This Sacramental Life: from the book pile 2012

Showing posts with label from the book pile 2012. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

from the book pile, 2012: a brief review of "From the Garden to the City" by John Dyer + all the rest of the titles from 2012

to see the book pile from 2011, click here / from 2012, click here

From the book pile posts collect my reading reflections as I work my way through the tower of books teetering off the edge of my nightstand. I post the once a month the books I've read. In the meantime, the fun little widget on my sidebar includes a "real time" thought about each title I'm reading.

When I first started this blog in 2006 one of my goals was to nurture a forum that kept me accountable for the cultural goods I consume. Of course, I didn't really know then to articulate the goal in those terms. The truth dawns gradually.

Every new year, I consider making a number goal for books read in the coming twelve months. (do you do that too?) It's never a good idea; rather takes away the enjoyment of arriving at December 31 and tallying up titles from the previous year. Feels like an accomplishment no matter the number.

Hope you enjoy!

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26. From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology

Author: John Dyer

Genre: non-fiction

Published: Kregel Publications, 20122

General Impression: Surprised. I read this book at the invitation of a friend. I loved her approach: send out an email to a group of friends she knows who love to read and talk about reading to read the book and get together at her house for discussion and noshing. Three couples joined in on rich reading and discussion.

For those who wonder how much technology is too much and if it's possible that technology might have redemptive qualities, Dyer's book is thought-provoking and perfect for discussion. While I did not know this author prior to reading, his chapters appeared to be well-researched across a relatively balanced spectrum of thought. And, though, reading the book did not persuade me to change any of my technology habits on any large scale, neither was that the author's stated purpose. I did come away more mindful of the concrete concerns that stem from so much time spent in a virtual environment. And -- in my book -- more mindful is always good.

A thoughtful analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of social media:

"The great temptation of the digital generation is to... assume that online presence offers the same kind of "complete joy" as offline presence. Our problem is not that technologically mediated relationships are unreal, nor is the problem that all online communication is self-focused and narcissistic. Rather, the danger is that just like the abundance of food causes us to mistake sweet food for nourishing food, and just like the abundance of information can drown our deep thinking, the abundance of virtual connection can drown out the kind of life-giving, table-oriented life that Jesus cultivated among his disciples."

A great example from the author of what it means to embody technological discernment:

"In our family we've attempted to take practical steps to foster the kind or relational world that Jesus and his disciples had. When I come home from work around 5:00 PM, I've decided to put my phone and computer away until I put my kids to bed at 7:30 PM; and my wife does the same with her computer and phone. This serves to carve out of the day a space (or as Borgmann calls it, a 'focal place') where we can interact together and share meals as a family. As my kids grow older, we plan to do this together as a family, with all of us putting our devices together in a common basket. When we are all disconnected from the world out there, it frees us up to be fully present with the people right here in front of us. When I go back to work, I spend my day on the Internet interacting with people and building websites, but I attempt to do so for the purpose of fostering embodied life, not replacing it. "

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Catching up on the classics:

27. Walden by Henry David Thoreau

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I went on a bit of a memoir kick -- again. Both of these are re-reads of some of all-time favorites:

28. An American Childhood by Annie Dillard

29. Bring Me A Unicorn by Anne Morrow Lindberg

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Just-for-fun reading:

30. The Know-It-All: One Man's Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A. J. Jacobs

31. Out to Canaan (Mitford series) by Jan Karon

32. The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White

33. The 24 Days Before Christmas by Madeleine L'Engle

34. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

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Four books I read when I was considering blogging-for-business:

35. Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World by Michael S. Hyatt

36. Tribes: We Need YOU to Lead Us by Seth Godin

37. How to Blog a Book by Nina Amir

38. Get Rich Click! by Marc Ostrofsky

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And two small books as required reading to join Christ Church's team of Chalice Bearers:

39. Can You Drink the Cup? by Henri Nouwen

40. The Meal Jesus Gave Us: Understanding Holy Communion by N.T. Wright

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Two books I read this year on the spiritual practice of Sabbath:

41. Mudhouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner

42. Sabbath: The Ancient Practices by Dan Allendar

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Lastly, one of the books I received for Christmas and devoured all too quickly (and will have to tell you more about at another time):

43. Listening for Madeleine: A Portrait of Madeleine L'Engle in Many Voices by Leonard S. Marcus

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Next up in the bookpile for 2013:

The Hobbit: There and Back Again by J. R. R. Tolkien

When I Was A Child I Read Books: Essays by Marilynne Robinson

The Art of T.S. Eliot by Helen Gardner (reading with an online book group)

I'd love to hear what YOU are reading!

