Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea

Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea

The Penguin Press

Published in 2007

ISBN 9781594201219

286 Pages

Summary (Mine): Coming Soon

Summary (Back Cover): In her room at the Hotel Giorgione in Venice, Gamrah sat on the edge of the bed. She rubbed her thighs, legs, and feet with a whitening lotion of glycerine and lemon that her mother made for her. Her mother’s Golden Rule was spinning in her mind. Don’t be easy. Refusal — it’s the secret to activating a man’s passion. After all, her older sister Naflah didn’t give herself to her husband until the fourth night, and her sister Hessah was more or less the same. But she was setting a new recored — it had been seven nights, and her husband hadn’t touched her…

Review: Coming Soon

Number the Stars

At book club the other night, I raided Amanda’s enormous stash of books for books that I had been wanting to read (thank you Amanda!)! Number the Stars by Louis Lowry was one of those books and it only took one evening to read through (big type and short book). I seem to read a lot of books on Nazi occupation of different countries during World War II and that was the setting of this book too. By the writing of the book you can tell that it is geared towards younger children, as the main character is a 10 year old girl named Annemarie and the story is told from her point of view. It takes place in occupied Denmark (this was my first time to read about Denmark and WW II) when the nazis begun to ship Jews off to concentration camps. Ellen, Annemarie’s best friend, is Jewish and the story recounts the courage of how Annemarie’s family hides and successfully gets Ellen and her family to Sweden. I think this book serves as a good introduction for younger children to the horrors of World War II.  Definitely recommended no matter what your age. 8/10

Fiction

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

After reading and enjoying The Maltese Falcon and discovering that Dashiell Hammett was the creator of the fabulous Nick and Nora Charles, I decided to move on to The Thin Man. And I liked it! I think I found it a little more confusing than The Maltese Falcon - there were lots of characters who ended up being important but who only appeared on the page maybe once or twice, though the explanation at the end was good (except for the parenthetical asides about how things turned out which I found kind of odd). There were lots of suspects, though, and I, like Nick and Nora Charles, kept going back and forth between who I thought had dunnit only to be taken completely by surprise by the actual solution. I wish there had been a bit more of Nora Charles, though - she sort of fades into the background for the second half of the novel or so, but when she’s there with Nick, she’s very likable - and clever, too, which is nice to see, especially in a hard-boiled detective novel.

I think the most impressive thing about the novel, even moreso than Nick’s detective skills, is the couple’s ability to drink! Honestly, I wasn’t sure how anyone was still on their feet, let alone solving a murder mystery! But I guess it was another time full of speakeasys and glittery cocktail parties.

My rating: B+

An intersting side note: Toward the end there, I was trying to read very quickly so I could move onto my next book (I’m not telling you what it is until I’ve read it, but I fully expect that it will be made entirely of win and awesome) only to be thwarted by this:

What’s that, you ask? That is the remains of pages 139-140 and 141-142. Missing from my copy of the book! Fortunately I was able to find another copy here at my parents’ house and finish the book, but it was still a little confusing there for a few minutes. Weird! I’ll definitely be heading back to B&N to get a complete copy tomorrow…

The Darcys Give A Ball: A Gentle Joke, Jane Austen Style, by Elizabeth Newark: The Sunday Salon Review

In Jane Austen’s masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice, our story ends with the lovely Miss Elizabeth Bennet marrying Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy in a double wedding ceremony alongside her beloved sister, Miss Jane Bennet to Mr. Charles Bingley, and we all close the novel satisfied knowing that all will turn out well.  Twenty-five years after this happy event, author Elizabeth Newark depicts in her Darcy’s Give A Ball: A Gentle Joke, Jane Austen Style what happens when Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy and Mrs. Jane Bingley decide to hold a ball at Pemberley as their children are now ready for the marriage mart. Although the Darcy’s do give a ball and that is the driving force of all these characters to convene at Pemberley, this light-hearted novelette really is about the Collins’, in particular the two youngest grown children and Mrs. Charlotte Collins nee Lucas. In these brief 156 pages, the first half of the story is devoted to the preparations for the ball while in the second half, at the actual cotillion, we meet some of the offspring from Jane Austen’s other novels, including the Brandons, Wentworths, Bertrams, Knightleys, Elliots, and Churchills.  Not surprising, the still unattached Miss Caroline Bingley, is busy match-making her favorites while the young people are falling in and out of love to the horror or glee of their parents. 

Because there are so many new characters, it was apparent that Newark decidedly focused on Eliza and Jonathon Collins and Juliet Darcy.  The rest simply faded to background; pairing anymore of them off would have been sadly contrived.  Still had Newark fleshed out any of these characters more thoroughly, the reader might care more about them.  Maybe.  Mr. Darcy, Sr. sightings are fleeting but when he does appear, he is as he ever was. On the other hand,  after 25 years as the mistress of Pemberley, Elizabeth Darcy first appears to have become a bit of a snob and forgotten that she was at one time considered not an acceptable match for the illustrious Darcy. Fortunately she comes around. I also believe this story could have been stronger had Newark moved her explanation of Charlotte Collins and Elizabeth Darcy’s friendship to the beginning of this story;  alas, when she finally explains Charlotte’s motivations and the affection for her old friend, it is a bit anti-climactic after all the activity at the close of the ball. 

Originally self published as Consequence: Or Whatever Became of Charlotte Lucas in 1997,  this is a harmless, light-hearted, and very quick read. Elizabeth Newark is a gifted writer and her turn of the phrase is oftentimes amusing.  However, it is questionable as to what “the little joke Jane Austen style” may have been. I think I was hoping for more substance.  In this case, maybe less is not necessarily more. Albeit, I am glad to have it part of my collection, I am indifferent to if I will re-read it again any time soon.  Still, I enjoyed well enough. 

Christina

3 out of 5 Regency Stars

The Darcys Give a Ball: A Gentle Joke, Jane Austen Style, by Elizabeth Newark

Sourcebooks, Landmark, Naperville, IL (2008)

Trade paperback (156) pages

ISBN: 978-1402211317

Additional Reviews

• AustenBlog
• Trashionista
• Amazon.com

Touched by an angel #11

After all the metaphysics of the previous post I thought I’d try a simpler topic this time: R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Eleventh in a series responding to John Cornwell’s Darwin’s angel: an angelic riposte to The God Delusion.1

See also: Touched by an angel #1; #2; #3; #4; #5; #6; #7; #8; #9; & #10

Find out what it means to me

A classic angelism, with quotes from The God delusion2:

[W]henever you refer to the mystery of, for example, the Trinity - by which Christians believe that there are three persons in the one God - you get abusive: you call it a “weird thing”, and you go on to write that believers “are not meant to understand”. Finally you lecture your readers: “Don’t even try to understand one of these, for the attempt might destroy it.” You add that believers think that they “gain fulfilment in calling it a mystery”.3 [My bold emphasis.]

The quotes are accurate. But a little context might help. The quotes are all from one example in a list of ‘religious memes’ which Dawkins includes in his presentation of the ‘memetic theory of religion’. (According to memetic theory a meme is a self-replicating cultural idea, symbol or practice.) Here he is talking about religious ideas which might be good survivors (in the sense of making many copies of themselves in human minds, human cultural artefacts etc) either because they have good survival value on their own, or because they have good survival value as part of a set of related ideas (a ‘memeplex’).

Reincarnation in Hinduism

The first on the list is:

• You will survive your own death.4

The idea is that this is something which, on balance, human beings will want to believe, and that therefore it is a belief which, other things being equal, is likely to spread (compared to, say, the converse: you will not survive your death). It is a meme which would have good survival value on its own. It is also fairly universal - found in most if not all world religions. However different religions might expand the meme in different and incompatible ways, generating further sets of more specific memes relating to concepts of heaven, hell, reincarnation and so on.

Another is:

• Belief in God is a supreme virtue. If you find your belief wavering, work hard at restoring it, and beg God to help your unbelief.5

This idea recognises, and builds on, the fact that belief in God is not always easy. It is an example of a meme whose survival value would depend on (or be at least enhanced by) other beliefs about eg the inadequacy of human faculties. This meme is not a feature of every religion. It is however found in those Christian traditions which recognise faith as one of a small number of theological virtues.

Holy Trinity fresco (Luca Rossetti da Orta)

Beliefs relating to the Trinity are also specific (in fact unique?) to Christianity. But they were not universal throughout Christian history, and are not universal now. The full quote referring to the Trinity is:

• There are some weird things (such as the Trinity, transubstantiation, incarnation) that we are not meant to understand. Don’t even try to understand one of these, for the attempt might destroy it. Learn how to gain fulfilment in calling it a mystery.6

The idea is not just that of the ‘Trinity’ or ‘transubstantiation’ or ‘incarnation’ memes themselves. The idea is of a meme with specific content (eg the doctrine of the Trinity), where that specific content is such that it resists human understanding; or is, at the very least, opaque to human understanding. In fact it is presented explicitly as a ‘mystery’ - indeed as an example of a mysterium fidei (mystery of the faith).

According to James Bretzke’s Consecrated Phrases7, a mysterium fidei is:

An element, or doctrine, of the faith which because of its sacred and/or supernatural[*] character is difficult to explain completely in rational and/or logical terms and which therefore must be accepted finally on faith. [Asterisk added.]

(*If Cornwell had included this quote he would no doubt have inserted ‘[there you go again]‘ after ‘supernatural’ - as he did when quoting Dawkins’ ‘God Hypothesis’: see Touched by an angel #10. But be that as it may.)

Martin Luther

Now couple this with the tradition - not universal within Christianity, but not particularly rare either - that reason and faith are inimical. For example Martin Luther:

Reason in no way contributes to faith. …For reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things.8

By now I think we are pretty close to Dawkins’ characterisation of the ‘weird things’ meme.

Remember he was not suggesting that all believers believe all these memes. There may be few Christians, Jews and Hindus for example who believe the second on his list:

If you die a martyr, you will go to an especially wonderful part of paradise where you will enjoy seventy-two virgins.9

His claim is merely that each of the ideas in the list has spread by replication through some human population.

Sock it to me, sock it to me…

Cornwell’s claim is that Dawkins’ reference to the Trinity is ‘abusive’. (This is what this post is about, not about whether the ‘memetic theory of religion’ is correct, or even makes sense.) Even with the quotes excerpted in Darwin’s angel the charge is hard to substantiate. With the context filled in the accusation is, quite frankly, weird.

On which subject: it is OK - in fact virtually obligatory - to call the doctrine of the Trinity a mystery. Which must mean it is OK to describe it adjectivally as mysterious? But it is not OK to call it weird? In my copy of Roget’s Thesaurus10, under 864 Wonder, I find:

Adj. …wonderful, …84 adj. unusual; weird, weird and wonderful, unaccountable, mysterious…

‘Mysterious’ and ‘weird’ may not be exact synonyms, but they seem hardly so distinct that substituting one for the other could be described as abusive?

