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Review: The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life

// May 18th, 2013 // Comments // Books, Family

The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life by Rod Dreher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is absolutely outstanding.

It is written in the vein of Wendell Berry, but is the true story of Ruthie Leming and her brother, the author, Rod Dreher. This is an oversimplification of the story, but an easy boil down of it is that Rod is the young man who goes off into the world looking for adventure and experiences, while Ruthie is the young girl who stays home to continue in the bonds of community and family. Rod thinks he’s got it figured out and Ruthie thinks she does. Rod learns what he is missing when he sees the community spring into action, to fulfill love for neighbor and bearing one another’s burdens, when Ruthie is diagnosed with cancer.

This book really did a number on me. In a good way. It is sad, but not depressing sad. It is inspirationally sad. It has caused me to reconsider the choices I’ve made and am making in my own life. What will the community look like that rises to help me should I become ill? How will my children react to hardship in their community, in their family? What will they recognize as their community? Their (extended) family?

This may be the most important book I’ve read in the last year or more. A must read.

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How Dorothy Sayers Made me Feel Dumb

// February 28th, 2013 // Comments // Books

I love it when a book makes me feel dumb. Well, kind of. I mean that I love it when a book introduces me to a concept that is new to me–making me feel “dumb”–but when it introduces it in a way that when I am finished I feel less “dumb.”

I’m reading one of those right now: Dorothy Sayers’ The Mind of the Maker. In her chapter titled, “Idea, Energy, Power”, she makes a point about writing that draws from the theological concept of the Trinity. The “Idea” that an author has is like God the Father. It is an Idea that has exists in completeness, beginning and end and everything in between, in the mind of the author. The “Energy” is the author’s writing the Idea out. The Idea begets the Energy that is the author’s act of writing, and is therefore akin to God the Son. The author makes no distinction between the two because, in the author’s mind, the Idea can only be expressed a particular way. Thus, the author cannot choose to make the text say something other than what the Idea allows it to say. The “Power” is the completed work, the book, that is read and experienced by a community of readers. It is God the Spirit. The Spirit proceeds from the Father in the same way the book proceeds from the idea in the author’s head. I guess one could say (although I’m not sure Sayers takes it this far) that the  book proceeds from the idea, but does so through the writing, or energy.

While the reader might think the book he is holding is the book, to the author’s mind the book was already a book as he was writing it by virtue of it existing in completeness in his mind. He always knew that it would look like what it does, even if he couldn’t have said it until he said it–through the “Energy” of writing.

This makes me feel dumb, but less dumb. I need to finish reading the whole chapter and the whole book. Sayers is onto something here, delving into the Mind of the Maker. I’m just not sure what yet.

Review: Face to Face: Meditations on Friendship and Hospitality

// February 20th, 2013 // Comments // Books, Church, Family, Kingdom Theology

Face to Face: Meditations on Friendship and Hospitality by Steve Wilkins

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was an excellent book. Pastor Wilkins presents exactly what every Christian needs to know about friendship, friendliness, and hospitality. There are two groups that definitely must read this book: churches and parents.

Churches. If you are in a church and want to see your church family grow closer together, you need to be practicing Biblical friendship and hospitality. You need to be pursuing these things. You need this book.

Parents. If you are the parent of any number of children, you need to understand that friendship does not come naturally to our children–especially in extremely individualistic America. This book will help you to articulate well to your children what friendship is and how your children should engage in it.

I read the most recent printing of it, and if you can get it, that is the one you should read. Pastor Wilkins added an introduction to the most recent printing that explains how the Trinity is the basis for Biblical friendship and hospitality. The introduction alone is worth the read.

For just a small taste of one of the points Pastor Wilkins makes, I share this. The Greek word often translated as “given” in the phrase “given to hospitality” has a huge impact on what hospitality should mean to Christians. First, while Paul tells Timothy that pastors should be “given to hospitality,” he also tells the Romans that Christians (yes, all of us) should be “given to hospitality.” The word translated “given” is also translated elsewhere as “persecute,” meaning that Paul “persectued” the Church. He did so actively and with great zeal. That is how Christians and pastors should be given to hospitality, with great zeal. He also shares that classical Greek used the word to describe a hound is given to the chase (of a fox or some other animal being hunted). Hospitality is not something Christians do when it is convenient or when it presents itself, as we wait passively for it. It is something we should be given to, actively pursuing, looking for–with zeal, as if we were persecuting those in need with our hospitality.

* I should add that I used this book to lead a Sunday School class and it worked quite well in that environment.

