WORLDS ARE FORMING

Beautiful Boy by David Sheff

So, I haven't been able to devour any books since Christmas break.  I've toyed with a few, but none have stuck...mostly because I didn't have time to commit to reading a sub-par book.

At the end of this oddly snowy Spring Break, I've picked up Beautiful Boy by David Sheff - a story, as its subtitle states - about "a father's journey through his son's meth addiction." Just today, I sat at The Service Station,  pouring through this book.  Sheff writes honestly and the content is quite accessible and engaging.   (Both Anne Lamott and Thomas Lynch are quoted throughout the book, and his writing style is very similar.)

As a person who has studied, loved, and worked with addicted persons, I find this to be a "real" book.  Sheff's son Nic wrote a companion book, Tweak, which I imagine I might read after I am finished with this one.  I imagine that I will finish this book by the end of the weekend.   

I realize I am gushing over a book I have yet to finish...but even after reading just a few chapters, I really think it is worth checking out.

Has anyone else read it?

Watching, Reading, Listening.

My last two weeks in pop culture...

WATCHING:
*Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story...A little profane, but a funny take on bio-pics.
*Juno:Hilarious, deep, great soundtrack.
*The Great Debaters: Sad, inspiring, well produced, great acting.

READING:
*The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
*A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
*Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

LISTENING:
*Sufjan
*Rosie
*Jack

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.

Upon the recommendation of a friend, I needed to pick up a book (a novel even!) that wasn't explicitly Christian or religious. 

SO.  I picked up Nicole Krauss' The History of Love.  She's the wife of Jonathan Safran Foer (whom I love...he wrote Everything is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)...their styles are similar AND different.  I enjoy it so far! 

Anyone read The History of Love?  If so, what did you think?

Getting the Love You Want.

I buy my textbooks off of Amazon.com, and often buy them used.  Sometimes, I'm lucky and get a great deal, and a book in great shape.  Other times, I get a good deal, but the book will have some writing in it, but I don't usually mind.

This semester, I purchased a book by Harville Hendrix, Getting the Love You Want for my Marriage and Family in the Christian Community course. 

There's a problem, though. The other day, I opened my book and felt a little awkward...

A God So Near: Essays on Old Testament Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller.

My first year at Princeton was Dr. Miller's last. I had two classes with him: Intro to Old Testament and God in the Old Testament.  I am grateful to have learned from such a kind and wise man.  He is something of a legend around the seminary, and I often hear his name in passing. 

I've been researching for my upcoming meditation in chapel, and came across a book of essays in honor of him: A God So Near.  It is really a rich book, full of essays from seminary professors from across the world, all in honor of Dr. Miller's commitment to the church.  If you get a chance, pick it up! 

(*Also - the cover is a painting by an artist friend, Melanie!)

Life Together: How Good and Pleasant it is!

"It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians.  Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies.  At the end all his disciples deserted him.  On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers.  For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God.  So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life, but in the thick of foes."  -Bonhoeffer, Life Together

I am preaching in the seminary's chapel in a few weeks, using Psalm 133... "How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in unity!"  I think I am going to be very Bonhoefferian.  The message and the text are marinating in me, and I think God is giving me some words to say.  Since I haven't been in preaching class, and haven't preached in a church this year, I have missed this preparation process!  I love it.

Buechner on Love.

My daily reading of Frederick Buechner sermons continues to do amazing things for my heart and mind. A few days ago, I read his sermon, Love, in Secrets in the Dark.  His texts are Deuteronomy 6:4-7 and Matthew 27:45-46.  I continue to appreciate Buechner's word-craft and creativity as he engages the life he lives and the Scripture he treasures. 

In the following excerpt, I gravitate to his reading Deuteronomy 6 as not just a command, but also a promise.  I haven't looked at the Hebrew text, but I have been comforted by that thought in recent days...on days that I don't feel I am loving God particularly well, perhaps I am given the promise that "Someday, Josh, you shall love me with all you've got."

"Nobody ever claimed the journey was going to be an easy one.  It is not easy to love God with all your heart and soul and mind when much of the time you have all but forgotten his name.  But to love God is not a goal we have to struggle toward on our own, because what at its heart the gospel is all about is that God himself moves us toward it even when we believe he has forsaken us.

The final secret, I think, is this: that the words You shall love the Lord your God becomes in the end less a command than a promise.  And the promise is that, yes, on the weary feet of faith and the fragile wings of hope, we will come to love him at last as from the first he has loved us -- loved us even in the wilderness, especially in the wilderness, because he has been in the wilderness with us.  He has been in the wilderness for us.  He has been acquainted with our grief...

[And we will rise] out of the wilderness, every last one of us, even as out of the wilderness Christ rose before us.  That is the promise, and the greatest of all promises..."  (pp. 103-104)

That'll preach.

Buechner on Hope.

I have recently been reading a sermon a day from Frederick Buechner's Secrets in the Dark, and am loving it.  His word craft and authentic experience of faith, as well as his theology, all draw me in deeper. 

Hope tends to be a central theme in my life of faith, and Buechner writes often of this.  His sermon, Hope, resonated well with me.  An excerpt:

"I think it is hope that lies at our hearts and hope that finally brings us all here [into the church].  Hope that in spite of all the devastating evidence to the contrary, the ground we stand on is holy ground because Christ walked here and walks here still.  Hope that we are known, each one of us, by name, and that out of the burning moments of our lives he will call us by our names to the lives he would have us live and the selves he would have us become.  Hope that into the secret grief and pain and bewilderment of each of us and of our world he will come at last  to heal and to save." (81)

What if Albert Camus had written Chicken Soup for the Existential Soul? (Talk about awesome!)

I just finished reading Camus' The Stranger for my Popular Religion/Culture in Modern Europe class.   (Hello, existential angst!  What a bummer of a book.)  I've also been reading Henri Nouwen's Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring, for pleasure.  Nouwen knows how to speak my language.  As always, I appreciate his transparency and insight.  Camus?  Not so much.

BUECHNER: Secrets in the Dark.

Good words from Buechner, on the preaching and hearing of God's Word.

"When a minister reads out of the Bible, I am sure that at least nine times out of ten the people who happen to be listening at all hear not what is really being read but only what they expect to hear... Only that is too bad because if you really listen -- maybe you have to forget that it is the Bible being read and a minister who is reading it -- there is no telling what you might hear."

-Frederick Buechner,
Secrets in the Dark: "The Magnificent Defeat," p. 2

Do those words resonate with you?  They do with me.  For those of us that spend time on either side of the pulpit, Buechner offers a good reminder.  Who knows how God will speak when God's word is read and preached?! 

May we listen with expectation...even today...trusting that God will speak.