5 favorite reads in May [from the book pile: 2015]

Art of Simple Food 

This book didn't make the list only because I skimmed it rather than read it, but it's a favorite for sure!

5 favorite reads in May

-- 1 --

11  Finding Livelihood: A Progress of Work and Leisure by Nancy J. Nordenson (Kalos Press, 2014.)

Reading challenge category*:  a book by a female author

I wanted this book to tell me -- artfully -- what to do when I grow up.  I am in a floundering season and this title looked promising.  Instead Nancy Nordenson validated -- artfully -- the pain of not quite knowing one's own vocation.  And, if suspecting, trudging up hill to make one's livelihood from that vocation.  Each chapter works together, but can also stand alone as an essay, tying together seemingly mundane daily observations into themes of desire, doubt and calling.  Woven throughout are the threads of Nordenson's own story with her husband, a painful struggle with unemployment and underemployment and goodhearted faithfulness.  As a writer who makes a living writing medical reports (her BA is in biology) while simultaneously pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing, Nordenson's prose manages to be both pragmatic and poetic, a tone which I thoroughly enjoyed.  If you prefer linear storytelling or bullet lists of tips, this book is not for you.

I want to write more about this book.  Hold me to it, please?

A couple of excerpts:

" 'And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.' I know this is the bottom line, the question worth the most points on the final vocational exam, yet the corollary questions remain: how, when, and where? The acting and loving and walking can't be in the abstract, but must be anchored in time and place -- moving arms and legs, fingertips and brain. And hopefully a paycheck is earned in the process."   

..... 

"I have been collecting images, lifting layers, switching between depths of field to catch glimpses of what's really going on here. How does work become more than what it is, and how do we become ourselves in the process? How do we find livelihood even as we are making it? How can an individual body of work contribute to a corporate body of work to participate in a universal, eternal, world-without-end body of work?"   

..... 

"Years ago I copied out words from a Lenten book into my journal, 'Pray to remember that upon you rest both the favor of God and the power of the Spirit.' This is how I think of God's grace coming to us. And these words, 'dedicate with faith your personal lifelong pilgrimage -- regardless of how insignificant it may seem to you -- as an important part of God's liberation of the world!' ...I have felt bread on the tongue and water on the flesh, but I crave signs of grace outside the cloister of the sanctuary and so am drawn to a teacher's recent suggestion to try living all of life as a sacrament, as a physical participation in the flow of grace from God to people and among people and back again. ...The surface view of grace isn't synonymous with the good life; history bears that out. Sometimes the favor and power of God, the share in God's liberation of the world looks like sweaty hard work, failed work even. I have to wonder about my willingness to live sacramentally, my willingness to have headaches and high blood pressure, frustration and exhaustion be visible signs of invisible grace as God works in me and through me."  

..... 

"I returned to work begin again. Breath and blood, flesh and brain, heart and bones. The weeks are holy."  

-- 2 --

12  A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion

Reading challenge category*:  a book with a love triangle

Full disclosure: I did not really enjoy this book at all.  The murky existential crisis of the wealthy, agnostic and hedonistic characters drove me a bit mad. It's the same reason I quit watching Mad Men.  I only read the book because it included this sort of writing:

"Three or four things I do know about Charlotte.

As a child of comfortable family in the temperate zone she had been as a matter of course provided with clean sheets, orthodontia, lamb chops, living grandparents, attentive godparents, one brother named Dickie, ballet lessons, and casual timely information about menstruation and the care of flat silver, as well as with a small wooden angel, carved in Austria, to sit on her bed table and listen to her prayers. ... "

-- 3 --

13  The Exact Place: A Memoir by Margie L. Haack (Kalos Press, 2012. 223 pages.)

Reading challenge category*:  a book you can finish in a day

What are the chances I read two books from Kalos Press -- a press I've never noticed before -- in the same month?  And in that same month, discover a blogging, Anglican, Binghamton acquaintance is writing a book for the same press?  Just interesting, don't you think?

I've had Margie Haack's memoir on my to-read list since it was first published.  I kept thinking it would be at my library and it never was.  Last week I received a serendipitous Amazon gift card and spent it immediately on this book.  (The other book I purchased was My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman which I read last fall and wanted desperately to mark up the library's copy with a highlighter and pen.  Now I can!)

