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.  

Apocalypse Now! Or, not...

Of late I am reading much apocalyptic literature. Not a subject in which I have much interest. So why am I reading it? The same reason I got trapped into reading Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth in the 1970s.
Ah, the hazards of joining a book club!

There is much buzz about the major motion picture coming in October starring Nicolas Cage based on the Left Behind books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. SEASONS, the women reading theology group at my church, is reading the first book of the series and plans to see the movie. They hope to be well prepared to discuss it with others.  I gave this book the librarian's look when it first appeared in bookstores in 1995. I looked at a couple of copies being read by family and friends. I read the Kindle sample. These books are badly, badly written and fraught with even worse theology. One reviewer called "eschatological porn." I refuse to read it!
I am reading End Times Fiction by Gary DeMar with an introduction by R. C. Sproul which addresses the theological errors in such books. I downloaded it as an e-book from Better World Books and, for those who have fascination with "the rapture" or "the Second Coming" or "the end of the world," I recommend DeMar's book.
Even better, read this sermon "Apocalyptic and the Beauty of God" by my favorite New Testament theologian, N. T. Wright.
Wright's book The Millennium Myth is also worthy exploring.

Reading--even reading about something in which I have so little interest--is never wasted time.  When I was asked to teach my Sunday School class on the last Sunday of August, I had ample background materials to apply to The Apocalyptic Discourse of Jesus from Luke 21:4-36.

A close reading of this brief text from the words of Jesus as offered in Luke's gospel will perhaps lead to a better understanding of biblical apocalypse and allow us to leave behind the noise and distraction offered by LaHaye's fiction.

By definition, biblical apocalyptic literature reveals the transcendent reality beyond the world of historical events; it joins historical events with what is happening beyond history. Biblical apocalypse mediates the eschatological events of the end times and the new beginning which follows. Biblical apocalypse reveals the redemption of Israel and the "coming of the Son of Man with power and glory". It is always a call to expectation and righteous living and its intent is hopeful reassurance.

The other synoptic gospels treat similar material in Matthew 24:1-3 and Mark 13:1-4. In both of these accounts, Jesus speaks from the Mount of Olives to his disciples in Matthew and to four named disciples in Mark. In Luke's gospel Jesus is spending his nights at the Mount of Olives and teaching every day in the Temple. His audience includes not only his disciples but the surrounding crowd of people as well as Pharisees, Sadducees, leaders, scribes, and Herodians.

Our text begins with a prophetic oracle ("the day will come")  in verses 5-6 as Jesus looks at the Temple stones and "devoted things" (the later perhaps resonates with the "render unto Caesar" passage in the previous chapter) and says that they will be thrown down. The destruction of the Temple is a recurring topic in Luke's gospel. See also Luke 13:31-35, 19:28-44, and 23:26-31.
Jesus' apocalyptic discourse is a response to a pair of questions about when the Temple will be destroyed and what sign will mark the coming of the day. This historical event happened ten to twenty years before Luke took up his pen.
When the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in approximately 66-70 CE, Christians had heeded the words of Jesus and fled the city. Reading biblical text requires that one consider not only the time frame of the story--Jesus teaching at the Temple--but also the time frame of the text's original readers. The first readers of Luke's gospel, having survived the destruction of the Temple, an apocalypse of a sort,  are several decades later living in a time of persecution marked by rejection and ejection from their Jewish community and imprisonment and death at the hands of Roman governmental authority. In his telling of the story, Luke places Jesus and his followers in the midst of a crowd, a crowd that will soon demand a crucifixion, a crowd not unlike that surrounding the persecuted church.  What is Luke's primary message to his readers?

One way to read this text is to look closely at its structure.
My structure differs a bit from that offered by Charles H. Talbert: Reading Luke: a literary and theological commentary on the third gospel. (2002) I agree with Talbert's basic structure (ABCDB'C'A') but I preferred  to expand the central point (ABCDED'E'B'C'A') because the repetition makes clear the repetitive nature of history. The structure also supports my contention that the point of this discourse is not the political upheaval and the cosmic disturbances that mark the Apocalypse although LaHaye and other popular rapture writers focus on those things. Luke in this structure makes clear the cycle of history which continues indefinitely. Jesus was asked "when" and Jesus in Luke says "not yet."  In the writings of Luke, Jesus' Eschaton is the final event of earthly history and his readers are not to be misled about its timing. Rather, these readers live in a time of waiting, of readiness, of persecution, of betrayal, of testimony, and of witness.

