“A Fine Balance”

One more book finished!  Before taking on this challenge, I had never heard of Rohinton Mistry or this book.  A Fine Balance takes place in India, primarily during the “Emergency” finagled by Prime Minister Indira Ghandi to keep herself in power (fascinating history — learn more about it here).  Mistry tells the story of four characters whose lives end up woven together in unexpected ways.   Each character suffers greatly; but each grows in relationship with the others.

This book is full of tragedy:  whole families killed because of class hatred, marital happiness destroyed in a traffic accident, family lines cut off by brutally enforced “family planning,” injustice and violence, religious hatred, etc.  And yet, to Mistry, I think the key theme is best expressed in the words of a philosophical lawyer we meet near the end of the book: ” ‘There is always hope–hope enough to balance our despair.  Or we would be lost.’ ” (Kindle location 10565)

Reading this book, I felt constantly on the edge between hope and despair, usually tilting toward despair.  The world of A Fine Balance is cruel, filled with loss (“Losing, and losing again, is the very basis of the life process, till all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence,” Kindle Locations 10610-10611), undirected and senseless at times (“Where was God, the Bloody Fool? Did He have no notion of fair and unfair?  Couldn’t he read a simple balance sheet?” Kindle location 11145), and yet, potentially beautiful, like a pieced-together quilt (” ‘Calling one piece sad [because of the memory behind it] is meaningless.  See, it is connected to a happy piece… So that’s the rule to remember, the whole quilt is more important than any single square.’ ” Kindle locations 9184-9187).

This is not a novel with a “happy ending,” and certainly not a world in which I’d ever want to live.  And yet, I’m not sure this story could be called a tragedy either.  Some characters are destroyed by the suffering they experience, others adapt and survive — it all depends on their ability to balance as they walk the thin line between hope and despair.  “A fine balance” indeed.

BBC 2014

And… once again… a year+ has passed since my last post.  Lots of water under the bridge! Rather than try to summarize all those months, I thought I’d give an update on my BBC book project.  So in order read, to the best of my ability to remember, here we go…

War and Peace

I read Tolstoy’s masterpiece entirely on my iPhone, using the Kindle app.  Maybe I’m crazy, but hey, it works for me!  As for the book itself, boy is it long!  I liked the “Peace” parts, not so much the “War.”

The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold’s 2002 novel was one of my favorite reads yet!  I had heard of the movie but knew nothing about the plot.  I was astonished by how hauntingly beautiful this book is — I highly recommend this story of a family trying to rebuild after suffering a tragedy, told by an unexpected narrator.

The Wasp Factory

I had never heard of this book by Iain Banks until this project.  I found it to be a truly horrible book — not in the sense that it is poorly written, but in the sense that the subject matter is horrible, horrifying, brutal.  These are not characters you want as best friends.  At the same time, the world Banks creates in this book is mesmerizing and vivid — so I can see why it would be on a book list like this.  I do not want to read this book again.  Am I glad I read it?  I’m not sure.  If you like movies like Silence of the Lambs, you might like this book.

Possession

Written by A. S. Byatt, this is a perfect book for a literature major like myself.  It starts out slowly but builds into an unconventional romance/mystery story.  The two main characters are academicians who follow a paper trail to discover a hidden romance between two prominent Victorian writers.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book — if you like the academy, mysteries, or novels dealing with postmodernity, this book is for you.

Gone with the Wind

I did NOT expect to like this book at all.  In fact, the only reason I read it now (rather than putting it off for last) is because I could get it cheap on my Kindle app…  I don’t like the movie version of Margaret Mitchell’s novel, I’m not particularly enamoured of the south, I loath the Scarlett O’Hara portrayed by Vivien Leigh in the movie, and I don’t really like Clark Gable either.

But to my surprise, I love the novel!  The characters are much more likeable in the novel, especially Scarlett.  I loved the way Mitchell portrays characters that are seriously flawed with compassion and not condemnation.  And I confess, now I have a literary crush on Rhett Butler…