Leave me a couple of suggestions in the comment box, won't you?

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

from the book pile, 2012: Heather Sellers, Wendell Berry and four vacation novels

to see the book pile from 2011, click here / from 2012, click here

Source: google.de via Tamara on Pinterest

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13. Page After Page: discover the confidence and the passion you need to start writing and keep writing (no matter what!)

Author: Heather Sellers

Genre: non-fiction

Published: Writer's Digest Books, 2005

General Impression: I'm generally wary of "how-to" books. Especially people writing and selling books to other people who want to write and sell books -- seems like a bit of conflict of interest. I gave Heather Sellers' Page After Page a try because Jennifer Fulwiler recommended it and she feels the same way about scorpions as me so I figured that was a pretty good guarantee. Also, this was the perfect read for our 30 hour drive back to New York for summer vacation. Not too heady, just enough inspiration, suggested writing exercises that didn't feel too dorky and plenty of good humor.

I don't know if I'll write better after reading Page After Page, but I'll definitely laugh at myself more in the process. And, in my book, that's a very healthy thing.

One of the best descriptions I've read on the insecurity of a writer's life:

"Writers are people who are comfortable with intense contradictions. They are the people who live with a high degree of anxiety. Becoming a writer means learning how to write, every day, without missing a day. In order to do this, writers have to gently embrace ambivalence, anxiety, not-sure-ness.

While unpleasant, this practice of writing while in a state of anxiety is key to making a writing life. It's way more important than learning plot or prosody or publication tips.

Many of the productive writers I know believe they are simultaneously shit and undiscovered geniuses. Brilliant shit. This belief is in itself anxiety-producing.Not knowing if you suck or are the next Anne Tyler/Stephen King/Albert Camus is simply very frustrating and irritating. It's a weird way to live. It's how we live."

Probably the best writing advice I've ever read:

"The secret to getting more work done is a little bit tricky, because it feels completely counterintuitive. If you want to pay your bills or get caught up on six months of unbalanced checkbook or start a new writing routine or do yoga, for that matter, the first thing you must do when the inevitable cranky horror mood strikes is nap.

I'm not kidding.

Here is the secret to life, the secret to writing, and to productivity...When you are cranky, down on yourself, behind, overwhelmed, blue, swamped: when you are saying, I need to write! I don't have time! I have to write, I'm behind; when you are sick or getting sick or recently sick, you must nap.

I know this sounds: (a) stupid, and (b) impossible.

I know you don't want to nap; you want to get caught up, and you have to or life will fall apart.

That plan never, ever works. Abandon it.

Stop the madness.

...You aren't going to have a great writing day if you whip yourself into it...Nor are you going to have a good writing day if you drive around doing errands and paying bills and thinking abouthow far behind in our writing you've gotten, how horrible you are.

There is only one solution, and it is this: Nap."

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14. Another Turn of the Crank: Essays

Author: Wendell Berry

Genre: non-fiction

Published: Counterpoint, 1995

General Impression: Ever since a friend told me about her doctoral thesis on the Mad Farmer, I started reading Berry's poetry. Years after I began reading his fiction. Now I'm starting on his essays. I'm a fan all the way around. There's a certain amount of sentimentality he includes in each genre that never felt gratuitous, especially grounded in the soil of the good soil of robust language and story. Reading this book of essays, I found myself for the first time feeling like the Farmer's prophetic voice for our country signaled too little too late.

