One syllabus of my life...

I recently accepted a Facebook challenge: "One book a day, for seven days, which has had an effect on you. No details, just the cover." 

Such a challenge can nearly kill me because I always have something more I want to say, but mostly I played by the rules. I chose 7 books from my library shelves, arranged them on my library table in the order in which I had read them, took a photo of each, and posted. After the fact, I realized that in some sense, this list was one possible syllabus of The Life I Read.

I had been tagged for the challenge my the daughter of my dearest high school friend. When Sarah and I were together, our conversations usually began, "What are you reading and what have you learned."  Our primary shared interest was science but there were multiple intersections and crossroads. She read a lot more art and music than I did; I spent more time with poetry and philosophy/theology. Our tastes in fiction/literature were very different but we were both working our way through the recommended reading list for college prep and it really helped to bounce our ideas of each other.

In Sarah's memory, I wanted the first book to be one that we had read and discussed. So I dug deep into the past for Book 1: Albert Schweitzer's autobiography, Out of My Life and Thought, originally published in 1931. Sarah and I read it circa 1965. I have revisited it several times over the years and I bought the 2009 version pictured. 

"I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics." 

- Albert Schweitzer

Book 1

What effect did this book have on me? At a time when I was very unsure if I believed in God at all, it made me consider faith and belief from a different perspective.  I learned that meaningful faith required a lot more than the mental assent to a list of beliefs or even a series of regularly practiced rites and worship. Meaningful faith demanded a day-in-day-out practice (like playing any musical instrument well) and was grounded not only (or possibly not at all) in Scripture but in caring for others.  

Meaningful faith required sacrifices of time, of thought, of talent, of work, of engagement with people and cultures that were not my own, and finally of life itself.

"We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness." - Albert Schweitzer

Book 3

I found myself revisiting Schweitzer's life and thought when I was introduced to Dorothy Day  whose autobiography is titled,  The Long Loneliness.  

"We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community." - Dorothy Day

I read Day for many years in bits and pieces as she was quoted by others who shared her devotion to "the care of the least of these," her hands-on care of the poor and displaced, and her social activism.  At first I considered her difficult, strange, and radical but I have come to see that meaningful faith is radical. I've done much of my reading of Dorothy Day digitally but her Selected Writings is part of my print library. 

"I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only by their actions." - Dorothy Day

Book 4

There was a time when Rachel Carson's Silent Spring would have been on my list. It echoes Schweitzer's "Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace." 

Rachel Carson writes beautifully and her work is the bedrock of the environmental movement. "In Nature, nothing exists alone." - Rachel Carson  As much as I love it, I do not have a copy of Silent Spring in my print library so I turned to Annie Dillard. 

I was introduced to Dillard as part of a course on environmental writers but her work is so much more. She has taught me more about seeing the profound in the prosaic, the eternal in the passing moment than any other prose writer. Her books are both environmental and theological in tone and outlook.  I posted both Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and the lesser known Teaching a Stone to Talk, Expeditions and Encounters. 

"The notion of the infinite variety of detail and the multiplicity of forms is a pleasing one; in complexity are the fringes of beauty, and in variety are generosity and exuberance." - Annie Dillard

Book 7

The seventh book I posted was W. Caleb McDaniel's Sweet Taste of Liberty. A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America. It's an unusual choice for me for a couple of reasons: (1) it's history, very readable history but not a genre I dive deeply into and, frankly, I most likely would not have read it if it had not been written by a friend and (2) it's recently published and I read it within the past year. Ordinarily I allow a book to ferment a bit more before it becomes something that has had an affect on me. 

This book tells the story of one woman and her fight for freedom and justice, justice that is defined as restitution. It gives a particular face to a pervasive problem. 

This book popped onto my reading list at just the right moment when I am seeing more clearly how slavery has always been the Achilles heel of American Democracy. I thought we had fought and won the battle with the Civil Rights Movement and all we needed was some time to bring about "liberty and justice for all." 

I see now that was wishful thinking. Seeing the cost of slavery detailed in one life makes it easier for me to extrapolate to the costs still carried by the black communities today.  