This whole allegation seems a perfect example of what Dawkins warned about at the start of The God Delusion - that

widespread assumption… that religious faith is especially vulnerable to offence and should be protected by an abnormally thick wall of respect, in a different class from the respect that any human being should pay to any other.11

Hence his disclaimer:

I shall not go out of my way to offend, but nor shall I don kid gloves to handle religion any more gently than I would handle anything else.12

References

1 John Cornwell, Darwin’s angel: an angelic riposte to The God Delusion, Profile Books, London, 2007.

2 Richard Dawkins, The god delusion, Bantam, 2006.

3 John Cornwell, 2007: 1 above.

4 Richard Dawkins, 2006: 2 above.

5 Richard Dawkins, 2006: 2 above.

6 Richard Dawkins, 2006: 2 above.

7 James T Bretzke, Consecrated phrases: A Latin theological dictionary, second edition, Liturgical Press, 2004.

8 Martin Luther, Table Talk.

9 Richard Dawkins, 2006: 2 above.

10 Roget’s Thesaurus, Penguin, 1966.

11 Richard Dawkins, 2006: 2 above.

12 Richard Dawkins, 2006: 2 above.

© Chris Lawrence 2009.

Elizabeth Costello - J.M. Coetzee

Just finished this book. It is the first time I have read Coetzee and I suspect that this is not a book for a first timer. While I got a peek into the brilliance of his mind and writing, I am afraid I was not able to appreciate it fully because I did not understand it completely.

This book is supposed to be about an acclaimed Australian author : Elizabeth Costello who is now in her last days. She makes her life by now giving lectures in the academic circles. It is through these lectures that first 6 chapters of the book are covered and though they are disconnected, we do get a glimpse into the mind of a writer. How she thinks, what she thinks about certain topics etc. Three thoughts are very strongly debated. Vegitarianism, African novel, Christianity and Hellinistic religion and lastly, exploration of evil by an author. She tries to make sense of the world but she is often presented with stark examples of both contrasts and thus she is flummoxed about what the reality is and what really matters. Then, there is a chapter about how she is waiting outside a door and is judged by a panel upon her beliefs. She is unable to point out a single thing that she believes in.

This is also the point where the book becomes a complete bouncer. No clue about what the author is actually trying to say. The last chapter which is actually a letter from Lady Chandos to some Francis Bacon, is almost as good as unread to me.

However, the parts that I understood impressed me a lot. There was a lot of analysis in the debates and almost all points that one can imagine were put on the table. One learns that the writer is a man of great thinking. The life of Elizabeth Costello is also very similar to Coetzee’s own life. It is I think an autobiographical portrait of himself as an author. I think that the experience of J.M. Coetzee, the writer, is what we have been offered. Being such an intelligent and complex man that he is, it is not surprising the book has turned out to be such. I will have to read it a few times more to really grasp it all.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Having read Gaiman’s graphic novel, Coraline, I was eager to dig into his adult fantasy, Neverwhere, but as I moved through this book, I kept experiencing déjà vu. I began rooting through my old paperbacks and found that I had read Neverwhere when it was first published in 1996. I felt good knowing this wasn’t a flashback like having a purple pony dance on your pillow. Not that I would know anything about that. It did happen to a friend of mine, though.

ANYWAY . . .

This is the story of Richard Mayhew, a young businessman in London, who has a good job, a grand heart, and a fiancé who rules him with an iron fist. It is also the story of London Above, London Below, and a girl named Door. (Dragon note: one day I’d like to know about Mr. Gaiman’s fixation with doors . . .)

On his way to dinner with his fiancé, Richard comes across an injured girl lying in the street, and though his fiancé demands that they leave the girl alone, Richard helps her by taking her to his apartment. When she awakens, she tells Richard that her name is Door and that he must find the marquis de Carabas, who owes her a favor and will take care of her. What she doesn’t tell Richard is that her family has been murdered, and that two of the most entertaining villains that I’ve had the good fortune to read are hot on her trail – Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar, who live by the motto: “Things to do. People to damage.”

Unfortunately, after his contact with the marquis and Door, Richard suddenly ceases to exist in London Above. Richard embarks on a trip to London Below where he hopes to find the secret that will allow him to return to his normal life in London Above, but London Below is a place fraught with magic and intrigue. Joining the marquis and Door in their hunt for the killers of Door’s family and pursued by the vicious Croup and Vandemar, Richard struggles to understand himself and the strange new world he inhabits.

Gaiman gives us a wonderful romp with delightful characters. At times laugh out loud funny, poignant, and just plain fun, Neverwhere takes the reader on a wild ride through London Below where nothing is sacred, neither angels nor death.

My Rating:    

Book Review (part 2): Muito Prazer, Fale O Portugues do Brasil / Speak the Portuguese of Brazil

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned this book and said I would write a review. Here it is.

I guess it’s natural for me to approach Brazilian Portuguese textbooks for English people in a similar way to how I view English textbooks for Brazilians. I do this in my job as an English teacher, and there are many, many poor textbooks but a few excellent ones too. “Muito Prazer” is, fortunately, a Brazilian Portuguese example of the latter, in my opinion. I would have no hesitation recommending this publication to learners of the language. It was certainly the sort of book I’d been hoping to see and use.

I’m going to be quite objective about this and list the many pros and few cons below and then conclude, briefly.

Why I like this book (the pros):

- The book is substantial (400 pages long), nicely presented (something you can’t take for granted in language textbooks) and nicely illustrated.

- The 2 CDs-worth of listenings are short, sharp and generally reflect possible real-life situations well.

- Explanations of new language are clear and simple, don’t rely on linguistic jargon and are rarely given in isolation without examples. New Grammar or vocabulary is introduced in small portions, tested with useful and appropriate exercises and activities and then slowly built on through the book. In other words, it is an integrated approach to learnign the language and this is a good thing.

- Students are not expected to “remember” everything and so helpful hints and reminders with references to pages earlier in the book are given.

- helpfully notes anomalies and irregularities to the principal rules.

- The activities only test what has been presented (which is not always a given in other textbooks).

- Authentic material is used in the readings. Articles are sometimes pulled from real website pieces.

- Each of the 20 units addresses a related theme - sport, health and body etc.

- The book does NOT forget pronunciation and includes some helpful pages on the topic.

- The book uses examples of Brazilian culture, geography and history to teach the language.

- The new language is presented in practical situations - buying tickets, viewing an apartment, meeting people.

- Useful reference sections at the back, scripts, answer pages and so on make it possible for someone (with a reasonable grasp of latin languages or previous exposure to Portuguese) to use this book without outside input and expect to attain an Upper Intermediate level appreciation of the language by the end of the 20 units.

Things that could be improved (or the cons).

- The readings are often far too short. Basically, make sure you are reading widely in addition to the material in the book. But, this is not surprising as the writers probably didn’t want to waste space in the 400 page tome.

- Related to the above, the questions for the readings are often too easy. For example, the reading might ask what the cost of an item is from the menu. Attaining the answer does not really demand comprehension of Portuguese - a child who only knows English would easily work it out.

- Occasionally, vocabulary is presented as a list with no explanation as to meaning. (This is when I have to call my wife to help! - or keep a dictionary handy!)

- Not really a con, but the book is designed for group use. Several activities involve talking to partners and this may not be possible.

- Related to the above, the answer section provides no clues as to what answers may or not be right when it involves the opinion of the reader (or his partner). For example, the book might ask you to write about your favourite colour. You want to check how you did, but the answer pages only say “Answers may vary” instead of giving examples of possible responses.

- Just a small thing. The book relies on Dialogues to introduce or present new language. Generally, they’re quite good and they’re not long but it would have been nice if there was some kind of task to do with these dialogues (fill in gaps / listen for an answer to a question) - otherwise, you may find yourself asking “why am I listening to these people?” or “why am I reading this?” which undermines motivation to learn.

To sum up, the cons are not very weighty if you are self-motivated in your learning, augment your use of the book with authentic reading material and have someone (a teacher? a native speaker?) to talk to and quiz about the tricky bits, and check your writing. I’m already half way through the whole thing and really enjoying it. So, if you’re learning Brazilian Portuguese, put this on your Christmas list.

Book review: Running on Emptiness by John Zerzan

Book Review: Running on Emptiness by John Zerzan (Feral House, 2002)

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

John Zerzan has been one of the more popular anarchist writers of the past two decades. He is considered one of the main theorists of anarcho-primitivism or green anarchism. His neo-Luddite politics have come to be  associated with the 1999 WTO protests a.k.a. “the battle of seattle,” “radical” environmentalism, and the unabomber. Running on Emptiness (Feral House, 2002) is an anthology of essays and interviews by Zerzan. The essays and interviews cover a diverse range of topics, from the origin of culture and oppression to abstract expressionism to Star Trek. 

Zerzan’s revolution

According to Zerzan, for most of its pre-history, humanity existed in a golden age free from oppression.  (68) Then, humanity’s original sin: symbolic thought or “culture,” enters the picture.  Humanity’s battle with culture began sometime in prehistory, the earliest cave art is dated from roughly 30,000 years ago. (5) Around 10,000 years ago, “culture triumphed with domestication [of crops and animals].” (5,15) From there, humanity’s fall from Eden snowballed into society as a full-blown technological hell. And, just on the horizon, even greater nightmares await us with the further loss of humanity to the machine through robotics and cyborg technologies. “Progress has meant the looming specter of the complete dehumanization of the individual and the catastrophe of ecological collapse.” (79)  The solution is to return to the ways of the past. So says Zerzan.   

