Saturday Good Reads

Our pasts can cast long shadows. Genevieve Thul wrote a letter to herself that had me in tears. Dyana Herron found Gethsemane companions. Brendan MacOdrum has all kinds of things he pulled from his past.

And photographs – like one from the Olympics showing the women’s hurdles – incredible. And  panes of sky from Nancy Rosback. Or artwork, like Karen Eck’s Raven Window.

And poetry. I find myself coming back to poetry. Again and again.

Prose

“The Spiritual Value of Wasting Time at Work” by Jim Woods at Shrinking the Camel.

“The Wonder of Why” by Billy Coffey at What I Learned Today.

“What We Did to the Unwelcome Guest at Our Wedding” and “When Someone Shouted My Name in the City” by Shawn Smucker.

“Notes from Underground 1” by Brendan MacOdrum at The Blue Oran.

“Your Version?” by Jake Lee at Very Much Later.

“A Modest Hope for Titus Lee” by Seth Haines.

“Why I Invest in Blogging” by Jason Stasyszen at Connecting to Impact.

“Gethsemane Companions” by Dyana Herron for Image Journal.

“Just Give Me a Sign” by David Rupert at  Red-Letter Believers.

“The Argument” by Karen Eck at Karenee Art.

“One Right Choice: A Letter to My Younger Self” by Genevieve Thul at Turquoise Gates.

Poetry

“Liquid Pearls” by Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

“A poem for Julia Cameron” by Megan Willome.

“Of Piety and Penumbra” by Fred Rutherford at Poetical Psyche.

“Edward Taylor” by D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

“Radiant” by Nancy Rosback at A Little Somethin’.

“The Search” by Karen Eck at Karenee Art.

“Flood Song and Other Poems” by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

“The Dragonfly Prophet” by Monica Sharman at Know-Love-Obey God.

“Scrubbing Rain” by B.K. McKenzie at Signed…BKM.

Paintings and Photographs

“The Women’s 400-Meter Hurdles” by Jeff Kavenaugh for Sports Illustrated, via Abraham Piper.

“Sepia Surfer” by Steve Gravano at Take a Look Around.

“Sometimes You Look Backward Because You Have a Restless Heart” by Kelly Sauer.

“Pacific Evening” and “Sky” by Nancy Rosback at A Little Somethin’.

“Beauty & Decay” by Susan Etole at Just…A Moment.

“Ravens Window, Complete” by Karen Eck at KareneeArt.

“Headland Sea Sky,” watermedia on panel by Randall David Tipton at Painter’s Process.

“Self-Portrait” by Tim Good at Good Photography.

Videos

“We’re NASA and We Know It” by Satire.

Photograph: Skater Boy in London by Eliska Nikodemova via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Pleasantly Disturbed Friday

It’s a pleasantly disturbed Friday. Duane Scott is on vacation somewhere or I’d give him credit for inventing this type of blog post.

In addition to The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges (Thursdays) and The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer (Wednesdays), I’m reading a book I can barely stand to put down – Dragonmarch by Ian Curtis. It’s the second volume in his Canticles of Andurun fantasy series, and it is one great story. It is also one big story, big as in epic, and it has dragons and goblins, an array of strange creatures, and humans who fighting the dragons, fighting each other, fighting the goblins. It is a rocking good story, and my review will be up next week.

Two other books I’m working on reviews (and an interview) on are Ursula LaGuin’s new book of poems, Finding My Elegy, and Emily Wierenga’s Chasing Silhouettes.

I had two blog posts this – on various chapters in The Discipline of Grace and The Pursuit of God – that I expected to be easy to write but turned out not to be. Sometimes you have to reach down inside and admit something, or do something, or decide something. Those posts were like that. Of course, those books – both classics – are like that, too.

I’m editing away on the manuscript of A Light Shining, the sequel to Dancing Priest. It’s coming, but the hard part lies ahead. The rewriting part. I did a small preview of the rewriting part – my attempt to try to make sense of all the comments I have to make sense of. The story is going to change, and that character in the preview – who came out of nowhere – is, I think, going to be the instrument to change the story.

