Life with Jocelyn

Jocelyn Larsen

An open prayer to God-Who-Shows-Favor

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This may come as a surprise to you (I know it definitely has to me!), but the longer I walk down the path toward God, the more drawn I am to already-written prayers. I find such ease in just reading, such comfort in finding my own feelings and thoughts already amply expressed, such unity in knowing that these are all prayers God has already fielded from so many holy mouths. I also find tremendous freedom of focus, having only to coax my heart into alignment with the words rather than to invent the words with my brain and coax my heart into alignment.

Today I offer you a prayer. I suppose that you could consider it an open prayer, along the lines of the open letter which is a cultural norm in our day. It is both a prayer for your sake and a prayer for your employ. I mean, I have already prayed it to God on your behalf and now I share it with you as a prayer that you may read to God on behalf of yourself and others. Don’t just read it. Try praying it.

God-Who-Shows-Favor:

I imagine your favor as being always in my periphery, as if you inhabit every corner of my home, my workplace, my neighborhood, my city, our world. You are too humble to appear front and center in every frame of my life. You prefer to sit at my side, to wait in the wings, to condescend yourself into a position of steady support. And yours is not the shallow support of a cheerleader – a baseless, arbitrary romance toward one team and a baseless, arbitrary hatred toward the other. No, yours is a deep and particular support for however and whatever leads ultimately to the Best Good for all. Couched in Wisdom. Founded in Reality.

I imagine turning occasionally to glimpse you and that whenever our eyes meet you are wearing a broadly goofy grin, nearly beside yourself with excitement just to be thought of and to have caught my attention for a moment. “Just admiring you,” you say. The smile takes over your entire face. It is almost an ugly smile, it is so robust. It makes me a bit uncomfortable. Anyone who has seemed to like me so much has always had ulterior motives. But there is something different about this grin. You seem simply, blissfully not to be aware of the social graces that keep most of us from expressing our uninhibited enthusiasm for whatever, whomever we love. It occurs to me that you are exactly like a child in this way. I cannot help it – a laugh bursts from my throat and out my mouth. It sounds fairly like a guffaw. I guess it is just that your face so caught me off guard. It is so unabashedly sincere, so indescribably splendid, and yet so innocently light-hearted. For a moment I am embarrassed at the abruptness of my laugh; it must have seemed fairly rude, to laugh essentially in your face. But you show no signs of embarrassment, even on my behalf. Social graces drown in the wake of instinct — of spontaneous reaction to life as it comes to you. 

And so: what else could I do? In the face to so much emanating favor, and that directed so intently, so unobligatorily… toward me.The only thing to do was: laugh.

I suppose that it was my receipt of your favor.

I suppose that it was your receipt for your favor.

I think it might have been all you wanted.

Maybe you CAN be and have all that you want…

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…if you let God have influence over what it is that you want.

I don’t think I’m alone in my insatiable desire for more.

I think all of us have some discontentment, idealism, or longing — whatever you want to call it. We just have it for different things. Some of us can’t get enough money to buy stuff; others can’t get enough money for its sense of security. Some of us can’t get enough control/order over our lives; others can never have enough of the free whimsy that adventure offers. Some of us can’t get enough of the comfort of food and drink; others can never be disciplined enough, exercise enough, or get thin enough.

A lot of us want all of the above!

And of course, at some level, all of us want less of the negative things: our anxieties, our anger, the brokenness in our relationships.

I feel frustrated often by all of the things I want that I can’t seem to get. I often say to myself / God things like:

Why can’t I just change myself for good?

Why do other people seem to have blessed and easy lives while I struggle?

Why won’t my relationships heal themselves once and for all?

Why is this always so difficult?

Then, I had an idea:

Maybe the only way to get what I want is to change what I want.

Maybe the best way out of some of these frustrations is to submit my wants to God, asking not for the stuff to satiate me, but for a change in my expectations, deep contentment with what I already have, and Love to cover over it all.

Maybe some of the things I want seem benign and Good to me, but maybe they are actually self-serving and therefore not desires that God can get behind like I’d expected.

