Review of Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? by Brian D. McLaren

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?

Christian Identity in a Multi-faith World

by Brian D. McLaren

Jericho Books, New York, 2012. 276 pages.
Starred Review
2013 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #8 Nonfiction

This is an important book for Christians to read if they want to interact with today’s society. (If they want to just hide out apart from the world, then they shouldn’t bother.) I like the questions Brian McLaren poses, and I like the thoughtful and thought-provoking answers he gives.

At the beginning of the book, he talks about the identity problem Christians have:

Simply put, we Christians already know how to do two things very well. First, some of us know how to have a strong Christian identity that responds negatively toward other religions. The stronger our Christian commitment, the stronger our aversion or opposition to other religions. The stronger our Christian commitment, the more we emphasize our differences with other faiths and the more we frame those differences in terms of good/evil, right/wrong, and better/worse. We may be friendly to individuals of other religions, but our friendship always has a pretext: we want them to switch sides and be won over to our better way. We love them (or say that we do) in spite of their religious identity, hoping that they will see the light and abandon who they have been to find shelter under the tent of who we are.

Alternatively, others of us know how to have a more positive, accepting response to other religions. We never proselytize. We always show respect for other religions and their adherents. We always minimize differences and maximize commonalities. But we typically achieve coexistence by weakening our Christian identity. We make it matter less that they are Muslim or Hindu by making it matter less that we are Christian. We might even say that we love them in spite of our own religious identity.

For reasons that will become clear in the pages ahead, I’m convinced that neither of these responses is good enough for today’s world. So I will explore the possibility of a third option, a Christian identity that is both strong and kind. By strong I mean vigorous, vital, durable, motivating, faithful, attractive, and defining — an authentic Christian identity that matters. By kind I mean something far more robust than mere tolerance, political correctness, or coexistence: I mean benevolent, hospitable, accepting, interested, and loving, so that the stronger our Christian faith, the more goodwill we will feel and show toward those of other faiths, seeking to understand and appreciate their religion from their point of view. My pursuit, not just in this book but in my life, is a Christian identity that moves me toward people of other faiths in wholehearted love, not in spite of their non-Christian identity and not in spite of my own Christian identity, but because of my identity as a follower of God in the way of Jesus.

This book explores those ideas in detail, and lays out what a strong benevolent identity can mean for our doctrine and our liturgy and our sense of mission.

I read this book over a long period of time. (I kept having to turn it in because it had holds.) I think I’m going to buy myself a copy and read it over again, because there’s much in here that I want to absorb more fully.

This is well worth reading. And if you disagree, it would be worth analyzing why you disagree. How do you think Christians should interact with today’s multi-faith world?

brianmclaren.net
jerichobooks.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Runaway Husbands, by Vikki Stark

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Relationships, Starred Review 0

Runaway Husbands

The Abandoned Wife’s Guide to Recovery and Renewal

by Vikki Stark

Green Light Press, 2010. 192 pages.
Starred Review
2013 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #2 Nonfiction

It’s been eight years now since my husband left me, and I’ve been divorced for three years. When I heard about this book, I had to read it. I was happy to be reading it from a place of healing. But still, the words were so validating. So good to know I’m not alone in this experience. Even better, I was able to recommend the book to a friend in the thick of it, and she said she was sure God prompted me to recommend it to her at exactly that time. I don’t doubt it for a second.

When I was in the middle of my husband leaving, the book that helped me tremendously was The Script: The 100% Absolutely Predictable Things Men Do When They Cheat. That book looks at what goes through the man’s mind as he’s getting ready to leave and leaving. Runaway Husbands is even more therapeutic, because it tells you what you will go through when you are left.

Now, I’m reading it from the perspective of several years out, but I so recognize the stages.

