Norris' The Cloister Walk

There can be nothing better than a good poet writing prose whether Thomas Lynch, the Michigan funeral director writing about death or Kathleen Norris, writing about her time in a Benedictine monastery. Both show a care for words and phrases that is formed in their lives as poets. Her subject matter is also compelling as she describes and reflects upon her experience living among the Benedictines and the community and rhythms of life that she found there. Some of the many good things that she had to say:
p27 [St Therese] "perfection consists in being what God wants us to be."
p38 "...the pain that comes from one's identity, that grows out of the response to a call, can't be escaped or pushed aside. It must be gone through."
p41 "The work of my life is given to others; in fact, the reader completes it."
p54 "[poem of boy] "I remember him/like God in my heart, I remember him in my heart/like the clouds overhead,/and strawberry ice cream and bananas/when I was a little kid. But the most I remember/is his love,/as big as Texas/when I was born."
p64 "...poetry, like prayer, is a dialogue with the sacred."
p68 "As so often happens, on this day worship reinforced my convictions that only Christ could have brought all of us together, in this place, doing such absurd but necessary things."
p127 "The tragedy of sin is that it diverts divine gifts."
p142 "...when you realize that anything good you write comes despite your weaknesses, writing becomes a profoundly humbling activity."
p147 "...those who know the exact price of things, as Judas did, often don't know the true cost or value of anything."
p154 "...if you're looking for a belief in the power of words to change things, to come alive and make a path for you to walk on, you're better off with poets these days than with Christians."
p165 "[Oscar Wilde] ... the problem is not in what we do but in what we become."
p206 "...it is through our failings and weaknesses, our "ways of imperfection," that we find God, and God finds us, the God who can turn any mess we've made to the good."
p251 "The problem did not start with theology--with my inability to grasp Christ as a living person--but might have more to do with my resistance to accepting the full mystery of the Christ present in any person..."
p261 "...too many young people grow up understanding that "true love" means possessing and being possessed."
p267 "Ceremony forces a person to slow down, and as many of live at a frenzied pace..."
p283 "Laundry is one of the very few tasks in life that offers instant results...For some people, laundry seems to satisfy a need for ritual."
p294 "It is not a choice but a call, and often the people who last in a monastery are those who struggle through their early years reminding themselves of that fact."
p311 "'What is it you seek?'...The ritual answer is anything but easy: 'the mercy of God and fellowship in this community.'"
p313 "Real beauty is always both tough and fragile..."
p315 "I wonder if the pace of modern life, along with our bizarre propensity for turning everything into a commodity, erodes our ability to think symbolically, to value symbols for their transformative power."
p352 "It is the aim of contemplative living, at least in the Christian mode, that you learn to recognize a blessing when you see one, and are able to respond to it with words that God has given you."
p367 "What could it be but sweetness, and God's blessing? His welcome refreshed me and made me see something that's easy to lose sight of in our infernally busy lives. That we exist for each other, and when we're at a low ebb, sometimes just to see the goodness radiating from another can be all we need in order to rediscover it in ourselves."

McLaren's A New Kind of Christian

Following in the tradition of the early Greek philosophers, McLaren sets up this book as an ongoing dialogue between a close-to-burnt-out pastor and his daughter's soccer coach/science teacher. The pastor is tired of the usual theological and personality battles in the local church and seems disillusioned with the message that he has been presenting. The science teacher also turns out to be a former pastor and left the ministry for some of the same reasons that the current pastor now articulates. The science teacher channels McLaren in this piece as he shares his spiritual journey and the "generously orthodox" claims he had come to hold dear.
p52 "When we let it [the Bible] go as a modern answer book, we get to rediscover it for what it really is: an ancient book of incredible spiritual value for us, a kind of universal and cosmic history, a book that tells us who we are and what story we find ourselves in so that we know what to do and how to live."
p54 "What if faith isn't best compared to a building but rather to a spiderweb? Instead of one foundation, it has several anchor points."
p83 "...we are chosen by God not for privilege but for service..."
p87 "What's the consequence of that..." creation by God
p91 "We are becoming on this side of the door of death the kind of people we will be on the other side"
p97 "...maybe a hundred years from now, the descendants of my fellow evangelicals today will be like the Amish of tomorrow, but instead of maintaining 1850's German culture, they'll perpetuate 1950s American culture."
p98 "One of the most dangerous things in the world...is to redefine sin to suit our own tastes."
p130 "I see a huge contrast between crossing a line in this way, and following Jesus on a journey. It's as if we have taken what is for Jesus a starting line and turned it into a finish line."
p155 "[The church] is about three things: community, spirituality, and mission..."
p162 A misguided view of seminaries and their libraries

McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy

The rather long subtitle for this book "Why I am a missional + evangelical + post/protestant..." Indicates the main point of his book - conceiving a Christian orthodoxy that includes and goes beyond current or historical boundaries with Christianity. There is much to admire here - who's against going beyond meaningless boundaries? The trouble for McLaren is various readers will have different ideas about what is or is not a meaningful boundary. I'm reminded of Lindbeck's Nature of Doctrine which argues that each group develops it's own dialect of the Christian language. McLaren is right, I think, in suggesting that there is a common language that can found and that there is value in sharing in it. The difficulty is that it is the very nature of communities to be formed with a certain theological dialect and there can be some challenges in maintaining a community when dialect is left behind or changed.
p64-65 Helpful chart of views of Jesus by group
p80 "Has he become ( I shudder to ask this) less our Lord and more our Mascot?"
p85 "Jesus defined his own identity not as being served, but as giving his life in service, and in this way, acknowledging Jesus as master means one voluntarily "takes his yoke" and learns from Jesus how to serve God, plus one's neighbor, plus one's enemy, and so the whole world."
p179 "...the tragedy of consumerism: one acquires more and more things without taking the time to ever see and know them, and thus one never truly enjoys them."
p225 "...the sacrament nature of Catholicism is this: through learning that a few things can carry the sacred, we become open to the fact that all things (all good things, all created things) can ultimately carry the sacred..."
p290 "...the practices of humility, compassion, spirituality, and love--which develop only in community--are more essential to a good and healthy theology..."
p293 "It [generous orthodoxy] is rather to be in a loving (ethical) community of people who are seeking the truth (doctrine) on the road of mission (witness) and who have been launched on the quest by Jesus, who, with us, guides us still."

Lamott's Traveling Mercies

Anne Lamott takes you through her life twice. The 55 page "overture" is a brief autobiography that sets the context for the stories and reflections that follow. The stories and reflections range from an encounter with a man and his dog on the beach to spending time with her friend dying of cancer. Perhaps because her life experiences and context is very different from what I have known, the shared and common faith is quite powerful. My favorite chapters are on Forgiveness and Grace (128-144) but here's some the good quotes:

p8. "He was a God whom his children could talk to, confide in, and trust, unless his mood shifted suddenly and he decided instead to blow up Sodom and Gomorrah"
p55 "She pointed it [the church] out to the policeman, and then she told him firmly, 'You can let me out now. This is my church, and I can always find my way home from here.'"
p65 "Maybe it's because music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way."
p95 "It's frustrating if you are hoping to have a happy ending, or at least a little closure, a movie moment when you toss them [ashes] into the air and they flutter and disperse. They don't. They cling, they haunt. They get in your hair, in your eyes, in your clothes."
p106 "She said that the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of hte emergency ward and that we who are more or less OK for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes. You sit with people, she said, you bring them juice and graham crackers.
p231 "It's about baptism, for God's sake. It's about full immersion, about falling into something elemental and wet. Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and tanks and fonts, you agree to do something that's a little sloppy because at the same time it's also holy, and absurd. It's about surrender, giving in to all those things we can't control; it's a willingness to let go of balance and decorum and get drenched."

Rathbun's Post-rapture Radio

Rathbun's book is a satire on the state of current American evangelicalism told through the voice of a narrator who stumbles upon the writers and journals of the Reverend Richard Lamblove. Lamblove finds himself in a highly-exaggerated evangelical church, trying to make sense of everything and ultimately, tries and fails to change it. Rathbun's overall critique is upon evangelical and megachurches focus on numbers, individualism, and status.

pxix "A seeker would never consider entering an antique building, dark and dour, to listen to old-fashioned music and hear an oddly costumed professor give a speech. But it was not a stretch for that same seeker to pull into the new church's large parking lot, enter the wide glass doors, sit in the theater-style seats, watch a band play familiar-sounding music, and hear a person dressed in regular clothes share a little bit about life."
p19 "...any church not meeting the Retail Needs of its congregation had an average of only six to thirteen months of "Potential Relevance" left.
p40 "This peace that Jesus is talking about is what we would probably call convenience."
p53 Evangelical Hermeneutic: It is about me. It tells me what to do or what not to do. It condemns those who are different from me. It implies the opposite.
p81 "Salvation has nothing to do with eternal self-interest. Salvation has nothing to do with building your own security pod that will jettison you to heaven when the world gets too hateful or your body gives out."
p86 "what takes more faith--to believe that God can save you and offer personal fulfillment and comfort, or to believe that God can reorient the whole world from one of hate, greed, fear and personal gain, to one ruled be peace and justice?"
p107 "I just want everyone to feel comfortable"
p145 "Where is the fire in baptism? Everybody does the water but where is the fire?"
p151 "Christ sacrificed himself once and for all, and when we remember that definitive act of love through the ritual of the Lord's Supper, there can be no qualifications in our invitation to the table."
p155 "We know the trajectory of power and glory...Sacrifice and humility is another story."
p160-2 "The people in these churches had adopted the culture of Rome, and so the message of Revelation is that they are living by the values of the Empire and not the values of the Kingdom of God."