The structure of Luke 21:8 - 28

• A  21:8-9  Time, "Don't be led astray"
• B  21:10       Political upheaval "wars and rumors of war" "Be not terrified"
• C  21:11          Cosmic disturbance "fearful things..."
• D  21:12              Persecution "for my name's sake"
• E  21:13-15            Testimony "Settle in your hearts..."
• D' 21:16-17         Persecution (betrayal) and death "because of my name..."
• E' 21:18-19             Witness "in your patience, possess your souls..."
• B' 21:20-24   Political upheaval "Jerusalem trodden down by the nations..."
• C'  21:25-26      Cosmic disturbance
• A'21:27-28   At that time, see "your redemption is near" "the kingdom of God is near"

Talbert concludes that this passage is all about persecution and perseverance.

In 21:29-36, Jesus concluded his discourse with a parable (a fig tree) which marks the passing of seasons. In all seasons, through Jesus' words, Luke urges his Christian readers to "Take heed to yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down..."

Note: "Generation" in 21:32 has at least two meanings:

1. a period of time of approximately 30 years. In this sense "generation" is tied to earthly history and is related to a fleshly life and human power
2. an indefinite number of years characterized by a particular quality.

In the Apocalyptic Discourse of Jesus, "generation" carries the second meaning; it is a period of time characterized by suffering and persecution,  testimony/witnessing, and expectant waiting. In this text, Luke has located his audience between the time of Jerusalem's destruction and "the day" when God judges the nations and redeems Israel in the "coming of the Son of Man". The counsel Jesus and Luke offer to their hearers applies equally to Christians today:

• Don't be lead astray
• Do not be terrified
• Settle your hearts
• In your patience possess your souls
• Lift up your heads because your redemption comes near
• Take heed to yourselves lest you lose heart with surfeiting and drunkenness and anxieties of life
• Watch
• Pray
• Be worthy to stand before the Son of Man 

Evolving...

SEASONS (my women reading theology group at church) will meet on Saturday to discuss Evolving in Monkey Town:  How a girl who knew all the answers learned to ask the questions  by Rachel Held Evans.  (link to amazon to sample the book)  It's a book that would have been a huge help when I was a freshman in high school and first met Mr. Darwin and his theory.  Like the author, I found  science challenged my faith.  Unlike the author, I kept my own counsel--for decades I shared my doubts with only a very few trusted ones.

After a brief time of private atheism, I found that I just could not live if life--all life, my life--was random accident. The world is full of beauty and I can never quite shake the thought that beauty has a source and a purpose and that somehow beauty and truth are linked. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' – that is all  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." So Keats and other nature poets formed my canon. For many years, I kept a journal that consisted of each day's one moment of supreme beauty and found myself feeling gratitude.  To whom?   Having been a doubting Christian, I became a doubtful atheist.  Beauty, gratitude and those second doubts led me step-by-step back to faith.  I came to think of God as "source and sustainer."

My mother, with whom I had shared some of my doubts, encouraged me to just read the Bible, and reach my own conclusions about what it said and what it meant.  She suggested I start with the  Psalms--more poetry.  The Writings of Hebrew Scripture--wisdom literature, the prophets, the song book of Israel--became my primary biblical text.  Most Psalms are not didactic but responsive--responsive to life situations, responsive to pain, responisve to injustice, responsive to a community, responsive to God.  The Psalms are not afraid to question God and I learned to be honest (with myself at least) about my doubts because a God who is "source and sustainer of all that has being" is certainly big enough to handle my questions.

Like Rachel Held Evans, I was troubled by all the great crowd of people, past and present, who could not believe because they had not heard.  "If salvation is available only to Christians, then the gospel isn't good news at all.  For most of the human race, it is terrible news."  p. 92  I was well-versed in the Girls Auxiliary of the Women's Missionary Union but it seemed "not right" that God would condemn those who had been born at the wrong place and the wrong time and it was unrealistic to expect that missionaries could reach across geography and cultures and centuries to preach to all people and offer them the Jesus choice.   If there is a God, God must be as merciful as  just, as gracious as  righteous.   "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end." [Lamentations 3:22-24; not all biblical poetry is found in Psalms.]

For people of compassion the idea of almost universal condemnation to eternal torment is quite troubling.  For many it is the sticking point; my father was concerned for all the Native Americans and for the hypocrisy he found in the church.  Even more troubling are the Christians who "are more offended by the idea of everyone going to heaven than by the idea of everyone going to hell." p. 113 My cousin is so troubled by what she learned as a child "from pretty Sunday school teachers who smelled like peppermint and let me call them by their first names"  p. 27, so offended by  unkind dogma, that she cannot even listen or seek the comfort that might be found in a more mature faith.