Granted, this book of essays compiled in the mid-1990's may have been right on time and I'm the one late to the conversation. Still, the social, agricultural and economic changes Berry recommends in many of these essays feel past-due. My son, Alex, and I read most of this book out loud together -- mostly because I felt like he needed some Wendell Berry thought in his repertoire before he began his undergrad political science studies. Eventually Alex admitted to me that reading the essays frustrated him more than anything else: "...I think they run the risk of being irrelevant because they're so demanding/impractical."

Still, Berry's words are full of a wisdom that add hearty nutrients for any reader. Perhaps, like the wisdom our parents and grandparents handed down, we benefit by rehearsing their words together, mining them for every amount of practical advice for our current time.

One of the passages where I thought "Oh...I think someone paid attention to this warning!":

"If a safe, sustainable local food economy appeals to some of us as a goal that we would like to work for, then we must be careful to recognize not only the great power of the interests arrayed against us but also our own weakness...

...we should also understand that our predicament is not without precedent; it is approximately the same as that of the proponents of American independence at the time of the Stamp Act -- and with one difference in our favor; in order to do the work that we must do, we do not need a national organization. What we must do is simple: we must shorten the distance that our food is transported so that we are eating more and more from local supplies, more and more to the benefit of local farmers, and more and more to the satisfaction of the local consumers. This can be done by cooperation among small organizations: conservation groups, churches, neighborhood associations, consumer co-ops, local merlchants, local independent banks, and organizations of small farmers. It also can be done by cooperation between individual producers and consumers. We should not be discouraged to find that local food economies can grow only gradually; it is better that they should grow gradually. But as they grow they will bring about a significant return of power, wealth, and health to the people." (from "Farming and the Global Economy", p.6)

An example of Berry as a dooming prophet:

"This essay owes its existence to anxiety and to insomnia. I write, as I must, from the point of view of a country person, a member of a small rural community that has been dwindling rapidly since the end of World War II. Only the most fantastical optimism could ignore the possibility that my community is doomed by the overwhelming victory of industrialism over agrarianism (both North and South) in the Civil War and the history both subsequent and consequent to it...I can not see how a nation, a society or a civilization can live while its communities die." (from "Private Property and the Common Wealth", p. 47)

Words that will never be outdated:

"We know that we need to live in a world that is cared for. The ubiquitous cliches about saving the planet and walking lightly on the earth testify to this....For we not only need to think beyond our own cliches; we also need to make sure that we don't carry over into our efforts at conservation and preservation the moral assumptions and habits of thought of the culture of exploitation....

...And certainly we must preserve some places unchanged; there should be places, and times too, in which we do nothing. But we must also include ourselves as makers, as economic creatures with livings to make, who have the ability, if we will use it, to work in ways that are stewardly and kind toward all that we must use.

...We must include ourselves because whether we choose to do so or not, we are included. We who are now alive are living in this world; we are not dead, nor do we have another world to live in. There are, then, two laws that we had better take to be absolute.

The first is that as we cannot exempt ourselves form living in this world, then if we wish to live, we cannot exempt ourselves form using the world.

...If we cannot exempt ourselves from use, then we must deal with the issues raised by use. And so the second law is that if we want to continue living, we cannot exempt use from care.

...A third law...is that if we want to use the world with care, we cannot exempt ourselves from our cultural inheritance, our tradition. ...we are in it because we are born in it...But that only means that the tradition too must be used with care.

...And so I am proposing that in order to preserve the health of nature, we must preserve ourselves as human beings -- as creatures who possess humanity not just as a collection of physical attributes but also as the cultural imperative to be caretakers, good neighbors to one another and to the other creatures.

...When we include ourselves as parts or belongings of the world we are trying to preserve, then obviously we can no longer think of the world as "the environment" -- something out there around us. We can see that our relation to the world surpasses mere connection and verges on identity. And we can see that our right to live in this world, whose parts we are, is a right that is strictly conditioned. We come face to face with the law...we cannot exempt use from care. There is simply nothing in Creation that does not matter. ("The Conservation of Nature and the Preservation of Humanity", the bold font is mine)

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Summer vacation means some fun novels 'round here! Just want to list the titles here for the record-keeping's sake.

15. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3), J.K. Rowling

16. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4), J.K. Rowling

17. The Moon by Night (Austin Family), Madeleine L'Engle

18. Three Blind Mice and other stories, Agatha Christie

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I'd love to hear what YOU are reading!