Writing is a nutty line of work.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and went to see the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild. She was keen to see it, I was more nonchalant, and I ended up liking it more than she did. It was filmed in Louisiana, way down there in Terrebonne Parish, not too far from where I grew up in suburban New Orleans. As my wife said, “It’s as weird as everything else in southern Louisiana.” I did not feel insulted. Much. And it is an odd movie, the kind that movie critics usually rave about and the rest of the world scratches its head and says, “What?”

I received the news today that one of the sites I write for occasionally will be closing down. More on that after the official announcement next week. It’s the way of the online world, I suppose, sites can come and go, but it still leaves me with a quiet, sad feeling. The contributors are also trying to figure out what to do with the archives.

In September, I’m going to change up the weekly Saturday Good Reads for two or three weeks, just to try something different. More on that later, too.

I'm scheduled to have lunch today with my daughter-in-law and grandsons. they're back from a triumphant tour of Little Rock (their maternal grandmother) and Shreveport (their paternal great-grandmother and assorted aunts, uncles and cousins). In Shreveport, Cameron discovered the wonder of flashlights.

The nice thing about Pleasantly Disturbed Friday is that you don’t have to think about how to end the post with something insightful or memorable.

You can just end it.

The Gap Grows Wider

One of the concluding events for my masters degree was an extended oral discussion with three professors. I didn’t have to defend a thesis, but I did have to consider what I had learned and what it meant, and what I was going to do with it.

My seminar work was focused on the history of religion and on literature, and I had read Roman and Greek classics, the early church fathers (I fell in love with the writing of Tertullian, who was something of a heretic), writers of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and writers of all periods on the subject of science. I was even able to take a seminar on the Latin American novel, opening up an entirely new world of literature for me.

I told the professors the truth – that I had started the program because I felt I certain gaps in my formal education. And now that I had finished the program, I’d discovered that the gaps had become larger, not smaller.

So it is with the word that seems to be less and less used these days, for fear of offending non-Christians and that mysterious group we call “seekers.”

The word is sin.

The older I become, the more I understand, the greater the gap seems to grow between me, my understanding of sin, and God.

I knew and understood far more about sin in my 20s than I do today. Of course, I was a whole lot smarter about everything in my 20s than I am today.

Today I see the gap; I see how wide it is. I see how short I fall. No matter what I do, I can’t bridge that gap. There are times when I feel the gap like a harsh wind in a cold place, and I think I’ll never be warm again.

Left up to me, I would be stuck in that cold place. Forever.

But this thing called grace wraps itself around me.

In The Discipline of Grace, Jerry Bridges spends some time talking about who and what we Christians think we are and who we really are. We’re much more comfortable seeing ourselves with our own eyes. We look at the decaying culture around us, and we feel pretty good that we’re not as bad as that.

Bridges call that what it is – Christian Pharisaism. We’re like that Pharisee who was so pleased that he wasn’t as sinful as the tax collector. As for the tax collector, he understand how bad he was, and how he needed God’s mercy, even if he didn’t deserve it.

Pharisaism is about performance, and a preoccupation with performance is one of those things I’ve struggled with my entire life. I’ll probably be trying to figure out how best to cooperate with the undertaker when he places my remains in the coffin.

Preoccupation with performance is the twin of self-righteousness. It also keeps the focus where I like the focus to be – on me.

Somehow, I don’t think God is real impressed. He knows my heart. And he wants me to have the heart of that tax collector.

Even as I see the gap grow larger, the bridge across it becomes longer.

Over at Informing the Reforming, Tim Challies is leading a discussion of The Discipline of Grace. To see how people are discussing the chapter entitled “Christian Pharisaism,” please visit Tim’s site.

This post is also submitted to Bonnie Gray's rejuvenated blogging jam, with today's theme being "What I Know Now." To see more posts submitted, please visit Faith. Barista.

Word Candy

So the folks over at TweetSpeak Poetry dreamed up an app called Word Candy. Actually, I'm one of the folks over at TweetSpeak. But I sat rather helplessly by and watched while the really creative folks went to town.

It's pretty simple, and actually a lot of fun. Go to the Word Candy site, sign in via Twitter or Facebook, and make yourself some Word Candy. You can change the categories available by clicking on the Word Candy logo at the top (trust me; it took some considerable experimentation for me to discover the obvious -- I'm not known for my technical capabilities).