Many of the ideas in Running on Emptiness are drawn from Frankfurt School authors, especially the analysis of alienation, time, art, culture, etc.  However, Zerzan also draws on a wide variety of other sources from philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, literary criticism, etc.  Zerzan’s often makes wild claims with cherry-picked, little, or no evidence. For example, Zerzan causally mentions supposed super powers that humankind has lost in the modern world: super health, super vision, super hearing, and telepathy. Zerzan’s revolution would probably be objectionable even to many of his fellow anarchists. Zerzan longs for a world without literacy (10), without language and “verbal communication [which] is part of the movement away from face-to-face social reality” (10), without art, “there would be no need of art in a disalienated world” (11), without time  (17-41, 75), without agriculture or technology. Zerzan quotes approvingly of James Shreeve who fantasizes about the Neanderthal’s supposed harmonious relationship with the world:

“… where the modern’s gods might inhabit the land, the buffalo or the blade of grass, the Neanderthal’s spirit was the animal or the grass blade, the thing and its soul perceived as a single vital force, with no need to distinguish them with separate names. Similarly, the absence of artistic expression does not preclude the apprehension of what is artful about the world. Neanderthals did not paint their caves with the images of animals. But perhaps they had no need to distill life into representations, because its essences were already revealed to their senses. The sight of a running herd was enough to inspire a surging sense of beauty. They had no drums or bone flutes, but they could listen to the booming rhythms of the wind, the earth, and each other’s heart beats, and be transported.” (2-3)

Zerzan’s First Worldism

Although Zerzan does recognize that some humans benefit from oppressing others, he draws the line between oppressor and oppressed incorrectly. Zerzan writes, “Just as Freud predicted that the fullness of civilization would mean universal neurotic unhappiness, anti-civilization currents are growing in response to the psychic immiseration that envelops us.”  (1) In this Mercusean-type argument, everyone is an oppressed cog in the system, opening up the possibility of universal, human revolution; the system has dehumanized us all, therefore a radical, humanist revolution is possible. Implicit, although not always clearly stated in Zerzan’s book, is the claim that everyone or virtually everyone has an interest in destroying and radically re-making contemporary society. Such a belief is far off the mark. In reality, most First Worlders benefit from the way things are and have little interest in returning to Zerzan’s imagined  Neanderthal-like way of life. Most Third Worlders do have an interest in changing the status quo, but not in the way that anarcho-primitivists like Zerzan  imagine. The history of revolution of the past century has disproven First Worldism and confirmed Lenin’s prediction that the East, or more broadly, the Third World, has become the center of gravity of the world revolution. Against Zerzan’s First Worldist orientation, there are many examples where social revolution has been unleashed as part of Third World, national liberation struggles: China, Vietnam, Albania, Korea, etc. There are no significant First World, social revolutions. Thus confirming Maoism-Third Worldism. 

This First Worldism of anarcho-primitivism is also reflected in its view of imperialism and national liberation. Imperialism is barely mentioned in Zerzan’s work. In Zerzan’s criticism of “anarchist” Noam Chomsky, Zerzan expresses disdain for Chomsky’s focus on imperialism in Chomsky’s political works. (140-141) Theresa Kintz, author of the introduction to Running on Emptiness, explains the anarcho-primitivist view of imperialist wars against the Third World:

“Interestingly, heads of states are referring to what is going on as a ‘clash of civilizations’ — how true, for a change. The regimes currently challenging the West’s supremacy are authoritarian entities no less civilized than capitalist America.. It’s been going on like this for thousands of years. Even a cursory overview of history shows that as long as civilizations have existed they’ve made war on each other –always have, always will.” (xii)

The anarcho-primitivist view equates Third World national resistance with Amerikan aggression. For anarcho-primitivists, Palestinian resistance is equated with Israeli occupation. Just like other First Worldist utopians, anarcho-primitivists see imperialism and forces of national liberation as two sides of the same coin.   

It is no surprise that Zerzan’s work says little of interest to Third World peoples who are the main force for social revolution in our epoch. Solutions to problems of poverty in the Third World such as land reform and development are absent from his work. Zerzan preaches the rejection of science and technology. Technology itself is evil in the anarcho-primitivist view. Yet peoples of the Third World are very aware that science and technology are necessary for liberation and development. Such naïveté is itself typical of First World utopians. 

On post-modernism

Running throughout Zerzan’s essays is a critique of post-modernism as an intellectual sham that serves the system. Zerzan writes, “PM abandons the ‘arrogance’ of trying to figure out the origins, logic, causality, or structure of the world we live in. Instead, postmodernists focus on surfaces, fragments, margins. Reality is too shifting, complex, indeterminate to decipher or judge… Meaning and value are old fashioned illusions, and so is the practice of writing with clarity.” (165-166) Of the anarchist Hakim Bey, Zerzan writes:

“Bey’s method is as appalling a his claims to truthfulness, and essentially conforms to textbook postmodernism. Aestheticism plus knownothingness is the PM formula; cynical as to the possibility of meaning, allergic to analysis, hooked on trendy word-play.. A point of view that tries to be consistent, well-researched tentative exploration is deemed [by Bey]] absolutist, rigid, aggressive, the product of a ‘presumptive vanguard of the pure.’” (145)

Zerzan’s critique of post-modernism is for the most part correct. However, it is not clear how Zerzan sustains such a critique  since it isn’t clear that he accepts science. Marxism, by contrast, rejects post-modernism and embraces science.  

Real environmentalist and revolutionary

Zerzan’s worries in these essays about ecological catastrophe are justified, “A hyper-technologicalized capitalism is steadily effacing the living texture of existence, as the world’s biggest die-off in 50 million years proceeds apace: 50,000 plant and animal species disappear each year.” (120) However, Zerzan’s anarcho-primitivist solution in Running On Emptiness is a fantasy land. Rather, Maoist-Third Worldists are the real environmentalists. It is only by resolving the principal contradiction between imperialism and the exploited nations in our favor that we can move to resolve other contradictions. The struggle against imperialism by the exploited nations is the only struggle that can unleash the social energy to make social revolution and environmental revolution possible. The anti-imperialist struggle is the key that unlocks other struggles. This has been shown over and over again in the last half-century of revolution. However, successful social revolutionaries like the Bolsheviks or the Maoists are lumped together with fascists by Zerzan. (86) Thus, Zerzan, like the failed anarchist tradition itself, fantasizes about a non-existent anarchist revolution while rejecting real resistance in the Third World and criticizing the workers and peasants who actually seized power and carried out socialist construction.  One wonders why Zerzan takes pot shots at the Bolsheviks while embracing twentieth century anarchism. Surely Zerzan would have equally rejected the social revolution carried out by anarchists in the Spanish civil war or Russian revolution had such ever materialized. After all, the vision of social revolution of the the anarchists of Spain or Russia surely had more in common with that of the  Bolsheviks than with Zerzan’s Neanderthal utopia.  The sense of this collection of essays is that anything short of rejecting civilization itself does not count. Zerzan’s work suffers, albeit to the most  extreme degree, from the same problems that the anarchist tradition has always faced: lack of science, utopianism, no track record of achieving human liberation on any significant scale, etc.

Twilight vs. Harry Potter

This thing  has been going on since last year, and I’m getting really sick of it.

A fool could tell that I am a Harry Potter fanatic by looking at this blog. (Esp my personality tests results). I don’t think anyone would be able to tell that I am also a Twilight fan. Well, the reason I don’t take twilight personality tests is because my knowledge on Twilight is low, reason being because I did not finish the Twilight series.

So I am no longer obsessed with both and I am going to give you my opinion (which is the same as many others) from a JUST point of view.

But let me tell you my story:

I’m really a bit too young to love Harry Potter, I think it was published when I was 2 . I watched the first movie when I was 7 (it was released that year), so I picked up my first Harry Potter book at the age of 7. I read through the series and eventually was on pace with the movies (now faster than the movies). I was in love with the Harry Potter series … until one fateful day.

I had seen my older cousin reading a book: . I had no idea what it was and why there was an apple on the cover. I was searching up on Robert Pattinson cos he played Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and I found the Twilight movie trailer. So, I went to Wikipedia and I saw the cover of the book. I remembered where I saw it from, and I borrowed it form my cousin. I fell in love with Edward Cullen and I said his name day and night. I went on with the series (it was torturing to read, boring, but “i did it for Edward“. yeah. I was that mad.) I was the first girl (i think) in my level to read Twilight. I told my friends the story and they went to check the book out. It spread to a few classes. Eventually, in about a month, my “love” for Edward died down and I realised it that the story is complete … erm, crap. I stopped reading the series halfway through Eclipse, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

So, now that I’m no longer obsessed with both. I’ll give you my point of view on this debate. I have researched all my facts and speak the truth, and the truth is hard:

1. Bestseller List: Every book in the Twilight series has proudly flashed “Bestseller list” on its back. This gives you the idea that Twilight is the bestseller book but I’ll be honest with you: Twilight only made is as far as #5 on the Bestseller lists and New Moon was #3. Only Eclipse made it to #1 and “kicked Harry Potter off it”. Harry Potter is still on #1 in some Bestseller lists. Also, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has been on the Bestseller list a long time before Eclipse was even published! Obviously, the shiny new toy has a higher sale! They didn’t even come out at the same time. But you have to take your Hat off that even though Eclipse was #1, Harry Potter, which has been around much longer, is still on the Bestseller list.

2. Readers: Twilight is only aimed for teenage girls, not really grown woman because they have their senses and maturity. Harry Potter is for all ages, both genders.

3. Creativity: I’ve heard of wizards and witches, but I’ve never seen them all go to a school before. That is some creativity there. I have seen dozens of vampire love stories, which stories are even better than Twilight. The only reason Twilight won is because its more romantic.

4. Realistic: Harry Potter associates with Growing Up, Racism, Good vs Evil, School Life, Sports and many others. Twilight doesn’t really assocaite with growing up, they are kinda grown up. There’s hardly racism, though some black people have commented that they find it offensive that Stephenie keeps using the word “white”. I don’t see a reason why they need to be offended but Stephenie was not really being sensitive. Twilight has no good vs evil, i mean, if you call victoria evil, you obviously have no idea waht evil is. There is school life. Sports? Yeah: Supernatural baseball and Bella falling down non-stop in any sport, or in her everyday life.

5. Characters: Bella is a very bad influence. She’s anything but independant. She relies on males a lot, esp Edward. She keeps falling and that is really getting on my nerves. It’s not cute, or wrong, but she’s acting like a 3 year old. Jacob says he is sad Bella didn’t love him so she asked him to kiss her so that he would feel that she loved him! I mean, Bella is like with Edward already! And that, at that moment, she realised she loved Jacob too (only not as strong as Edward). Bella is also extremely superficial, she keeps comparing her looks with others. That’s where you’re ugly, Bella. Your internal beauty is the ugliest thing to walk the Earth. Bella keeps asking Edward to have sex with her while she’s human, and like… are you a sex-addict Bella? She was like slightly embarassed when she told her father she was still a virgin. God… . Bella willingly says bye to her friends and people who love her and care for her just to be with Edward. That’s not simple in real life, I couldn’t do that so easily to be with the man I love. Bella just waved her hand at them to run off with Edward. She’s being insensitive and selfish. Your friends love you, Bella. Look at you.

 6. Vocabulary: I can’t read a chapter of Harry Potter without looking at the Dictionary at least once. Twilight has horrible vocabulary. I got by the first book knowing every word. There were difficult ones that people didn’t know but I had seen those words a dozen times before. Stepehenie Meyer keeps repeating words especially “white” and “dazzled”. I’ll send Mrs Meyer a Thesaurus in a fan mail.

7. Reason to read: There are so many reasons to read Harry Potter. It’s the character. It’s the magic. It’s the school, the quidditch, voldemort, growing up, all that jazz. I can stand here and look you in the eye and tell you that people only read Twilight for one reason: They are in love with Edward, Jacob or possibly another character. As much as Twilight fans can deny it, you know that’s the only reason you read Twilight. You say the story is magnificent, but you know it’s crap. Gibberish. Boring. Hard core sucks. Sucks big time, REAL big time. And love for this characters is childish and immature! Look, I was once “in love” with Edward, it’s not wrong, but it’s not love either. There are so many nice guys around. It’s called infatuation, it dies off. But girls are clinging on to it like its true love, like Edward loves them back. You can fantasize, its not wrong. But he doesn’t exist. Even if he did, he’s taken. Married. Someone’s husband. Someone’s father. He’s not real, so stop taking it for real love because that is just immature.

