The Little Friar

It's all right, I suppose, unless you are under the attack of the melancholy demon. That strange effortful repositioning of yourself in the quiet, in a chair. Laundry, house chores: monsters that seem to stare at you through the mist of a dark haze that we call a night at day. Hours, the telephone -- unless misinformed -- rings for you, if it ever does. This night at day, yours to decide among drinks, or among books, or just sitting there in silence. The one who sits a second place at the table anyway. The one convinced that the monologue today in the car was a conversation with the past. The tears and sobs and moans. The meek, they say, inherit the earth. Damn the earth!  You simply want your day back. That light that breaks this night. Alone, alone. Nobody can make it through this night alone.

Lawrence Richardson's I Know What Heaven Looks Like: A Modern Day Coming of Age Story is a captivating story about a fierce faith.  There are difficult moments in life, and Richardson writes with courage about them.  But he does so in a way that doesn't focus on them. Instead, I Know What Heaven Looks Like moves beyond childhood experiences of poverty, neglect and abuse to talk about healing and hope in life.  It's a powerful book -- the heart of which is a personal narrative about gender transition -- that helps us see what finding our true selves in God really looks like. It's a deep and fulfilling read! _____________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.  

Jack Call's Psychedelic Christianity:  On the Ultimate Goal of Living draws on Call's own practice with LSD as a Christian philosopher to offer a relevant, rigorous picture of an ancient faith in the postmodern world.  No, it's not a book about LSD, but it does use those experiences as a springboard to think about the "big questions" of Christianity -- particularly about the "goal of living" and the afterlife. Call describes a creative relationship with God -- the very mystery of spirituality -- that offers readers a guidebook for a spiritual journey. Readers will find Call's humor disarming, and his clear prose a good guide for that journey. It's a small book that will speak volumes to readers who give it some time and attention. ____________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

Charles Stone's Holy Noticing:  The Bible, Your Brain, and the Mindful Space between Moments brings "mindfulness" into rich conversation with modern science, biblical faith and spiritual practice.  "Mindfulness", or what Stone calls "holy noticing", is "an ancient Christian practice that helps us flourish spiritually and engage the present moment to pause and notice what is happening now, all with a holy purpose" (p. 16).  The goal of this holy noticing is what the Hebrews called "shalom" -- "completeness, soundness, wholeness, and experiential peace". Pastors know quite well the stress and distractions that name modern life.  It's that distractedness that led Stone to write Holy Noticing . Disciplines like holy noticing are at the heat of what Christians need these days.  This book is therefore a must-read.  This book fits in with spiritual works that date all the way back to the Desert Fathers and Mothers.  ...

Nancy Kane's Stages of the Soul:  Gods Invitation to Greater Love is written with the warmth and spiritual insight of a gracious "mother" in the faith -- one whose own ministry takes her into the very depths of the human heart and spirit every day as a counselor and spiritual director. Written with theological integrity and biblical insight, Stages of the Soul is one of those much-needed gifts to the Church in our own time and place.  Here, there's help in growing in meekness, compassion and suffering to show the Kingdom of Jesus Christ in the real world. Growing into Christ -- and reflecting Christ-likeness.  That's the message of Stages of the Soul .  Kane is able to navigate rough waters -- like pride, pain, sin, loss -- in a way that draws us to repentance and encourages us toward greater intimacy with Christ. This is a book for which so many Christians have yearned in recent years. _______________________ I received a free copy of this book from the...

Susie Davis' Dear Daughters:  Love Letters to the Next Generation is a beautiful book!  With all the sturdiness and usefulness of a gift book, Dear Daughters is filled with insights into life from a "spiritual momma".  Davis is kind, honest, and wise here -- in all the ways we hope mothers can be for the next generation of women. Davis is able to put words to so much of what women in the Church feel.  Transitions are difficult, but their beauty is found in the transformations that they bring.  That's the true gift of this little book.  It's ultimately lovely letters about a loving God. ___________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

Denise Uwimana's From Red Earth: A Rwandan Story of Healing and Forgiveness recounts Uwimana's experience of survival during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, during which 800,000 Tutsi were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors in 100 days.   That genocide was the beginning of my own faith crisis that ultimately led me to embrace a more hopeful universalism.  So reading Uwimana's first-person account gave me a new perspective. " How could ordinary people veer from a normal life -- looking for work, studying at college, or earning a living -- to butchering others? ...  I can only answer that demons from hell were unleashed like seething lava over our land", Uwimana writes.  The rest of From Red Earth tells her first-person narrative of moving beyond the massacre.  Here, we learn what it's like to rebuild a life, to forgive one's enemies, to help others struggle through the crisis and to reconcile life in its aftermath.   Uwimana's is a spiritu...