Maybe my discontentment is actually mostly greed.

Maybe my idealism is actually a lot of pride.

Maybe my longing is actually quite a bit of envy.

Maybe my discontentment, idealism, and longing does not need to be satiated, but rather utterly transformed.

Maybe the only way to get what we want is to change what we want. And for that, we’ll definitely need God.

God, change what we want so that we can be and have all that we want to be and have, according to Your Best Good for us in every way. We trust you. Amen.

I need pastoring.

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Yes, I need pastoring.

But it’s not what you think.

First, let me say that I think overall we’ve done a grave disservice to the title and meaning of “pastor.” Because when I say “pastor,” don’t you automatically only think of people who work at church buildings and deliver sermons on Sunday mornings??

It’s sad, if you think about it.

We almost always use “pastor” as a noun only, as a label, as a title: “Pastor So-and-So of Such-and-Such Church.” It may certainly be used as a noun, but it is also a verb! All of us can and do pastor each other all the time — incidentally, mostly outside of church buildings, where the largest majority of pastoring is needed since most of us spend 166 hours of our week outside of church.

Also, unfortunately, we’ve reserved the title of “pastor” only for those who have jumped through our denominationally-imposed standards of education and vocational equipping.

By hoarding the title for the elite few, we’ve accidentally turned those few humans into the only living spiritual heroes or heroines we know. The poor things! What infinite pressure this accidentally puts on them! After all, they are just humans, too. They go back and forth between work and home every day, just like the rest of us, figuring out how to live and move and have their being in Christ. Their marriages are messy, just like ours. Their kids struggle within and without, just like ours. They don’t feel like praying and reading the Bible every goddamn day, just like the rest of us.

And, by hoarding the title for the elite few, oh how we miss out on the quiet pastors and pastoras among us who do at least as much if not more of the waiting on, serving, overseeing, and care taking of us day in and day out. (These italicized words are the what the Greek words for “pastor” have as their meaning and undertones.)

No, when I say I need pastoring, I have something else in mind. It’s not less than you think, it’s more. Way more.

I need way more than one person with the title of “pastor” that I see from a distance for a couple of hours one morning per week. I need a whole team of pastors popping in and out of my every day life, each with different gifts, insight, and help.

And I need way more than to hear a once-per-week sermon. I need to learn to hear the sermons that are floating in and around and all about my life constantly, preaching Grace and Truth and Love on the fly, in the moment, exactly when I’m in greatest need of pastoring, whether I know it or not.

Yes, we all need pastoring. And all of us are invited into the vast work of gently pastoring one another every day of the week.

Last week we went to the sea for a few days with dear friends. We stayed in the same big house together with all our kids. We ate together, played games together, played in the sand together, watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids together, watched the rain together. And we pastored each other. (Though none of us have “pastor” as our regular job title.) Their baby was pretty sick and had a few hours off and on of being really fussy. We took turns holding the baby, pastoring the baby, giving each other breaks from the baby, inventing ways to keep the baby happy. Also, my kids are really loud. They took them down to the beach one afternoon so that I could actually take a nap! Then, one afternoon, two of the adults got in a fight over some legitimately difficult circumstances. Together, all four adults listened, coached, raised our voices, asked questions, affirmed, fought some more, and patiently pastored us all together to greater ways of seeing and understanding.

Though it wasn’t exactly happy and comfortable in the moment, in the end I was so grateful for the fussy baby and the loud kids. I guess I was just mostly so glad for us — that we’d created a culture where we could take turns sacrificing our own needs and agendas for the sake of each other.

Though it wasn’t exactly happy and comfortable in the moment, in the end I was so grateful for the fight. I guess I was just mostly so proud of us — that we’d created a culture where two people could have a very normal fight in front of each other and we could all work through it in a healthy way that led to resolution and actually even stronger relationships between us all.