I have more points but this is really long already so… yeah. Most Twilight fans would hate me when they read this, and curse me for being obsessed with Harry Potter, but I really am not. I love both books. Okay, I don’t really like Twilight that much anymore. Critics said Harry Potter wins and twilight fans say that they’re being bias to JK Rowling. They’re not bias, it’ a fact.

So, yeah, my conclusion: Harry Potter beats Twilight a trillion times.

The Sacramental Life

For those of you who follow Theology Forum, you know that we have a deep interest in the relationship between theology and spirituality. In light of this interest, this post concerns a book entitled Sacramental Life: Spiritual Formation Through the Book of Common Prayer by David A. deSilva. For those of you who recognize the author, you might be surprised by the book title. deSilva is a New Testament scholar and a Methodist, neither of which (one would think) orients him towards this topic! My friends at IVP told me that this was a labor of love for deSilva, coming out of his background in the Anglican church and the rich spirituality he found in the Book of Common Prayer (special thanks to IVP for sending me the volume for review). In his own words,

I am a person of faith today precisely because the liturgies of the Book of Common Prayer gave me a language and a context for encountering God in my youth that continue to be essential vehicles for my own spiritual formation.”

There are many things I really liked about this book, and I will highlight a few of them here. First, deSilva does an unusually good job of communicating well and concisely. This, coupled with the equally unusual feat of suggesting helpful practices at the end of each chapter makes this volume a great book to use in a small group or individual setting (my wife and were reading it together, which is a great use as well). The chapters are short, which make it a great daily read, and with 45 chapters, it is a great discipline for about a month and a half.

deSilva breaks down the spirituality of the Book of Common Prayer into four major sections: Baptism, Holy Eucharist, Christian Marriage and Christian Burial. So why these four? deSilva admits that he should probably have stopped at the first two if he was writing on sacraments as such, but he isn’t. “It is a book about living the sacramental life, that is, living in line with the model of discipleship that the sacramental liturgies articulate and seek to shape within us, and availing ourselves more fully and more often of the resources God sets before us through these sacraments.” Therefore the first two focus on the principle “rites” of the church, while the latter two “flesh out” the former in particular life contexts.

Many evangelicals, I would imagine, would find this statement odd. How do you “flesh out” baptism or communion? Aren’t they events in our life? Here, I think deSilva has done a great service to the broader evangelical church. He focuses, through Book of Common Prayer, on the life forming realities of both baptism and Eucharist. deSilva explains,

Baptism has a dual nature. On the one hand, it is performed once and considered thereafter to be an accomplished fact. On the other hand, baptism provides an orientation to our selves, our world and our God that must be appropriated day after day. Martin Luther wrote that ‘in Baptism, every Christian has enough to study and to practice all his life. He always has enough to do to believe firmly what baptism promises and brings - victory over death and the devil, forgiveness of sin, God’s grace, the entire Christ, and the Holy Spirit with his gifts.’ We are both baptized and initiated into a baptismal life. We are taken into a baptismal covenant in which we are called to walk each day.”

Likewise then, “If baptism charts the course for our journey, the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, provides our nourishment for the journey. In the Eucharist, God provides spiritual refreshment and empowerment to sustain us in our exodus from sin and from the corrupting powers of this world, even as God sustained the Hebrews throughout their wilderness wanderings in their own exodus from Egypt.”

All in all I really enjoyed the volume. If you know people who are curious about the Book of Common Prayer but altogether unfamiliar with it, this would be a decent place for them to start. I did think it could have been shorter, but after working through through it a chapter a day, I really came to enjoy the format. As readers of TF, I would be curious to hear how many of you use a prayer book? Likewise, does anyone attend a non-liturgical church which focuses on the baptismal and eucharistic pattern of the Christian life? This seems like a neglected element in much of evangelicalism.

Mongolia Monday- "Required" Reading, Part 3

For the final installment of my list of “must” reads for anyone interested in Mongolia, I offer three books: One about a place and two about people.

The word “Gobi” is a byword for dry/arid/trackless/endless desert. In fact, there is a saying, “Dry as the Gobi”, to describe an extreme lack of moisture. Would it surprise you to know that the best, sweetest vegetables grown in Mongolia come from the Gobi? Or that snow leopards live there? Or that there is a forest with trees that have wood so dense that a piece of it sinks when thrown in water? Author John Man realized his dream of traveling to the Gobi (which is the word for “desert” in Mongolian) and then wrote this excellent book, Gobi, published in 1997, about his journey there, along with lots of excellent information on the human history, natural history, geology and paleontology of this remote and fascinating part of the world.

“We stopped to confer, and I unfolded the map on the bonnet. The Flaming Cliffs were definitely west, they had to be…..In the distance, a ger appeared, standing out of the desert as clear as a mushroom on the moon….Inside, the woman of the ger was distilling camel’s milk, boiling it in an immense pot, capturing the essence as it condensed, drop by drop. We received tokens of hospitality: camel’s curd, hard and sharp as parmesan, and a dish of distilled camel’s milk. It was a nectar of transparent purity, like vodka to look at, but with its alcohol content disguised bya smooth and subtle texture.”

This was one of the first books I read after my first trip to Mongolia in 2005 and it was, in part, the inspiration for my own trip to the Gobi in 2006. Re-acquainting myself with it for this review, I saw in the Acknowledgements two familiar names: wildlife artist Simon Combes, who Man encountered in the Altai Mountains when Combes was there gathering snow leopard information for his Great Cats series of paintings and Dr. Richard Reading, who was the scientist in charge of the Earthwatch project, Mongolian Argali, that was my means of getting to Mongolia the first time in spring of 2005. You’ll be hearing more about Dr. Reading in the not-to-distant future.

Gobi by John Man, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1997

Every Westerner who goes to the Gobi is, to some extent, traveling in the footsteps of Roy Chapman Andrews, who organized and carried out his series of five Central Asiatic Expeditions from 1922 to 1930. Andrews was about as close to a real life Indiana Jones as one is likely to find. Dragon Hunter, by Charles Gallenkamp, tells the story of Andrews’ life and his amazing adventures. He made his reputation at The Flaming Cliffs in the Gobi, where he and his fellow scientists found some of the most important fossils in the history of paleontology. Which was ironic, because Andrews was in Mongolia on a mission laid out by his boss at the American Museum of Natural History in New York to find evidence that man had originated in Asia, not Africa; a goal tinged with more than a bit of racism.

“It was agreed by everyone that the primary objective of the 1923 eexpedition should be The Flaming Cliffs. Shackelford’s unidentified dinosaur skull, the egg-like fragment found by Granger, and prolific array of bleached bones littering the ground and eroding out of the sculptured formations offered an irresistable lure.”

You can see my photo of The Flaming Cliffs at sunset and Mongolian dinosaur fossils on my website under “Mongolia/Mongolia 2006 photos/items 4 and 1

Dragon Hunter by Charles Gallenkamp, Viking 2001

Women of Mongolia is a truly wonderful collection of first person narratives that introduce us to women from every part of Mongolian society: city and countryside, professionals and laborers. I was struck by their strength, practicality and resourcefulness, all of which were necessary for them and their families to survive the transition from socialism to a market economy. The photos in the book may make them seem distant and exotic, but once you start reading, you realize how much we have in common even though the details of their lives are very different from the average American.

A herder woman: “What do I do all day? There’s plenty to do! First I get up at around six o’clock in the morning to milk the cows. My daughter helps me. We have nineteen cows to milk, so it takes around one hour. After that I do various other jobs. I go to bed around ten or eleven in evening. We make everything here. Yes, the wheels of the carts outside are an example. My husband makes them, out of wood. We use the carts to move the ger and our belongings. They are pulled by oxen. I make all the ropes out of horsehair - you can see them on the outside of the ger, holding down the felt.”

An anthropologist: “I recently founded a new Department at the University, so right now I am rather busy. I’m head of the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the Academy of Sciences, and also head of the new Department of Anthropology at the National University…The focus of my own work has been craniological study…..How did I get started in this work? I graduated from the Moscow State University in anthropology because that is what the government told me to study.”

Women of Mongolia by Martha Avery, Asian Art and Archaeology/University of Washington Press 1996

——-

And, on a different note: join Lonely Planet Mongolia author Michael Kohn as he takes the train from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing and beyond.

Prairie Home Companion's 'Pretty Good Joke Book’

A sequel to "Pretty Good Jokes."

“Hard to believe that he beat out a million other sperm.”

- From the Pretty Good Joke Book

On the Saturday children’s reviews on this site, I’ve said that joke books can make wonderful gifts for children, especially for 5-to-9-year-olds. But joke books can also be good gifts for adults.

One that might appeal to many families is the Pretty Good Joke Book (Highbridge, 2000), introduced by Garrison Keillor, which collects hundreds of the jokes told on the “Joke Show” segment of Prairie Home Companion and has had a variety of sequels and editions, including one on CD. All entries were wholesome enough for National Public Radio. (Even the “adults-only” and “totally tasteless” sections look like monuments to good taste next to the workof comedians like Denis Leary and Jim Norton.) The jokes fall into 30 categories, including bar, insult, lawyer, religion, musician, yo’mama and Iowa and Minnesota jokes. And though some trade on the sex-role or other stereotypes found on any drugstore greeting-card rack, it’s hard to fault those that anyone might have occasion to use, such as: “Hard to believe that he beat out a million other sperm.”

© 2009 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

www.janiceharayda.com

Best Book on Islam for Christians

I am often asked what resources are helpful for Christians in understanding Islam. There are TONS of books, articles, and websites written by Christians on Islam for a Christian audience. And believe me, they range from really really ridiculous to balanced and helpful.

But for the general Christian inquirer, Encountering the World of Islam is, in my opinion, the best book on the market for Christians to engage with Islam and Muslims. It is balanced, extremely informative and user friendly, and it is - best of all - a compilation of the best writings on Islam by Christians in the recent decades. It is the most useful guide to Islam that I know of for Christians. I know the editor, Keith Swartley, and I can testify of his genuine heart for God’s Name and his love for the Muslim world. I recommend it very often to people as a must read first start on Islam.

Go here to learn about the book.

Go here to purchase it.

Belated

Man, I have been terrible about blogging lately!  Since it’s been a while, I think I’ll make use of some bulleted listing.