Because I read McDaniel's book, I revisit Dorothy Day's radical social activism which is grounded in radical Christian practice. 

A year ago, I'm not sure I would have seen (perhaps I wouldn't have even tried to see) a case for reparations. Having read this book, I gave full consideration to and endorse without reservation Pete Buttigieg's Douglass Plan for restorative justice. If you want to know about it here is the link:  https://peteforamerica.com/policies/douglass-plan/

Book 2

So what other books were on the list?

Voyage of the Dawntreader. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis which shows how bravery, even in the very small, is powerful and effective in the battle between good and evil.  Reckless, radical faith is often needed and that is an idea that both Schweitzer and Day would have honored.

Book 6

All such lists of books always call me to post one of my favorite theologians which means not only C.S. Lewis but these days whatever has recently come from the pen of either  Walter Brueggemann  or N. T. Wright. I went with this N.T. Wright because it is a very clear statement of how and why no one political party owns the Bible. This book is one of the many that has helped me formalize my insistence that I am neither Evangelical nor Fundamentalist and it is my Christian calling not to be.

Book 5

The remaining selection is from my Evelyn Whitaker Library because it's my project and never far from my heart. I can never pass up a chance to make others aware of the wonderful writings of "the author of Tip Cat" who published anonymously.  Laddie was one of her first published works and tells of the story of a successful London doctor and his loving  mother and his failure to care for her. Over 20 years later Whitaker published another story reversing the gender. A woman nurse of exceptional ability and potential is called home to care for her aged and abusive father. Together the books present a deft contrast between gender roles and societal expectations.  

What I'm reading...

I intended to blog more often this year but...  I'd planned to blog on my birthday a week and a half ago and woke up sick.  The next day my computer didn't wake up at all.  The following Monday my husband became very ill.  It will be a long time before I've put all the pieces back together but everyone and every thing at least seems to be up and functioning more or less normally.

What I've been reading:

Fiction:

Conroy, Pat: The Prince of Tides. 1986.  Kindle.  I seldom read any best-selling book until it's been kicking around a few years.  "Popular" does not equal "time-tested" and there is so little time to read.  I also tend to avoid 20th Century male authors; their world view is often too depressing for me.  I knew I would love this book and I also knew I would hate it.  I loved the first half and hated the last half;  I prefer "elegy" to "nightmare."   Pat Conroy wrote a great novel in the tradition of the great Southern novel with the requisite beauty, quirky characters, and disfunction.  kindle location [kl] 859 "...you're southern to the bone, Savannah.  It don't wash out."  loc 1268 "The southern way?" she said.  "My mother's immortal phrase.  We laugh when the pain gets too much.  We laugh when the pity of human life gets too... pitiful. We laugh when there's nothing else to do."  "When do you weep... according to the southern way?" "After we laugh, Doctor.  Always.  Always after we laugh."  kl 3646 "...in the South.  Sorrow is admired only if it's done in silence."  kl 3748 "I've always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position."   It has some wonderful descriptions of childhood and some painful ones:   kl 169 "Later when we spoke of our childhood, it seemed part elegy, part nightmare."  kl 1504 "There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory."  kl 3046 "There is no fixing a damaged childhood.  The best you can hope for is to make the sucker float."  It offers descriptions and commentary upon the 20th Century struggles against racism and those of feminism and environmentalism.   kl 201 "This has not been an easy century to endure."  Chapter 18 should be required reading.  I don't know that I've ever fully appreciated the role of a coach, despite having a couple in my family.  The descriptions of the North Carolina locale are heart-breakingly beautiful and made me want to go live on an island and fish. One of my favorite quotes is about reading:  kl 997 "You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read.  People that like to read are always a little fucked up."  There is, of course, a movie and it's a good one but the book is better.  I've decided to read some more Conroy: My Reading Life.  Doubleday, 2010.  Kindle.

