The Little Friar

Today is the Feast Day of St Francis of Assissi.  That means any number of churches will be hosting services of prayers of blessings for animals.  It's such a significant counter-cultural act, I think, that a little meditation is in order. This year, I bless our three cats.  But why? Let's be honest.  Some folks probably see Christians blessing critters as little more than a gimmick.  But for us -- as we prepare to begin a life together in Christian marriage -- it's a way of celebrating that these three "pets" are very much a part of our family.  Through them and in them, we experience God's good love.   And that love is a direct challenge to a wrong-headed cultural bias that being Christian is just a matter of the interior life.  Somehow we've adopted a world-denying concept of being Christian.  I say wrong-headed , because being Christian is very much a world affirming  protest.  Meeting God in Christ ha...

After each of our increasingly routine mass shootings, there's this predictable exchange:  American liberals advocate gun control laws, while conservatives say we shouldn't do that.  I have to say that at a practical level, I'm with the liberals on this one.  No matter what some dangling participle in the Constitution seems to imply, one of the primary goals of forming any human society is increased safety from unpredictable interpersonal violence.  No law can stop people from getting angry and lashing out, but those people will do a lot less damage if they don't have access to military-grade weaponry, for instance. That being said, it cannot be the case that access to firearms is the root cause of nihilistic violence in American society.  It is a symptom -- an incredibly urgent one that must be treated immediately, but still a symptom.  The deeper problem is the profound alienation and callousness that American social formation produces.  That is ...

The Gospel in Tolstoy offers what I think is one of the best collections of Tolstoy's spiritual writings. This anthology offers -- as none of his many novels, novellas, short stories, plays, or essays could offer on its own -- the Tolstoy's vision of life with Jesus and the great theological  themes of betrayal and forgiveness, sacrifice and redemption, death and resurrection. Drawing from War and Peace , Anna Karenina , Resurrection , The Death of Ivan Ilyich , The Kingdom of God Is Within You , Master and Man , Walk in the Light , and Twenty-Three Tales , Miriam LeBlanc's selections are each prefaced by a contextual note -- something I'm glad to see, since these literary selections are but pieces of that massive literary corpus.  But readers will nonetheless find in these pages a rich, accessible sampling.  Tolstoy amateurs -- like me -- will be pleased to find some of the writer's deepest, most compelling passages in one volume.  I know I was. Tolstoy him...

I can't count the number of times that I saw confusion or even outright anger at the news that the Pope, during his most recent visit to the United States, met with and encouraged Kim Davis . To be honest, I'm hardly surprised he did, nor am I surprised his message of "support" for her insistence for religious exemption. Yes, Pope Francis believes in Climate Change.  Yes, Pope Francis cares if people are starving.  These concerns, I'm pretty sure, are at the heart of the Christian care for the other -- for the world as a whole, and for the creatures within that world. Yes, Pope Francis even believes that priests should forgive women of abortions.  At least for a single year of "mercy".  Normally, one needs to petition the bishop for forgiveness for an abortion. But let's be honest, all those things hardly make the Pope a good American, or more particularly a good "liberal" American. When I look at the American political landscape,...

Typically, when most folks hear the word pastor , they think evangelist , counselor , preacher , moral example , or even organizational leader or entrepreneur . All of those may have a place in how we pastors self-identify, but this little book seeks to pose another word that should come first to our minds:  Theologian . This book advocates for the essential and valuable contribution a "pastor theologian" makes to healthy local church life, from within the community of a local church (or, conceivably, a network of churches).  (The authors are careful to distinguish the pastor theologian role they are promoting from the "academic theologian" who spends his or her time in the setting of universities or seminaries.)  As the subtitle of the book makes clear, the authors want to resurrect an ancient vision where robust theology was produced by local church leaders, for the health of the larger church (e.g. Athanasius, Augustine, Calvin, and Edwards). Chap...

I return every year to read Gregory the Great's Pastoral Rule , because in it I've found so much focus and reflection for my own pastoral ministry. This weekend, though, I turned to a different text.  It's one I haven't read for at least 16 years.  But George Herbert's Country Parson is filled with so much wisdom, too, that it's a shame I haven't re-read this classic until now.  I'll now have to add it to my list of annual re-reads. George Herbert's Priest to the Temple, or, The Country Parson:  His Character, and Rule of Holy Life  continues to stand as a classic in the theology of ordained ministry.  Particularly striking is his catholic understanding of priestly ministry, his high standards of pastoral responsibility, and the similarity of his spiritual and pastoral counsel to that of Gregory's Pastoral Rule .  Herbert certainly stands in the patristic and medieval tradition of pastoral theology.  While his ideals for the time an...

I was walking between buildings outside. And the grey cloud above began to drop her rain. I noticed it first in the small circles turning grey to black as each tiny drop touched the sidewalk. I stopped and turned my face upward closing my eyes to the sky as a child would. And the rain felt like cold pinpricks. Small, chilly kisses upon my skin. All it was was a soft spring shower. But my heart ached as I looked up to heaven. For I felt surprised by kindness and grace.

