Godric has been on my "to read" list for some time. It didn't come off of the list for a while because while there were plenty of things that sounded enticing (for example: I like Buechner, have a penchant for medieval tales, and the book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in the early eighties) everyone I'd heard talk about the book also mentioned it was really hard to get into and the dialect was hard to get through. I decided to give it a chapter or two and see if it grabbed me, and it did. The style definitely took some getting used to and I had to sail on past a word occasionally while guessing at its meaning based on context, but on the whole I found it very engaging and in many places poetic. Buechner bursts Godric out of the sterile shell you might find in Lives of the Saints and makes him real, with personality and roughed edges, as you might expect from someone who'd lived in as a hermit for most of the last 60 years of his life.

Janel and I honeymooned in Quebec and I remember being curious about how a pervasive Catholic identity could crumble within one generation. La Guerre, Yes Sir! is a portrait of a small Quebec town during the Second World War which gives a perspective from a time when the church still had a much more prevalent connection to everyday life (at least ritually and in their cursing). In the book, various elements collide: Quebecois and "Maudits Anglais", parents and children, Protestant and Catholic, and so on. The humor of the book is soaked in religion, death, sex, and small-town community with the war always underneath everything.

I read the Sparrow a number of months ago and now I've got the sequel queue'd up in my "to read" list. Thanks to David Dark, I've also downloaded a podcast of an interview with Mary Doria Russell for the next leg of my travels. The Sparrow is an interesting blend of sci-fi, anthropology, linguistics, and religion. I think this excerpt from the back cover is a good introduction:

As the last line makes pretty clear, things didn't go exactly according to plan. The mystery of what exactly happened on the mission is gradually unfolded but not fully revealed until the end of the book, when we learn of the events that have transformed Emilio Sandoz into a wretch of a man. I was particularly intrigued by Sandoz's experience of God throughout and his disappointment and sense of betrayal as the mission deteriorates. In the meantime, the book goes into fascinating detail about life on Rakhat, alternating narratives from before and during the mission with those from after Sandoz's return to Earth.

Recommended reading.

In a strange way, I end up with more questions but my faith feels stronger on a fundamental level. A friend of mine coined the phrase "faith-infused agnostic" and that term has grown on me in a lot of ways. It reminds me of Meister Eckhart's famous prayer that God would rid him of God. Our perceptions of God are always incomplete, and trying to force God into terms we can understand can become a form of idolatry.¹ It seems that humility dictates that we acknowledge our own fallibility and finitude with respect to a God that cannot be contained by any concept within our grasp. At the same time, I can't help but continue to wrestle with the events of my life, the kind of world we live in, and God’s role in both.

Many of the issues I find myself mulling are not unique to me – most of them have been asked since ancient times and none of them have definitive answers. Knowing this reminds me that I shouldn't be surprised that I haven't solved life’s most profound mysteries, and I suspect that my thoughts may continue to change over time.

I was interested in this book based on the jacket copy above. I found it to be a mostly pleasant read but I wish it had delved deeper into the noise and the dirt. Most of the chapters were completely rooted in the day-to-day of a middle-class life rather than anything particularly dangerous or chaotic or calamitous. I was hoping to read someone's exploration of where the majesty and glory is in a world where babies get brain tumors, earthquakes destroy lives and oil spills ruin ecosystems and livelihoods. This book was more about "[digging] into ordinary moments" and the more serious issues were occasionally added as asides without deeper exploration.

She refers to the book as a "compilation of journey notes" and I think that is a fair description. Each chapter is generally only one or two pages, relating an experience or thought that she had, followed by a short conclusion she had reached after the fact. At times this felt too moralistic, but made for light and usually interesting reading. It was easy to read a chapter or two even when I didn't have a lot of time to devote to it. In some ways it felt like a blog that you could tuck in a pocket and pull out whenever you wanted (for those of us without fancy phones and gadgets, that is still a novelty).

As a designer, I appreciated the work that went into the book, and its small size felt comfortable to hold (design was by Sharp Seven, who've done a lot of interesting work on a lot of great projects, including Jesus for President and Conspire Magazine). And as an independent writer myself, I applaud Krista and her husband for their courage in stepping out and braving the world of publishing. They've even set up a publishing company called Swerve Press. If she continues in this vein, I'll be interested to see what her future projects bring to the table.

Links:

• Swerve Press
• Krista Finch
• International Justice Mission - 10% of proceeds are donated to IJM

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book.

As I packed for our in-process move, I found a scrap of paper from years ago, with this quote written on it. Something must have struck me about it then, and it strikes me again now. It's from Buechner's Telling the Truth:

Related: Living in God's absence: Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani?

Walter Wink
Engaging the Powers (via the Daily Asterisk)

I was reading NT Wright's Surprised by Hope around Easter last year and I remember thinking that the themes of the book were appropriate – we won't just become disembodied spirits, but rather renewed bodies on a renewed earth and heaven. A friend's comment rang true after I finished the book: that's all fine and good, but what about here and now? It seems that Wright tackles that question in his latest book, After You Believe.

“...part of the problem is that for many centuries, Christians have assumed that virtually the only point in Jesus' death was 'to save us from our sins,' … in God's kingdom human beings are rescued, are delivered from their sin, in order to take their place...not only as receivers of God's forgiveness and new life, but also as agents of it.” (p.112)

He sets the stage by describing two types of mindsets within contemporary Christianity – one which sees the faith as a system of rules to try to follow (and be forgiven for when we fail, and try to follow them again) and the other which preaches that we are simply to find our true selves and then be true to it rather than to try to live hypocritically, pretending to conform to a certain standard (after all, Jesus dined with the outcasts of the day). His alternative is an entire book dedicated to virtue.