Ken Harrison's Rise of the Servant Kings: What the Bible Says about Being a Man is, in the end, is a disappointment for me.  Among the spate of books about the spirituality of masculinity, Harrison's Rise of the Servant Kings is yet another that uncritically baptizes so much of the culture around us and its unhealthy perspectives on gender and gender roles. Harrison draws quite heavily from his time as an LA police officer, creating parallels between law enforcement and "the blueprint of biblical masculinity".  Those parallels, I think, are entirely too forced and crafted from certain cultural perspectives more than from biblical ones. In the end, Harrison's book feels too much like the culture out of which it grows, and too little like Jesus. ______________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

I made comments a month or so ago about the Methodist General Conference.  Those comments stand on their own ( here , here , here , and here ). What I want to reflect on today, though, is the recent Judicial Council's decisions about questions raised on the votes taken at that General Conference. I've lived through lots of ecclesial battles in my time:  In the early 90s, the Baptists around me (and for whom I care deeply) fought over women in pastoral leadership and the innerancy of the Bible; in the mid 90s, the Methodists around me (for whom I care deeply) began fighting over homosexuality; in the early 00s, we Episcopalians started fighting again about homosexuality and ordination.  So I've lived in these divisions for a long time.  Therefore I have some thoughts on them and how Christians might reflect on them.  Or, more importantly, what we might do about them. The Judicial Council has upheld some of the constitutionality of the Traditional Plan as w...

I've been thinking quite a bit lately on the way in which the Eucharist -- the holy meal, holy communion, the Lord's supper, whatever you'd like to call it -- has been practiced in the local church which Kendra and I attend.  These reflections grow out of that experience, as well as the experience of being a local parish priest for a long time.

The church of Notre-Dame of Paris is without doubt, even today, a sublime and majestic building ... a vast symphony in stone, as it were; the colossal handiwork of a man and a people. -- Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) Notre-Dame de Paris (or, The Hunchback of Notre Dame for those of us who grew up reading the Anglicized story) was probably among the first handful of grown-up books I read as a child.  It engendered within me a love for all things European.  Later, as a student, I took a course on cathedrals with Dean Lytle at Sewannee.  We read through Otto von Simpson's The Gothic Cathedral and its material on the cathedral was breathtaking.  At the time, I could tell you all about the Rose Windows and the flying buttresses. But that's not what anyone wants to hear about today. The last news I've heard is that the building is not a total loss as was originally thought.  Tragically, unimaginably, the spire and the roof are gone, the ...

Has it really been 15 years? Back in the summer of 2004, I accepted a teaching post at a small liberal arts college in southeast Tennessee.  It was Hiwassee College.  The school had big goals, even if it was struggling amidst the then-recent decision by its regional accrediting body to pull the school's accreditation.  I was to be the school's professor of religion (I'd go on to teach the gen ed speech course as well as the freshman seminar for honors students).  The post taught me a lot about teaching and learning.  It helped me to develop a theological account of the liberal arts.  I gained an appreciation of Hiwassee's heritage in educating those of its region who otherwise wouldn't have been able to gain access into a college education.  It truly was a school of "great beginnings". Recently Hiwassee College leadership made the decision to close the school, after 170 years of its service to Methodist higher education in the area. There are a n...

The Heart's Necessities is a collection of poems by Jane Tyson Clement (1997-2000), but there's more going on in the book than the poetry.  The subtitle, "Life in Poetry", reflects the difference living with poetry makes in a life.  In particular, in this case, with musician and songwriter, Becca Stevens. The collection is divided into five chapters.  There is a roughly-chronological progression to the collection, but chronology isn't strictly followed in favor of supporting each chapter's theme.  (Though the themes are informed by what was going on in the poet's life during various points.)  The first chapter presents poems written between 1935 and 1939 (age 18 to 22).  The second picks up in 1939 and while it ends on a poem from 1953, mostly covers a period to 1941.  Chapter three includes selections from 1940 to 1953 (ages 23 to 36).  The penultimate chapter includes poems from 1954 and 1955.  The last chapter is stretched out...

On April 9, 1945, after conducting a prayer service for fellow prisoners in Flossenberg camp, Dietrich Bonhoeffer received a summons:  "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, get ready and come with us".  He replied, "This is the end, for me the beginning of life".  He was hanged that night. The path to his death at 39 was prefigured in his early work on The Cost of Discipleship , where he wrote that the Cross "meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.  When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die".  This end was also prefigured in his early recognition of the idolatrous and evil designs of Hitler's Third Reich.  He helped form the Confessing Church to resist Hitler's efforts to co-opt Christianity in favor of a national cult of "German Christianity".  Bonhoeffer's 1932 radio address , alongside his direct involvement in Operation 7 , directly resulted in his brother in law, Hans von Dohnanyi's, arrests, convictions and assas...

  On April 8, 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer ascended the scaffolding at Flossenberg prison, a condemned man in the eyes of the Third Reich for his pacifism and attempts to work against the German war machine and preserve Jewish lives in a plot that is more deserving of his memory than the silly stuff that circulates around his supposed activities in assassinating Hitler.   Today, in short, is his feast day.  So I wanted to honor his memory today. 1.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Christian theologian.   Rather, one should say that he became a Christian theologian.  Eberhard Bethge, his former student and biographer, notes the year 1933 as a "transition from theologian to Christian".  In 1936 Dietrich wrote to a girlfriend and confessed:  "I plunged into work in a very unchristian way ...  [T]hen something happened, something that has changed and transformed my life to the present day.  For the first time I discovered the Bible ... ...

Dr Mickey Efird was perhaps the most influential biblical studies prof I've ever had the blessing to sit beneath as a student.  His engaging and easy lecture style brings the biblical text alive.  So finding these treasures on the internet was a beautiful surprise and something I simply had to share.