsi" seems to have been misunderstood by many viewers, perhaps even by its distributor. Described on the DVD cover as a story of redemption, this film about a teenage thug in Johannesburg does not offer much hope. Instead, it reminds the viewer that "AIDS touches us all." Essentially orphaned by the loss of his mother to AIDS, Tsotsi learns to survive on his own. His actions touch the wealthy even more directly than the poor, in spite of their insulated neighborhoods. In the end, the street thug is seen more clearly and sympathetically as a frightened boy, and we wonder what might have been done to bring him a different future. The film thus reminds us of our responsibility to those who are known to most of us only as statistics.

Reading Old Books

2007-02-16T20:31:00.000-08:00

C. S. Lewis argued for the reading of old books, especially in theology. He wrote,"Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. Often it cannot be fully understood without the knowledge of a good many other modern books. If you join at eleven o'clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said. Remarks which seem to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you will not see why—the reason, of course, being that the earlier stages of the conversation have given them a special point. In the same way sentences in a modern book which look quite ordinary may be directed at some other book; in this way you may be led to accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its real significance. The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity ("mere Christianity" as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between."

There is a reason why some books are still in print after a thousand years. They are worth reading! That is why we so frequently turn to the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Browse it by author, and you will find some of the most influential thinkers in the history of the church. Bookmark this one--you will love it!

Leaving Church

2006-11-21T04:11:00.000-08:00

One of the highlights of last week's trip to Washington, D.C. was Sunday morning worship at St. John's Lafayette Square. The small yellow church across from the White House is known as the church of the presidents, but we were not hoping for a brush with power. We came to hear the "really real" voice of Barbara Brown Taylor.
Barbara Taylor has been an Episcopal priest since 1984. Her most recent book, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, reflects on the 15 years she spent in parish ministry and her decision to leave it. She is quick to say that she has found a different kind of ministry in teaching, writing, and speaking, but she has also found a different kind of faith. That story, told beautifully in Leaving Church, is very much worth reading.
"If it is true that God exceeds all our efforts to contain God," Taylor writes, "then is it too big a stretch to declare that dumbfoundedness is what all Christians have most in common? Or that coming together to confess all that we do not know is at least as sacred an activity as declaring what we think we do know?" Observing that "the poets began drifting away from churches as the jurists grew louder and more insistent," she writes that she "wanted to recover the kind of faith that has nothing to do with being sure what I believe and everything to do with trusting God to catch me though I am not sure of anything."
Leaving Church is one person's story, but it is a story through which we see ourselves, others, and the gracious presence of God more clearly. Taylor writes, "This is not the life I planned or the life I recommend to others. But it is the life that has turned out to be mine, and the central revelation in it for me--that the call to serve God is first and last the call to be fully human--seems important enough to witness to on paper."

(photo credit: Don Chambers, www.barbarabrowntaylor.com)

Amahoro Africa

2006-10-21T22:21:00.000-07:00

Our friend, Luke Miller, is the North American Coordinator for Amahoro Africa, an organization that is fostering a vital conversation between western church leaders and their African counterparts. The present focus of this conversation is "Amahoro Africa: Toward a Post-Colonial Church in Africa," a gathering to be held next May in Kampala, Uganda. Check out Luke's blog, which is eye-opening even for those who cannot join us in Kampala.

Conversations with Poppi

2006-09-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

When we asked them for book suggestions last November, our friends Robert and Blanche Jenson gave us some great recommendations. One to watch for, said Blanche, was Conversations with Poppi about God. Poppi, of course, is Robert, otherwise known as Jens. He is one of America's foremost theologians, but he is also a pretty great grandpa.

The idea for this book came about when the Jensons' granddaughter, Solveig, asked him some questions one night before going to bed. They kept talking until about one in the morning, and that gave Blanche an idea. Why not get a tape recorder and talk some more? Poppi and Solveig kept talking, and their transcribed conversations have been preserved in this wonderful book. It is warm and humorous, but also profound. It is sweet, but never condescending. Solveig holds her own in the conversations with her grandfather, and he both respects and encourages her thinking. Conversations with Poppi about God is careful theology at its most accessible level, with lots of affection and a twinkle in the eye.

Bob

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

2006-08-16T08:28:00.000-07:00

There is a reason why some books are still in print after 1500 years. They are worth reading, and they are worth reading more than once. Other books, like Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, win the Pulitzer Prize for the same reason. This one is a keeper.