Dodd's My Faith So Far

Patton Dodd, currently a PhD student at BU, marked a turning point of his faith journey when responding to an altar call at a charismatic megachurch and that's how his faith memoir begins. His tale is largely a look at his struggles in combining his Christian faith with both the secular and Christian cultures. Towards the beginning of the book, he struggles to free himself of his old patterns and addictions by clinging to the Christian culture. Rather than being a place of refuge and comfort, Dodd experiences incongruities and excesses in both his charismatic megachurch and in his time at Oral Roberts University. His faith being neither simple or easy strives to find a middle ground. Here's some of the good stuff:
p1 "Becoming [a Christian] has to do with daily practice--what to think, what to say, what to read, where to put one's foot down and why."
p14 On speaking in tongues "Ooh, it sounds horrible. The deacon does it so naturally, and I sound like one of the Sand People on Tatooine. But as I speak, the deacon starts praising God, so I figure I am doing something right."
p19 "Growing up evangelical means that turning on the radio involves a moral decision."
p33 "If I can see it, it must be temporary. If I can't it must eternal, and therefore true"
p39 "I leave the service knowing that God Himself has taken a spoon and scooped all the nastiness out of my chest and flung it into the stratosphere... I want to be Shop-Vac'd by God."
p49 "The Southern Baptists, the Lutherans, the Methodists, the Presbyterians--I see that they are Christians, too. They are on the right path, but they are walking awfully slowly."
p57 "Religions people don't worship God; they worship the form of God."
p88 "Faith is a tool, like a crowbar the believer constantly uses to pry obstacles aside, or a paintbrush to alter the appearance of the world."
p101 "Our testimonies sometimes take the form of spitting contests"
p106 "Without really knowing that I'm doing it, I have started to compile a list of Screwy Christian Stuff: certain parts of the Bible, certain interactions with other believers, certain moments in certain church services that upset my idea of a Christianity that works they way I expect it to."
p122 "Also on the Screwy list: Is Jesus mean?"
p160 "Others have found it: a place where you can believe and not feel as though you have to jump off a cliff to do it, a place where you can achieve a kind of modified contentment in a flawed faith culture."
p163 "You'll get stronger, and you'll screw up, and then you'll get stronger some more. Eventually, you'll get over it. It's called sanctification, and it takes a while."
p171 "ORU skateboarder Jason, who is now Eastern Orthodox ('It's all about the Eucharist, man')"
p174 "People who believe in Jesus, yes, but who have to remind themselves why. People who love God, of course, but who have trouble expressing how. People who have faith, though not as much as they'd like. But they're working on it."

Rienstra's So Much More

Rienstra prefaces her book by describing the need for a guide and friend upon entering a new place. The phonebooks, maps, and details are overwhelming and she needs someone to help her soft out the basics from the giant mass of information. As a librarian, I can identify well with the problem of information overload and the need to provide better basic and well-sorted information. Rienstra largely accomplishes her goal of guiding the reader through Christian thought and spirituality. Although one can find a systematic theology lurking beneath, she is successful in imitating a guidebook to the Christian faith. Some quotes/points:

p8 "...indefinite beliefs about the transcendent avoid the troubles of a God with personality. The minute you move from a life force to a personal God, you are dealing with an other who could potentially make demands on you that you would rather not conform to..."

p25 "[Prophecies] are not simply predictions but patterns of how God views the world and chooses to make himself known in it."

p31 "Christians pray to the Spirit when they seek understanding (especially of scripture), inspiration, a change of heart, or renewed understanding."

p56 "Our human dignity depends on retaining our status as responsible creatures..."

p59 "As long as you think you are good enough right now or could be soon, you limit yourself at best to a dim shadow of goodness in this life."

p96 "God permits human freed and the workings of a fallen creation to cause pain and sorrow. However, God is also active in weaving that pain and sorrow into his larger purposes..."

p154 "God expects us to exercise some responsibility and figure it [the most trying questions of our age] out... I do believe we have to keep putting the whole Bible in front of us as a Christian community"

p178 "If my sermon is lousy, at least people have Communion" quoting Debra's pastor

p180 "But instant transformation is not the typical pattern. What with our own obtuseness and tendency to suffer from bad worship and all, most of us require years of churchgoing before showing improvements."

p214 "...good works do not earn salvation but are a sign of salvation."