Victorian scholarship:

Adams, Maureen: Shaggy Muses.  The dogs who inspired Virginia Woolfe, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browing, Edith Wharton, and Emily Bronte. New York:  Ballantine Books, 2007. Kindle.  My friend, Cathey Roberts, recommended this book {she also mentioned a seminar on Creativity and Madness which riffs nicely with Conroy's book and brought a smile to DMP}and I immediately downloaded it and read it straight through without iterruption--one of the advantages of physical weakness and no computer is that one may read and read and read. kl 3361 Quoting Virginia Woolfe:  "Half the horrors of illness cease when one has a book or a dog or a cup of one's own at hand."   kl 4496 "Like many creative people, she [Emily Dickinson] depended on someone else to oversee the balance between having time alone against the need for connection with others to avoid being engulfed by the work."  Emily Dickinson and her friend Susan Gilbert, who married Emily's brother, "shared a hatred of housework, a love of literature, and an intense interest in religion."  Sounds a bit like me. 

My "intense interest in religion" groups six very different books:. 

I'm continuing the Annie Dillard Reader and have just finished the excerpts from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, perhaps my favorite work of mysticism.  kl 4236 "that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames." kl 4270 "An infant who has just learned to hold his head up has a frank and forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment.  He hasn't the faintest clue where he is, and he aims to learn.  In a couple of years, what he will have learned is how to fake it..."  kl 4567 "But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought.  The literature of illumination reveals this above all:  although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise...  I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam."  . 

I was asked to read an excerpt from For the Time Being during a Sunday worship--which I was too ill to read--and as a result I'm reading W. H. Auden's Collected Longer Poems which I haven't touched since my undergraduate course with Dr.  Monroe K Spears, Poetry of W.H. Auden: Disenchanted Island.  I have a much better appreciation of the modern poets now than I did in my youth. 

"Remembrance of the moment before last

Is like a yawning drug."

Several weeks ago, DMP and I went to see the new Narnia movie which has given us an excuse to re-run the movies and re-read the books.  I first read C.S. Lewis's literary scholarship (the dreaded and still dispised Milton semester with Alan Grob) and happened upon Voyage of the Dawntreader so I started the series in the middle.  It's always been my favorite and  one reason is that dear swashbuckling mouse Reepicheep reminds me so very much of DMP.  This story is also a commentary upon "reading the right books" and celebrates imagination rather than information.  A lesson that our universities might well learn before they slash the funding for humanities and libraries.

I continue my slow progress through Robert Alter's The Book of Psalms which is masterful and magnificent.  From the 39th Psalm:  "Let me know, O LORD, my end and what is the measure of my days.  I would know how fleeting I am... a nothing... mere breath.... For I am a sojourner with You, a new settler like all my fathers.  Look away from me, that I may catch my breath before I depart and am not." 

These psalm readings work really well with the book that is the companion of the Open Door class study of Genesis.  Walter Brueggemann's Land kl 231 "...any society is likely to treat its land in the same way it treats its women."  kl 307 "...land is never simply physical dirt but is always physical dirt freighted with social meanings derived from historical experience."  kl 485 "Biblical faith begins with the radical announcment of discontinuity that intends to initiate us into a new history of anticipation.... rooted in the speech of God..."

Blog note:  I will continue using the Amazon associate links and images in the text of the blog because Amazon usually allows readers to take a look inside or download a sample.  I've switched the sidebars to LibraryThing which lets me maintain an on-line catalog and collection lists.  They have the advantage of being readable on the Kindle.   http://www.librarything.com/home/KCummingsPipes 

I first saw the LibraryThing used in Catherine Pope's Victorian Geek blog: http://blog.catherinepope.co.uk/2011/01/an-eye-for-an-eye-by-anthony-trollope/ and clicked the link in one of sidebars.  The first 200 books is a free membership if you want to give it a try.

Leftovers...

I like leftovers, especially all those left from luscious holiday feasts.  This post deals with a few things that are left over from 2010. 

My house is still fully decorated and will remain so for a few more days and, yes, I'm still listening to Christmas music.  I'll play Handel's Messiah while taking down the tree, probably on Wednesday. 