Annie Dillard writes with glorious detail as she wonders at the natural world. From her cabin on a creek in the Blue Ridge Mountains, she takes the time to see and think about creatures that most of us ignore. But Dillard is no romantic, and her descriptions are blunt, not gilded. Witnessing the shriveling death of a frog whose insides are sucked out by a giant water bug, Dillard wonders about the presence of God in a world of inescapable and inexplicable brutality. She does see His beauty, and she recognizes the surprising, gracious displays of His glory. Those experiences remain signposts for her sense of what is real. Yet other displays, especially among insects, are startling, even repugnant.

Annie Dillard sees life clearly and realistically, but she also sees it as a gift to be enjoyed. She embraces the tension between mourning and dancing that, according to Marilynne Robinson, is inherent to this life. She portrays it especially well in The Living, her novel about eighteenth century settlers on the Washington coast. This paragraph from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek summarizes her point of view:

Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. And then you walk fearlessly, eating what you must, growing wherever you can, like the monk on the road who knows precisely how vulnerable he is, who takes no comfort among death-forgetting men, and who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal which neither burns nor warms him, but with which he will not part.

Embodied Prayer

2006-06-24T07:58:00.000-07:00

Prayer is our most overt expression of creatureliness--an acknowledgment of dependence on the One who alone is God. Yet we often approach prayer as if trying to transcend our humanity. We avoid distraction, resist sleep, and try to focus on spiritual things in the presence of God. Such things are not altogether bad, but we must not regard embodiment as an impediment to the practice of life with God. Rather, it is a central part of the human condition in which we have been created to glorify and enjoy God.

What might prayer look like when coupled with an appreciation of our embodiment? It may incorporate a wide variety of physical postures, as Doug Pagitt and Kathryn Prill prescribe in Body Prayer. It may also follow the rhythm of the day--something Christians have long expressed through the Liturgy of the Hours. We Protestants may resist patterns of prescribed prayer, but we often replace them with routines that are less creative and more sporadic. Try following the Liturgy for a few days. It will make you more conscious of life's cadence, especially with brief night prayers that mark the close of the day. "May the Almighty Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end. Amen."

Mockingbird

2006-05-13T20:10:00.000-07:00

Derek Webb's newest CD, Mockingbird, will never be mistaken for Easy Listening. The music, which has been likened to that of the Beatles, is pleasant enough, but the words can make you squirm. And rightly so. Webb continually challenges our social complacency. The opening lines of "A King and a Kingdom" come to mind:

who's your brother, who's your sister
you just walked passed him
i think you missed her

My favorite, however, is "A New Law." Like an earlier Webb song, "T Shirts," it addresses the laziness with which the church often engages culture. Webb recognizes that there is a certain security in the hard lines we tend to draw. Calling us to a practice of life with God that is shaped by the Spirit and characterized by grace, he urges, "Do not be afraid."

don't teach me about politics and government
just tell me who to vote for

don't teach me about truth and beauty
just label my music

don't teach me how to live like a free man
just give me a new law

i don't wanna know if the answers aren't easy
so just bring it down from the mountain to me

i want a new law
i want a new law
gimme that new law

don't teach me about moderation and liberty
i prefer a shot of grape juice

don't teach me about loving my enemies

don't teach me how to listen to the Spirit
just give me a new law

i don't wanna know if the answers aren't easy
so just bring it down from the mountain to me

i want a new law
i want a new law
gimme that new law

what's the use in trading a law you can never keep
for one you can that cannot get you anything
do not be afraid
do not be afraid
do not be afraid

Communique

2006-04-14T10:59:00.000-07:00

Several years ago our good friend Jeff Lawrence co-founded Communique, an online literature and arts journal. After a great start, it languished a bit while Jeff and his partners pursued other responsibilities. As of today, however, Communique is online once again. You will find provocative fiction, poetry, and literary analysis in this issue, with archived articles just a click away. Communique is always worth reading. We are glad to see it back!
Joni and Bob

Art Sighting

2006-04-10T10:43:00.000-07:00

Be sure to look at the recent posting under Sighting of Delight for Art on the website. We recommend an event in June that will wow you.

Touching the Void

2006-04-10T10:02:00.000-07:00

I am an extremist when it comes to vacations. Give me remote, scary, arduous ADVENTURE! Our girls have been known to say, "Mom, couldn't we go someplace our friends might even recognize?" Not surprisingly, I love to read about or watch movies about epic adventures in which the human beings overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. The stories make me feel alive on all cylinders. Looking over the brink of the chasm (either literally or vicariously) lets me see life in sharp relief against its alternative.