The Shadow of the Wind

I’m still not sure what I think about this book, written by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.  I was prepared to like it, because it is a favorite of a friend of mine, Chris Marchand.  And I loved the preamble!  Actually, I think I liked the preamble so much that when Chapter 1 began and changed directions from where I thought it was going, I was majorly disappointed.  Someday I should read the book again and see if I enjoy it more.

~~~~~~

Currently, I’m working my way through A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry.  Including that one, I have only 16 books left to read!

 

 

Various and Sundry, Plus BBC

Hello again!  I looked at my blog today for the first time in awhile and realized I hadn’t posted anything since… last year…  That seems rather lax.  So, some updates:

1) My brother got married in January!

The little bro is all growed-up!                                 P.S. My cousin Shaun took this picture.  If you like what you see, visit top-shelf-photo.com.

2) I’m heading back to Rwanda in May!  Can’t wait!

3) I have not been very “productive” in the BBC project department, but I did read Cloud Atlas (Mitchell) and Swallows and Amazons (Ransom), and I’m making good progress with War and Peace.  I would probably never have read these three books if it weren’t for this project, which is what I love about it!  I particularly enjoyed Cloud Atlas (although I can’t imagine how they made it into a movie, which is probably why the movie didn’t get good reviews).  It was one of those books that was hard for me to put down — in part because of the style in which it’s written.  The book has layers of stories — a chiasm, if you’re familiar with biblical studies — so that the first half of each story is told first, then a whole story in the middle, then the concluding half of each story in reverse order.  Intriguing!

If you need a visual, as an example:
Story 1.1 – Story 2.1 – Story 3.1 – Story 4 entire – Story 3.2 – Story 2.2 – Story 1.2

Swallows and Amazons is a charming children’s book that takes place in England in the 1930s (I think).  It wasn’t my favorite — in part because I’m not fascinated by boats and pirates (you’ll have to read the book to figure out the connection).  It did, however, inspire me to draw an analogy in our church staff meeting that ended up inspiring the theme of our annual church celebration… 🙂

War and Peace… well, I’m still reserving judgement.  I have almost zero interest in the Napoleonic wars, which is a major handicap with this sucker…  but I’ll get there!

I took a break from serious reading earlier this year for some literary “candy” — it was glorious.  I’m sure you understand — unless you’re one of those people who lives on a steady diet of non-fiction…

4) I’m thankful to work where I work and serve where I serve, with the people that I serve and the people I work alongside.  And I’m thankful for resurrection.

Church of the Redeemer

The Case for Corporate Worship — Sojourners Magazine

As you might imagine, as a pastor I am passionate about the church and all things related to the church.  The author of this article is right:  people are fleeing from the local church, and often for good reason.  House churches are becoming more popular, and in some cases that is a good thing.  However, I believe that there is no substitute for corporate worship as a larger body, where we meet together to hear teaching from Scripture, celebrate the Lord’s Supper, offer our prayers, and fellowship together.  The Rev. Kenneth Tanner makes a good case, I think, for the importance of the church in this article.  There’s an excerpt below, but I recommend reading the whole thing:

Yes, we need Bible studies, small groups, and intimate settings for growth in Christ. Wonderful things happen when folks committed to each other in a wider context get to “be real” in their spiritual walk. There’s learning, accountability, and participation in spiritual practices that better occurs when a few families or a segment of the local church or an otherwise unaffiliated group of Christians gather to pursue some facet of Jesus and discipleship in him. Whenever two or three are gathered in his name, he is in our midst.

But private gatherings where only our close associates or friends gather cannot replace corporate, participatory, open-invitation worship, cannot replace the work of the local church, without unintended consequences.

So why should every Christian commit to the local church no matter where they meet for weekly worship? Because, when it works the way it was designed, there is nothing more beautiful on earth, for we become the presence of the resurrected Jesus when we gather around four practices, in these we become the body of Christ.

When the apostles gathered publicly with the first Christians, they did four things: they heard the apostles teaching (from the apostles or their appointed surrogates), broke bread (Communion), prayed, and engaged in self-sacrificial fellowship. All of this active, every-member participation was focused on the personal presence of the resurrected Jesus Christ, present in their midst to reconcile, heal, deliver, forgive and renew.

When we seek authentic connection to Jesus Christ today, whether in a church building, high school, storefront, or house, wherever we seek him together, we should expect to find him in these four practices. We should not expect to encounter him regularly in their absence. When any of these four are missing, the church is not gathered.

Via Sojourners — God’s Politics

BBC Project — Catching Up

Ok, so some of you might have been wondering what’s going on with the BBC Book Project I started some time ago. Yes, I’m still working my way through the list!  Apparently I haven’t given an update on my readings since the end of March.  Oops…

So, in case you’re interested, here, in no particular order, are the books I’ve been able to cross off my list since March:

• The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. — I enjoyed this read quite a bit, despite the heterodoxy it contains.  An exciting adventure with many twists and turns — reminds me of a John Grisham novel.

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon — I love this book!  It’s written from the perspective of an autistic boy, and I’ve never read anything like it before.  It gave me a great deal of insight into how autistic people think, process, and experience the world.  Read it!

 

 

 

 

 

• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville — YES, I made it all the way through Moby Dick!  I feel highly accomplished.  And I even enjoyed parts of it.  I could have done without the pages and pages and pages of minutia about whaling and all things whale (although you should go read the Wikipedia page on the sperm whale — fascinating!).  But the sections that were actually part of the story were amazing.  If you like Shakespeare, 19th-century literature, whales, or artistically presented theological dilemmas, you just might like Moby Dick.  My advice:  be ok skimming parts that don’t interest you.

• Germinal, by Emile Zola.  Looks at the life of coal-miners in 19th-century France, and their attempts to unionize so that they can earn enough to survive.  Brutal existence, lots of injustice, but a compelling read.

• The Color Purple, by Alice Walker.  Loved it!  Like a lot of African-American literature, not for the faint of heart.  But powerful, and great characters.

 

• A Town Like Alice, by Nevil Shute.  Great book!  Based on a true(ish) story of a group of women who were captured by the Japanese on an island during WWII, and who were forced to march around from place to place for the remainder of the war.  It’s also a love story, and it takes you from London to the Pacific islands to Australia.

• Animal Farm, by George Orwell.  I did NOT enjoy this book.  For some reason, I find it very difficult to read about animals suffering, even if it’s an allegory, even though it’s just a story.  I was glad to finish this one.

I also took a brief hiatus from my list to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot.  This book has gotten a lot of press recently, and for good reason — it’s a thought-provoking and compelling story that raises many ethical questions that pertain to us all.  I enjoyed the chance to learn some things about science through story. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out.

Currently, I’m finishing up Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell, and really enjoying it.  I haven’t seen or read anything about the movie that just came out, but I can’t quite imagine how they made this book into a movie, because of the way the book is written.  More on that once I finish reading it…

So that’s a summary of my literary accomplishments in the last few months.  Good times, great books, can’t go wrong!

Politics and our Eschatology

Here’s my only political comment on this, the day after election day:

Somewhere overnight or this morning the eschatology of American Christians may become clear. If a Republican wins and the Christian becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that Christian has an eschatology of politics. Or, alternatively, if a Democrat wins and the Christian becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that Christian too has an eschatology of politics. Or, we could turn each around, if a more Democrat oriented Christian becomes depressed and hopeless because a Repub wins, or if a Republican oriented Christian becomes depressed or hopeless because a Dem wins, those Christians are caught in an empire-shaped eschatology of politics.

Read the whole thing!

via Politics and our Eschatology.

“What Church Will Be Like in 50 years.”

Recently, I ran across an article that had some predictions about what church will be like 50 years from now, on a website called “Church for Men” (see the link at the bottom of this post).  I found the contents of that article absolutely appalling — do people really buy into this??  Some of you saw and commented on the article when I posted it on Facebook — and I had so many things I wanted to say, I decided to add some comments of my own here. Here we go…

• First of all, a website called “Church for Men”?  I understand the need the site is trying to meet, but something like this just feeds into the unhelpful gender divide that is already present in large pockets of the evangelical church.
• The post accepts trends happening outside of the church (e.g. large corporations buying out mom-and-pop shops) uncritically.  Not only does the author assume no difference between how business works and how the church works, he seems to see no reason to push back against the trend toward church “megatization.”
• The author assumes that the purpose of the church is to “meet people’s needs” (see the first paragraph).  I would argue this is a gross (though popular) distortion of ecclesiology.
• As someone who helps to pastor a “midsize congregation”, I strongly object to his analysis of these “family churches.”  I think that smaller congregations offer some things that megachurches do not, and perhaps can not. Midsize churches have been around a lot longer than megachurches, and I don’t think they are going away anytime soon.
• I object to his assertion that megachurches offer “superior preaching, music, and programming.”  In this assertion, the author reveals some assumptions that I would challenge — for one thing, the assumption that preaching is the most important part of the service, that big contemporary worship bands (I assume) are the best way to worship, and that the church is supposed to offer “programs” for its members. In our church, we have intentionally avoided creating programs, instead letting our ministries flow out of the gifts and skills of our members, as well as what God is doing in our particular congregation.