Eric Metaxas' 7 Women and the Secret of Their Greatness comes on the heels of Metaxas' earlier biographical work on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, William Wilberforce, and 7 Men .  Metaxas has become the go-to Christian biographer, so this collection brings his earlier work into a view for selected Christian women who have lessons to offer about discipleship, obedience and "greatness". A good biography, of course, requires two things:  An interesting subject and an interesting writer.  Maybe I'm just a cynic, but while Metaxas' biographies are good , there's nothing in there that makes them great.   But that's especially true for this collection:  I expected a book about "the secret of their greatness" to mean that we'd have more than just a brief -- how much can you report in 20 pages? -- summary of these women's lives. Life is story -- and that's especially true for theological stories.  And good short stories -- like good brie...

Nadia Bolz-Weber's Accidental Saints:  Finding God in All the Wrong People is a compulsively readable account of her meetings with many remarkable sinners who still retain the glimmers of God's grace.  Ultimately, Accidental Saints is filled with the sorts of sermons -- or, well, sermon ideas -- that bring the healing of the Gospel into contact with real human lives. Bolz-Weber isn't your typical pastor; she's an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, covered in tattoos, often profane, and convinced that God can be met in the darkest places, just as readily as in any church.  Her love for blue language peppers the book, so if that sort of thing offends you, this isn't the book for you. If, though, you love -- as I do -- stepping through the liturgical year, reflecting on the deepest meanings of Christ's presence in these rites, exploring why God's love should be the heart of every sacred (and secular) experience, well, ...

The HCSB Apologetics Study Bible for Students is a beautifully-crafted hardcover that has a sharp outer design for the cover as well as similar graphics occasionally on the inside.  I love the indented and colored tabs that will help teens locate the right book of the Bible for easier study. The commentaries and articles scattered randomly throughout this Apologetics Study Bible for Students are very interesting and thought provoking -- calling the learner to deeper study and understanding of the particular topic being shared.  I particularly enjoyed the various quotes scattered throughout -- voices that allow some important theologians from the past, like Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to influence the way we speak of living Christianly in the world. But ultimately this study Bible falls into the trap that nearly all other apologetic texts fall into:  Namely, thinking that Christianity is largely a "head trip" that can be confirmed by thinking the rig...

In all honesty, once Christianity was on top and fully part of the establishment -- after Constantine -- the Church was a bit embarrassed by the powerless one, Jesus.  We had to make his obvious defeat into a glorious victory that had nothing to do with defeat -- his or ours.  Let's face it, we feel more comfortable with power than with powerlessness.  Who wants to be like Jesus on the cross, the very icon of powerlessness?  It just doesn't look like a way of influence, a way of access, a way that's going to make any difference in the world.  We Christians are supposed to be so strange for just this reason!  We worship this naked, bleeding loser, crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem -- but yet we always want to be winners, powerful, and on top ourselves ... at least until we learn to love the little things and the so-called little people, and then we often see they are not little at all, but better images of the soul. The way of Jesus is...

St Francis once asked his followers to tie a rope around his neck and lead him around like a donkey. It was an act of public self-mortification peculiar to Francis's spirituality and leadership style. It was his way of combating pride. The other day I was thinking about that incident in Francis's life. I can't speak for every blogger, but I often struggle with self-image and presentation. With what "people think about me". Online and in real life I often struggle with having the last word or the final answer or the correct opinion. Consequently, when a post of mine is criticized for being in error or lacking in nuance or contradictory or not in keeping with my professed values I start to struggle with ego issues. I want to argue back and push back. And my goal in pushing back isn't the pursuit of truth but the restoration of my self-image, mainly in the eyes of others. And if I can't effectively address the concern then I feel like there is this lo...

Timothy Snyder's Black Earth:  The Holocaust as History and Warning puts forward a new theory on the Holocaust:  When people talk of learning from the Nazi genocide of some six million European Jews during World War II, they normally mean that we should mobilize to stop similar genocides happening in future.  But Snyder means something quite different, and in order to lay out his case, he provides an engrossing and often thought-provoking analysis of Hitler's antisemitic ideology and an intelligently argued country-by-country survey of its implementation between 1939 and 1945. According to Snyder, Hitler was driven by the philosophical conviction that race is the fundamental feature of human life on earth.  History, according to Hitler, was the perpetual struggle of one race over another.  We don't relate to one another as humans, and we certainly don't relate to one another as nationalists or as societies of laws.  Instead, for Hitler, humanity...

Johann Christoph Arnold's Cries from the Heart:  Stories of Struggle and Hope is a collection of reflections from the world of a pastoral counselor that focus on one particular lesson for the Church these days:  The power of prayer. While the collection of stories offers anecdotes about the Christian meaning of life in the midst of suffering and pain, Arnold gives us lessons on the importance of the virtue of courage.  The life of faith, he rightly insists, isn't lived without doubt, but precisely in the midst of doubt.  The struggle through pain in the way of the Cross.  I was particularly moved by chapter 1, "Searching", in which Arnold recounts the story of Sybil and God's pursuit of her, even in her atheism.  From her early rejection of God to the hell of drug use and prostitution she spiraled down into, all the while God is pursuing her -- in her own heart's desire for God.  After her experience at a Christian retreat center, where the retr...