Miller - Blue Like Jazz

Miller's life seems to confirm both the randomness and God's direction to the universe. Jazz is an appropriate metaphor in that we see some forms, some phrases that repeat, a conversational arc but also life and reflections that strain our ability to anticipate his motivations and where he might head next. Miller is very much someone in search of "authentic" faith and his searching leads to some interesting encounters and observations. One of the tensions in his book is that his "search" for the authentic is an almost individualistic search while he seems to find what is most authentic in the midst of community. Some quotes/points worth noting:

p77 "the things we want most will kill us." Miller reflects about the innate and overwhelming "love of darkness" and finds it impossible to love the right things without God's help.

p79 "I believed if word got out about grace, the whole church was going to turn into a brothel."

p86 "The ability to accept God's unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return...God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love.

p130 "There was room at the table for me, but I wasn't in the family."

p182 "No rut in the mind is so deep as the one that says I am the world, the world belongs to me, all people are characters in my play. There is no addiction so powerful as self-addiction."

p215 "The problem with Christian community was that we had ethics, we had rules and laws and principles to judge each other against."

Bell's Velvet Elvis

"Velvet Elvis" may be a good metaphor for the book. Like any painting generally complementary of Jesus or Elvis, there may be some things worth admiring but not everyone will want to hang it their house. Rob has an engaging style of writing, flip-flopping between paragraphs and single sentences as if he were talking to you in your kitchen. His theology and style are put forth as common sense, hopeful, authentic, and reflecting his experience of the world in 21st century America.

A few quotes:
"It doesn't matter where I find it, who speaks or lives it, or what they believe, I claim and affirm the truth wherever I find it." (p80)
"...to be Christian is to do whatever it is that you do with great passion and devotion." (p84)
"Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God has made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it." (p114 quoting his therapist).
"God has an incredibly high view of people." (p134)

Particularly striking about the first quote is his use the first person singular, implicitly claiming Rob Bell the arbiter of truth. Similarly, the other quotes show the high value Rob places on self-actualization whether it is in discerning truth, work and vocation, or to become who God has made us individually to be. He does have some good things to say about the work of God in Christian communities and society - "It is our turn to rediscover the beautiful, dangerous, compelling idea that a group of people, surrendered to God and to each other, really can change the world." (p164)

Rob Bell probably considers most things that would be a part of a systematic theology but it comes out rather randomly and some things just don't hang together as well as we might hope. I appreciate his sense of hopefulness but distrust his reliance on "whatever seems like truth," "feels good," or "feels right."

Keizer's Enigma of Anger

Enigma of Anger was indeed as the subtitle proclaims "essays on a sometimes deadly sin." While the essays were enjoyable and many of salient points well taken, I missed the sustained argument that comes with books that are written with a bit more of the whole in mind. Still, each of the essays in their own ways, argued for the legitimacy of anger within the lives of the faithful and humanity generally. There are lots of ways that anger can stray into sin, both in understanding the source and in it's expression. After reading the book, I get the sense that rightly felt and expressed anger is a difficult but not impossible target. One of the things that Keizer's book may accomplish for readers is to encourage them to have a deeper and sustained reflection on their own anger. A few quotes worth considering:

"The worldview of the envious--and to a certain extent, for the lustful and avaricious too--runs counter to God's vision. Nothing they see is good, or good enough, or else nothing they see is enough of the good. In other words, you can never please them, which is as good a definition as you may get of what it means to be damned." p 46

"An artistic performance is like a Thanksgiving meal--be it Grandma's or the Holy Eucharist: Someone has gone to a lot of trouble on your behalf, and all you're required to do is sit down and eat, watch, or listen. And in the right frame of mind, that is all you want to do: be nourished and be grateful" p91

"It is mercy--not justice or injustice--that makes us the most angry in the end" p279

Wright's Dwelling Places

Nice to be back in Iowa. Wright's Dwelling Places transports the reader to small fictional town in Iowa where families have been economically squeezed out of the farming business. While Mack and Jodie are able to find other jobs, they struggle most in losing a way of life, a way of relating to nature, and a way of relating other people. The story is told through the eyes of four of the five main characters, with perspectives regularly shifting through a common timeframe. The story certainly deals with loss and change, and how family members experience this in different ways and with different results. Of particular interest was how Christianity plays throughout the story: how farmers and foreclosing bankers go to the same church, how the somewhat misplaced prayer of Kenzie speaks powerfully to her father Mack, how the church is able to help the families name what has been lost.