The author’s husband left her when she came back from a book tour, a tour during which he’d consistently expressed his love to her. Here’s how she describes why she wrote this book:

I was measuring what I’d observed with clients against what I was experiencing in my own life, and I just didn’t get it. Most people assume that it’s impossible for a person to have an affair without the partner having some knowledge — that the injured spouse is always either complicit or purposefully blind. However, that was not my case. Under even the closest scrutiny, I was unable to discern any trace that could have tipped me off that things were not hunky-dory in the marriage. On the contrary, few wives could boast of a more devoted mate, and, oddly enough, until the revelation of his infidelity and subsequent heartless flight from the marriage, he was the ideal husband!

I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how a man who genuinely appeared so committed to our marriage could morph overnight into an angry stranger. In the midst of my suffering, I knew that there’d be no rest for me until I could figure it out. So as days stretched into weeks, I started researching wife abandonment. Through reading and speaking with other women, a remarkable picture slowly started to take shape; my husband’s bizarre behavior seemed to fit into a pattern exhibited by other men who suddenly bolted from apparently happy marriages and then turned against their wives. The similarities were uncanny! I defined this pattern and named it Wife Abandonment Syndrome.

She names eight ways that Wife Abandonment Syndrome is different from a typical divorce: Shock value, a sense of powerlessness, lack of closure, deception, reality is shaken, a redefined past, greater effect on children, and greater effect on friends. There’s a reason this shakes your world so drastically! This book helped me feel better about how long it’s taken me to recover.

I like her eight Transformational Stages of recovery, because I recognize them all. It would have been nice to have this when I was going through them! She aptly names them after weather patterns: Tsunami, Tornado, Thunderstorm, Ice Storm, Fog, Sun Shower, Early Spring, and Warm Summer Day.

And here are her Seven Steps for Moving Forward, which she elaborates on more fully in the main part of the book:

1. Recognize that the chaos won’t last forever (needed to resolve the Tsunami Stage).

2. Accept that the marriage is really over (needed to resolve the Tornado Stage).

3. Integrate the fact that your husband has changed irrevocably and is beyond caring for your welfare (needed to resolve the Thunderstorm Stage).

4. Understand why he needs to justify his actions any way possible — including rewriting history, lying or attacking you (needed to resolve the Ice Storm Stage).

5. Give up trying to get the acknowledgment and apology that you deserve (needed to resolve the Fog Stage).

6. Turn your focus from the past to the future (a step in both the Sun Shower and Early Spring Stages).

7. Celebrate your new life as a single person (Warm Summer Day Stage).

Besides guiding you through these steps, this book offers plenty of helpful advice and encouragement for coping. Best of all, perhaps, is knowing you are not alone.

runawayhusbands.com

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Source: This review is based on my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Good Prose, by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories, Writing 0

Good Prose

The Art of Nonfiction

Stories and advice from a lifetime of writing and editing

by Tracy Kidder & Richard Todd

Random House, New York, 2013. 195 pages.
Starred Review

Tracy Kidder writes good nonfiction. On Sonderbooks, I’ve reviewed Mountains Beyond Mountains and Strength in What Remains, and I read Among Schoolchildren long before I started writing Sonderbooks.

Good Prose is a book written by Tracy Kidder and his long-time editor, Richard Todd, about the writing process. It throws in the story of their collaboration and friendship along the way, but mostly it gives lots of insights about writing good prose.

It’s no surprise that the writing in this book is exceptionally good. So to review this book, I’m going to simply offer several example paragraphs.

Even the stories about their friendship are insightful. I like this bit from the Introduction:

A long association had begun. Todd knew only that he had a writer of boundless energy. For Kidder, to be allowed not just to rewrite but to rewrite ad infinitum was a privilege, preferable in every way to rejection slips. And as for Todd, it was possible to imagine that a writer willing to rewrite might turn out to be useful. Todd once remarked to a group of students, never expecting he would be quoted, “Kidder’s great strength is that he’s not afraid of writing badly.” The truth was that Kidder was afraid of writing badly in public, but not in front of Todd. Kidder would give him pieces of unfinished drafts. He would even read Todd passages of unfinished drafts, uninvited, over the phone. Very soon Todd understood when he was being asked for reassurance, not criticism, and would say, “It’s fine. Keep going.” When a draft was done, Todd would point out “some problems,” and another rewrite would begin.

