bekahcubed I always enjoy it when a parent offers me a chance to spend time with their young ones–and last Saturday, I got to spend a day with Jonah and Livi.
I returned from taking Livi to the bathroom to find that Jonah had made himself a “nest” with all the living room pillows.
Livi wanted to join in the fun so she grabbed the sole remaining pillow and tried her best to make a nest as well.
Book Reviews:
Rating: ****
Category:History of America’s Civil Religion
Synopsis: Meacham explores America’s civil religion through the words and writings of the Founding Fathers and other American leaders
Recommendation: If you like history or political topics, you’ll like this title. It’s quite well written.
Read the rest of my review.
Rating: **** stars
Category: Religion and Politics
Synopsis: Boyd argues that “the quest for political power is destroying the church.”
Recommendation: Many may find this book offensive (I know I was definitely tempted to take offense)–but I think Boyd’s thesis is certainly worth grappling with. Christians (particularly those who are interested in politics) would do well to read this book and wrestle through the ideas found within.
Read the rest of my review.
Rating: 5 stars
Category: Juvenile Fiction
Synopsis: Scout and Finch learn about life, justice, mercy, and racism when their father is appointed to defend an unjustly accused black man.
Recommendation: An absolutely amazing treatment of the topics of human dignity, justice, and mercy–without ever being pedantic. This is a must read.
Read the rest of my review.
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Books for the TBR list:
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Related to previous posts:
On similar lines with my “Heresy Hunter” case study (Part 1 and Part 2)
Borrowed from Carrie, who borrowed it from Barbara, who got it from a Booking Through Thursday prompt.
What are you reading right now?
Founding Faith by Steven Waldman.
Oddly, that’s all I currently have going. I expect that to shortly change :-)
Do you have an e-reader?
No sirree, Bob! I’m a paper and ink girl–a semi-Neo-Luddite (as much as one can be while being an avid blogger, that is!)
Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?
I’m always reading several books at once–but I like there to be only one fiction title going at a time. I have a harder time keeping fiction plots and characters straight if I’ve got more than one going at a time. So fiction generally gets read in fits and bursts instead of a few chapters a day like the rest of my reading.
Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?
Yeah–I started keeping my books out of the library forever so that I could get them all reviewed! I also occasionally wonder “How will this look in my Nightstand post?” But I never censor my reading for Nightstand posts, even though I’ve thought of doing so. What you see is what you get–although it doesn’t always mean what you think :-)
How often do you read out of your comfort zone?
Less often than I’d like. But there are just too many books to be read–and too many IN my comfort zone to keep me busy.
What is your reading comfort zone?
Girlie novels (certain Christian romance novelists, chick lit, stuff that’s all about interpersonal relationships), Juvenile and YA fairy tale adaptions, memoirs, sociological type stuff. Okay–my reading comfort zone is pretty wide. It’s easier to say what ISN’T in my comfort zone than what is.
What ISN’T in my comfort zone is mysteries, suspense, science fiction, smutty romance novels, and fiction that makes you think. (It’s the fiction that makes you think that I’d prefer to read more of, by the way).
Favorite place to read?
In the bathtub.
What is your policy on book lending?
I only lend books I own :-)
and books that I know the library doesn’t own.
Otherwise I direct people to the library.
Christian living/theology/doctrine books, I lend out carefully on a few conditions:
Do you ever write in the margins of your books?
Of MY books, absolutely. Generally, though, I only write in nonfiction titles–I write arguments, Scripture references, other thoughts, etc. And, as I mentioned above, I beg anyone I loan books to to do the same.
What makes you love a book?
I love a book that I don’t have to work too hard to get into =). And I like if it portrays good and evil as good and evil. I like…
Man, that’s a hard question. I’m not sure what makes me love a book. I just know that I love it.
What will inspire you to recommend a book?
For fiction, if it is well-written, engaging, accurately depicts reality (good and evil, interpersonal relationships, etc.), and has some cross-genre appeal. Otherwise, I tend to qualify my recommendation as to where it fits within the genre.
For nonfiction, if it is well-written, engaging, and addresses a valuable topic in what I deem to be a thoughtful (or at least thought-provoking) manner.
Genre you rarely read (but wish you did?)
Fiction that makes me think. I tend to want to turn off my brain when it comes to fiction–but from my brief forays into fiction that makes me think, I know that it’s worthwhile. I just don’t take/make the time and mental energy to read them.
