Saturday, April 6, 2013

Saturday Good Reads: Two on Faith, One on Writing



Three blog posts stuck in my head this week. Three different subjects, three very different writers, and yet they do share at least one thing in common. They look deeply into what they write about.

Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk posted on Evangelicalism as a Way Station, making the statement that evangelicalism works best as a mission, not a church tradition. It threw me, because so much of my faith has been shaped by evangelicalism, although I’m in a more denominational church now and have been for the last eight or nine years.

On the same day that I posted about an experience in Erfurt, Germany, Emily Wierenga at Imperfect Prose posted about what happened in her own house: “The Day I Met Jesus in My Bedroom.” I read it, and I didn’t doubt it for a minute. I recognized what she was describing.

And then Seth Haines at On Writing, one of my favorite writers (even if he is a lawyer in his day job). It’s a short post, but packed with meaning and asking the question, “Why do you write?” And the post begins with a poem by Billy Collins, which immediately hooked me.

All good stuff. Great stuff.

Painting: Writing to Father by Eastman Johnson (1863), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I read I.Monk...

People have needs depending on their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual age. Maybe all the differences are needed here on Earth and perhaps it is okay to move from one thing to the next. Where does it say that we are to stay in one place, or with one group, all of our lives?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

visited seth's blog, and read the post.

i write because it soothes me, because it takes my thoughts and gives them a place to come together.

Writing can be a way of relating with God...with myself...and with others; as thoughts find a place in letters and words.

Writing is one way that feelings can be expressed.

It helps to purge or clean-out what is hiding in the wrinkles of my mind and heart.