That ritual established itself early on and persisted through many articles and Kidder’s first two books. A time came — midway through the writing of Among Schoolchildren, about a fifth-grade teacher — when Kidder began revising pages before Todd had a chance to read them. This was a means of delaying criticism forever. No doubt that was Kidder’s goal, and he could remain happily unaware of it as long as he kept on rewriting. Things went on that way for a while, until Todd said, in the most serious tone he could muster, “Kidder, if you rewrite this book again before I have time to read it, I’m not working on it anymore.” Kidder restrained himself, and the former routine was reestablished.

Here are some tidbits from a section on Characters:

Some general truths apply. For instance, one sure way to lose the reader is trying to get down everything you know about a person. What the imaginative reader wants is telling details. Characters can emerge in long descriptive passages, as in Tolstoy, but brevity can also work. Graham Greene rarely gives us more than a detail or two — a face “charred with a three days’ beard” or a pair of “bald pink knees” — and Jane Austen often gives us less than that, and yet the people those writers create have come alive for generations of readers.

Whether it is brief or lengthy, mere description won’t vivify a statue. What we want are essences, woven into a story in moments large and small. A character has a wart. You could describe it in detail, but the reader would probably see it more clearly if you described not the wart but how the character covers it when he’s nervous.

Here’s a paragraph from the chapter on essays:

When you write about your own ideas, you put yourself in a place that can feel less legitimate than the ground occupied by reporters or even by memoirists, who are, or ought to be, authorities on their subjects. An all-purpose term describes efforts at sharing your mind: the essay. As an essayist you can sometimes feel like a public speaker who must build his own stage and lectern. Essays are self-authorizing. This is the dilemma but also the pleasure of the form. The chances are that nobody asked for your opinion. But if your idea is fresh, it will surprise even someone, perhaps an assigning editor, who did ask.

And from the chapter on style:

We think of an author’s style as if it were some sort of fixed identity, but it is made up of an accumulation of granular decisions like this one. I remember once in those early days giving Kidder some advice about style. I said in effect, “Look, you are not always the calmest and most reasonable person in the room, and there is no need to be. But you admire such people. Why don’t you just pretend to be a reasonable man in your prose?” I think it was useful advice, actually, but it’s not as if a style is a one-time discovery. It is created and re-created sentence by sentence, choice by choice.

And finally, here’s how they sum up the book, again from the Introduction:

Good Prose is mainly a practical book, the product of years of experiment in three types of prose: writing about the world, writing about ideas, and writing about the self. To put this another way, this book is a product of our attempts to write and to edit narratives, essays, and memoirs. We presume to offer advice, even the occasional rule, remembering that our pronouncements are things we didn’t always know but learned by attempting to solve problems in prose. For us, these things learned are in themselves the story of a collaboration and a friendship.

The result is a book both instructive and entertaining.

tracykidder.com
AtRandom.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Fire in the Ashes, by Jonathan Kozol

Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Fire in the Ashes

Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America

by Jonathan Kozol

Crown Publishers, New York, 2012. 354 pages.
Starred Review

This book is made up of stories — stories about some of the poorest children in America, but children whom Jonathan Kozol has known and cared about for twenty-five years. So we get to see them rise into adulthood. Some of them do not go on to productive lives, but most of them do, and the readers rejoice with Jonathan.

He begins the book with a note to the Reader, which begins like this:

Over the course of many years I have been talking with a group of children in one of the poorest urban neighborhoods of the United States and have written several books about them and their families. Readers ask me frequently today if I’ve kept in contact with the children and if I know how many have prevailed against the obstacles they faced and, in those cases, how they managed to survive and how they kept their spirits strong amidst the tough conditions that surrounded them.