• I do understand his point about midsize congregations becoming encumbered by properties, and losing members to megachurches.  However, there are ways for smaller churches to adapt as well — renting space, for example (which is what we do).  As for losing members to megachurches… well, small church takes work and contributions from each part of the congregation, and when folks aren’t willing to step up and share the load, it can become easier to seek out a church where the staff does the work.
• Satellite campuses — I really don’t like satellite campuses, because they are so impersonal.  I believe that preaching and worship are to be shaped (though not determined) by particular congregations — when a pastor doesn’t know his or her people, I think the preaching can suffer.  If preaching is intended to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” a pastor better know a bit about the members of the congregation!  Now, certainly God can (and does) speak through impersonal sermons — but in my opinion, there’s no substitute for actually knowing your people.
• His analogy between Walmart and megachurches disturbs me.  Consumerism, anyone? Why do churches need to swallow up other God-honoring churches?
• I think satellite churches give too much power to the preaching/peaching pastor.  And I don’t think that’s helpful for anyone, least of all for the pastor him/herself!
• I also don’t think denominations are going anywhere.  I think they exist for valuable purposes, and give theological shape that is necessary for faith.  Granted, all these divisions between us aren’t helpful, and there is room to learn from one another — but worship in a church in Evanston, IL will not — and SHOULD NOT — look the same as worship in a church in Kigali, Rwanda.  I think the same is true in the states — different kinds of worship are ok, because no one style of worship can express everything about God!  So yes, let’s learn from one another, but let’s also accept that these traditions are not just old things to be jettisoned, but foundations that can help us encounter and serve God.
• As someone on Facebook pointed out, there is waaaaay too much emphasis on skilled (male) preachers in this argument.
• How could he use the phrase “McDonalds-ization of the church” as a good thing??? Consistent quality, yes — but not GOOD quality!  I think that analogy says the wrong thing about God.
• As a friend at church once said, “efficiency is not a kingdom value.”
• Does this article lean toward idolization of the sermon (and therefore the preacher)?  Obviously the author is not part of a tradition that emphasizes Sacrament alongside Word.
• I won’t even get into the author’s assumption that pastors and preachers are to be male.
• Where is the Spirit in this article?
• I agree that there is a strong need for pastors who are truly pastors — but I don’t think that has to be (or should be) a separate category from “preachers”.
• I also agree that it is a good thing for laypeople to step up and help in ministry — although I disagree that this will automatically follow from the mega-tization of the church.
• I am highly suspicious of the author’s assertion that “for men, sermon quality is paramount.”

I could go on.  I know that God works through megachurches as well as small churches, but I am tired of the highly-American assumptions that bigger is better, that efficiency is a virtue, that Christians are church “consumers” while churches are supposed to “meet people’s needs,” that preaching is a superior calling to all of the other gifts given by the Spirit, and that business trends ought to shape the church.

So there you have it.  If this analysis resonates with you, or if you think I have misunderstood the article at any point, please comment!

http://churchformen.com/teaching-in-the-church/what-church-will-be-like-in-50-years/

Link

This would explain so much…

BUFFALO, N.Y. — We hear all the time that we need to get off the couch, stop watching TV and get moving.

But what if watching TV under specific conditions could actually provide the mental boost you need to tackle a difficult task?

A new paper that describes two studies by Jaye Derrick, PhD, research scientist at the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions, found that watching a rerun of a favorite TV show may help restore the drive to get things done in people who have used up their reserves of willpower or self-control.

via Favorite TV Reruns May Have Restorative Powers, says UB Researcher – UB NewsCenter.

Her.meneutics: My Perfect Life with Anorexia

This is probably the best article on anorexia in young Christian (over-achieving) women I’ve read.  Someday, I’ll be ready to write about my own experience with disordered eating that began in an undergraduate Christian college… but for now, please read the article.  Here’s an excerpt (don’t worry, it has a happy and true ending):

For many months, I did not see my eating disorder as an issue that I needed to face. Although I was aware that restricting food was not normal, I was also proud that I did not have to eat—so much! so often!—like everyone else did. For perfectionists, Anorexia seems to offer us something we fail to achieve through academics: the chance to prove that we are worth loving. But as we seek to control food, food begins to control us, and we lose sight of God’s truth about our identities. In my struggle to earn love, I lost my grip on my spiritual identity, sinking into a universe of food rules, depression, and shame.

via Her.meneutics: My Perfect Life with Anorexia.

Where Leadership is Anchored

I like this article from Scot McKnight’s blog.  There are far too many people out there who strive to lead but aren’t willing to follow.

“Some of the most dangerous leaders are those who think they know better than anyone else, who are interested only in their own inventions and who relish the isolation of being out ahead of everyone else” (37). Mel [Lawrenz, in Spiritual Influence] turns it inside out: “The best leaders you ever followed did not learn leading by leading, but by following.”

 

Genuine spiritual influence then is leading others into following Jesus. The question then is this: Does this person lead me to follow Christ or does this person lead me to follow him/her?

via Where Leadership is Anchored.