Favorite biography?
That’s a tough one. I tend to remember the person being “biographed” rather than the biography itself. The only thing that comes to mind is not strictly a biography–more an autobiography or a memoir. But I love Corrie ten Boom’s Hiding Place
Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?
I haven’t read much from the “inspirational” front this year. I’ve been more into the “get down to the nitty-gritty, challenge your faith, figure out what you believe” front. Lots of exercising my mind towards the things of God, not a lot of “heart-warming” stuff.
How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?
Not sure how I feel about it. I do give negative reviews. But whether I should, and how I choose which books to review (even though I had a negative impression of them)? I guess I give negative reviews when I think there’s a good possibility that some people could be led astray by the book if they don’t read some truth about it, or if a book had pros and cons, or if I expected a book to be good based on other reviews, book jacket flaps, whatever and was disappointed.
Most intimidating book you’ve ever read?
Plato’s Republic. I was in sixth grade. I wasn’t intimidated then. I am now! Then, of course, I didn’t feel the challenge of having to understand it. I read it, but didn’t understand it. Now I’m frightened.
Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?
Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Despite reading and enjoying everything my library owns by Tolstoy apart from these two titles, I’m still intimidated. It’s a Russian novelist thing. I’ll get over it eventually.
Favorite fictional character?
Elizabeth Bennet
The longest I’ve gone without reading.
Summer 2006, Jacksonville Florida. Two months. Only read the Bible. Challenging. Growing. It was my “Summer of One Book.”
Apart from that? I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than a day since I learned to read. And I’m not exaggerating at all. (Just ask my mother and siblings!)
What distracts you easily when you’re reading?
My sisters shrieking wildly because my brother had just proposed to his girlfriend.
Other than that, I am NOT easily distracted. I was one of seven children, homeschooled, in an 1100 square foot house, remember?
Favorite film adaptation of a novel?
A&E’s Pride and Prejudice
Most disappointing film adaptation?
I’d ditto Carrie and Barbara and say Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story. I don’t know that you can even call that an adaptation.
What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
Absolute boringness or complete and utter heresy. I’ve done it with only a handful of books: Oz Garcia’s The Healthy, High Tech Body, Larry McMurtry’s Books: A Memoir, and Joel Osteen’s Become a Better You. Those are the only books I can remember stopping reading (without writing myself a note to pick them back up again.)
Do you like to keep your books organized?
Yes–but the organizational system varies. My fiction is ordered by author’s last name. My nonfiction is ordered by topic. My Biblical reference/Christian living is ordered partly by topic, partly by last name, and partly by what looks good on the shelf :-). My library books are ordered either by size or by due date, depending on how confident I feel that I’ll be able to get everything read before it’s due back!
Jon Meacham’s introduction to American Gospel (link is to my review) was sufficient to give me fodder for an entire post of quotes. The rest of the book proved to be equally rife in thought provoking quotes.
I present a brief selection (since I probably ought not retype the entire book!)
“Winthrop’s text [‘City upon a hill’] is frequently used as a source of reassurance about our exceptional national destiny, yet we should not be so quick to think that an ancient phrase of his can help us smooth over the rougher passages of our history, or that telling ourselves we are a special people entitles the country or any element within it to impose its will on others under the cloak of divine sanction.”
This reminds me of…well…Calvinism…actually. You see, Calvinists should be the most humble people in the world. After all, we affirm that we have been saved by absolutely no merit or choice of our own. Likewise, if America has indeed been called to be a city on a hill (although, of course, that passage refers to disciples of Christ, not to America)–but if America had been called to be a city on a hill, that should be an incredibly humbling thing. To be chosen by God to be on display? Surely not because we are great, but because He has some purpose to work through us. This ought drive us to our knees, to humility, that we might live for and fulfill His purposes–not that we should proudly consider him to have given His stamp of approval to our purposes.
“Williams was mostly interested in saving the church from the state, not the state from the church. The world was the world; the kingdom of God was something else entirely. ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,’ Jesus said, ‘and to God the things that are God’s.’ Williams called for a ‘hedge or wall of separation between the Garden of the church and the wilderness of the world.’ Note that Williams was not planting a hedge or building a wall to protect the state, but rather religion, believing that the ambitions and vices of men could pervert the church, turning faith into a means of temporal power.”