It has not been difficult to keep in contact with most of these children because so many of them, as they have grown older, have come to be among my closest friends. They call me on the phone. They send me texts and e-mails. We get together with each other when we can.

The stories that follow are stories of particular children. But these stories put faces to poverty. They make us care. I can’t think of a better way to raise concern for problems in urban America than to get us to care about the children and families growing up there.

Sometimes life is more astonishing than fiction, and more inspiring, too. Even if you don’t want your awareness of issues raised, this book is worth reading for the stories alone. You will care about the wonderful people he features and follows into adulthood.

JonathanKozol.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Living and Loving After Betrayal, by Steven Stosny

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Relationships, Starred Review 0

Living and Loving After Betrayal

How to Heal from Emotional Abuse, Deceit, Infidelity, and Chronic Resentment

by Steven Stosny, PhD

New Harbinger Publications, Oakland, CA, 2013. 235 pages.
Starred Review

Steven Stosny’s books helped me tremendously after my husband left me, particularly You Don’t Have to Take It Any More, which was retitled Love Without Hurt. I also went to his Compassion Power Boot Camp after I moved to Virginia, and it helped tremendously in my healing.

However, those materials were designed to help someone when in the middle of an abusive relationship. Now that my divorce is final, I have no more contact with my ex-husband.

So I was delighted when I heard about Steven Stosny’s latest book, Living and Loving After Betrayal. It uses his powerful approach of self-compassion to help you heal after betrayal and be ready to love again — whether getting back together with your spouse or someone else.

Now, I’ve come a long way since my husband left me. But these are wonderful reminders of how to stay healthy. Just this morning, I woke up from a dream about my ex-husband that made me feel rejected all over again. I turned to Steven Stosny’s methods, reminding myself of my core value, and didn’t get sunk in feeling bad all day.

What’s more, if I ever dare to get in a new relationship, I am glad to have this wise advice about avoiding a potential betrayer, and learning to trust again. And reading this also makes me less afraid to start a new relationship.

As with his other books, the crux of Steven Stosny’s healing techniques is self-compassion, and focusing on your own core value.

He doesn’t focus on what happened, but more on how to heal. However, he does understand that betrayal is hard to overcome.

Whether it crashes upon you in revelation or seeps into consciousness via delayed realization, intimate betrayal snatches the floor of personal security from under you. Most of my clients describe the initial aftermath of revelation and realization as a kind of free fall, with no bottom in sight. Shock and disbelief are punctuated by waves of cruel self-doubt:

Was I attractive enough, smart enough, successful enough, interesting enough, present, attentive, caring, patient, or sacrificing enough?

He shows you how to use your emotional pain to help yourself to heal, improve, repair and grow.

Self-compassion is a sympathetic response to your hurt, distress, or vulnerability, with a motivation to heal, repair, and improve. It brings a sense of empowerment — a feeling that you can do something to make your life better, even if you are not sure what that might be at the moment. It tends to keep you focused on solutions in the present and future.

Self-criticism is blaming yourself for your hurt, distress, or vulnerability, usually with a measure of punishment or contempt. It’s based on the mistaken idea that if you punish yourself enough you won’t make similar mistakes in the future, when just the opposite is true — self-punishment leads to more mistakes. (Who is more likely to make more mistakes, the valued self or the devalued self?) Self-pity is focus on your pain or damage with no motivation to heal, repair, or improve. It has an element of contempt for your perceived incompetence or inadequacy because it assumes that you can’t do anything to make your life better. Needless to say, self-criticism and self-pity turn pain into suffering.

One of the problems after betrayal involves post-traumatic stress and obsessive thoughts. This book shows you how to recondition your brain with restorative images whenever painful thoughts surface. I was able to use those techniques this morning after waking up from a dream about my ex-husband. They work!