Mack - the loss of the farm led to a depression that landed him in the psychiatric ward and estranges him from his wife and family
Jodie - wife of Mack who also struggles with the loss of the way of life, becomes involved with another man, but eventually accepts Mack back into her life.
Rita - mother of Mack, lives alone but cares for many of her elderly neighbors and friends. Her husband and other son died in trying to keep the farm.
Kenzie - daughter of Mack and Jodie who regularly prays for her family and throws herself into her spirituality and faith. Kenzie finds herself attracted to an older man that seems to share her faith.
Young Taylor - son of Mack and Jodie who seems obsessed with death, closer perhaps to expressing what everyone else is experiencing at the loss of farming.

Communion quote

"Once we have learned to recognize God's presence in holy communion, then we are better equipped to recognize God's presence wherever bread is taken, blessed, broken, and given. Once we have learned to recognize God's gift of new life in holy baptism, then we are better equipped to recognize that gift wherever water flows to cleanse and refresh."

"On this rock" by Barbara Brown Taylor in Awakened to a Calling: Reflections on the Vocation of Ministry.

Prothero's American Jesus Part 2

Prothero rounds out his section on "resurrections" with a consideration of Jesus Christ as Superstar. Jesus becomes a celebrity and an image/symbol that gains currency among the Jesus Freaks, Hollywood, and Broadway. This is turn spawns a kinder, gentler Jesus that fuels the seeker-sensitive megachurch and contemporary Christian music industry. One really can see the progression in American culture as Jesus becomes more and more of a personal friend. Who wouldn't want Jesus? and so what if that fueled desire helps sell some books, albums, and theatre tickets.

For the mainline Protestant, the second half of the book is interesting but Prothero can't hold up the same mirror in front of us as he explored the various "reincarnations" of Jesus as Mormon, black, rabbi, and oriental. The Mormon example is especially interesting in that it is a uniquely American religious group that was "born and raised" in the USA. Mormons both reacted to and accommodated the culture at various points as times changed and they became much more institutionalized. The Black culture in American has had a very complicated relationship with Jesus and their other books that treat this subject more throroughly. One of Prothero's interesting points is the conflating of Jesus with Moses.

The last couple chapters look at the view of Jesus from both a Jewish and Eastern Religion perspective. One cannot live in America without encountering Jesus. Both groups have tried to understand Jesus from their own religious perspectives and have suggested, sometimes overtly, that Christians have got Jesus all wrong. The Jewish communities have thought about Jesus as being a good Jew. The Hindu communities have through about Jesus as being a good avatar.

Overall, American Jesus takes a good look at how Jesus has been seen, portrayed and used in the American culture. Actions begets reaction and despite the good intentions of the actors and reactors, Jesus entry into secular America is not without controversy.

Prothero's American Jesus Part I

Prothero begins with a close look at Thomas Jefferson and his work to define his own faith. Of particular interest was in how Jefferson rejected the traditional church, creeds, and clergy and even cut/pasted his own Bible (an effort which has been extended by the Jesus Seminar). Jefferson's "true religion" distilled down to belief in God, the afterlife, and moral living. The separation of Church and state along with the general proclavity towards independence meant that faith and thus one's image of Jesus was a matter of some choice.

In this period, we see an emergence of Jesus as a part of the religious landscape in America. In Calvinistic and Catholic faiths, Jesus plays an important role in theology and creed but what emerges is the belief in a very personal Jesus, a belief reflected in hymns, images, and preaching. In contrast to evangelical strategy using fear of a judgmental God, Prothero argues that we begin to see Jesus as the gentle shepherd calling sinners to "come home." Jesus enters center stage and there is a flurry of interest in chronicling the life of Jesus, so that the faithful could emulate his life.

Jesus eventually becomes to effeminate for some and the book traces the "pushback" to remasculinize Jesus through an emphasis upon his strength of character and later, strength of personality. It's surprising to me that we don't seem more evidence of a return to the judgemental side of Jesus. While Prothero notes the importance of the story with the moneychangers, I would expected more with the judgement stories (sheep and goats, etc.) and the Book of Revelation. Of course, Americans have a hard time reading the moneychanger passage without identifying with Jesus (instead of with the moneychangers).