• Book Review #1 — Marlena De Blasi’s A Thousand Days in Tuscany — Just like her book on Orvieto, I really enjoyed this one.  I like her writing style, her way of looking at Italian rural living, and I love the imagery.  Verdict: A
• Book Review #2 — Marlena De Blasi’s That Summer in Sicily — This one was more of a narrative of someone else’s story than the usual documenting of De Blasi’s own adventures.  Though I loved the story, I didn’t enjoy the style of this one quite as much as I did the others.  All the same, still a beautiful story with great Italian imagery and beautiful prose.  Verdict: B+  Now if only I could find her book about Venice in the library, I would finally be able to complete the series!
• Book Review #3 — Jonathan Harr’s The Lost Painting — I loved this one.  It tells the (presumably nonfiction) story of the discovery of a lost Caravaggio painting.  The writing is extremely compelling, the story is complex enough to keep you interested, and I really enjoyed the discussion of the details of the painting and of the restoration process.  Verdict: A
• We’ve started to get some presents from our baby wishlist, so I wanted to say thank you if you’ve sent one.  I am trying to send out written thank you notes as the presents arrive, but we all know how tough that sometimes is.  So, if you’ve sent something, THANK YOU, and I promise you’ll get a note in the mail sometime soon.
• I’ve gotten five reviews so far on my Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award entry.  It’s pretty exciting, especially since at least one of the reviews is from someone I don’t know, and the editorial reviews are pretty positive too.  If you have time, and any interest in reading a fantasy type novel, I’d love for you to wander over to the site, download the first seventeen pages (it’s FREE) and leave a review for me.  They will choose the top 100 entries on April 15th, so I am hoping to have lots of positive reviews by then in the hopes of impressing the publishers!
• Today, I am officially 33 weeks pregnant.  There have been so many days leading up to this where I wasn’t sure I would ever get this far.  Now, with every new day passing, I am feeling more and more hopeful about the chance to really be taking this little girl home with me sometime soon.  In all likelihood, I will be bringing her home sometime in mid to late April.  We’ve put together her stroller and car seat, the hospital bag, and her going home outfit.  It’s making it all feel so… real.  I am SO excited about it, so ready to meet my little girl!
• Of course, all of this talk about preparing for Evi’s arrival has also brought with it a lot of thoughts about my sweet Aodin.  I sure do miss my little man.  A good friend said yesterday that she knew Evi would be a good baby because she will have learned so much from her big brother.  I told her how touched I was at this, since honestly very few people outside of my parents really talk about Aodin much anymore.  I understand why though.  That being said, she told me that she never thought of me without thinking of Aodin, because he is a part of who I am now.  I loved hearing that.  It made me proud (again) to be his mother, and so happy for the little moments I got to share with him.  I can’t wait to tell Evi about her brother, and to see what she has to tell me.
• Speaking of pregnancy, I cannot get enough MILK lately.  MILK MILK MILK.  I am not a huge fan of milk in general, and will only drink skim, and even then only with a super rich brownie or cookie or cake.  Otherwise, I like to drink water, juice, or diet sodas.  For the past couple of weeks though, I am downing a gallon of milk every four days or so all on my own!  I guess some baby needs the calcium, so I am happy to drink it.  Now if only I could find some cheap but good scallops, and someone would bring me an avocado, I would be utterly content.

Touched by an angel #6

It seems to be getting worse. In Chapter 4 (Beauty)1 John Cornwell takes issue with Richard Dawkins’ attack on the ‘argument from beauty’ in The God delusion.

Sixth in a series responding to John Cornwell’s Darwin’s angel: an angelic riposte to The God Delusion.2

See also: Touched by an angel #1; #2; #3; #4; & #5

From the sublime

Ludwig van Beethoven

First, what Dawkins actually says, including the first two sentences which Cornwell omits:

[A] character in the Aldous Huxley novel [Point counter point]… proved the existence of God by playing Beethoven’s string quartet no 15 in A minor (‘heiliger Dankgesang’) on a gramophone. Unconvincing as that sounds, it does represent a popular strand of argument. I have given up counting the number of times I receive the more or less truculent challenge: ‘How do you account for Shakespeare, then? (Substitute Schubert, Michelangelo, etc. to taste.) The argument will be so familiar, I needn’t document it further. But the logic behind it is never spelled out, and the more you think about it the more vacuous you realize it to be.3

Cornwell starts by countering Dawkins’ autobiographical statement (‘I have given up counting the number of times…’) with ‘Is this really a popular claim?’ Maybe I am gullible, but I am prepared to accept that a famous atheist does get presented with arguments like this fairly frequently. And that maybe angel Cornwell, defender of the faith, does not. Move on?

In fact Cornwell takes us on quite a tangent:

When people invoke religion in a work of art they generally mean that a religious theme or idea has inspired the work. It seems perfectly understandable, doesn’t it, that an artist should be moved by a religious story without necessarily adhering to orthodox beliefs…

Perhaps. But this is not Dawkins’ point, as his use of the example of Shakespeare - as opposed to, say, Dante - clearly demonstrates. Although there are plenty of biblical references in Shakespeare, there is little if any religion per se, little if any evidence of inspiration by a ‘religious theme or idea’. The ‘argument from beauty’ (in retrospect perhaps more accurately labelled the ‘argument from artistic creation’?) is effectively: God must exist, because otherwise how can we account for the works of (eg) Shakespeare and our experience of those works? The idea is that God reveals himself as the creator of artistic creation (via the creation of artists) and by our aesthetic appreciation of artistic creation. The artists themselves could be atheists. The argument is not: how can we account for Shakespeare’s religious inspiration?

This misunderstanding is probably why Cornwell finds Dawkins’ next passage so ‘curious’:

Obviously Beethoven’s late quartets are sublime. So are Shakespeare’s sonnets. They are sublime if God is there and they are sublime if he isn’t.4

Cornwell asks:

Whose standpoint are you adopting? The poet’s? The reader’s? God’s? Or Richard Dawkins, as an angel, surveying all three?

Sistine Chapel

Why is standpoint suddenly so problematic? Dawkins has described Shakespeare’s sonnets as sublime, as he has described the Sistine Chapel as inspirational and John Lennon’s Imagine as magnificent. So it is surely from Dawkins’ own standpoint - in the most obvious, subjective, unproblematic, unangelic sense? From the standpoint of the person making the evaluation - in the case of a poem, typically the reader or listener. Not, typically, the poet’s: I would like to tell you about this sublime poem I have just written? And, no, not God’s. (We will pass over Cornwell’s amnesia about who is supposed to be wearing the wings.)

To add weight to this interpretation it might help to quote a passage twenty or so pages later, from a different context, where Dawkins says:

As in the case of our ability to appreciate a Beethoven quartet, our sense of [moral] goodness (though not necessarily our inducement to follow it) would be the way it is with a God and without a God.5

Cornwell is in his own world though:

I think you might mean that a poem can have sublimity - whether the poet believes in God or not. That’s fair enough, except it doesn’t quite fit now with the next stage of your argument. You write that it’s as if readers would require that Cathy and Heathcliff really exist in order to enjoy Wuthering Heights!

Let’s take this step by step. No, it’s nothing to do with the poem having sublimity whether the poet believes in God or not. Dawkins is saying a sublime poem is sublime whether God exists or not. End of story. Cornwell may not agree with that statement, he may disagree with Dawkins’ evaluations of various artworks, but that is what Dawkins is saying - very clearly.

So the bit about Cathy and Heathcliff is beside the point. Except I am beginning to doubt whether Cornwell is reading the same version of The God delusion as I am. In the next paragraph Dawkins describes his surprise that his interviewer on Desert Island Discs could not understand how an atheist could enjoy Bach’s St Matthew Passion:

You might as well say, how can you enjoy Wuthering Heights when you know perfectly well that Cathy and Heathcliff never really existed?6

So, no, Dawkins actually seems to be making the very uncontroversial claim that someone can enjoy Wuthering Heights while being perfectly aware that Cathy and Heathcliff are fictional.

Cornwell has not quite finished with those poor ’sleepers in that quiet earth’, but the next bit of angelspeak I think I understand:

Although the Gospels are not history in the modern sense, they can be read in the reasonable confidence that Jesus Christ actually lived and walked the earth 2,000 years ago; that he chose followers, preached a striking message about love, told parables, and was crucified. Accepting that Christ was the Son of God, performed miracles, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven certainly requires something more than routine credibility: it requires faith. But is this comparable to requiring that to “enjoy” Wuthering Heights, a reader must believe that its characters actually existed? Surely not. A willing suspension of disbelief such as one adopts when reading plays, novels, and poetry is not at all the same as faith; and your insinuation that people are incapable of making such a distinction betrays a poor regard for the reading public.

Now this does connect with Dawkins’ response on Desert Island Discs. But its strange positioning is presumably so Cornwell can level his charge of ‘insinuation’. Dawkins may have been referring to ‘willing suspension of disbelief’, but not necessarily. All he was actually saying was that he could enjoy (rather than “enjoy” - whatever that means) a novel without believing the fictional characters were real; and that, for him, was similar to his being able to enjoy Bach’s St Matthew Passion without believing in God - or, perhaps more specifically, without having the same sort of belief as a Christian might have in the full reality and significance of the events in the life of Jesus which the composition refers to.

Barack Obama

A person or character depicted in (say) narrative could be completely fictional, completely factual, or somewhere in between. For example Titus Andronicus in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is completely fictional; Barack Obama in a news report about his inauguration is completely factual; and Richard III in Shakespeare’s Richard III is somewhere in between. I think it would be fair to say that Dawkins the atheist would see God as completely fictional, and the Jesus of the gospels as being at least in the category of the Shakespearean Richard III. Hence his unsurprising parallel between listening to the St Matthew Passion and reading Wuthering Heights.

But there is no reference here to the ‘reading public’, and therefore no insinuation about them. Dawkins wasn’t even referring to the ‘reading public’, let alone generalising about them. It is actually Cornwell who is generalising about the reading public, by implying that fiction always and only works via a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’. He is also generalising about the Christian reading public by implying that there is one and only one kind of ‘faith’ and it is totally unlike the willing suspension of disbelief which typically but not necessarily accompanies the enjoyment of fiction.

Phew.

References

1 John Cornwell, Darwin’s angel: an angelic riposte to The God Delusion, Profile Books, London, 2007.

2 John Cornwell, 2007: 1 above.

3 Richard Dawkins, The god delusion, Bantam, 2006.

4 Richard Dawkins, 2006: 3 above.

5 Richard Dawkins, 2006: 3 above.

6 Richard Dawkins, 2006: 3 above.

© Chris Lawrence 2009.

What I'm Reading: "Doing Business God's Way" by Dennis Peacocke

I read an article last month on “Economics and the Current Financial Crisis” that was one of the most informative and insightful perspectives that I had found on our nation’s economic state. (http://www.gostrategic.org/index.cfm?pageID=253#) This article led me to purchase a book by the author, Dennis Peacocke, entitled “Doing Business God’s Way.” This is an excellent handbook for approaching economics from a biblical perspective.