And so -- my first Word Candy, using the words of poet David Wheeler. You can read my review of Wheeler's Contingency Plans here, and an interview I did with him here.

I'm addicted to words. And I like candy (certain kinds, that is, like Candy Corn). Put words and candy together -- I'm a goner.

Have Everything, Possess Nothing

We first heard of the book in our small group Bible study. We had just finished one study, and someone suggested we read a new book called The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson. It was short and easy to read, and lots of Christians were supposedly reading it. So we agreed, and began our study and discussion.

Not long after that, one of the ministers at our church began to teach our adult Sunday School class – and the subject was The Prayer of Jabez. And not long after that, a sermon series began in worship services on – surprise – The Prayer of Jabez.

The book was a bestseller, and for a long time. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s based on a rather obscure text in 1 Chronicles: “And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, 'Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.' So God granted him what he requested.”

The focus in our Sunday School class and the worship services was primarily one phrase in that text – enlarge my territory.

My church wasn’t alone. Far from it. The book swept evangelical churches all over the United States (and beyond, for all I know). There were study guides, audio CDs, all the usual stuff that comes with a bestseller. Time Magazine did a one-page feature on the book phenomenon.

Somebody’s territory indeed got enlarged.

Never had I seen my church, or any other church, go so overboard over a book. If the sales figures are any indication, the entire church in America went overboard.

I likely offended a few people by referring to the book as the “gospel of Jabez.”

In retrospect, it was a book almost tailor-made for suburban American churches and their middle-class and upper-middle-class members. You could justify material well-being as God’s special blessing, his “enlargement of your territory.”

Some of us, and I hope it was more than some, were appalled. A very thin, almost non-existent line separated the message of Jabez from the name-it-and-claim-it, prosperity gospel: if you have sufficient faith, you will be materially blessed, and you will be blessed in this lifetime. All you have to do is ask God to “enlarge your territory.”

Jabez had little to say to the poor in America or in the world. It had little to say to people who were suffering, or to the unemployed. And it should have had precious little to say to the rest of us, too.

Material blessings are not a sign of how good a Christian you are, or whether you have sufficient faith. The real question is not whether you have them or not, but whether they possess you or not.

A.W. Tozer invites us to consider Abraham.

“He (Abraham) had everything, but he possessed nothing,” writes A.W. Tozer in The Pursuit of God. “There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation. The books on systematic theology overlook this, but the wise will understand.”

Abraham withheld nothing from God, not even his own son. And he didn’t have to ask God to enlarge his territory

To have everything, but to possess nothing.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’re reading Tozer’s The Pursuit of God. To read more posts on this chapter, please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.

East Wind, Rain

The wind came from the east

that day, and rain

rain like pellets fired

from an air rifle, hard, stinging

my face, little wet shrapnel,

wrapping me in a swaddling

of rain, a cocoon of stones

showered with thunder above

and below

a killing rain, with its smell

of metal, and lightning

bleeding rain, sweat, bloody

sweat tears, and rain

neon rain edged in silver

and gold, falling and rising

like prayers

For the month of August, TweetSpeak Poetry has a rain project – a found poem theme of rain that uses book spines as the prompt. (See “August Rain: The Decisive Moment” by Seth Haines, published Mondat at TweetSpeak Poetry, for more details.)

The poem above is taken from the titles of the following books: East Wind, Rain by J. Richard Nash; Killing Rain by Barry Eisler; Neon Rain by James Lee Burke; Thunder and Rain by Charles Martin; The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard; Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane; Rain of Gold by Victor Villasenor; Wrapped in Rain by Charles Martin; and Night of Rain and Stars by Maeve Binchy.

This poem is also submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph: Rain by Jiri Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Poetry for Isaac and Ishmael

What does poetry have to say to Isaac and Ishmael, Jew and Palestinian? More than one might expect. Certainly more than I expected.

Poet Elana Bell has taught poetry to educators, prisoners, and high school students. Some of those students are in New York City, where Bell is writer-in-residence at the Bronx Academy of Letters.

Others live in Israel.

And Palestine.

And it all comes together in Eyes, Stones: Poems.

To continue reading, please visit my post today at TweetSpeak Poetry.