I want to share my favorite decorating tip which might prove useful at other times.   Note the brass candle holders.  I pressed them into floral foam and used the foam to secure the bright red elongated ornaments.  The visual effect is candle-like but it was much safer than a lighted flame close to my drying-out-by-the-minute Noble fir.  I keep thinking of using this trickwith things other than ornaments.  Maybe pussy-willows, or tree limbs, or peacock feathers?

I monetized this blog several months ago.  Being an Amazon associate allows me to display images of book covers and provides an easy link for readers wanting more information.  In the interests of full disclosure, I would receive  a small % of any sales which my links generated.  To date, there has been no money.  If there are ever any proceeds, they will be donated to a library or children's reading program.

What I'm reading:

Among my Christmas celebrations was a reading of  The Children's Book of Christmas Stories edited by Asa Don Dickinson and Ada M. Skinner, originally published in 1913, a Project Gutenberg eBook downloaded to my Kindle for free from manybooks.net although it is also available at Amazon's Kindle store. 

I have added links to several of my favorite sources for Kindle books to My Favorite Web Places in the right side bar.

Alter, Robert: The Book of Psalms. A translation with commentary. New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.  This is my current bedside book and I'm lingering over a psalm or two each night.  I have read through the 53rd Psalm of this superb and well-annotated translation.  Alter's notes compel me to notice how much the Psalms are related to the Prophets--particularly Isaiah and Micah--and of their commonality with Wisdom literature--particularly Ecclesiastes and Proverbs.  A note on Psalm 48:17:

"Like Your name, so  Your praise--

to the ends of the earth.

With justice Your right hand is full."

Alter comments on the word justice:

"the Hebrew  tsedeq can also mean "victory" or "bountiful act."

What a rich and challenging concept is God's justice!

As I read the Psalms in this translation, I note the frequent repetition of the word "breath" and am reminded of a by-gone resolution which, as I kept it, helped restore my health.  Both spiritual and bodily health and, indeed, life itself require breath.  The only New Year's Resolution currently on my list is:  Breathe deeply.

In my Annie Dillard Reader, Kindle edition, I've read her Poems and The Book of Luke (1989)which made wonderful Advent reading.   Kindle location 3899 "It is a fault of infinity to be too small to find.  It is a fault of eternity to be crowded out by time."  3922 "This Bible, this ubiquitous, persistent black chunk of a best seller, is a chink--often the only chink--through which winds howl.  It is a singularity, a black hole into which our rich and multiple world strays and vanishes.  We crack open its pages at our peril."  3925 "...it is the book that kidnaps the children, and hooks them."  The author writes about her experiences in Christian summer camp and Sunday School and offers insightful commentary on the Gospel text, concluding with these selected quotes:  4095 "What a pity, that so hard on the heels of Christ come the Christians.... flawed to the core, full of wild ideas and hurried self-importance....  They are smug and busy, just like us, and who could believe in them?  ...Who could believe that salvation is for these rogues?"  "Unless, of course--  Unless Christ's washing the disciples' feet, their dirty toes, means what it could, possibly mean:  that it is all right to be human."  4109 "If they were just like us, then Christ's words to them are addressed to us, in full and merciful knowledge--and we are lost.  There is no place to hide."  Annie Dillard's lovely meditative prose, her keen observations, and the way her mind interweaves everything make her one of my favorite authors.

At least a half dozen of my friends have urged me to read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, Dial Press, 2009.  I finally found time for a nice uninterrupted reading of this book which I enjoyed at least as much as my friends thought I would.  I knew nothing of the German occupation of the Channel Islands during World War II.   Kindle location 145 "That's what I love about reading:  one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you into another book, and another bit there will lead you to a third book.  It's geometrically progressive--all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment." 

I suppose I've just added a second, continuing, resolution: Read as many good books as I can and  share them in my blog with as many friends and strangers as possible.
I've been downloading many, many samples as I explore titles and plan my reading for the New Year.

My favorite Christmas present:

DMP insisted that he be allowed to up grade my original Kindle to the latest generation Kindle with Wi-Fi and 3G. I'm really enjoying the upgrade which came loaded with my media library from the first Kindle. The first night I opened my Kindle and began reading where I'd left off. The improvements are really improvements and I love the larger memory and the ability to organize my eBooks into collections on the home page. It's much faster, too. The e-Ink Pearl offers better resolution and more choices for fonts and line spacing. Wow!