We all need pastoring, every day. And we all need to offer our Love and our gifts to pastor alongside the people around us, every day. Because we need pastoring pastors everywhere, every day: care giving, overseeing, teaching, preaching, sermonizing, serving, being the humble spiritual heroes and heroines we need in a thousand different ways. We are all invited to learn the care-full, humble, messy, servant’s work of self-sacrificially pastoring one another in all of the moments of our lives, everywhere we go.

Will you let yourself be pastored? Will you humbly pastor the people around you?

 

Daily Strength for Daily Needs

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I have developed a bit of a habit of beginning my work day with just a few minutes of quiet. The more difficult my work, the more consistent I seem to be. Hm. Anyway, the few minutes of quiet are usually composed of something like read-praying, or pray-reading. (I’m not sure which.) I find myself turning more and more to pre-written prayers that I can borrow as my own prayers. These prayers are especially great for when my brain is too foggy or too famished or too fraught with the big needs of my little life to come up on my own with very intelligent or genuine prayers. So, pretty much every day. It’s a good thing for me that Christ-followers have been writing down their prayers for thousands of years so that I can lean on them.

I have a few sources from which I read often, and I want to mention one to you today because I have found it to be consistently just what I need:

  1. brief and simple – not too much
  2. deep and profound – not too little, it whisks me quickly into the Reality of God without being smarmy or sentimental
  3. a great introduction to new-to-me heroes of Faith, Hope, and Love – you know – a few in the surrounding cloud of witnessing “saints,” whether officially canonized or not

And the book is: Daily Strength for Daily Needs, collected by Mary W. Tileston. It is so old that:

  1. at some point I found an electronic version of it for free on the internet, though I now own a hard copy since I found it fairly easily at a used bookstore
  2. the English is old, but I almost prefer it because it makes me pay attention; I feel like you could easily transcribe it in your head if the Thees and Thous are a bit too much for you

Each daily reading consists of three short entries, usually one Scripture, one poem or song, and one paragraph/prayer. Here is what I read today:

——

Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

MATTHEW vi. 32

 

All as God wills, who wisely heeds

To give or to withhold;

And knoweth more of all my needs

Than all my prayers have told.

J. G. WHITTIER

 

LORD, I know not what I ought to ask of Thee; Thou only knowest what I need, Thou loves me better than I know how to love myself. O Father! give to Thy child that which he himself knows not how to ask. I dare not ask either for crosses or consolations; I simply present myself before Thee; I open my heart to Thee. Behold my needs which I know not myself; see, and do according to Thy tender mercy. Smite, or heal; depress me, or raise me up; I adore all Thy purposes without knowing them; I am silent; I offer myself in sacrifice; I yield myself to Thee; I would have no other desire than to accomplish Thy will. Teach me to pray; pray Thyself in me.

FRANCOIS DE LA MOTHE FENELON

——

Surely you do not need my commentary on that, but here it is anyway: just a few phrases that hummed louder than the rest and that now will stream through the back of my consciousness as I do my inward, outward, and upward Work today:

 

And knoweth more of all my needs

Than all my prayers have told…

…I simply present myself before Thee…

…I am silent; I offer myself in sacrifice…

…pray Thyself in me…

 

The entire mound that is my accumulated, prayed needs – filling many journals and many desperate prattling ons, I can assure you – is a tiny bump compared to the vast stack of my actual needs that are preserved, treasured, and pondered in the mind and heart of God. All that is mine to do is to show up to God, to present myself to God, to be sure that I am present and attentive if and when God’s Voice wavers in my general or specific direction. Even Prayer is not wholly mine to which to attend to — God prays in me.* A silent offering of myself is enough Prayer even for God.

A good way to start my work day, don’t you think? 😉

Love, JRL

 

*PS. To read more about this – the idea of God praying in you – get your hands on something, anything written by Maria Boulding – it is a stunning and recurring theme of hers.

my paraphrase: philippians 2:12-13

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Wrestle, exercise, and go to practice every day to experience more and more what it means to let God restore every aspect of your being. Don’t ever get smug or over-confident toward God; just let God keep energizing you to focus on living congruently (with your motivations and actions in increasing alignment), trusting only in the simple fact of God’s goodwill toward humankind.