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Review: Mere Christianity

// February 19th, 2013 // Comments // Books

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is my second reading, I think my first reading was around 2007 or so. C.S. Lewis is simply incredible. This book is no exception. It should be must reading for any Christian. If you haven’t read it, and can’t get to it anytime soon, read a synopsis of it so you can fake the conversation and pretend you’ve read it.

I remember reading this book through the first time and being less than impressed because Lewis wasn’t a Calvinist. My reading must have been earlier than 2007 because I was clearly still in the “cage-stage” of Calvinism. (That means I was still new enough to Calvinism that I was annoying to be around, and should have been locked up in a cage until I was through with all that.) This reading, it didn’t bother me. In fact, I’m not sure he actually said anything that a Calvinist would disagree with.

I really enjoyed, near the end, Lewis’s chapter on “Let’s Pretend.” He talks about good pretending versus bad pretending and says that “Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.”

This, I think is the importance of liturgy and habits. This, I think is the importance of a book like James K.A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, and the arguments it offers along these lines. This, I think is what Augustine had in mind when he said that we believe in order to understand. Or, what someone else meant when they said that God expects us to obey before we understand.

I am also greatly intrigued by his chapter on “Nice People or New Men.” In it, he gets at what he might have been doing when he has the Calormene being welcomed by Aslan into Aslan’s country (heaven). Christians, says Lewis, are those who accept Christ and are on their way to being conformed into His image, are those who do not accept fully the doctrine of Christ but are so attracted by Him that they are His, or are those who practice false religions like Buddhism but emphasize those points which line up with Christianity and de-emphasize those points which oppose Christianity so that they are in fact practicing Christianity. This last group is the group to which he believes some pre-Christ pagans might belong (like Socrates, I assume). I just want to understand this chapter better.

Good book. Must read. Make it happen.

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Review: The Violent Bear it Away

// February 7th, 2013 // Comments // Books

The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O’Connor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, first let me say I will not make the mistake of rating Flannery O’Connor four stars again. She is a five star worthy author, that much is clear. From both the quality of her writing and also the amount of kickback I received when I rated her book, Wise Blood, only four stars!

Flannery O’Connor is an extraordinary writer. She is one of the few people who can write a story in which all of the characters can be disliked and yet still tell a story worth reading. This book is about a young boy who is kidnapped by his great uncle, who believes himself to be a prophet, so that he can baptize and raise the boy as the prophet who will continue his own work. The boy struggles with whether to recognize he has been called to be a prophet and to obey the call, or to accept that his great uncle was a nutter and get on with his life. He has only the memory of his great uncle to convince him of the former (and any signs from God), but has the impact of his conscience and his uncle pushing him toward the latter.

O’Connor’s stories (at least the few with which I am familiar) tend to not have happy or even resolved endings. If they do, the resolution is quite subtle. I think this is her way of reminding us that we are waiting for the ultimate and total rule of heaven to break into our world, and until it does, life will be dissatisfying–at least insofar as getting answers and justice.

I think this is one of the books that will probably have to be read two or three times. I think there are foreshadowings earlier in the story that I missed, but that I would catch on a second reading. Any Flannery O’Connor–this book or any other–is worth the read.

As one Presbyterian pastor friend of mine once said, “If I converted to Catholicism, it would be because of their literature–not their doctrine.”

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Review: The Odyssey

// February 6th, 2013 // Comments // Books, Education

The Odyssey by Homer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading The Odyssey this year. A couple of observations jumped out at me in this reading:

1. There is a definite theme of weaving (stories, garments, etc.) in The Odyssey.
2. There is a consistent example of teaching in the story. Athena appears several times as Mentor to both Telemachus and Odysseus. She is using her time to mentor Telemachus on how to be a man and a leader (primarily by presenting him with positive examples of manhood and leadership in Nestor and Menelaus). She also uses her time to train Odysseus to be a leader (he knows how to be a leader in war, see The Iliad, but needs to learn how to be a leader in his homecoming.)
3. Odysseus might be a type of Christ. This point is especially interesting because Homer wrote (or spoke) this long before Christ and without knowledge (we assume) of the God of the Bible. At a minimum, he unwittingly taught things that prepared the Greek people to receive the Gospel of Christ. I think this is also true of The Iliad.
4. Penelope is amazing. Andrew Kern, of the CiRCE Institute, argues that The Odyssey is a hymn or ode to Penelope, to celebrate her integrity, wisdom, and faithfulness.

I get to read this book again next year, and I’m quite excited for the opportunity to do so.

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