I think Williams and Greg Boyd would have gotten along together well :-)
“Even the preachers of the day saw the wisdom of keeping Williams’ garden and wilderness separate. The reasoning was rooted in both conviction and in pragmatism: church and state would be more powerful apart than they would have been if joined together.”
A very interesting statement to be sure. Are church and state more powerful apart than together?
“‘The magistrate is to govern the state, and Christ is to govern the church,’ said Reverend Samuel Stillman in a 1779 sermon to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. ‘The former will find business enough in the complex affairs of government to employ all his time and abilities. The latter is infinitely sufficient to manage his own kingdom without foreign aid.’ The religious knew, too, that to ally themselves with the powers of the temporal world might result in momentary gain, but only momentary.
I love that last line of Stillman’s: “The latter [Christ] is infinitely sufficient to manage his own kingdom without foreign aid.” Amen!
“‘[In] allying itself with a political power,’ Tocqueville said, ‘religion increases its power over some and loses the hope of reigning over all.’…He was not speaking theoretically, but from experience and history. ‘In Europe, Christianity has permitted itself to be intimately united with the powers of the earth,’ he said. ‘Today these powers are falling and it is almost buried under their debris.'”
Thinking of the fate of Christianity in the former Holy Roman Empire and both its Catholic and Protestant successors, I am inclined to think that this historical argument is a great one against the marriage of church and state.
“[Franklin] did not mean to imply, he said, that ‘our General convention was divinely inspired when it formed the new federal Constitution….Yet I must own that I have so much faith in the general government of the world by Providence, that I can hardly conceive a transaction of such momentous importance…should be suffered to pass without being in some degree influenced, guided, and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent, and beneficent Ruler.‘”
If God is indeed sovereign and sovereignly orders the world according to His will, then America is what it is because God willed it. But this is not reason for boasting, as though God places His stamp of approval on all that America does. Rather, it should be reason for trembling, since the same God who raises nations can also fell them in accordance with His will.
“If the first shall be last and the last first, then who are Christians to exert power over others by the sword or the purse or the polling place?”
An utterly fascinating question–with an incredibly complex answer (Our book club over The Myth of a Christian Nation spent ten or so weeks discussing that question–and I’m not sure we managed to come to any definitive conclusion.)
Prompt: What role did music play in your growing up years? What, if any, music do you associate with early childhood? What music style or songs were popular when you were in high school? How did you listen to music – on the radio, albums, etc. Did you have a stereo in your room? …
My family was early adopters of the Compact Disc. It was the late ’80s and the only way you could get a CD player was as a stereo component–you had to hook it to a stereo and speakers in order to make it work. This was before you could get boomboxes and walkmans and cars that played CDs.
Our CD collection had two components: classical music and Hosanna! worship music.
The most frequently listened to album was “All Hail King Jesus”–but we all called it “Rister Rise” after the second song on the album “Let Your Spirit Rise within Me”. Joshua, no more than three at the time we acquired the album, loved that song, but couldn’t quite pronounce the words.
The Hosanna! songs were simple choruses, easy for us children to learn, infinitely danceable (to a preschooler’s mind). They were new songs when we learned them, of course–although now many contemporary churches would find them desperately outdated.
Most have been forgotten and I don’t miss them much. Others, I take the time to remember and continue to sing. If you flip through the book of Psalms in my Bible, you’ll see little music notes drawn in here and there. When I see that note, I know that there’s a song, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, that goes along with the nearby verse. And most of those songs were Hosanna! songs.
The list could go on and on. Yes, some of the songs were trite, most of the melodies simple. But so many were Scripture, set to music a child could easily sing. They were beautiful.
Of course, we kids weren’t allowed to touch the CDs. Our grubby paws would undoubtedly have ruined them quickly (as it is, my parent’s collection is still in good shape twenty years later. The music we kids started acquiring for ourselves in our teens has not fared so well–apparently our grubby hands and bad habits were indeed harmful to CDs!)
We could, however, put in tapes. We listened to Psalty the Singing Songbook, Jungle Jam, Big Steps Little Feet–and a tape we called “Syrup Lady” after the incredibly syruppy-voiced narrator.
But our real favorites, which Mom started letting us handle once we got into our elementary years, were her old records. She had some of the best records from the early days of Contemporary Christian Music–Larry Norman, Randy Stonehill, LAMB, Evie, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Chuck Girard. We listened to some of the same songs over and over and over again. Oh, how we loved that music!