Joe Simpson wrote a book titled Touching the Void. It tells the harrowing true story of him and his partner, Simon Yates, as they face disaster after a fall on an ice mountain. The book was followed by a movie in which one or both of Joe and Simon appear (do not want to give it away!). My climbing friends tell me the movie is one of the more realistic they have seen from the technical perspective. Find the book. Watch the movie. Grip the sides of your chair with your fingernails as you hold on for the ride. Peer over the edge and feel what it is to live this life out loud.
Joni from the brink

RELEVANT

2006-04-04T07:29:00.000-07:00

We love living in the turbulence where theology and culture meet. It is the best location for engaging people as they look for answers. Check out Relevant magazine, put out by the Relevant Media Group. The magazine is targeted at college and career folks in their 20's and 30's. It is a must read for anyone who is one of these creatures or has such creatures in their lives (work, family, friends). Relevant is edgy, energetic, and challenging. You may not agree with every page, but that is part of the point. Check it out at www.relevantmagazine.com. We get the hard copy also. Good for tearing out pages to be passed along in those turbulent waters.

Joni and Bob

Theology Unplugged

2006-03-13T19:32:00.000-08:00

Our friends at Bible.org continue to offer excellent resources on the web. They are best known for the NET Bible, available on their site as a free download. Many of my colleagues at Dallas Seminary have worked on that project, and you can tell. It has 61,000 translators' notes!

Bible.org also hosts The Theology Program, an ambitious and well-conceived project that makes quality theological instruction accessible over the web. Their aim is to equip "people, churches, and pastors to understand and defend the Christian faith." Well, pastors are people, too (most of them, anyway), but check out the site and you will see what they mean. Be sure and look at the portion called Converse with Scholars, where you will find their interview with . . . me.

While you are checking out these resources, you might also take a look at Jonny Baker's blog. Jonny works with the Church Mission Society in London, and we had the privilege of meeting him at Princeton last fall. He consistently offers creative and practical recommendations for worship on his website. It is worth checking frequently for stimulating ideas.

Bob

Traveling Mercies

2006-02-21T00:27:00.000-08:00

How have we ever come this far into the blogsphere without insisting you read Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies? What were we thinking? Lamott is a dread-lock sporting, ex-addict mom who loves, in her words, "all things Jesus-y." She will cause you to gasp, cry, cringe, and raucously laugh out loud. The book follows her journey in faith. It is a good read for people who are still looking a bit askance at God and for those of us who have been around too long and take God for granted.

If you want a sweet book, perhaps you had best pass this one up. Lamott writes what is real about life. What grace is when you are looking up at the gutter. You will meet church ladies that press baggies of dimes into Lamott's hand just to keep her from starving. You will see Christ in a thousand human faces.

Go ahead. Get the book. Enjoy the ride. You will, like us, buy it by the case. It is a wonderful bridge to conversation with almost anyone.

Joni and Bob

The Creative Habit

2006-01-30T17:06:00.000-08:00

Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit provides a guided tour of the creative process. She is famous for her choreography, but Tharp is also a stimulating writer. Is she qualified to write on creativity? Listen to these words from her introduction:

I'm a dancer and choreographer. Over the last 35 years, I've created 130 dances and ballets. Some of them are good, some less good (that's an understatement--some were public humiliations). I've worked with dancers in almost every space and environment you can imagine. I've rehearsed in cow pastures. I've rehearsed in hundreds of studios, some luxurious in their austerity and expansiveness, others filthy and gritty, with rodents literally racing around the edges of the room. . . . I've worked with dancers in the opera houses of London, Paris, Stockholm, Sydney, and Berlin. I've run my own company for three decades. I've created and directed a hit show on Broadway. I've worked long enough and produced with sufficient consistency that by now I find not only challenge and trepidation but peace as well as promise in the empty white room. It has become my home."

As you might guess from the book's title, Tharp believes creativity does not just come naturally. Consistently creative people practice disciplined routines. "Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits." Building on stories from her own experience and those of her friends, Tharp offers practical guidance. Each chapter concludes with exercises, and yes, they are creative.

As people made in the image of the Creator God, creativity is part of our calling. It brings richness and dimension to life. It enables us to live expansively in a world of endless possibility.

Bob

Weavings

2006-01-24T10:29:00.000-08:00

The Weavings journal for March/April 2002 is open on my desk. Its topic is Creativity. The journal last month was on Mystery. It spurred me to teach, last week in church, on recovering a biblical sense of mystery. If you do not subscribe to Weavings, visit www.upperroom.org and get a subscription. It comes bimonthly and includes insightful writings from a wide variety of authors. Each edition centers around a topic. Essays, poetry, short stories, and more deliver a smorgasborg of delight.

In the Creativity edition, Wendy Wright writes of visiting her second daughter for the first time at college. Hear her words from "Potter and Clay":

What is the formative lesson of this autumn tide of my life? What is it to let the soft clay of my being be re-formed by the process of this second daughter's springtime flowering, her moving away? She was fashioned first inside me, took shape all those years under my nurturing hands. Now I open them wide and let her go, the fruit of this harvest season. What deep roots, stretching into hidden groundwaters, will the coming season of winter bring?