 I was very comforted by C.S. Lewis whom Rachel Held Evans quotes on p. 139:  "We do know that no person can be saved except through Christ.  We do not know that only those who know Him can be saved by Him."  Even more comforting to me than Mere Christianity was the story from The Last Battle in the Chronicles of Narnia when the young warrior who has faithfully served Tash discovers himself in Aslan's country where he immediately loves the great lion who has always loved him. 

By the time I graduated from college, I had a very thorough understanding of Darwin's theory, as it had been first written and as it had been revised.  I understood science far better and had a fuller appreciation of its beauty.  Oddly, the more science I learned and the more open my mind, the easier it was to say with Charlotte Yonge:  "some when, some how, God..."   For me there is no conflict between science and faith but there is an almost constant conversation between them.  I understand that science itself is not "the truth" but an understanding of truth in constant evolution.

"By little and by little" [Dorothy Day] I found faith to believe... most of the time... and a few years of reading Zen taught me to think of Christian life as a practice.  Even when I feel no belief, I practice Christianity:  I meditate, I pray, I read the Bible, I assemble with the saints, I sing songs of thanksgiving, I devote myself to good works.

Like Rachel Held Evans, I learned that "obedience--with or without answers--was the only thing that could save me from this storm."  p. 106  

When I spend time studying the Bible and time reading books by serious biblical scholars, when I see new ways of understanding biblical text and the world around me, when I get to talk with others who are also asking questions, I find it easier to believe.  Among the more recent books that have evolved my faith is  N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope (previously blogged) which is also mentioned in Evolving in Monkey Town p.173.

Most of my doubts are now a faint and fading echo but, for me, faith is never simple.   I walk a somewhat rocky Way through a dark valley.  I am a believer and  a Christian.  I take biblical text seriously.  I am neither a Fundamentalist nor an Evangelical.    I believe in God and in Christ Jesus, Messiah,  who brings life from death.  I believe in "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."    Everything else is subject to change. 

"Evolution means letting go of our false fundamentals so that God can get into those shadowy places we're not sure we want" God "to be.  It means being okay with being wrong, okay with not having all the answers, okay with never being finished." p. 23

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...

What I'm Reading...

When I start a novel, any novel but especially a good one, I want to read it all the way through from start to finish with as few interruptions as possible, which is of course not at all possible most of the time.  Vacations are an exception.  Earlier this month while on vacation, I indulged in a fiction binge:

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth:  Lady Audley's Secret, Kindle downloaded from  Project Gutenberg.  Braddon (1857-1915) first published her "sensation" novel about bigamy in 1862 and it was a sensation of the popular sort, going through nine editions in the first year.  I was surprised at how much fun it was to read this book--a murder mystery with a bit of romance and family dysfunction.  The character of Robert Audley (the nephew/sleuth) and some of the book's tone remind me a bit of the much later comic novels of P. G. Wodehouse.  A quote re. Lady Audley's relationship with her adult step-daughter:  "There can be no reconciliation where there is no open warfare. There must be a battle, a brave boisterous battle, with pennants waving and cannon roaring, before there can be peaceful treaties and enthusiastic shaking of hands."    Another favorite:  "Sir Michael Audley made that mistake which is very commonly made by easy-going, well-to-do-observers, who have no occasion to look below the surface.  He mistook laziness for incapacity.  The thought because his nephew was idle, he must necessarily be stupid.  He concluded that if Robert did not distinguish himself, it was because he could not.

"He forgot the mute inglorious Miltons, who die voiceless and inarticulate for want of that dogged perseverance, that blind courage, which the poet must possess before he can find a publisher; he forgot the Cromwells, who see the noble vessels of the state floundering upon a sea of confusion ...  and who yet are powerless to get at the helm...  Surely it is a mistake to judge of what a man can do by that which he has done....  The game of life is something like the game of ecarte, and it may be that the very best cards are sometimes left in the pack."

Yonge, Charlotte M.:  The Heir of Redclyffe,  Kindle downloaded from Project Gutenberg, first published in 1853 and the best selling of Yonge's novels, "the most popular novel of the age."  Yonge (1823-1901) used profits from her  books for charity.  Her father told her upon the success of The Heir of Redclyffe "that a lady published for three reasons only: love of praise, love of money, or the wish to do good."  She is sometimes called the novelist of the Oxford Movement and was a life-long Anglican Sunday Schools teacher.   I read this book long ago, probably in imitation of  Jo March in Alcott's  Little Women.  I enjoyed reading it again.  Yonge is  a bit "preachy" even for my taste (despite my complete sympathy with her religious views and, as readers of this blog have undoubtedly noted, my predilection for all things theological) but dear Charlotte does go on and on and on and...  Perhaps that's one more thing I have in common with her.