 

Soul Practice: Walking through Difficult Things

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I’ve run up against something difficult today, and I’ve had to preach to my heart again the sermon about what to do with difficult things. Anyway, I thought maybe it could help a few of you, in case you, too, have run up against something difficult recently, and so here she is.

Dearly beloved:

It pains me to know of your pain. Life is hard, isn’t it? And there always seems to be something, doesn’t there?

Well, from where I sit, you have two human-way options and one Christ-way option.

The first human-way option is to lie down and let the difficult circumstances or feelings mow over you. If it is something that brings out your fear/anxiety/worry, this means you will choose the safest path rather than the path of courage. If it is something that brings out your anger/rage, this means choosing resentment rather than freedom. If it is something that brings out your self-pity, this means you will choose to despair rather than hope. I have said that you “choose” a path, but in reality hardly anyone ever exactly chooses this path; it is almost as if this path chooses you. This is the path that most often just seems to happen to you when you do nothing in your power or in the power of the Spirit of God to do something differently. It is as if a river of your instinctively reactive thoughts and feelings picks you up and takes you with it, unwittingly, wherever it may flow.

The second human-way option is to attempt to transcend the difficulty by denying or avoiding its pain. “I’m not anxious,” you will hear yourself say, while your mind races and you cannot tear your thoughts away from the difficult thing. “Me? Angry? No way!” you will hear yourself say while bitterness simmers in your bones. “I’m fine,” you will hear yourself say, while you distract yourself with shopping or sex, screen or work, food or drink. A lot of Christians like to call this option the way of faith; it is actually the way of dishonesty. A lot of Christians like to consider this the heroic way. They chant positive phrases while they charge blindly ahead, unwittingly bayonetting Reality with the inchoate battle tactics of a revolutionary war soldier.

Another way to think of these two human-way options is to consider the invitation of N. T. Wright in The Challenge of Jesus: “[to hold on] simultaneously to the pain of the world and to the love of God…and to live in prayer at the places where the world [and ourselves in this world] are in pain.” [italics, mine] The first response to difficulty I have described would be like holding onto the pain of the world while abandoning the Love of God. The second response I have described is like holding onto the Love of God while abandoning the pain of the world.

Now. The third way. The Way of Jesus, the “Christ”-ian option, is to walk with God (and others) through the difficult thing.*

First, we will just sit with the reality that this thing is, indeed, difficult. Go ahead and let yourself admit it. You may even feel sorry for yourself for a moment, if you need. Poor you. Life is hard and the hits just keep on coming. If you live in the western world, if you had a mostly happy childhood, if you have imbibed any of the entitlement of the so-called American dream, these together have forged in you such a strong expectation for ease and comfort and happy-as-the-status-quo that any difficult thing really does seem to jar you deeply. I do not mean that as an indictment, just as an observation, and in response to your pain, I release an onslaught of sincere compassion for your plight.

 

Jesus was

man of sorrows

Jesus led

a life of descent

Jesus knew

the pain of pain

At home you are

with him

in your difficulty

Be comforted

 

It is wise of you to bring your difficulties, your worry, your ranting and raving, your habitual self-focus to the One who knows it all full-well and can handle it, can handle you.

Now. There is only one thing left to do: Keep walking. Only keep walking. Walk right on through it. Resist the temptation to let yourself be buried by it. (Do not stop or lie down on the path.) Resist the temptation to paste on a smile and avoid within and without the hardship of it. (Do not attempt a rainbow leap over the path in a single bound.) Instead, walk through it. Take in your small hand the gargantuan Hand of God. Put one foot in front of the other.

Your journey through difficulty may be short-lived. You may have forgotten it all by bedtime tomorrow. Or your journey may be long. You may still be forging this very same path through the dark, through the wilderness, through the desert of difficulty all your live long years. You simply do not know and it is not for you to know. It is only for you to walk.