Steven Stosny explains that the key to healing and growth is your core value.

Core value grows out of the uniquely human drive to create value — to make people, things, and ideas important enough to appreciate, nurture, and protect. Consistently acting on the drive to create value provides a sense of meaning and purpose in life. This chapter and the next will help develop your core value as a general means of healing and growth. Although a highly developed core value won’t make you forget your betrayal, it will definitely make all that you have suffered less important in your life as a whole. The past can no longer control us, once it is overshadowed by the deeply human drive to create value and give our lives meaning.

He finishes the book with tips about getting into a relationship again, whether with your betrayer or someone new. Here’s hoping I will have a reason to look at those tips again! Reading this book made that idea seem much less impossible. Here’s to healing!

Steven Stosny’s blog, Anger in the Age of Entitlement
compassionpower.com
newharbinger.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Pursuing the Good Life, by Christopher Peterson

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review 0

Pursuing the Good Life

100 Reflections on Positive Psychology

by Christopher Peterson

Oxford University Press, 2013. 341 pages.
Starred Review

I’m rather fascinated by Positive Psychology. I’ve read books like How We Choose to Be Happy, You Can Be Happy No Matter What, and What Happy Women Know: How New Findings in Positive Psychology Can Change Women’s Lives for the Better, and enjoyed all of them.

Christopher Peterson was one of the founders of the field of Positive Psychology. This book is a set of 100 short pieces taken from his Psychology Today blog called “The Good Life“. I approached the book by reading one piece per day for the last few months. (I had to turn the book back in a few times, too!) The pieces were fascinating, or at least amusing, and often helpful.

Here’s a paragraph from Dr. Peterson’s first chapter:

My goals for the reflections that follow are several. First, I will discuss research findings about the psychological good life. Second, I will explore the most promising practical applications based on these findings. And third, I will use positive psychology as a vantage to make sense of the world in which we live. I hope you find what I say interesting.

Indeed, you might not expect to find a book written by an academic to be entertaining and practical at the same time, but this one is both of those things.

oup.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of God Believes in Love, by Gene Robinson

Christian, Current Issues, Nonfiction Review 0

God Believes in Love

Straight Talk about Gay Marriage

by Gene Robinson
IX Bishop of New York

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2012. 196 pages.

Here’s a thoughtful, intelligent, personal, and thoroughly Christian presentation on why it’s time to make marriage legal for gays and lesbians.

Now, I come from a very conservative background. I grew up thinking the Bible was pretty clear that homosexuality is sinful. As I’ve grown up, though, I (obviously?) have far more gay and lesbian friends and co-workers, and I wonder. It was actually a sermon series on controversial issues in my own church that helped me see maybe the Bible is not so clear on that topic after all.

But this book helps me see intellectually what my heart had already figured out. That we’re calling things sinful that God almost certainly doesn’t call sinful.

I appreciate that Gene Robinson does take a Christian approach. He doesn’t say that God is wrong in this area. He very much feels that gay marriage can be God-honoring.

Usually when I review a book on issues, I present snippets from different arguments. This book does present well-thought out arguments that address most issues I’ve seen presented in, say, Facebook posts against gay marriage. But I don’t want to present sections out of context. When I do that, I often get arguments back, as if the quotation is all there is to say, and can be too easily refuted. Let me just encourage you, if you’re honestly interested in this question, of whether Christians can legitimately support gay marriage, to read this book and give it plenty of thought and prayer. I’m glad I did.

I will simply quote from the bishop’s summing up at the end:

I believe in marriage. I believe it is the crucible in which we come to know most deeply about love. It is in marriage that God’s will for me to love all of humankind gets focused in one person. It is impossible to love humankind if I can’t love one person. That opportunity to love one person and to have that love sanctioned and supported by the culture in which we live is a right denied gay and lesbian people for countless centuries. It’s time to open that opportunity to all of us. Because in the end, God believes in love.

aaknopf.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Vader’s Little Princess, by Jeffrey Brown

Humorous, Nonfiction Review 0

Vader’s Little Princess

by Jeffrey Brown

Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2013. 64 pages.