Some of my current reads are exposing me to our critical need for a sound biblical worldview through which we can see all of the components of our world and culture accurately. Of course, this statement presupposes that there is in fact an accurate way to see things, thus implying that there is an opposing inaccurate way to see things. This presupposition is grounded in the acknowledgement and belief that in spite of what secular humanism and cultural relativism have so subtly taught us, there remains a right and wrong perspective and a subsequent course of action that ensues. Perhaps a little heavy for a simple book review, but significant nonetheless, as Peacocke begins his discourse of a biblical ethic towards economics with examining the relationship between a person’s and a nation’s philosophy toward life and its effects on poverty and wealth on both respectively.

Why I Would Recommend This Book

It’s simple really. Economics is an absolute, unchangeable reality of life that cannot be argued or ignored. Times of instability are perfect opportunities for kingdom leaders to arise with divine solutions. The biblical character of Joseph in the book of Genesis is a perfect example of this (Genesis 41:28-38). These divine solutions are the culminating effect of a character that has been thoroughly proven, a worldview that has been accurately shaped, and a wisdom that has been divinely inspired. These are the responses that God’s people can and I believe should be making in this hour, not reactions induced by and with fear.

I’ve studied numerous books on the subject of leadership, business management, organizational systems and structures, etc. What I have found in “Doing Business God’s Way”, however, has opened up a whole new world of thinking as it relates to leadership, management, ownership, and money. I have been severely challenged to be more intentional with my leadership and productive with my stewardship. Dennis’ book is not a lifeless documentary on what some view as a stale subject carrying negative emotions from high school or college. The principles in this book are biblical, they are relevant, they are fresh, and they are timeless. You’ll be inspired and equipped to look at all of life from parenting, creating, leading, and owning differently.

Excerpt of “Doing Business God’s Way” – (Partial) Table of Contents

Chapter 1: God is Building a Family Business – God is the Creator of Private Property

Chapter 2: Maturity Comes by Stewarding Property – We grow by Caring for People and Things.

Chapter 3: Generational Wealth and the Family Unit – All Lasting Wealth Comes Through the Family Unit and is Built Generationally.

Chapter 4: Our God Loves to Work – Work is a Holy, Everlasting Calling

Chapter 5: The Product of the Family Business is Service – Service is the Foundation of all Lasting Growth

Confirm Yourself in Anglicanism

I am currently attending Confirmation Classes at my Episcopal parish.  If there is one thing you’ll discover when talking to Anglicans is that defining the term “Anglican” is really quite difficult to do.  Sometimes the “Via Media” seems more like the “Via anything-goes.”

As an academically minded youth I have found a treasure trove of books on Anglianism which have been helping me learn what it means to think and believe like a Prayer Book person.  I would venture to say this.  Anglicanism, before all other branches of Protestantism, is truly a body which takes the phrase “Reformed and Always Reforming” pretty literally.  Heck, they were even Prebyterians for a few years.  I am hedging my bets that they can keep it going, and hopefully with thinkers like Wright, Williams, Thiselton, Milton, Jenkins, McGrath, Polkinghorne, and Radner at the helm, we might end up looking more like Christ than we did yesterday.

Of course, first you will need a Book of Common Prayer.  The official Episcopal Church one is the 1979 BCP.  I have heard many complaints about this book but have found almost no faults in the celebrations of the Daily Office, Liturgy’s for Special Occasions (such as Ash Wed. etc…) and the Service for Eucharist.  In fact it takes much of the 1662 BCP and updates it with the theories advanced by the famous Liturgist Gregory Dix which in the end have made the book a bit more Catholic than it’s predecessor.  So show some love for the ‘79.  But, that is not to say that the 1662 (the sort of “gold standard” book - ie- the one the British colonized the world with) isn’t powerful, especially for the services for ordination.  So get one of those too.  To fill in the blanks, this MASSIVE tome on the worldwide BCP’s lays to rest the conservative argument that the 1662 is the “authoritative” book in the Communion.

There are of course many many books which purport to tell us all what Anglicanism really “is” but these days one needs two perspectives, I think, to really get a feel for it.  One needs a book from the perspective of “Classical Anglicanism,” which is inevitably Anglo-focused.  But the truth is that the formative years were all very, well, British.  I can think of no more thorough book than “The Study of Anglicanism” edited by Stephan Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight.  In its revised edition it spans a substantial 517 pages with a brief “History” of Anglicanism at the start, from which it moves on to well researched essays on everything from Canon law to our Eucharistic theology.  Highly recommended.

But of course on also needs a book which paints Anglicanism as it actually is now, which is a non-Western church.  More people attend an Anglican church in Nigeria on a single Sunday morning than all the Anglicans in Britain, America, Canada, Scotland and Ireland combined.  We are now a World Communion (or are trying to be) and “An Introduction to World Anglicanism” from Cambridge helps us to get our heads around what Anglicanism is and where it might “be going.”

A very short yet greatly commendable book is by none other than Rowan Williams.  His little book “Anglican Identities” gives us some academic articles on Tyndale, two on Hooker, as well as Ramsey, Westcott, the poet Herbert, J. A. T. Robinson and an intriguing essay “Anglican Approaches to St. John’s Gospel.”  A must.

As Anglicans have tried to avoid Confessionalism, much of their identity comes from thier divines.  Another huge book which is a collection of pieces by no fewer than 100 thinkers and poets (not that poets aren’t thinkers!) “Love’s Redeeming Work - The Anglican Quest for Holiness” This book is a gem.

There are of course many other books which could be very helpful, perhaps this one on Anglican Ecclesiology, or this “Very Short Introduction” or “Anglican Approaches to Scripture“; but I only have so much time!

A Great and Terrible Beauty: Book Review

Buy A Great and Terrible Beauty from Amazon.com

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray is about a young woman, Gemma Doyle, who is sent off to boarding school in India after her mother is murdered in India.  Gemma witnessed the murder of her mother and she cannot rid herself of the responsibility she feels for her mother’s death.  While in boarding school, Gemma learns that there is more about her mother than met the eye and the strange occurrences that she’s been experiencing may be more real than she thinks.  Gemma must face the truth about her mother and contend with new friendships in A Great and Terrible Beauty. 

Although many of the circumstances surrounding the novel are supernatural, Bray accurately portrays the roles that women played in Victorian society.  Women did not have many rights and were often seen as little more than objects for marriage.  Young girls, especially, were disempowered and led to believe that their only hopes were for a successful marriage.  The futility of these girls lives is an ongoing theme throughout the novel.  The girls in the novel (Gemma, Felecity, Pippa and Ann) long for independence and to fufill their own dreams; but the dictates of their family and society often overrule any hopes for a future.

 

Bray, also, portrays the cattiness of young girl with vivid clarity.  Although the girls have little to no freedom in their lives, they try to gain freedom through positioning in their social circles.  Felicity, the alpha female, always reigns supreme and the others follow in hopes of riding on her coattails.  Ann is marked as the outcast for the other girls use to retain their position of top dog.  The book, in many ways, plays up to a Victoria retelling of Mean Girls with a twist, because these girls have more depth to them than the stereotypes they portray.

At the heart of the novel, Gemma is a young girl who may be able to bring a little excitement into all of the girls’ lives.  She just discovers an unimaginable power and she must learn how to control and be responsible with it.  For all of these girls, this power brings about the possibility of freedom.  A freedom they could not have imagined and all of a sudden they crave and need it more than they know.  Will this new power destroy these girls or bring them together?

 

The novel is well-written and tells the all to0 familiar story of the confinement of being female.  Although the story is set in Victorian England, there is much that can be related to for modern girls.  Clicks, cattiness, mean pranks, etc are all in today’s society.  The images that women portray to the world are not always true and there is depth to every person if delved into.

List of books in The Gemma Doyle Trilogy:

• Book 1: A Great and Terrible Beauty ($9.99 from Amazon)
• Book 2: The Sweet Far Thing ($12.23 from Amazon)
• Book 3: Rebel Angels ($9.99 from Amazon)

February Short Book Reviews

Devil’s Cub – Georgette Heyer. This did not suffer at all from my not having read its predecessor (These Old Shades) and was improved by the parents of the main characters all having their own extremely lively backstories which, while often only alluded to, made everyone more interesting and twice as large as life. Abductions, compromising situations, concealed identities, everyone defending everyone else’s honour with a different understanding of what that means, character A shooting character B (non-fatal) after B says A won’t (this reminds me of my family – never dare my mother to do something, by the way). Lots of fun.

The Corinthian – Georgette Heyer. Not as outrageous as Devil’s Cub, but with occasionally startling, how-can-this-not-be-intentional subtext (and having now read some of her non-historical fiction I think it was intentional), theft and murder and assumed identities coming back to bite the people who thought they were a good idea to start with.

The Talisman Ring – Georgette Heyer. I didn’t expect to enjoy this little murdery/theft/mystery/romance as much as I did, but then the second-fiddle silly heroine turned out to be deliberately pretending to be silly, which led to some hilarious asides between her and the people who know she hasn’t really fainted, etc. Also, smugglers and secret passages and hidden cellars and daring adventurers.

The Narrow Road to the Interior – Bashō. A quiet little pause of a book, in the midst of all these others – the tranquil, poetic account of the author/poet’s journey through 17th century Japan.

Space Train – Terrence Haile. I posted extracts and initial thoughts here. It was an experience. A consistently horrific experience.

Young Miles – Lois McMaster Bujold. This is an omnibus (‘by, to, from, for or with everybody’) of two novels and a novella: The Warrior’s Apprentice, ‘The Mountains of Mourning’ and The Vor Game, so I’m claiming it as two novels for the purposes of this year’s book count. I had been evading Bujold and regret that now. They were wonderful – adventure/mystery/detective/military-procedural/comedy-of-manners/jurisprudential/concealed-identities/missing-emperor/clash-of-cultures/clash-of-eras/cumulative-disaster stories which move at a flying pace, full of wonderful characters, irresistible forward momentum, hope, disappointments, reverses, surprises – they were like Hornblower and Jack Ryan and Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer, but with space battles and situations which make the thought of writing an SOS in macramé seem plausible until 3 weeks after finishing the book when you realise it is brilliantly ridiculous.

The Amazing, Remarkable Monsier Leotard – Eddie Campbell and Dan Best (graphic novel). Self-indulgent, but not in a bad way. I felt like I was reading something the author and illustrator had made not with ‘the audience’ in mind, but for their own pleasure. A gentle, episodic, odd, humorous, sad series of vignettes of circus life and adventures and aging and fading, with beautiful soft sketchy images. Also with fortitudinous bowels, unlikely deaths and a cameo by ‘Lord’ George Sanger, whose autobiography I have just started reading.

Penhallow – Georgette Heyer. The only reason I wanted a happy ending for any of these appalling characters was so that I didn’t have to close the book thinking of them living out their horrible lives in self-inflicted misery. The cover billed it as a murder mystery, but it wasn’t a who-done-it at all. It was a why-haven’t-they-done-it-yet. When the victim was murdered, at last, I knew who had done it (you saw it happen, and also the blurb was completely wrong) and didn’t really mind if the murderer was caught. The characterisation was very thorough (I often enjoyed the descriptions) – I just disliked all the characters.