Once Anna and I entered our teen years, CDs were commonplace and we had numerous CD playing boomboxes about the house–and CD players in our computers. Music went from being a household event with everyone singing and dancing along to being a primarily individual event, listened to by one person for their own enjoyment. Now, of course, everyone has their iPods and no one can hear another’s music–everyone just dances to their own, isolated from the rest of the world.
It’s nice not to have to listen to the more obnoxious music some people :-) find pleasant these days–but I do occasionally miss the old days where we all gathered in the living room to sing and dance and enjoy our music together.
Visit Linda for more Flashback Friday posts.
Today I’m thankful…
…for my job–I’m so glad to be back in the classroom again (as a teacher, that is!)
…for cruise control–with as much traveling as I’ve had to do lately, I don’t know what I’d do without it.
…for Chris Tomlin on my car radio, letting me “multitask” worship and driving :-)
…for a job offer–I enjoyed meeting the care team today and really think I would love working with this facility.
…for an interview–It’s probably my dream job, although it pays significantly less than the offer I’ve already had. Nevertheless, if they deem me their best applicant, they’re willing to wait until January for me. (Which means I might be able to have my cake and eat it too.)
…for lunch with Anna–We’ve been able to lunch together each time I’ve gone up to Columbus for an interview, and it’s so nice to have that informal sister time.
…for being alive despite a brief scare in the car this morning and my incredible drowsiness in the car this afternoon
…for the sermon on humility that met me just where I was at. Just about a year ago, John Piper deviated from his ongoing series in the book of John to talk about humility. It “just happened” to be the next sermon up on my mp3 player this afternoon. (Lord, help me to see the gospel in such a way that would exclude all vain boasting in the flesh.)
…for the Sovereign God, who knows every decision of today, tomorrow, and the rest of my life–and whose hand is in every circumstance that comes my way
I think that this blog’s all about me.
Am I the only person who occasionally wastes hours of her day reading her own blog?
I find myself nodding, mm-hmm-ing, and occasionally bursting into an amen.
I want to write myself comments to say “Bravo”.
I become impressed with how I express myself, with the topics I write about, with the way I think about issues.
I’m pretty much my biggest fan.
Which is pretty much not cool at all.
My pride would say that I am wise, that I know the answers, that bekahcubed is a fount of wisdom and discernment.
The word of God says otherwise.
In fact, God’s word places wisdom and pride on opposite ends of a spectrum.
“When pride comes, then comes shame; but with the humble is wisdom.”
~Proverbs 11:2“By pride comes nothing but strife, But with the well-advised is wisdom.”
~Proverbs 13:10“In the mouth of a fool is a rod of pride, But the lips of the wise will preserve them.”
~ Proverbs 14:3
In fact, pride is the one thing that Scripture tells us God actively opposes: in both James 4:6 and I Peter 5:5, we read:
“God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble.”
In taking pride in my wisdom, I reveal how little wisdom I truly have–
and I set myself in opposition to God and He to me.
How much better that I heed the word of God through James:
“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.”
He’d just lost his wife, the woman he’d loved for years, the one he’d shared everything with. He described the early stages of his grief this way:
“How could things go on when the world had come to an end? How could things–how could I–go on in this void? How could one person, not very big, leave an emptiness that was galaxy-wide? Everything–every object–was pervaded by the void. I could teach my classes smilingly, even to calmly reading a poem about loss…But that first day of teaching after the St. Stephen’s night, when I left the class to go home, I saw the MG, small and somehow forlorn, invaded by that void, and I was barely able to get off campus before the tears came….There were, though, thousands of other things and memories, each of which must be seen once in that piercingly bleak emptiness.”
~Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy
I read the words and identify with them. I know that void, the blankness of imagining life without, the reality that life will be–now is–without. I walked to classes, turned in assignments, taught my students, carried on with life. To the outside observer, I was fine. People commented on “how well I was taking it.”
I wasn’t taking it well at all. I continued in the routines of day to day life, but every step was now pervaded by the void.
Then as now, I shook myself and said I couldn’t be experiencing what I was. To say that my experience was anything like Vanauken’s is to make light of the depth of his grief. It’s like the pet owner who compares the adoption of his pet to the difficult process his neighbor is going through to adopt a child.
Yes, I had reason to sorrow. But grief? Grief like this?
A woman I know lost her husband of more than a quarter century at about the same time as I experienced my loss. She had reason to grieve. I–I was overreacting, clearly.