This book, along with its companion, Darth Vader and Son will make anyone who’s ever seen Star Wars laugh out loud.

The assumption is what it would have been like if Darth Vader had been a real Dad to his kids. This one looks at life with Leia during the rebellious teenage years. The references to the films, twisting them slightly, are hilarious.

It’s all done as comic panels, so the references to the films are visual as well as quotations placed in a new context.

I like the one where Leia knits her dad a “Cozy” for his helmet. He wears it, looking ridiculous, and thinks, “Just tell her you like it.”

Or, referencing the film: Leia’s sitting down at a table with Darth Vader at the head. He says, “SO, WE MEET AT LAST.” She says to Han Solo, sitting next to her, “Behave yourself, or my Dad will totally kill you.”

On a related note, when Han is frozen in carbonite, Leia’s protesting, “You are so mean! All he did was kiss me!”

I love the way Star Wars is so ingrained in our culture, he can write these comics knowing full well that most readers will know exactly which scenes he’s referring to.

Too funny!

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Christianity After Religion, by Diana Butler Bass

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Christianity After Religion

The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening

by Diana Butler Bass

HarperOne, 2012. 294 pages.
Starred Review

This is an important book for Christians to read, no matter how they feel about the sociological phenomena happening that the author describes, and whether they agree with her or not.

Here are some segments from her introduction:

Strange as it may seem in this time of cultural anxiety, economic near collapse, terrorist fear, political violence, environmental crisis, and partisan anger, I believe that the United States (and not only the United States) is caught up in the throes of a spiritual awakening, a period of sustained religious and political transformation during which our ways of seeing the world, understanding ourselves, and expressing faith are being, to borrow a phrase, “born again.” Indeed, the shifts around religion contribute to the anxiety, even as anxiety gives rise to new sorts of understandings of God and spiritual life. Fear and confusion signal change. This transformation is what some hope will be a “Great Turning” toward a global community based on shared human connection, dedicated to the care of our planet, committed to justice and equality, that seeks to raise hundreds of millions from poverty, violence, and oppression….

This book is concerned with religion and change — specifically how Christianity, especially Christianity in the United States, is changing and how people are questioning conventional patterns of faith and belief. At the outset, let me be perfectly clear. I do not think it is wise to adapt religions to contemporary tastes willy-nilly. As the gloomy nineteenth-century Anglican dean William Inge once said, “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widow in the next.” I do, however, think it is exceedingly wise for faithful people to intentionally engage emerging religious questions in order to reform, renew, and reimagine ancient traditions in ways that make sense to contemporary people.

The 1970s were the beginning of the end of older forms of Christianity, and now, decades later, we are witnessing the end of the beginning. What follows is a sustained reflection on how religion has changed in our lifetime — a life lived between the beginning of an end and the end of that beginning — and what that means for Christian faith and practice. Much has changed. Where Chirstianity is now vital, it is not really seen as a “religion” anymore. It is more of a spiritual thing.

She achieves this “sustained reflection.” I read it slowly, so I don’t remember everything she said, but that it all got me thinking. However a couple things stood out:

First, people of all religions and non-religions are talking about and seeking “spirituality.” It’s not so cool to be “religious.” But everyone seems to be after being “spiritual.” Here’s an interesting section about that:

But spirituality is neither vague nor meaningless. Despite a certain linguistic fuzziness, the word “spiritual” is both a critique of institutional religion and a longing for meaningful connection. In a wide variety of guises and forms, spirituality represents an important stage of awakening: the search for new gods. As the old gods (and the institutions that preached, preserved, and protected the old gods) lose credibility, people begin to cast about for new gods — and new stories, new paths, and new understandings to make sense of their new realities. In the process, the old language fails, and people reach for new words to describe the terrain of their experience. “Spirituality” is one such word, an ancient word, to be sure, but a word that is taking on fresh dimensions of meaning in a fluid and pluralistic religious context. To say that one is “spiritual but not religious” or “spiritual and religious” is often a way of saying, “I am dissatisfied with the way things are, and I want to find a new way of connecting with God, my neighbor, and my own life.” It might not be a thoughtless mantra at all — in many cases, it may well be a considered commentary on religious institutions, doctrine, and piety.