The Gospel in Dostoyevsky pulls together a number of selections from his many works into an anthology that traces the journey from "rebellion against God" to "life in God".  Along the way of that journey, we encounter some of the most iconic figures from Dostoyevky's fiction, most notably The Brothers Karamozov , The Idiot and Crime and Punishment .  I admit that I came to Dostoyevsky more out of existential boredom than angst as a teen.  But it was Dostoyevsky that captivated my imagination as an answer to Nietzsche's nihilism.  So to find Plough's "reader" in that fiction, reading these selections was much like writing my own literary conversion.  That's because Dostoyevsky, much like Tolstoy, captures so much of what I believe the modern world needs to experience about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Dostoyevsky here shine the light of literary gift on the good news that we are not left to our own devices, that God in Jesus Christ has...

Provocations:  Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard is one of those edited collections of spiritual classics that is, itself, destined to become a classic.  Here, Kierkegaard speaks at his finest, his clearest, his most accessible, in a way that is meant not only to inform -- but to transform . This book is one that readers will find themselves transformed by the Jesus Kierkegaard knows and of which Kierkegaard writes.  This isn't a book that contains simply more information about the spiritual life.  No, this is a book that is meant to embark its readers onto the journey of life with God in Jesus. This book is meant simply to provoke . Charles Moore has edited some of Kierkegaard's most important works, in an effort to make the Dane speak with clarity to a new age -- one filled with all the dread and deadness in its spiritual life that Kierkegaard saw even in the early nineteenth century. So if you find that you're unprovoked, you really should read it again...

Andrew Gant's The Carols of Christmas:  A Celebration of the Surprising Stories Behind Your Favorite Holiday Songs is a delightful little book that offers a glimpse into the magic that is each Carol, including a generalized summary of the history of some of our best known and most love Carols.  There are histories into some classic Carols -- "Good King Wenceslas", "Away in the Manger", and "O Tannenbaum" -- along with some anecdotal evidence that the Wesleyan Carol, "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" replaces "Hark, how all the welkin' ring".  You'll read how Ralph Vaughan Williams applied the tune of an English folk song about a dead ox to a poem by a nineteenth century American pilgrim to make "O Little Town of Bethlehem". Gant blends expert knowledge about musical history with a readable story into some of our most-beloved musical traditions. The Carols of Christmas is one of those books that is a must-have...

Jerry Root and Mark Neal's The Surprising Imagination of C.S. Lewis is an amazingly refreshing and thorough exploration of the role of the various forms of "imagination" in C.S. Lewis, and a good introduction for students into 12 of Lewis' most important works.  The appendix covers every form of imagination that Lewis discusses, while the chapters highlight twelve of the more important ones through looking at particular Lewis books. What Root and Neal mean by "imagination" is that Lewis speaks to the heart as well as to the head.  Most of us are accustomed to Lewis' strong logical apologetic in works like The Problem of Pain or Mere Christianity , but it's Lewis' desire to speak to that part of being human that is "older" and more nascent:  The human heart.  Imagination isn't simply make-believe.  Just as airline pilots nuance their training with experience in air currents, so Lewis believes we humans have something much more ...

Mark 8 is difficult for me to read. It's difficult because in Mark 8, Jesus says this:  "If anyone is ashamed of me and of my teaching in this godless and wicked day, then the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels". Mark 8 is one of those pivotal moments in the gospels.  In the pagan district of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus gathers his disciples and discloses to them the cost of discipleship, what it means and entails to be a follower and not just a fan.  First, Jesus tells the Twelve that his sphere of operations will imminently shift from north to south as he heads for a showdown in Jerusalem, where he will be murdered by a political coalition of Israel and Rome.  Then, when Peter protests, Jesus vehemently rebukes him and roars that his objection is satanically inspired.  Finally, Jesus details the ultimate end of his messianic project, driven to the site of his own execution bearing a cro...

Elizabeth Goudge's biography, My God and My All:  The Life of St. Francis of Assisi is a classic now brought back to life by Plough Publishing.  Goudge, of course, is most remembered as an English novelist and children's writer.  Her Little White Horse was among my favorite stories as a little boy.  So I was excited to see this biography of St. Francis come back into print. It takes a novelist's imagination to accomplish what Goudge gave us in My God and My All :  She scours the academic writing and the primary sources, and brings a living, breathing saint to life -- someone whose revolutions, according to this book, saved the Church.  And I think she's right. Francis is among the saints -- those who are the "true makers" of our humanity, as Goudge puts it in the early pages of the book.  "By emptying themselves, by getting rid of self altogether, they become the channels of God's creative power and by Him, thru them, we are made."  She bri...