Some sort of eBook reader is the future of reading. No one loves the "book experience" more than I, but a Kindle in a leather cover is an acceptable substitute. It opens up a world of reading materials that I couldn't otherwise find or afford.

Remember that you can download all Kindle books on multiple devices and have your reading synced across devices.visit Amazon to download free reading apps.

Happy New Year!

What I'm Reading...

Politics, politics, too much politics.  Now that the election is over I intend to take a hiatus from politics.  "...a pox on both your houses" unfortunately puts a pox on my house, too.

I've started preparation for the annual Medicare Part D (prescription drugs) assault.  I've got to do it for my parents and it's a ministry to offer my help to the Keenagers at church.  2011 plan data is now available at the Medicare Plan Finder . Enrollment in 2011 plans is from November 15, 2010 to December 31, 2010.

The last month has seen lots of time devoted to wind energy information and contracts and letter from our attorney... Daddy signed the contract on Monday so now we wait and hope to reap the wind.

Home repair/maintenance considerations.  I'm  thinking of replacing my dishwasher before it breaks (it's old enough to be near the end of its expected life span) because I seriously covet a Bosch dishwasher with its leak guard and enclosed heating element.  This unthrifty fit was brought on by what I thought was a leaking dishwasher but what proved to be a leak in the 53-year old plumbing behind the wall.  I love my 1957 ranch but...  While I've got a handyman here to replace that small piece of pipe, he's going to repair the minor water damage, reinforce the cabinet base, and replace the kick board.  When all that's done and my kitchen is back in good working order, I really don't want to have to deal with another water-leaking dishwasher, so I'm trying to convince myself that it's really an sound economic decision to get the thing I want to get now. 

It's not only the autumn season,  it's catalog season.  Every day brings a half dozen catalogs, slick glitterings to tickle my materialism.  I just can't resist browsing through them although I'm such a procrastinator that I really don't indulge in actual buying very often.  I always think I'm going to find perfect gifts for everyone on my list without having to go out into the crowded malls.  It's so much fun when UPS brings stuff to me.

In my Annie Dillard Reader I'm enjoying large selections from An American Childhood.  Kindle I'm fascinated by comparing her growing up as a town kid in a northeastern city (Pittsburgh) and my own American childhood on a farm in West Texas.  My days were filled with many more chores than hers but we each had ample time to think during our days and nights.  Like me, she had an entertaining mother.  Her mother told jokes; mine sang and danced around the kitchen, and read and recited poetry.  Like me, she was pretty much allowed to choose her own reading and to pursue her own interests with minimal parental supervision.  Libraries and baseball are common to both of us.

Wright, N.T.: Surprised by Hope.  Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, previously blogged, continues to surprise me.  I'm surprised at how easy it is to highlight on my Kindle and retrieve references and I'm surprised by how very much I needed to rethink.  2413 "Bodily resurrection is not just one odd bit of that hope.  It is the element that gives shape and meaning to the rest of the story we tell about God's ultimate purposes."  2855 "As with God's kingdom, so with its opposite, it is on earth that things matter..."  2996 "...heaven and hell are not, so to speak, what the whole game is about.  This is one of the central surprises in the Christian hope....  The New Testament, true to its Old Testament roots, regularly insists that the major, central, framing question is that of God's purpose of rescue and recreation of the whole world, the entire cosmos."  Wow!  anyone with any interest at all in matters eternal needs to read this book.  I'll have to buy hard copy to share with DMP because he absolutely refuses to even try to read my Kindle.

Chiffolo, Anthony F. & Hesse, Rayner W. Jr.:  We Thank You God, for These.  Blessings and Prayers for Family Pets.  New York:  Paulist Press, 2003.  Illustrated by Andrew Lattimore.  I got this book back down from the shelf to search for a quote for a sympathy note when a dear friend lost her beloved pet and have been enjoying it.  I love to read the dog quotes aloud to Miss Mandy Whitepaws.