I was shamed when I wrote of the difficulties of day to day living–of living through my pain. She commented, identified, encouraged me to trust God amidst it all. How could she be identifying with my grief? She had reason to grieve–much more reason than I. I should be comforting her, not she comforting me.
Yet however small my loss may have been compared to the losses of others, I was grieving in the same way.
The same void. The same questions. The same need to trust God just to make it through the next moment. The same little things that set off fountains of tears. The same pain that can’t be put into words.
Long months have passed, months where it took all my energy to merely cling to Christ. Months where I’ve barely been able to see through the tears, through the void. The sun peeks out from behind the clouds every now and again. I begin to think that my grieving days may be numbered.
Then I read of grief like Vanauken’s and the grief rushes back into my soul. My heart aches as I read of the intimacy he shared with his wife, the years they spent together, the years he lost. My heart aches to think of the memories I don’t have, the time I didn’t share, the stories I can’t tell.
I am crying again, grieving again, feeling my loss with such intensity.
And again, I think, what right have I to grieve? My loss is so very small–Vanauken’s loss, Annette’s loss so great. How can I dare to grieve over so little, so long?
I don’t know, except to say that grief does not know the measures of reason.
“How could one person, not very big, leave an emptiness that was galaxy-wide?”
I don’t know, except to say that this is the way of grief.
…of saying “I’m a fan” or “I’m not a fan”.
Evidence?
According to this very blog, I’m a fan of…
And, by the same source, I’m not a fan of…
Yeah, I’m pretty much a fangirl. Or not.
There’s a little game I play on occasion–I call it “when I get a big-girl job”.
You see, right now I work on a contract basis, with a semester-by-semester contract for the teaching assistantship. I have low job security and need to be prepared for an extended job search each time my contract expires. Because of this, any “extra” money that I earn gets funneled immediately into savings.
Which means that there are a number of things I want but don’t really need that I’ve put off purchasing for now.
But on the days that I allow myself to play “when I get a big-girl job”, I dream of buying a road bike and contact lenses.
The road bike is for me.
I love cycling and commute wherever I can on my bicycle. I’m ridiculously slow, in part because I’m not in that great of shape and in part because my bicycle is not that great.
I bought it seven years ago off a rack at Walmart. It’s a standard $100 mountain bike, heavyish and clunky. It’s great for a kid exploring–not so great for an adult who wants to commute.
Then there was the accident. Only months after purchasing my bike, I had an unfortunate encounter with a fire hydrant that mangled the front post. Somehow, between my dad and my grandpa, we managed to scrounge up a new front post and get it installed. The new post is older and heavier, and unfortunately, the brake mount is different–and doesn’t exactly work correctly.
I’ve tried replacing the brakes, remounting them, working whatever hacks I can. But I’ve been unsuccessful at truly making the brakes work properly. So the mount swings back and forth and occasionally, I discover that I’m working double time trying to ride with the brake pad applied to one side of a wheel.
So I’d really like a new bike. A road bike, light and well-designed.
The second item isn’t so much for me as it is for my dad.
When it became clear that my vision needed correction, I chose glasses over contacts for a number of reasons. First, glasses are the economically savvy choice. They last until you need a new prescription. Second, glasses are the economically savvy choice. :-) Even if you use contacts, you should have a pair of glasses for emergencies anyway. Third, I have perennial environmental allergies. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to introduce little pieces of plastic into my already regularly red and itchy eyes.
Now, though, I’m eager to give contacts a try.
Why?
Because my glasses bug my dad to pieces. They’re perpetually crooked.
At first, I regularly dropped by the eye center where I bought my glasses to have the professionals there straighten my frames. It frustrated me that by the time I returned home, they were sitting crooked again.
I took to straightening them myself–but it never seemed to last for long.
Finally, I figured out what the problem was.
My nose is crooked.
That’s not new information–but I hadn’t connected the two. You see, my nose’s crookedness begins very close to the bridge of my nose and continues all the way down. Which means that straight glasses, if placed all the way at the bridge, will sit straight. But if those glasses slip even a quarter of an inch down my nose, they will begin to tilt precariously.
The glasses that once sat parallel to my eyebrows now lie at odd angles, giving me a rather mad professor look.
It doesn’t bother me too much–but it drives my dad crazy.
Enough that I’m ready to try contacts “when I get a big-girl job”.