Do not fret about your pace; do not feel guilt over the unsteadiness of your step. Do not pressure yourself to run or jog or skip. Do not lose hope if you lose the path entirely for a bit.

Do not feel the need to come up with fancy prayers, pouring out excesses to the Man of Sorrows who already knows. And, if you can, do not speak many words at all about the difficulty, whether to God or others. Give the difficulty a one word name, if you can, and then pray that word to God.

You do not have to resolve today all of the problems.

You do not have to bear today all of the misery.

You do not have to anticipate today all of the future.

Today you must simply walk.

Today you must simply walk through the portion of it that belongs to today.

Today you must simply walk.

 

Benediction: Concern yourself only with the difficulty of today, knowing that the Man of Sorrows hears your prayer and walks with you. Amen.

Peace & patience to you today, friend.
Love, Jocelyn

 

* Timothy Keller, in Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering, paints a brilliant picture of these three “options” for dealing with difficulties – the particular language here is mine, the idea was first planted in my mind by him.

 

fill in the blank: “the world was made for _____”

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In Ishmael (which I briefly reviewed here), Daniel Quinn tells a story that keeps returning to my thoughts. I will retell it to you here in the way that I retell it to myself, though I cannot guarantee that my memory of it will have entirely very much in common with Quinn’s original story. Nevertheless, it went something like this:

A man (with an especial interest in anthropology) was entirely alone on the undeveloped earth. (Think pre-civilization, not post-apocalypse.) The man wandered all over the planet, looking for life. Finally he arrived at the sea. Walking along the beach, he came to a jellyfish washed up on the sand. “And how did you get here?” he asked the jellyfish. “Oh!” said the jellyfish. “Well, in the beginning there was nothing except God. Then one day God spoke and into existence came light. On the next day, God made the atmosphere – the space between the waters here and the waters way above us. On the third day, God made dry land between the seas, like this very sand we’re standing on and….” here the jellyfish paused for dramatic emphasis, “…plants! Millions and millions of delicious things to eat, like phytoplankton. Then, on the fourth day of this particular week, God shaped the sun and moon and stars, effectively making what Time is to us – the seasons and rhythms. But on the FIFTH day,” here the jellyfish sucked in his tentacles a bit with a sort of self-conscious modesty, “on the fifth day, God said, ‘Let the waters swarm with swarms of jellyfish!’ And here we are: Jellyfish. The crowning jewel of all that God made.”

Boy, have I come to love that jellyfish; what a personality! 😉

Anyway, it may be stating the obvious, but Quinn was using the jellyfish’s origin story to poke some holes in our western origin story… a story that inevitably ends with what can sometimes be a very narcissistic, unconcerned dominance that results in oppression of all kinds – ecological, spiritual, sociological, biological, relational, etc. If I were to summarize Quinn’s critique, I’d say that he saw the predominant cultural stories of the west (though not always explicitly articulated) as culminating in the idea that: the world was made for mankind or, to say it another way, that the end of the world is mankind. Quinn longed, I think, for something bigger and better than that story…a Story that would have space for all of the jellyfishes and all of the humans, but something that could leave Life to live itself out and something that could give Life to the lives all around it.

So: I’ll let you read Quinn for yourself, but his ideas have planted a few really good questions in my psyche. Questions like: What if all of the saints and mystics are right – what if the world is God’s and everything in it? What if the entire world was made for God? What if humans have been charged with the Responsibility and Gift to partner with God in leaving Life well enough alone to live itself out? and in bearing and bringing more Life to everything around us? What if the Life we are to enjoy and in which we are to participate is an ever-inclusive kind of Life with ecological, spiritual, sociological, biological, relational, etc. ramifications?

How have I been sucked into the self-centered, human-centered origin story? How have I taken advantage of the Leadership and Responsibility God gave me by wielding my power to misuse and abuse the Life in and around me? How am I a Taker rather than a Leaver/Giver (again: ecologically, spiritually, sociologically, biologically, relationally, etc.)?