Flowers for Mrs Harris – Paul Gallico. The only Gallico novel I had read was heart-rending, lyrical The Snow Goose: A Story of Dunkirk. I only realised when the last movie version came out that he also wrote The Poseidon Adventure, which was… unexpected. Flowers for Mrs Harris is like neither. It is a short, cheerful, hopeful and unlikely story of Mrs Harris, a cleaning lady, who saves to buy a Dior dress and goes to Paris to buy it. It tips between characterising some things as having particular appeal to the feminine brain (I think that may have been Terrence Haile’s term rather than Gallico’s), and praising an unvarnished, unromantic life of hard work and independence. It is sentimental, comic and lightly tragic but always pragmatically so (it reminded me a little of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, which I have seen but not read), and is a short, cheerful read.

Also: Genesis, Esther, Mark and Romans.

Oh, this new-fangled technology!

A lot of older persons are accused of avoiding the many varieties of new technologies. I suppose to some extent that’s true. A lot of us, however, are reasonably conversant with all this geek stuff. And then there are those few shining examples who not only speak to it, but rush to greet all the new advances with open arms.

Such a one is Peter E. Abresch, now resident close to the Chesapeake Bay region of the Maryland shore, with his wife of a good many years, Annemarie. After a career with the government during which he learned about computers, Peter turned to writing fiction after his retirement in 1991. Because he and Annemarie liked to attend Elderhostels™, he decided to use that as a setting for what became his Elderhostel Mysteries. If you’ve not yet read any of them, I will highly recommend them. Bloody Bonsai introduces us to Jim Dandy (James P., to be formal) a fairly-recent widower who finds himself at loose ends. His kids talk him into attending an Elderhostel™  Course on Bonsai, little realizing what they’ve started! He finds an attractive, unattached artist who owns her own gallery, and in addition to her artistic skills has a huge curiosity bump. Dodee Swisher leads, Jim follows and finally, they manage to identify the murderer without getting either of them killed in the process.

The problem here is that he’s on the east coast, she’s in the midwest, but phone calls and letters persuade them to try again (this was in the days before e-mail) so the next summer, off they go to Baltimore and a cooking school. Library Journal categorized Killing Thyme as “An entertaining blend of cooking tidbits, Baltimore surrounds, fascinating workshop participants, and persistent hanky-panky on the sidelines.” Well!

Their next adventure Tip a Canoe finds the two at a birdwatching/nature study Elderhostel™  on South Carolina’s Santee Lakes. The following year, however, finds them on the other side of the USA and the Santa Fe Trail in Painted Lady. This one veers into the supernatural a bit, as Dodee’s paintings seem to carry the image of a woman who fell from the hotel rooftop before their trip actually started. There is also a novella – Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing.

Unhappily, because of the crunch in the publishing world, at this point, Peter lost his publisher. But writers don’t usually give up when that happens – they’re optimistic creatures, and continue writing, regardless. He was encouraged by notes from fans asking “where’s the next book in the series?” So last fall, he took it upon himself to publish the next one — Name Games through CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon.com.

In this one, Peter indulges his fondness for puns and word games by the names he assigns to the characters, other than Jim and Dodee, that is. The adventure nearly does them in, as they go white-water rafting and hiking through the woods. He thought it would be safe–who ever heard of a drive-by shooting from a rubber raft?

In addition to these five novels, Peter has two other novels in print through CreateSpace: Capital Coven and If They Ask For A Hand, Only Give Them A Finger, both of which deal with spies and so forth in the Washington DC area. There is also one non-fiction guide book: Easy Reading Writing: Easy Reading about Writing Easy Reading.

Well, I hear you say, a lot of people do self-publishing these days, and that’s very true. It’s easier than ever with the POD (print on demand) process which keeps millions of trees still standing instead of being converted into books that are all-too-soon converted to fodder for landfills. But Peter has gone one better, embracing the new technologies of pod-casting and creating audio books on CD, all by his own self. Mostly.

Every now and then one of his books has too many characters in it for him to do all the different voices, so he ropes a friend or two into a few sessions with the digital recorder, splices it all together in the computer and bingo! Book on CDs for easy listening.

Coven, being slightly longer is on 8 CDs, while Finger is on 6. Full information and details are available through his web-site: www.sidewalkbooks.com He’s also allowed Amazon to convert the print books to e-books for its Kindle reader. And there are a couple of books available for free downloads at podiobooks.com Be advised that donations are accepted at that site, and the author does receive a fair share.

And if you like poetry, you might like to receive one of his spiritual type poems which he sends out every Monday. Send an e-mail to Peter at Sidewalkbooks.com and put ‘Burnt Offerings’ in the subject line. If you’d rather have a weekly newsletter about writing fiction, put ‘BookMarc’ in the subject line.

We should all be so into new things—for fun, he’s learning to play a 5-string banjo!—and active as we gently ‘mellow into fine wine.’ His most recent birthday was his 78th! Way to go, Peter!

As always, if you have comments or questions, you may use the space provided below or write to me directly at: kelly at theseniorreader.com           No spam, please! Consider this your advisory notice that that if you send spam, it will be automatically forwarded to the US government and your ISP.

2009 Trinity Blogging Summit

I’m am quite pleased to announce the 2009 Trinity Blogging Summit, thank God it’s finally here!  I would like to express my sincerest appreciation for those who were able to participate and I apologize for the constant delays.  I myself did not write on the Trinity although I wish I had.  I thought I’d take the easy way out by providing a bibliography of Trinitarian resources but this ended up taking me days upon days to compile and I know that I haven’t even scratched the surface.  Perhaps I’ll be able to contribute something else at a later date in time.  Let me also take this time to say that if you were originally supposed to contribute and would like to do so at your convenience, I’d be happy to update this page.  Now onto the posts which I list in the order I received them.  Enjoy!

1. Chicken of the Sea — Theodora Ranelli
2. Triune Holiness — Peter J. Leithart
3. Rethinking the Shape of the Trinity — Anne Kim
4. Greek Syntax and the Trinity — Mike Aubrey
5. A Trinitarian Bibliography — Nick Norelli

And while we’re on the subject of the Trinity allow me to direct your attention to three posts listed on my Scholar’s Corner page which provide links to quite a few of the articles listed in my bibliography.  

• Christological Resources Online
• Trinitarian Resources Online
• Monotheism in Antiquity   

You might also be interested in the various reviews I’ve done on books about the Trinity:

• A Brief History of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Church
• Classical Trinitarian Theology: A Textbook
• Communion with the Triune God 
• Delighting in the Trinity: Just Why Are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit Such Good News? 
• Father, Son, & Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, & Relevance 
• Father, Son, and Spirit: The Trinity in John’s Gospel
• God the Holy Trinity: Reflections on Christian Faith and Practice
• God’s Life in Trinity
• The God Who Is Triune: Revisioning the Christian Doctrine of God
• The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship
• Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the doctrine of the Trinity
• Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective
• The One True God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 
• Paradox in Christian Theology: An Analysis of Its Presence, Character, and Epistemic Status
• Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology
•  The Substance of the Faith: Luther’s Doctrinal Theology for Today 
• Trinitarian Soundings in Systematic Theology
• The Trinity: Evidence & Issues [pt. 2 here]
• The Trinity (Guides to Theology)
• The Trinity Guide to the Trinity
• The Trinity & Subordinationism: The Doctrine of God & the Contemporary Gender Debate
• The Triune God: An Essay in Postliberal Theology

B”H

I shook Michael Chabon's hand...

Reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is like going on a wine tour. You have to be a certain age to even drink wine and you have to be subtle/intellectual enough to care about the differences. Also, you have to resist the urge to slowly become a douchebag. That’s how I felt about Kavalier and Clay: mostly because I’ve heard the hype and I know it’s going to be a great gosh-golly punch in the face story- but in a good way- type of book. And it was. There’s no denying that.

Michael Chabon, as everyone probably knows, is a master of storytelling. His sentences are so cozy and elaborate, they “just pick you up and tuck you in bed” as one critic put it. I would have to agree. His book was dense to the point that I felt like I was eating a 5by5 burger at in-n-out. Like damn, talk about hindering the story. I suppose people like the elaborate descriptions that gives every object in the room some kind of personal attitude, but I thought there was too much of that.

I tend to shy away from things that everyone just adores. It gets old. But Kavalier and Clay is definitely a “classic” that will last for generations. The story encompasses the magic of youth and puppy love, but also draws in comic-book fanatics: the long lost fantasy of every true American boy. It’s also a commentary on the American Dream - for all its sleazy business men and riches beyond any poor Jewish boy’s imagination. It’s also written amazingly well by  a writer who is indeed fluent in the language of sentence construction.

Perhaps when I am older, old enough to taste wine and appreciate the value of Michael Chabon’s hand, and less cynical to the fanatics that surrounded me at his book reading, I can let his sentences “tuck me into bed”.But right now, when I’m young and impatient, I’m going to end up swallowing delicacies whole.

Vivian Hoxbro: Abstract Stole

I’ve been following Vivian Hoxbro designs for awhile now, but never really quite got the bug to knit one of these designs until I discovered this pattern from her book, Knit to be Square.  I love, love, love this pattern for its bright colors, and playful personality.  I just received a newsletter from Harrisville yarns announcing that all of her kits will be going on sale for 25% off at harrisville.com from March 17-28, 2009.  Yesterday I braved the long trip to Wild Fibers in Santa Monica and found another great pattern book by Elsebeth Lavold in her designer’s choice series, book 17, the small things matter collection.  Filled with beautiful accessories made with her silky wool.  You can see photos of all the designs here.  My favorites are Hana and Malin

Readerly Updates

Apologies for the lack of updates.  Things have been interesting.  I’ve had quite a few family commitments that have made internet time almost non-existent.  In fact, it’s taken an early night on a business trip for me to even get a chance to poke my head in here, but while I haven’t been online much, I’ve definitely been reading.

I’m really starting to wonder if I’m a little ADD when it comes to reading, because I haven’t been finishing books very quickly, and I’m on a trend of reading at least four books at a time - three novels and a book of poetry - that I don’t know when it will end.

The one thing I have finished is my reread of Stephenie Meyer’s The Host.  I really resisted reading this the first go around, and took every chance to scrutinize it vocally that I could, but by the time it was over I couldn’t deny that I loved the thing.  It’s still a very bizarre book the second time around - bits of it remind me of a Miyazaki film on acid - but rereading it and knowing those parts were going to come in, it was a little easier to swallow.  I still have issues with a few little points where someone along the line (and that of course starts with Ms. Meyer herself) didn’t fact-check things very thoroughly (ask me about the honey issue sometimes… that one really irks me), and I still hate the first ten chapters.  But.  Ian.  O’Shea.  I have to admit, that if it came down to a fight to the death in Meyer characters for my affection… well, Ian is the only one who could give Jacob Black a run for his money.  Well maybe that Garrett fellow from Breaking Dawn—he was pure beauty.