Good writing. A publication that I kept for reference now four years later. Valuable.

Joni

Saint Ralph

2006-01-23T13:27:00.000-08:00

My husband has classic stories from his days in Catholic school in southern California. When he gets together with old school friends, they laugh until they cry. If you have those memories or are attached to someone who does...or if you were a boy or know someone who was a boy...rent the new DVD, Saint Ralph. It is the story of a boy in Catholic school who believes winning the Boston marathon will save his terminally ill mother. One priest is his reluctant champion. Another is his nemesis. The humor is a bit rowdy around the edges, but it comes on strong throughout. A story of how far faith will take you.
Joni

Peace Like a River

2006-01-09T08:20:00.000-08:00

Our new friends, Blanche and Robert Jenson, insisted we read Leif Enger's novel, Peace Like A River. We must now insist that you read it also. Superb writing. A vision of God's sufficient grace through life's convoluted journey.

"Where do we go from here? He didn't know. We'd simply go forth, he said, like the children of Israel when they packed up and cameled out of Egypt. He meant to encourage me. Just like us, the Israelites hadn't any idea where they'd end up! Just like us, they were traveling by faith! Indeed, it did impart a thrill, yet the trip thus far, in the frigid and torpid Plymouth, had reminded me of what a hard time the chosen people actually had of it. Once traveling, it's remarkable how quickly faith erodes. It starts to look like something else - ignorance, for example. Same thing happened to the Israelites. Sure it's weak, but sometimes you'd rather just have a map."

Reuben, the young boy riding in the frigid Plymouth, has seen his father perform miracles: walking on air, healing a pock-marked face, restoring leather rent in two. His father had commandingly charged Reuben to "in the name of God, breathe!" at the moment of his birth. And Reuben breathed! He was too scared to do otherwise. The metaphor of breathing runs through the story as a marker of life and death.

The family needs a miracle as they ramble through the countryside, hoping to find a prodigal son. They travel pulling an Airstream trailer that was the gift of a dead man. Sister Swede chronicles the adventure through her Wild West poems. Reuben wishes for a simple miracle to make the family whole again. Or perhaps a map leading him in a straight line to the answers. Restoration comes through ragged, broken people, through forgiveness of large and small sins, and through the sting of death mingled with the victory of life. The book ends with Reuben witnessing to his journey through this life and beyond into the next:

"Is there a single person on whom I can press belief? No sir. All I can do is say, Here's how it went. Here's what I saw. I've been there and am going back. Make of it what you will."

Handling Sin

2005-10-26T18:18:00.001-07:00

We first met the Southern writer Michael Malone at a conference in Grand Rapids. We thought he was both hilarious and insightful, so we picked up his novel, Handling Sin. Apparently several divinity schools have used it in classes, but it is not a standard theology textbook!! It is the VERY funny story of Raleigh Hayes, an insurance agent from Thermopylae, North Carolina who thought he had everything under control until it all began to unravel. Raleigh receives word that his father, a former minister, has checked himself out of the hospital and left for New Orleans in a Cadillac convertible with a 20 year old girl. Accompanied by his lifelong friend, Mingo Sheffield, Raleigh takes off after his father on what becomes an uproarious, multi-state adventure. Along the way, he runs up against each of the Seven Deadly Sins while learning what is truly central. Handling Sin may be the funniest book you ever read, but Malone uses the humor to communicate a very serious point. If we have no room for others and do not love them well, we are missing the whole point of life on this earth. This is a book about grace, being fully human, and embracing the Scriptural command to love.

Foolscap: Or, The Stages of Love is not the comic romp of Handling Sin. It is a story of Theo Ryan, an English professor who has not quite found his place in the world. When the novel parodies the self-importance of academic communities and publishers, we wonder how close it comes to the author's own lived experience--Malone, who certainly knows the world of publishing, is married to a professor of English at a southern university. If you are reading Foolscap, be sure and stay with it. You might not know where it is going, but toward the end Malone brings it together with a fabulous image that is inspiring, refreshing, and well worth the trip.

As Christmas approaches, you might also try Malone's The Last Noel. This is a beautiful, bittersweet story that traces the relationship between two friends over the course of a lifetime. We see Kaye and Noni in a series of Christmas encounters, each separated by several years. Best buddies as children, they grow to love each other dearly. Sadly, they never quite admit it--not to each other, anyway, or not in time, or maybe not until the end. Pack some tissue for this one, but be ready, too, to enjoy the present with the people you love. As you read, look for Malone's subtle allusions to the twelve days of Christmas in his twelve chapters.