Alter, Robert: The Book of Psalms. A translation with commentary. New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.  DMP gave me this book for Christmas and it was forgotten and buried in my stack.  In fact, I had already put it back on my want list before I found it.  Christmas all over again.  [The image at left is a clickable link where Amazon will let you look inside and browse this book.  I sampled this book on my Kindle and read the introduction there before I put the book itself on my list.  For reading the psalms, I found this one of those rare instances where the Kindle just didn't work.] This is my current bedside book.  I read a couple or three psalms each night before sleep.  Robert Alter, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at U. Cal. Berkeley, is a formidable scholar from whom I have learned much having read both The Literary Guide to the Bible and The Art of Biblical Poetry.  Alter is enriching my understanding of the Psalms and expanding my Hebrew vocabulary.  His translation attempts to be readable poetry in English while maintaining much of the psalmic poetics.  I think he succeeded brilliantly.  Introduction xxix  "Biblical Hebrew is what linguists call a synthetic language, as opposed to analytic languages such as English."  In his introduction xxxi, Alter described his translation process from the Hebrew as  "emulating its rhythms... reproducing many of the effects of its flexible syntax, seeking equivalents for the combination of homespun directness and archaizing in the original, hewing to the lexical concreteness of the Hebrew, and making palpable the force of the parallelism that is at the heart of Hebrew poetry." 

While the introduction and commentary are excellent and of great interest to a scholar of the Psalms, the translation itself is wonderful devotional reading.  From the 4th Psalm, v 6-8: 

"Offer righteous sacrifices

and trust in the LORD.

Many say, "Who will show us good things?"

Lift up the light of Your face to us, LORD.

You have put joy in my heart

from the time their grain and their drink did abound.

In peace, all whole, let me lie down and sleep.

For you, LORD, alone, do set me down safely."

Alter's use of "lift up" in v. 6 as a "gesture of divine favor (as in Priestly Blessing)... common in biblical idiom" is one example of a better reading to be gleaned from his translation.  Most, perhaps all, other English translations say "let" which is a far weaker, less evocative phrase. 
Alter found the "syntactic link" of grain and drink in v. 8 "obscure." My knowledge of Hebrew is certainly not strong enough to enable me to comment on syntax but I suggest a connection to v. 6 "righteous sacrifice" since both grain and wine are offered in joyful harvest festivals and as individual sacrifices of thanksgiving.    As a Jewish scholar, Alter would not approve my Christianizing the Psalms but this translation recalls to me the Eucharistic moment when the host and the cup (grain and wine) are lifted up.  This book is full of such tidbits to keep me happily reading for a long, long time.

What I'm Reading...

When one is a reader much time is spent in collecting, maintaining, and getting rid of books.  These activities  reduce the time available for actual reading but books as a tactile experience have been a source of joy to me since...  well, since before I learned to read. 

A number of books from my collection were borrowed and used as decoration at a baby shower for my good friend Tricia. I took the opportunity to rearrange my collections.  All of my children's literature [except for the rabbit books and a few oversized books] has joined my Victorian author collection evelynwhitakerlibrary.org in the antique amoire in the living room.  I've also been adding archival covers to book jackets and decorative covers which somewhat diminishes that lovely tactile experience.

We bought the Eastlake piece while DMP was in the Army stationed in Maryland.  There were really super antique auctions and shops but unfortunately not a lot of money.  I planned to use it in our dining room as a china cabinet but it has spent 32 years in our living room holding our special (or sometimes merely decorative) books. At the same time I bought a similarly styled dresser intending it also for the dining room to hold my collection of table linens and function as a cocktail or beverage buffet. It lives in the guest bedroom/office.  I still have dining room dreams but DMP says that I might as well let go of the vision we saw in a lovely shop in the French Quarter of New Orleans.  I will never have a dining room to hold that beautiful table for 18 (the dealer said there were 2 additional leaves) with its three sterling silver candelabra. 
A girl can dream...

Oh well, if I spent that much time entertaining, there would be much less time for reading.

Having mined the water on our family farm, we are hoping to reap the wind. 