Rather than a focus on rules, or an attempt to find our true selves, Wright suggests that we ought to be doing the work of forming new habits, becoming the type of people that respond to situations automatically out of a character formed by the virtues of faith, hope, and love as well as the fruits of the Spirit. (As an aside, I am curious how well the cheesy children's music that Janel and I both experienced as children, and which we are now exposing our daughter to will help in this regard.)

In a discussion about the renewing of our minds, Wright describes how Paul “has glimpsed a fresh vision of the ultimate future, which has given him turn a fresh vision of the habits of life by which humans can already live in the present as people shaped by that future.”

The book itself is at turns interesting, repetitive, engaging, and a little dry. I did appreciate the follow-up on his previous book (the themes of which are integrated throughout this one) and as I am currently thinking a lot about the “now/not yet” dilemma, it was good to get some of Wright's input on living as citizens of God's kingdom in the midst of all the brokenness that continues to thrive around us.

Links of interest:

• http://www.ntwrightpage.com/
• Browse inside this book: http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061730559/After_You_Believe/index.aspx

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this book

Finally got around to watching "Food Inc." last night (streaming on Netflix) and considering food seemed an appropriate way to conclude our Lenten practice of taking on vegetarianism. It was a good reminder to us to try to be extra intentional about supporting the local co-op and CSA options when we need to buy food to supplement our (small) garden and our dumpster diving. And it may be helpful as we consider our future relationship with meat-eating.

I recommend it if you haven't seen it yet: visit Food Inc.'s official site.

The Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative (LFFC) has added Washington Community Fellowship (WCF) church at 907 Maryland Avenue, NE, to its list of community-supported agriculture (CSA) distribution points. WCF, the only LFFC delivery location in the city, will open each Wednesday night from the beginning of May through mid-November for shareholders to pick up their fresh fruits and vegetables. The cost of shares for the 28-week season is as follows:

• Full share of vegetables (7-12 items weekly, for 28 weeks): $775
• Half share of vegetables (4-9 items weekly, for 28 weeks): $475
• Full share of fruit (1-2 items weekly, for 20 weeks): $120

Visit www.lancasterfarmfresh.com to learn more about LFFC and to sign up! Choose the "NE DC/WCF" location on your application form.

Twenty-five full shares for pick-up at WCF need to be sold by April 15th in order for LFFC to include it as a pick-up site. Please forward to your friends, neighbors, and listserves. (Please note -- if there are not enough subscribers, LFFC will refund the money of those who paid.)

I wanted to like this book. Coming on the heels of reading Peter Rollins' book of parables, I was hoping for a lengthier story in the same genre, but they were quite different experiences. The premise was intriguing enough -- an ancient manuscript discovered in a decrepit old house, "bound in vellum...written in an unusual hybrid of Middle English and Dutch" and translated into the tale shared in this book. Unfortunately I found the story to be too predictable and less than subtle. I realize that part of the problem is the genre -- can you blame a morality tale for being didactic? The story wove a variety of biblical images throughout the narrative, some more effectively than others, as well as a fair number of clichés. ("Every narrator makes choices...Some see the wine jug half empty; others see it half full.")

[Spoiler alert] While I agree with the basic sentiment expressed in the book (essentially "be the change you want to see in the world") I have to admit I was expecting some kind of a twist at the end and despite the fact that I love St. Francis' prayer (my wife and I included it in our marriage ceremony and have it hanging in our house), I felt cheated to find that the big secret was something so well known.

Perhaps I was just expecting too much.

If you're interested in checking it out, the publisher has made it available for free by email or RSS over at Daily Lit.

You can also find it on Abebooks.

*Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book

I finished Peter Rollins' recent collection of tales the other day. He hesitates to call them parables but he is hoping that is what they will be to the reader. "Parables subvert [the] desire to make faith simple and understandable. They do not offer the reader clarity, for they refuse to be captured in the net of a single interpretation and instead demand our eternal return to their words, our wrestling with them, and our puzzling over them...A parable does not primarily provide information about our world...the parable transforms the way we hold reality, and thus changes reality itself." Some of the stories are adapted from Scriptural stories and parables, others are completely original. It's a small book and the stories are very short -- sometimes less than two pages. Each is followed by a short commentary describing what prompted him to write the story or giving some of the philosophical background that went into it. (He notes in the introduction that these commentaries are not meant as explanations but rather as "place[s] of entry for the uninitiated.") The book is separated into three parts, titled "Beyond Belief", "G-O-D-I-S-N-O-W-H-E-R-E", and "Transfigurations."

I left the book on the table beside my bed and read a parable a night for a while, which is probably a better way to go then simply plowing through the entire collection at once. Take a listen to "The Orthodox Heretic" in the YouTube clip to the side and see some other resources linked below to see if you'd be interested in the book.

More Peter Rollins resources

• The Rapture - A tract that I helped Peter prepare (in the style of Jack T. Chick). Although this story is not in the book, it will give you a good idea of what to expect.
• Translating the Word - in which Peter shares another of the stories and spoils the plot of The Book of Eli
• The Third Mile - Peter reading another story from the book.
• No Conviction - Peter reading another story from the book.
• Other Peter Rollins video - A collection of other videos (not all related to this book)

Find the book at Paraclete Press | AbeBooks | Amazon

*Note: Peter has just updated his website with this info: "To aid in this time of reflection I have chosen seven parables to supplement the thirty-three already found in The Orthodox Heretic. If you purchase a copy of the book from Paraclete Press (up until the beginning of Lent – 17th February) you will receive these additional parables. This means that you will have one to reflect upon for each day of Lent."