The Exact Place was easy to read in one day, not because it was a "page-turner" in the normal sense of that description but because it was so warm and interesting and loveable.  Ms. Haack manages to tell gently and truthfully the story of her childhood both validating pain and embracing sweetness. Also, the setting of northern Minnesota is clear and winsome. The authentic view of farm life made me want to wave the book in front of Wendell Berry's face and say "See!  This is why rural kids leave home!"  Not because I grew up on a farm, but the Mad Farmer makes me feel a bit contrarian.  As I've mentioned before.

-- 4 --

14 An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler (Scribner, NY 2011. 238 pages includes an appendix of recipes)

Reading challenge category*: a book written by an author with your same initials (or, in this case, same first name)

Oh, this book!  I carried it together with my recipe card box around the house with me for weeks. I copied recipes in their traditional form:  

1/4 cup finely chopped onion 

1/8 cup finely chopped carrot 

1 stalk celery, finely chopped and so forth

but also conversational sorts of recipes:

Cook scallions in a very hot, well-oiled pan. Once the bulbs are sweet and tender and their green tops charred, curl them under poached eggs.   

This method of cooking is so foreign to me.  The kind where you look through your cupboard and your fridge and just know what sorts of left-over drizzles and dabs will go together just so to make mouth-watering, clean, comfort food.  As I was reading, I recognized friends and family who have this skill that I do not yet possess, but gosh-darn it plan to figure out before I'm stooped over with a spoon in one hand and cane in the other.

The beauty of this book is the warm prose that combines all my favorite things:  lovely writing, simple instructions, and an expectation for thrift.  Adler tells a story about food preparation that I can imagine myself maybe, just maybe, able to imitate.  

The first chapter is titled "How to Boil Water" and that's all I needed to feel welcome to this table.

"The pot was invented 10,000 years ago, and a simmering one has been a symbol of a well-tended hearth ever since. I don't mean to suggest that now that you have been reminded of the age and gooness of a ot of water, you start boiling everything in you kitchen -- but that instead of trying to figure out what to do about dinner, you put a big pot of water on thes tove, light the burner under it, and only when it's on its way to getting good and hot start looking for things to put in it.
In that act, you will have plopped yourself smack in the middle of cooking a meal. And there you'll be, having retrieved a pot, filled it, and lit a burner, jostled by your own will a few steps farther down the path toward dinner."

-- 5 --

15  Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the MIssion of the Church by N.T. Wright (Harper One, 2008. 295 pages)

Reading challenge category*:  a book you started or never finished (more specifically, read but did not read deeply)

This title will end up on my "Life-Changing Books" list, next to The Challenge of Easter.  For some strange reason, in 2009 when I first purchased the book, I got stuck in it for about two years and ended up just browsing through it.  This time around, two of my sisters and my mom and I decided to read together and talk together once a week about what we were learning, wondering and feeling about what -- in some regards -- is a pretty radical re-framing of what we'd come to believe about Heaven and what it means to follow the Resurrected Christ in the here and now.

Our conversations started out a bit jittery as we got to know the former Bishop of Durham's voice, which is occasionally a bit off-putting to the newcomer. 

It takes a lot of courage to reexamine long-held, passionately-held beliefs.  I'm so encouraged by my mom and sisters for their willingness to ask questions whose answers will be mostly wrapped in mystery until the Glorious Day when we are reunited with Christ and living in a new earth where all things have been judged and made right.

Many of our conversations included variations on the question "Since we can't know for sure what it will look like for Jesus to return and what heaven will look like or where our deceased friends and family are right now, does it matter to our everyday lives?"  And with a variety of responses we decided that yes, it does matter.  Not that we can know for sure, but that we can be diligent in understanding and study so that our lives reflect well the hope found in the real-life resurrection power of Christ.  That power that is even now fueling our lives, and through our lives fueling acts of love, hope and justice around us.  To be able to hold onto hope in the tension between fact and mystery is an act of worship.  

Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.

Some helpful resources for walking through this book:

• Surprised by Hope Participant's Guide (you can choose just the workbook or a workbook/DVD set.)

• Surprised by Hope section summaries from N.T. Wright on YouTube  (We broke up our reading into 6 sessions based on the video and workbook sections.)

• Since I'm a playlist junkie, I collected songs on Spotify that reminded me of all our reading and conversation:  Surprised by Hope

*This year, I'm using a fun challenge checklist with a Facebook group of friends (and sisters!).  You can find the checklist here:  Take Our Ultimate Reading Challenge  If you'd like to join our Reading Challenge 2015 group on Facebook, let me know and I'll send you an invite! *

Go to my Book Pile page to see my reading lists from 2014 and previous years.