Leave me a couple of suggestions in the comment box, won't you?

Sunday, August 05, 2012

from the book pile, 2012: Dawn Eden, Barbara Brown Taylor, Jane Kenyon

to see the book pile from 2011, click here / from 2012, click here

From the book pile posts collect my reading reflections as I work my way through the tower of books teetering off the edge of my nightstand. I post the once a month the books I've read. In the meantime, the fun little widget on my sidebar includes a "real time" thought about each title I'm reading. [update: I'm experiencing a technical glitch with my comments on the sidebar widget. I'll try to fix that soon, but for now you can at least see the titles in my book pile.]

When I first started this blog in 2006 one of my goals was to nurture a forum that kept me accountable for the cultural goods I consume. Of course, I didn't really know then to articulate the goal in those terms. The truth dawns gradually.

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10. My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints

Author: Dawn Eden

Genre: non-fiction

Published: Ave Maria Press, 2012

General Impression: Although this book was not exactly what I hoped for, Dawn Eden provides some of the most sound writing on the subject of wounding and forgiveness I've ever read. Eden, herself a victim of childhood sexual abuse, reaches out to all abuse victims but her primary audience seems to be readers already versed in Catholic teaching. Much of the time I felt a bit like I was sitting in on a class for which I missed the prerequisite. This is not to say I felt aggravated, by any means. Only a bit out of the loop and wishing Eden could extend the range of sainthood to the broader communion of saints -- living and dead -- who join us as witness and fellowship. Still, this book will go in my short stack as a ready reference on the subject of healing and forgiveness.

One of the best passages I've read on the subject of forgiveness:

"Does God want this particular brand of sanctity from us, where we would actually kneel down and kiss the hands of our worst abusers? No, not literally -- evildoers should never be rewarded for their actions... What's more, every person's story is different. Some of us can indeed reach out to those who hurt us the most, allowing ourselves to be emotionally vulnerable for the greater good of reconciliation and healing. For others of us, the most loving thing we can do for our abusers is to keep them from having any opportunity to abuse us ever again.

While in these matters we should, whenever possible, seek advice from someone we trust, no one else can decide our course of action for us. The choice of whether it is best for us to initiate contact with our abuser, or seek to maintain distance, is ultimately between us and God....

Yet, in another way, I believe God does call every one of us to be thankful for our past. We may not be capable of kissing our abusers' hands. But we will one day want to kiss the hands of Jesus -- who, while not willing the abuse (for God never positively wills evil), permitted it to happen, knowing he would bring good out of it."

The saint most intriguing from Eden's book:

"If we want to see a shining example of how cooperation with grace can, over time, lead a deeply wounded person to fulfillment in Christ, we need look no further than Dorothy Day.

...God worked a change in her, the kind of change I believe he works in every wounded person who desires it and is patient with the workings of grace. He transformed her heart so that, instead of seeking to gain love, she sought the grace to give love, to love God through loving her fellow human beings: 'I offered up a special prayer, a prayer which came with tears and with anguish, that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the poor.'

...Dorothy, in giving herself completely to God through neighbor and to neighbor through God, embodied a spiritual motherhood that was truly beyond anything she herself had received."

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11. An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

Author: Barbara Brown Taylor

Genre: non-fiction

Published: HarperOne, 2009

General Impression: I'm not sure why I am just now reading this book since it's premise is so near and dear to the heart of what I write about here at This Sacramental Life. I finally noticed Barbara Brown Taylor's name credited enough times for it to sink in that I, too, might enjoy reading her book. An Altar in the World reminds us the splendor in the everyday ordinary that not only exists whether or not we notice, but that also can be glimpsed as we develop simple, daily practices of paying attention. Leading the reader through daily, embodied spiritual practices such as "The Practice of Getting Lost" and "The Practice of Wearing Skin", Taylor reminds us persistently that such physical practices will serve us as tutors for the spiritual unseen.

I think I need to read this book again because I feel like I should have loved it. Instead, somehow, it barely caught my attention and I can't quite articulate why. Somehow the promise of the content was meatier than the content itself, in my opinion.