Just a few small thoughts for your Tuesday start-to-a-four-day-week. 😉

2017 book reviews, part III

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KIDS // PARENTING // SABBATH

IX. Kids’ Books

The Peculiar Miss Pickett, Nancy R. Julian. 1972, 91 pages ***

 

Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars, Ellen MacGregor. 1951, 94 pages ***

 

Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis. *****

This summer my boys were 7, 5, and 2. As soon as school was out, we began reading one chapter together of Chronicles of Narnia before bed most nights, beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and finishing with The Last Battle later this fall. One of the adults would read while everyone else listened, in varying degrees. The 7-turned-8 year old thought they were fantastic – still emphatically his “favorite books ever!” (And he is emphatic and enthusiastic about hardly anything.) The 5-turned-6 year old loved them. The 2-turned-3 year old was impatient at times, but mostly would just eventually fall asleep to them, having read “his” other book or two before we began.

 

Ramona the Brave, Beverly Cleary. 1975, 190 pages ****

Our family has a particular fondness for Ramona because she has such a similar {strong} personality to one of our boys. It is clear to me that Cleary either had that personality herself, had a close friend or family member with that personality, or raised a child with that personality. That said, I learn so much from Ramona’s mom, Mrs. Quimby, in each of the Ramona books. Ramona the Brave is my clear favorite. It makes my husband and me laugh and cry at how much it seems we are raising a male-Ramona; it gives us a much deeper appreciation and love for him. After one of my Enneagram retreats this year, to decompress, I pulled it off the bookshelf in a coffeeshop and read it in one sitting.

 

Ramona Forever, Beverly Cleary. 1984, 182 pages ****

 

James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl. 1961, 119 pages ****

 

X. Parenting

Parenting from the Inside Out, Siegel & Hartzell. 2003, 250 pages ***

The main thing that I remember from this book is that the authors basically defined love as holding someone in your mind’s eye (or being thoughtful of them and what is best for them) even when you’re not with them. I really resonated with that and felt challenged and reinvigorated to parent my children with depth and thoughtfulness and empathy.

 

Parenting without Borders, Christine Gross-Loh. 2013, 270 pages ****

Raised amidst the influences of both American and Korean cultures, Gross-Loh compares and contrasts the parenting styles, traditions, assumptions, etc. of several diverse cultures, including but not limited to Japanese, German, French, Korean, American. I found the book very thought-provoking as it challenged my western status quo. It helped me think outside of the box and get to the roots of why I parent the way I parent. It might be a bit of a difficult read for the idealists among us, but just keep leaning into the idea of small changes that can make the best of what we have…

 

XI. Sabbath

Sabbath as Resistance, Walter Brueggemann. 2014, 89 pages ****

Brueggemann is simply a brilliant human being. His insights always challenge me and my ways of thinking. This little book had on it a big call: to contemporize and to argue for the essential nature of the fourth commandment (“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”), what Bruggemann regards as the hinge command between the first three (regarding how to relate to God) and the last six (regarding how to relate to others). He did an excellent job, as he always does, of demonstrating the Way of Yahweh as opposed to the oppressive, insatiable gods of culture / today.

 

The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel. 1951, 101 pages ****

A classic which hadn’t grabbed my attention until this year when a few of the books I read recommended it. While I read, I had at least one of those moments of sensing that Heschel is on to something utterly life-altering: that Time does not move or change, but that we change as we move through Time. Heschel calls for an entire reorientation to Time, especially in a respect for the sacredness of Time (via Sabbath) rather than our usual recognition of the sacred within our Stuff (i.e. our Bibles) and our Spaces (i.e. our church buildings) only.

 

The Sabbath World, by Judith Shulevitz. 2010, 217 pages ***

2017 book reviews, part II

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ART // JOURNALS // FICTION // OTHER

V. On Art and being an Artist

The War of Art, Steven Pressfield, 2002, 165 pages ***

 

Beate Not the Poore Desk, Walter Wangerin, Jr. 2016, 141 pages ***

 

The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron. 1992, 217 pages *****

Julia invites one into the community of artists with arms open wide. She offers belonging and belief to anyone doubting, smoldering, or paralyzed about being an artist. The best thing Julia offers me weekly (I bought her whole trilogy compilation and am currently working through the second book) is that she seems, eerily to know a whole lot of what I’m thinking and she steadily encourages, draws out, and challenges me as an artist. The Artist’s Way is essential reading for anyone who has a sense that any sort of creative work might be their calling, but that that creative work is utterly outrageous, irresponsible, or impossible for them to do.