What are you reading right now?

*Linking up with Rachel today

5 favorite reads from February - April [from the book pile: 2015]

5 top reads February - April

-- 1 --

6  The Practice of Homefulness by Walter Brueggemann (Cascade Books, April 2014.)

Reading challenge category*:  a book by an author you've never read before (I might add that I own books by this author -- just haven't read them yet!)

I sheepishly admit I thought this book title meant something other than what it, in fact, means. But the actual meaning resurrected my dry and thirsty self far more than any ideal I'd erroneously projected onto the title, thanks be to God.

I could include countless meaningful excerpts from this series of essays and sermons written and spoken by Brueggemann.  Here's a concluding paragraph from the opening essay and it comes after the author exegetes several Old and New Testament passages that speak to the covenant Yahweh makes with his people to provide homes of peace (as well as the commitment Yahweh makes to break up the homes of those who violate that covenant).

"The church is invited to see itself set in the world with a priestly role, to proclaim and practice God's mighty acts, to be the mode of mercy that orphans receive from God. Preaching is a chance to let the practice of mercy touch the reality of God's displaced orphans. 

I conclude with four questions that may haunt us as we do the awesome work of preaching: 

1.  Is it true that some lack a home because some have too much house? 

2. Is it true that we seek too much house at the expense of our neighbors, because we ourselves are deeply homeless? 

3.  Is it true that one cannot care deeply about homes for others until we find our true homefulness? 

4.  What did he mean when he said this [Matthew 6:25-32]"

-- 2 --

7  Our Town: A Play in Three Acts by Thornton Wilder

Reading challenge category*:  a play

Full disclosure: I read the book while watching a movie version.  I found that method to be thoroughly enjoyable, thank you very much.

-- 3 --

8  Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet by Christian Wiman (Copper Canyon Press, September 2007. 240 pages.)

Reading challenge category*:  a memoir


Continuing my education on Christian Wiman. I need to own this book so I can re-visit it.  Very, very good.

-- 4 --

9 Every Riven Thing: Poems by Christian Wiman (Mulholland Books, June 2014. 464 pages)

Reading challenge category*: a book of poems (don't think that's a category, but it should be!)

Poems both joyful and sorrowful, written in the middle of the poet's suffering with cancer.  Beautiful and good.  Need to own.

-- 5 --

10  The Former Hero by Jeffrey A. Mays (2014. 189 pages)

Reading challenge category*:  a mystery or thriller

I'm so proud of my friend Jeffrey for the commitment and passion he put into writing and publishing his first novel.  I first really met Jeffrey by stumbling into him time and again in the coffee shop where he wrote a good amount of this book.  I'm also proud of his wife Trina for supporting him so well in this endeavour.  (We're also celebrating the 2015 Book Award for Suspense/Thriller from the Texas Association of Authors.)

Here's the book summary:  

"When a train-wreck, single-mother wakes from an afternoon nap to find her little girl gone, she launches on a frantic search through the dark city streets to find her. Fearful that the girl has been abducted by the burgeoning sex trade, she solicits help and protection from an outcast loner on a Harley. But when they raise a clamor in the city offices seeking police aid, they draw the suspicion-and malice-of corrupt city barons. One sour veteran detective might help them, if they can just find him. Meanwhile the superhero Omni-man lies in a hospital hoping that doctors can find a cure to restore his lost superpowers. But he soon realizes he will face life as an ordinary man. When he joins one last adventure to help find the missing girl, the former superhero begins a psychological journey that leads him farther down the rabbit hole of self-discovery than he was prepared for."

You can purchase the book on Amazon (Kindle or Paperback) or through Jeffrey's website here. 

*This year, I'm using a fun challenge checklist with a Facebook group of friends (and sisters!).  You can find the checklist here:  Take Our Ultimate Reading Challenge  If you'd like to join our Reading Challenge 2015 group on Facebook, let me know and I'll send you an invite! 

*Go to my Book Pile page to see my reading lists from 2014 and previous years.*

What are you reading right now?

*Linking up with Rachel today

5 favorite reads in January

what I read in January

-- 1 --

1  Lila by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 2014. 272 pages.)

Reading challenge category*:  a book published this year

I've followed Marilynne Robinson ever since reading Gilead with the IAM Reader's Guild back in 2010. Her understanding of the characters she writes completely charms me.  I love the people.  And I love Lila the same as all the others.  Maybe even more.  I did find myself wishing for two things as I read, though: a bit more action with a bit less eavesdropping on Lila's thoughts about things and chapters.  I really struggle settling in to a book without the ebb and flow of chapter openings and closings.  