I've started 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 and I'm hopelessly behind the class in my reading.  I'm greatly enjoying the DVD discussion by N.T. Wright and the discussion questions.   A few years ago I read this author's  The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God--Getting Beyond the Bible Wars (2006) and would put it on my short lists of books that made a significant difference in my world view because it finally made clear to me the questions asked by post-modernist thinkers. p. iv "Almost all Christian churches say something in the formularies about how important the Bible is.  Almost all of them have devised ways, some subtle, some less so, of ostentatiously highlighting some parts of the Bible and quietly setting aside other parts."  p. xi "How can what is mostly a narrative text be "authoritative"?  [How can we] "speak of the Bible being in some sense "authoritative" when the Bible itself declares that all authority belongs to the one true God, and that this is now embodied in Jesus himself."  p. 14 "My present point is that these older ways of thinking about the world have left their mark on the study of the Bible, on the way it has been taught... and that these ways of thinking have themselves become discredited in the mainstream culture."  p. 16 "integrity consists not of having no presuppositions but of being aware of what one's presuppositions are and of the obligation to listen to and interact with those who have different ones."  My copy of this book is very heavily highlighted and I recommend it with enthusiasm.  I'm hoping that I will be able to enjoy reading N.T. Wright as much on the Kindle with bookmark/highlight tabs as I did in print with my yellow highlighter in hand.

I continue reading Annie Dillard (previously blogged) and greatly enjoyed revisiting Total Eclipse and An Expedition to the Pole from Teaching a Stone to Talk.  I found her short story The Living a bit odd and disturbing, as Dillard can be.  I'm reading a collection of her works on my Kindle.  Dillard is one of the finest nature writers I've encountered and I greatly enjoy her writing style and her powers of observation.  She makes unexpectedly connections and helps me see how intricately all of life is interwoven.  Interwoven--what a great name for the book I'll never write.

And as previously blogged  I'm reading through everything by Carlyn G. Heilbrun who will undoubtedly merit a blog dedicated solely to her one day.  I recently finished The Last Gift of Time. Life Beyond Sixty. This author gives voice to my thoughts and I know no other author (who did not live in the 19th Century) who mirrors by interior life and thoughts so well.  p.2  "...aging might be gain rather than loss, and... the impersonation of youth was unlikely to provide the second span of womanhood with meaning and purpose."   p.4 "Perhaps I am one of those who are born... blessed with the gift of eternal old age."  p. 35 "As Sartre said, not to choose is to have already chosen.  The major danger in one's sixties--so I came to feel--is to be trapped in one's body and one's habits, not to recognize those supposedly sedate years as the time to discover new choices and to act upon them."  p. 120 "What one remembers is, I think, a clue to what one wants to be."  p. 137 "To find unmet friends, one must be a reader, and not an infrequent one.... Reading--like those more frivolous lifelong pursuits, singing in tune, or diving, or roller-blading--is either an early acquired passion or not:  there is no in-between about it, no catching up in one's later years."   and p. 182 "Life seemed simpler because I was young and simple."  p. 150 quoting Samuel Johnson:  "the enduring elegance of female friendship." ...perfectly describes the relationship of a woman reader with a woman writer whose work she has encompassed, reread, and delighted in."  Thank you to my "unmet friends for that "enduring elegance:  Jane Austen, Evelyn Whitaker, Elizabeth Barret Browning, Grace Livingstone Hill, Beatrix Potter, Christina Rossetti,  Annie Dillard and, yes, Elaine Showalter and Carolyn G. Heilbrun.


I finished the second of the poetry books DMP gave me for Christmas last year.  Gluck, Louise: Averno.  New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux,  2006.  She is an excellent poet and I'll probably keep  this book on the shelf and may reread it in a year or two but it was much to dependent on the Persephone myth to be quite my cup of tea.  full text available at the floating library

I'll close this month's reading list with another quote from Carolyn G. Heilbrun (p. 182): 
"True sadness which is not nostalgia can, I have found, be dispelled by reading: by that same literature which seemed, in my youth, to hold both excitement, wisdom, and all I could discover of truth; and by today's newly perceptive books.  Lifelong readers continue to read, finding in books... the means to enjoy life or to endure it."