 

Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott. 1994, 237 pages ****

 

VI. Non-fiction journals of writers I love

The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, Madeleine L’Engle. 1974, 245 pages ****

 

A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis. 1961, 151 pages ****

Dark, brooding, and fantastically honest, I absolutely loved this little scrap of Lewis’ journal following the death of his not-long wife, Joy.

 

VII. Fiction

The Human Factor, Graham Greene. 1978, 302 pages ****

 

The End of the Affair, Graham Greene. 1951, 238 pages ****

 

The Accidental Tourist, Ann Tyler. 2002, 352 pages ****

A brilliant caricature of what it must be like to live inside the brain of an Enneagram 5? (I can only guess! But it made me appreciate and have more grace toward e5, either way. Would any of my Enneagram 5 friends/readers want to read this book and let me know if it resonates with them?? You can write your response in binary to me, if needed. 😉 )

 

Hannah Coulter, Wendell Berry. 2004, 190 pages ****

This was the first Wendell Berry book I ever read. It is written in first person through the eyes of Hannah Coulter, telling her story of life and family, of farm and place. Her story was imperfect and beautiful and redemptive. My overall feeling from this book was that of being sublimely grounded. It was my first Wendell Berry but it will not be my last.

 

Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis. 1956, 313 pages ****

 

The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver. 1998, 544 pages ****

I think 68% of Americans must have read this book much nearer to the time of its publication. I was in the other 32%. (I prefer to make a book prove its validity by sticking around for several decades — at least.) Anyway, I read this with a group of friends. Kingsolver’s character development, telling her story from five different first-person perspectives, was stunningly well-done. She championed women in a special way, she painted a fascinating picture of humanity and their diverse transformation potentials, and she shut my mouth and made me grateful for the life of comfort I lead every single day. She also made me think a lot about parenting… about childhood being something white people made up and tacked onto the first part of life.

 

Ishmael, Daniel Quinn. 1992, 263 pages *****

This book was explicably a passing along of a philosophy of origins and culture, sociology and anthropology. (It has no plot to speak of, and was not written to be impressive literature or beautiful art. It is comprised primarily of a back and forth dialogue between a teacher and a student.) But I love having my brain blown up every now and then, listening to how others think and see the world, and for that: Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael does not disappoint. Quinn examines the mythology of western culture (“What mythology?” doubts the student.)– the stories we tell ourselves and our children about how the world began and why everything is as it is. He explores many varying themes, but weaves them all together in what I thought was a very cohesive and relatively easy to understand web. Fascinating, brain-expanding, thought-provoking.

 

Gilead, Marilynne Robinson. 2004, 282 pages *

 

The Queue, Basma Abdel Aziz. 2016, 224 pages *

 

VIII. Other

The Gospel According to Mark, James R. Edwards. 2002, 508 pages ***

Mark for Everyone, N. T. Wright. 2001, 226 pages ***

The Rule of St. Benedict, St. Benedict. circa 540, 96 pages **

What is the Bible? Rob Bell. 2017, 336 pages ***

The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer. 1998, 183 pages ***

Tattoos on the Heart, Gregory Boyle. 2011, 212 pages *

 

 

2017 book reviews, part I

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SPIRITUAL FORMATION // NEW AUTHOR // EUGENE // ENNEAGRAM

 

Happy year’s end! It is time for my annual book reviews posts.

This year I read a lot, at least for my still-have-young-kids-who-interrupt-me-practically-every-forty-seven-seconds self. So, I’ll give you my full list and give each a 0-5* rating, but I’m only going to comment on the top 17 of 2017.