Still, I am fond of Lila.  I am glad she exists -- even though she is, technically, a fictional character.  Oh for more Lila's in the world keeping the religious on their toes, reminding us all of the simple beauty of existence.

-- 2 --

2  On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz (Scribner, 2013. 265 pages) 

Reading challenge category*:  a nonfiction book

Full disclosure: this book is not what I hoped it would be.  I'm not sure why, exactly.  I'm completely sold out on the idea of paying attention, really looking at the world we live in day in and day out.  But this was a bit tedious for even me.

-- 3 --

3  The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (240 pages.)

Reading challenge category*:  a book at the bottom of your to-read pile

This book has been on my "to read" list for years -- basically ever since I first read Brennan Manning's description of the "whiskey priest."  For whatever reason, I had the hardest time tracking the book down until I helped myself to my friend Jeffrey's bookshelves.  It took me a while to get into the pace of the novel but about two chapters in I became engrossed in the story.  Maybe more than the story as the voice.

Here's the Amazon blurb:

In a poor, remote section of Southern Mexico, the paramilitary group, the Red Shirts have taken control. God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest is on the run. Too human for heroism, too humble for martyrdom, the nameless little worldly “whiskey priest” is nevertheless impelled toward his squalid Calvary as much by his own compassion for humanity as by the efforts of his pursuers.

Here's one of several favorite excerpts:

"A voice said, 'You are the priest, aren't you?' 

'Yes.' It was as if they had climbed out of their opposing trenches and met in No Man's Land among the wires to fraternise. He remembered stories of the European war - how during the last years men had sometimes met on an impulse between the lines. 

'Yes.' he said again, and the mule plodded on. Sometimes, instructing children in the old days, he had been asked by some black lozenge-eyed Indian child, 'What is God like?' and he would answer facilely with references to the father and the mother, or perhaps more ambitiously he would include brother and sister and try to give some idea of all loves and relationships combined in an immense and yet personal passion...But at the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery - that we were made in God's image. God was the parent, but He was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac and the judge. Something resembling God dangled from the gibbet or went into odd attitudes before the bullets in a prison yard or contorted itself like a camel in the attitude of sex. He would sit in the confessional and hear the complicated dirty ingenuities which God's image had thought out, and God's image shook now, up and down on the mule's back, with the yellow teeth sticking out over the lower lip, and God's image did its despairing act of rebellion with Maria in the hut among the rats. He said, 'Do you feel better now? Not so cold, eh? Or so hot?' and pressed his hand with a kind of driven tenderness upon the shoulders of God's image."

-- 4 --

4 Image Journal: Issue 83 

I'm so glad to subscribe again after missing out the last couple of years!  Especially enjoyed Wayne Roosa's contribution "The Avant-Garde and Sacred Discontent: Contemporary Performance Artists Meet Ancient Jewish Prophets"

Here's a follow-up interview:  A Conversation with Wayne Roosa

-- 5 --

5 The Art of Neighboring: Building Genuine Relationships Right Outside Your Door by Jay Pathak & Dave Runyon (Baker Books, 2012. 184 pages + study guide.)

Reading challenge category*:  a book you own but have never read

I've had this book on my nightstand for a while and love that our church is reading it together this winter.  The book was born out of a gathering of 20 Denver pastors in 2009.  They invited the local mayor to join them and asked him this simple question:  "How can we as churches best work together to serve our city?" At the end of a conversation including all the usual suspects of social problems cities face, the mayor surprised them with this summary:

"The majority of the issues that our community is facing would be eliminated or drastically reduced if we could just figure out a way to become a community of great neighbors."

The authors confessed a bit of embarrassment that the mayor was basically asking them to follow the second half of the Great Commandment.  "In a word, the mayor invited a roomful of pastors to get their people to actually obey Jesus."

Online resources:
The Art of Neighboring website (includes resources and map of participating churches across the U.S.)

Download a Block Map (if you read nothing else, complete this exercise!)

Download the Block Party Kit

*This year, I'm using a fun challenge checklist with a Facebook group of friends (and sisters!).  You can find the checklist here:  Take Our Ultimate Reading Challenge  If you'd like to join our Reading Challenge 2015 group on Facebook, let me know and I'll send you an invite! 

*Go to my Book Pile page to see my reading lists from 2014 and previous years.*

What are you reading right now?

*Linking up with Jenna today