I've read and am continuing to read much about wind energy and wind farm contracts.  Windustry.org is one good place to start.   As a family, we've decided to participate in a community wind farm and all of us are excited about the possibility of having an income source even after the water is gone.  My brother, along with his son, has been very helpful and is doing a super job of not only acquiring information and making contacts but of being point man for our family.  After much study and even more talk, we all agreed that it was a "win-wind." 

Wright, N.T.: Surprised by Hope.  Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, Harper-Collins, 2008.  This is the book selected for Sunday Bible study in the Open Door class which I'm reading in a digital edition  on Kindle.   My recommendation:  read it, read it, read it. Kindle location 1174  "There are, after all, different types of knowing.  Science studies the repeatable; history studies the unrepeatable....  History is full of unlikely things that happened once and once only." 1209 "Sometimes human beings--individuals or communities--are confronted with something that they must reject outright or that, if they accept it, will demand the remaking of their worldview."  1235 "The most important decisions we make in life are not made by post-Enlightenment, left-brain rationality alone."  1333 "All knowing is a gift from God, historical and scientific knowing no less than that of faith, hope, and love..."  1564 "Creation was from the beginning an act of love, of affirming the goodness of the other..."  1803 "What creation needs is neither abandonment nor evolution but rather redemption and renewal; and this is both promised and guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  This is what the whole world is waiting for."   1831 "In our own day the problem is... flat literalism, on the one hand, facing modernist skepticism, on the other, with each feeding off the other."  1856 "Part of Christian belief is to find out what's true about Jesus and let that challenge our culture."  1896  "...if the ascension is true, then the whole project of human self-aggrandizement represented by eighteenth-century European and American thought is brought to heel."  1901 "At this point the Holy Spirit and the sacraments become enormously important since they are precisely the means by which Jesus is present."  2248 "...God's world, the world we call Heaven....  is different for ours (earth) but intersects with it in countless ways, not the least in the inner lives of Christian believers." 2397  "The ascension and appearing of Jesus constitute a radical challenge to the entire thought structure of the Enlightenment (and of course several other movements).  And since our present Western politics is very much the creation of the Enlightenment, we should think seriously about the ways in which, as thinking Christians, we can and should bring that challenge to bear."

Being informed and transformed by reading N.T. Wright, I am very happy with the Christmas card which DMP and I will send this year.  As usual I "preview" the readings for Advent and select Bible verses.  DMP and I select a card and choose a verse.  I love that our card this year will celebrate Jesus' coming to earth not only as the Babe of Bethlehem but as the Redeemer who will bring resurrection and a new heaven and a new earth.  From the 96th Psalm:  "Let the heavens be glad, Let the earth rejoice...  Then shall the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for He is coming."

I continue to nibble at my Annie Dillard reader.  Living like Weasels (1974)  is as nearly perfect as reading gets.   The short essay describes her encounter with a weasel and offers a meditation about choice and necessity.  It concludes:

"I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.  Then, even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part.  Seize it and let it seize you aloft...  lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles."

SEASONS (a group of women meeting monthly to read and discuss theology): 

Rice, Anne: Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt. New York:  Ballantine Books, 2005.  A competent retelling of the story richly embroidered with the senses (you can taste the bread, feel the water of the mikvah, smell the smoke of the sacrifice) and the creation of a very believable family dynamic.  I don't care much for this type of fiction and wouldn't have read it if not for SEASONS but I did enjoy and do recommend it.  I plan to donate Out of Egypt to the church library.

Long ago, I considered writing a book on the 1st Century, including the childhood of Jesus, the hidden life of Christ.  Rachel Crying for Her Children was my working title.  The project was put away and forgotten--I often find I satisfy my creative impulses by researching and planning without actually having to write a book.  Probably an indication that I'm better suited to be a librarian than a writer.  I much enjoyed revisiting this material and was pleased to  see in Rice's Author's Note and in the bibliographic materials on her website  many of the sources I had researched.  I will also take a look at a couple of titles which Rice recommended:  the translations of Richmond Lattimore and at John A. T. Robinson:  The Priority of John. 
                                                                                                            So many books, so little time...