Another part I remember is where she talked about how community is more important than ever.

If you want to knit, you find someone who knits to teach you. Go to the local yarn shop and find out when there is a knitting class. Sit in a circle where others will talk to you, show you how to hold the needles, guide your hands, and share their patterns with you. The first step in becoming a knitter is forming a relationship with knitters. The next step is to learn by doing and practice. After you knit for a while, after you have made scarves and hats and mittens, then you start forming ideas about knitting. You might come to think that the experience of knitting makes you a better person, more spiritual, or able to concentrate, gives you a sense of service to others, allows you to demonstrate love and care. You think about what you are doing, how you might do it better. You develop your own way of knitting, your own theory of the craft. You might invent a dazzling new pattern, a new way to make a stitch; you might write a knitting book or become a knitting teacher. In knitting, the process is exactly the reverse of that in church: belonging to a knitting group leads to behaving as a knitter, which leads to believing things about knitting.

Relationships lead to craft, which leads to experiential belief. That is the path to becoming and being someone different. The path of transformation.

It is also the path found in the New Testament; the Way of Jesus that leads to God. Long ago, before the last half millennium, Christians understood that faith was a matter of community first, practices second, and belief as a result of the first two. Our immediate ancestors reversed the order. Now, it is up to us to restore the original order.

As you can see, she draws some conclusions from current trends and reexamines what Christianity should be all about.

A thought-provoking and important book.

dianabutlerbass.com
harperone.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/christianity_after_religion.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of My Bookstore, edited by Ronald Rice

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

My Bookstore

Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop

Introduction by Richard Russo
Edited by Ronald Rice and Booksellers Across America

Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, New York, 2012. 378 pages.
Starred Review

My Bookstore is a delight. I read it slowly, one essay per day. It would be a wonderful project to try to visit all the bookstores mentioned in this book, though it might take a lifetime.

The premise is simple. 82 American authors wrote an essay about their personal favorite independent bookstore. The essays are entertaining and delightful. Some talk about the power of reading, some about community, some about great book recommendations, some about wonderful family times.

Here’s what Richard Russo says in the introduction:

Many people love good bookstores, but writers? We completely lose our heads over them. We tell each other stories about them. We form lifelong, irrational attachments to our favorites….

…to me, bookstores, like my first one, remain places of genuine wonder. They fill me with both pride and humility when I come upon my own books in them. Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world’s longest, best, most thrilling conversation. The people who work in them will tell you who’s saying what. If you ask, they’ll tell you what Richard Russo’s up to in his new one, but more important, they’ll put in your hand something you just have to read, by someone you’ve never heard of, someone just now entering the conversation, who wants to talk to you about things that matter.

If you haven’t been in a good bookstore in a while, the book you now hold in your hand will welcome you, lovingly, home.

By reading this book, you can experience for yourself some of those stories that writers tell.

It seems wrong to have a link to Amazon after this review. However, I’m going to keep it there, but ask that my readers merely use Amazon as a “showroom.” Get the information about the book, current price, length, reader reviews. Then go find an independent bookstore and buy yourself a copy. Even though there’s only one of the stores in this book anywhere near me (and not so very near), I think I need to purchase a copy of this book before my next vacation and then start checking off stores.

It does have a list at the end of the stores by geographic location. This book is a celebration of books and people who love them.

blackdogandlevinthal.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/my_bookstore.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.