Either way, I'm thankful for the well-crafted premise and imagine the content will be coming back to me in pieces over time. This is really the best we can ask of any book, yes?

Excerpt #1 (book introduction):

"People seem willing to look all over the place for this treasure [of spirituality]. They will spend hours launching prayers into the heavens. They will travel halfway around the world to visit a monastery in India or to take part in a mission trip to Belize. The las place most people look is right under their feet, in the everyday activities, accidents, and encounters of their lives. What possible spiritual significance could a trip to the grocery store have? How could something as common as a toothache be a door to a greater life?

...What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world."

The twelve practices:

The Practice of Waking Up to God (Vision)
The Practice of Paying Attention (Reverence)
The Practice of Wearing Skin (Incarnation)
The Practice of Walking on the Earth (Groundedness)
The Practice of Getting Lost (Wilderness)
The Practice of Encountering Others (Community)
The Practice of Living with Purpose (Vocation)
The Practice of Saying No (Sabbath)
The Practice of Carrying Water (Physical Labor)
The Practice of Feeling Pain (Breakthrough)
The Practice of Being Present to God (Prayer)
The Practice of Pronouncing Blessings (Benediction)

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12. Hundred White Daffodils: Essays, Interviews, the Akhmatova Translations, Newspaper Columns, and One Poem

Author: Jane Kenyon

Genre: non-fiction, anthology

Published: Graywolf Press, 1999

General Impression: Oh, beautiful words. I knew I would love getting to know Jane Kenyon, but didn't expect to bond to her work quite so quickly. Kenyon's husband, U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall, curated this collection of her prose after her too-young death to leukemia. While the selections seem a bit disconnected (everything from short newspaper columns to Kenyon's translations of Russian poetry to interview transcripts with Bill Moyers and others), the effect of the accumulated whole provides a beautiful snapshot of the woman behind the poems.

Perhaps most striking to me is Hall's decision to include an unfinished essay Kenyon wrote, describing a transformative spiritual experience. She left it unfinished not because she ran out of time but because she "became speechless when she tried to name it." The essay left hanging mid-air, so to speak, seems fitting for her interrupted life.

I'm glad to know that all of Kenyon's suffering with manic depression and unanswered spiritual questions have been released into comfort and joy, but I sure wish she could have written more words (poetry and prose) to leave behind.

The poem in which Kenyon tries to name the experience:

"Once There Was Light" (from Having it Out with Melancholy)

Once, in my early thirties, I saw
that I was a speck of light in the great
river of light that undulates through time.

I was floating with the whole
human family. We were all colors -- those
who are living now, those who have died,
those who are not yet born. For a few

moments I floated, completely calm,
and I no longer hated having to exist.

Like a crow who smells hot blood
you came flying to pull me out
of the glowing stream.
"I'll hold you up. I never let my dear
ones drown!" After that, I wept for days.

One of Kenyon's most popular poems with an interview excerpt about writing it:

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

Moyers: How did you come to write "Let Evening Come"?...

Kenyon: That poem was given to me.

Moyers: By?

Kenyon: The muse, the Holy Ghost. I had written all the other poems in the book in which it appears, and I knew that it was a very sober book. I felt it needed something redeeming. I went upstairs one day with the purpose of writing something redeeming, which is not the way to write, but this just fell out. ...

Moyers: Do you still believe what the poem expresses, given Don's cancer and own illness?

Kenyon: Yes. There are things in this life that we must endure which are all but unendurable, and yet I feel that there is a great goodness. Why, when there could have been nothing, is there something? This is a great mystery. How, when there could have been nothing, does it happen that there is love, kindness, beauty?

Excerpt from Kenyon's notes for a lecture titled "Everything I Know About Poetry":

8. Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read god books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phones off the hook. Work regular hours.

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Pages

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

from the book pile, 2012: a brief review of "From the Garden to the City" by John Dyer + all the rest of the titles from 2012

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

from the book pile, 2012: Heather Sellers, Wendell Berry and four vacation novels

Sunday, August 05, 2012

from the book pile, 2012: Dawn Eden, Barbara Brown Taylor, Jane Kenyon