Also, I sort of read in categories this year – sometimes on accident, sometimes on purpose. So I’ll be awarding 1ish winner per category and I’ll organize the books by category and so that you can more easily peruse the kind of books you might actually want to read.

All in all, the list will come to you somewhat evenly in three posts. On the final post, I’ll let you know my “I insist!” Book List recommendation, the book(s) I read in 2017 that I think everyone ought to read. (If there is one.)

Also, I’d always love to hear what you’re reading and how it’s changing you. So please comment below or subscribers email me back and let me know the best books you read this year. I’m always adding books to my to-read list, and, honestly I’d just mostly love to connect with you.

For reference, here’s my 5* scale:

* Meh

** Fine

*** Good

**** Great

***** Fantastic! and/or Brilliant.

Top 17 of 2017

 

I. Spiritual Formation

The Mountain of Silence by Kyriacos C. Markides. 2001, 243 pages *****

So much expansion happened in my mind and heart as I read this book and ruminated on it in the months thereafter. This was essentially the book Father Maximos (a Greek orthodox monk) never wrote. The author thoroughly explored orthodox (specifically Anthonite) traditions through stories and teachings. It was fascinating and overall very affirming to see and experience the Way of Jesus through an older, more traditional culture and religion than my own. I found that we all had much more in common than not. The writing was a bit clunky in places, having been translated from Greek, but the content was mind-blowing.

 

Prayer and the Common Life, Georgia Harkness. 1948, 217 pages ***

 

A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, Philip Keller. 1970, 142 pages ***

 

Liturgy of the Ordinary, Tish Warren Harrison. 2016, 153 pages ****

 

Concerning the Inner Life, Evelyn Underhill. 1926, 63 pages *****

Just read it. And then read it again every year for the rest of your life. It’s short and it will solve all your problems. A written-down lecture to pastors and priests in her day (1940s Britain), Concerning the Inner Life is a simple but brilliant instruction on the importance of developing one’s interior life rather than only externals. I am a writer and so I feel like I should write so much more about it. But that would ruin it. So: Just read it.

 

II. New spiritual formation author: Maria Boulding

Every year I try to introduce myself to one new writer to see if they might be a good mentor for the years to come. This year there was a clear winner: Sister Maria Boulding. Per the recommendation of my most reliable book-recommending friend, early this year I ordered three of Sister Boulding’s books and then proceeded to read them, insatiably, back-to-back-to-back. I fully intend to do so many more times in future years.

Maria Boulding writes insightfully and humbly about the spiritual growth and journey of a person’s soul. She gives one the impression of having gone before and, yes, the path of Jesus is a dark and painful journey, but it is Peace and Life and Hope. She gave me many new and brilliant images of Jesus the Human.

The three Boulding books I read were:

Gateway to Hope, Maria Boulding. 1985, 150 pages *****

Prayer: Our Journey Home, Maria Boulding. 1979, 98 pages *****

The Coming of God, Maria Boulding. 1982, 186 pages *****

 

III. Eugene Peterson

The Pastor, Eugene Peterson. 2011, 317 pages ****

The Pastor is Eugene’s memoir of his vocational formation. It is comprised of mostly story, tying together to themes and an eventual whole – pretty nearly exactly the manner in which we all find our vocations, I suppose.

 

Traveling Light, Eugene Peterson. 1982, 196 pages ****

 

IV. On the Enneagram

Enneagram Companions by Suzanne Zuercher. 1993, 179 pages ****

Enneagram Companions is an excellent resource for any person who is confident of their type and has any job in the field of direct-ministering-to-others (spiritual direction, mental health counseling, missionary, parent, etc.). Zuercher explores how each triad receives and gives in a spiritual director-directee relationship. Her lucid and brilliant observations can be well applied to any of the beforementioned relationships.

 

The Enneagram: A Journey of Self Discovery, Beesing, Nogosek, and O’Leary. 1984, 221 pages ***

 

Using the Enneagram in Prayer, Suzanne Zuercher. 2008, 101 pages ****