I still get frustrated with various aspects of Meyer’s hackneyed sense of literary justice.  In Twilight, Bella gets her little circle of weirdly immortal friends/family, with no change, ever, and here we get a very strong character made pointedly weak and all but helpless at the very end of the novel.  It’s for that reason, mainly, that I wouldn’t mind it terribly if there aren’t any sequels to this, despite the fact that the ending leaves it very open for continuation.  My one leaning for a sequel, would be so we could learn more about Burns, because I just happen to have a weakness for tall redheads in stories (and in real life, for that matter).

I’ve also been rereading some other things - I guess it’s a trend lately.  I’m indulging in a life-long crush and rereading Anne of Green Gables. I haven’t read this series in years, and never read all of it, actually, and I’d really like to.  Anne Shirley was one of my very first fictional friends, which I guess is true for millions of people.  The love story between Anne and Gilbert Blythe, which I’ve barely touched as of yet in the first novel, is one that’s influenced my taste for fictional pairings all my life—it’s something a half-step beyond “will they or won’t they,” there’s that spark that’s just as likely to explode in your face as it is to combust in a more positive way.  Anne is completely disdainful of Gilbert for years, on account of a percieved insult she recieved from him at their very first meeting, but Gilbert is struck, full victim to Anne’s overenthusiastic, romantic charms despite her temper.  That said, he never moons over his losses, and he doesn’t roll over and play dead, either.  While I wouldn’t say he fights back, really, Gilbert gets his digs in here and there, and his patience runs out at various times (very understandably), which is something I’ve always appreciated.  It makes the pair of them much more real than a saintly ever-lasting patience would.  (And along that line, how does Stephenie Meyer compare Edward and Bella to this?  Really?)

I’m reading Emma, also, to finish out my round of Austen novels, but it’s going surprisingly slowly.  I’ve always enjoyed this novel before, but it just seems to be dragging, which is strange because I know I’m comprehending more of it than I had the first two times I’d read it (Both for classes, and both rushed.  And both years ago).  Maybe I’m just distracted by the fact that the fourth Fablehaven novel comes out March 24th.  I am looking forward to that an awful lot.  Maybe not to Harry Potter proportions, but up there with Jasper Fforde, which is high in my book.

Does God Have An 'Eternal Purpose'? A Review of From Eternity to Here by Frank Viola

It was 2003; I was 23. Finally after all these years, I had scraped up the cash (& credit cards) to undergo that great American rite of passage - the summer trip to Europe. Thanks to the generosity of Andrew Jones & family, a couple of house churches, and many other hospitable friends (including Bea & Andy Marshall) I made my way from London to Bournemouth to the Netherlands to Birmingham and Sheffield. While on one leg of my British journey, I was part of a learning party Andrew & friends put on called Wabi-Sabi. It was there I was having a conversation with a fellow American, a new friend 20 years my senior, who had published a book the year before. He was a pastor and church planter, and ‘coach’ to other pastors and church planters. He was asking me what I was up to, & I told him about a book I was working on. (It’s a book I’m still working on! Could this be the month I finish it..?)

“What’s it about?” He asked.

I proceeded to tell him, noting that in part it attempts to unfold “The eternal purpose of God.”

“Well!” He exclaimed jovially but incredulously. “When you figure that one out, be sure to let the rest of us know!”

Ah, these were the early, heady days of postmodern incredulity to metanarratives - even postmodern Christian suspicion of Christian metanarratives. And why not, after all? We (at least, we evangelical Christians) were weaned on a ‘big story’ of “If you were to die tonight, do you have assurance in your heart that you’d go to heaven?” Or, “Have you heard the four spiritual laws?” Those of us following Jesus with awareness of our post-everything cultural shift were keenly aware of the shortcomings of our blithely-uttered “theories of everything,” and were looking for a humbler approach - even if it ultimately meant affirming a much humbler, more localized, cosmology.

But I had a problem - one I still have, at least in part, today. But it’s one I think From Eternity to Here by Frank Viola speaks into. My problem, sitting in Europe circa 2003 - and in the Southeast US of A circa 2009 - is that, since 1998 or so, I was arrested by a grand story - a tale of a God in love, a God who is love, a God who is Community, creating matter and physicality and embodiment as an expression of that love to pour Godself into. If this Story doesn’t do away with the Fall-Rescue-Restoration narrative so common to Christendom, it certainly reframes it, going back further and then permeating the present, to the point (for me at least) that some eschatological tensions are less pronounced. And further still, proponents of this Story have the audacity to believe it’s hiding in plain sight right in our bibles:

Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Paul’s letter known as Ephesians, 3:8-11, TNIV - emphasis mine, as ancient Hebrews & Greeks did not have italic fonts yet.)

So this story’s sexy - it has grace, and the overseeing of an age-old ‘mystery,’ in the same sense as ‘mystical’ or Babylonian mystery religion (only better). A message, a power, hidden by God in Christ that would be as revelatory to heavenly principalities and powers as it would be for mere mortals, a divine purpose that’s not only age-old but eternal.

WTF??

By which I mean Where to, Frank?? It is this impenetrable enigma that Viola turns his pen to unfolding for us - and it’s a good thing, too: If folks in the first century CE barely grasped what the apostle Paul (and, Frank contends, Jesus - and others) were talking about, we certainly don’t talk much about this stuff 20+ centuries later.

Except, interestingly, there is a stream of the Christian family who has dared speak about such things: Plymouth Brethren, Christian Missionary Alliance, Keswick Higher Life movement folks, and their descendents. I can’t do justice to their whole story here - that’d be a post in itself, or a series - so I’ll just do a genealogy. Ruth Paxson begat Mary McDonough begat Watchman Nee and T. Austin-Sparks (I’m talkin’ spiritually, now) begat Stephen Kaung and Devern Fromke. Hudson Taylor and AW Tozer run around in this family tree too, somewhere. All of these folks had teaching ministries, or churches, or publishing outreaches, the emphasized the the exchange that happens when those who trust in Christ spiritually ‘die’ with Christ and have his resurrected life take the place of your own - and how this all fits into a larger, more cosmic plan of God’s original purpose - or as Fromke calls it, ‘The Ultimate Intention.’

Frank brings these teachers’ core messages into the 21st century, connecting them in dialogue with other branches of the Christian family, including neo-orthodox folks like Karl Barth & Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who explore radically Christ-centered spirituality as the ground of all being and escape from religion and conventional categories of knowledge), and more recently still post-evangelical luminaries like Stan Grenz and Miroslav Volf who explore the social habits of the Trinity and how these might be reflected in the Church.

So where to, Frank? Frank wants us to begin in the Godhead:

In “the agelessness of eternity,” God had an incredible dream: He wished to expand the “infinite communion” that He had with His beloved Son. He wanted other beings to participate in the interior mystery of the Trinity, to share in the sacred exchange of fellowship, love, and life that flows…between the Father and His Son. He wanted others to participate in “the amiable society” of the Godhead.

But he doesn’t end there. In order to “participate” in the Godhead, the Church in Frank’s depiction lives out four values (see chapter 27):

Communion with God:

As the bride of Christ, the church is called to commune with, love, enthrone, and intimately know the heavenly Bridegroom who indwells her.

Churches that excel in the bridal dimension give time and attention to spiritual fellowship with the Lord. Worship is a priority. Seeking the Lord, loving Him, communing with Him, and encountering Him are central.

Corporate display of the church in an atmosphere of ever-member freedom:

The church is called to gather together regularly to display God’s life through the ministry of every Christian. How? …In open-participatory meetings where every member of the believing priesthood functions, ministers, and expresses the living God in an open-participatory atmosphere (see 1 Cor. 14:26; 1 Pet. 2:5; Heb. 10:24–25, etc).

God dwells in every Christian and can inspire any of us to share something that comes from Him with the church. In the first century, every Christian had both the right and the privilege of speaking to the community. This is the practical expression of the New Testament doctrine of the priesthood all believers.

The open-participatory church meeting was the common gathering of the early church. It’s purpose? To edify the entire church and to display, express, and reveal the Lord through the members of the body to principalities and powers in heavenly places (Eph. 3:8–11).

Community life where practical reconciliation takes place:

The church’s allegiance was exclusively given to the new Caesar, the Lord Jesus, and she lived by His rule. As a result, the response by her pagan neighbors was, “Behold, how they love one another!”

God’s ultimate purpose is to reconcile the universe under the lordship of Jesus Christ (Col. 1:20; Eph. 1:10). As the community of the King, the church stands in the earth as the masterpiece of that reconciliation and the pilot project of the reconciled universe. In the church, therefore, the Jewish-Gentile barrier has been demolished as well as all barriers of race, culture, sex, etc. (Gal. 3:28; Eph. 2:16). The church lives and acts as the new humanity on earth that reflects the community of the Godhead.

Thus when those in the world see a group of Christians from different cultures and races loving one another, caring for one another, meeting one another’s needs, living against the current trends of this world that give allegiance to other gods instead of to the world’s true Lord, Jesus Christ, it is watching the life of the future kingdom lived out on earth in the present. As Stanley Grenz once put it, “The church is the pioneer community. It points toward the future God has in store for His creation.”

It is this “kingdom community” that turned the Roman Empire on its ear. Here was a people who possessed joy, who loved one another deeply, who made decisions by consensus, who handled their own problems, who married each other, who met one another’s financial needs, and who buried one another.

Commission where we love the world as God does:

As we have already seen, when Jesus Christ ascended into heaven, He chose to express Himself through a body to continue His ministry on earth. As the body of Christ, the church not only cares for its own, but it also cares for the world that surrounds it. Just as Jesus did while He was on earth.

The pages of history are filled with stories of how the early Christians took care of the poor, stood for those who suffered injustice, and met the needs of those who were dying by famine or plague. In other words, the early Christian communities cared for their non-Christian neighbors who were suffering.

Not a few times a plague would sweep through a city, and all the pagans left town immediately, leaving their loved ones to die. That included the physicians. But it was the Christians who stayed behind and tended to their needs, sometimes even dying in the process…the early church understood that she was carrying on the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. She well understood that He was the same today, yesterday, and forever (Heb. 13:8).

So there you have it. I’m still not sure if we contingent humans can dare speak in plain prose about something as ineffable as an “eternal purpose of God.” And yet, if I saw my American church planter friend again today, I’d echo Pete Rollins (or is that Caputo? Or is that Derrida?) in saying that while language definitely fails at such a sublime provocation, we cannot help but speak about eternity and ultimate meaning. Some of the best conversations, orations, letters and books have been penned exploring this very idea, and From Eternity to Here is no exception. What I appreciate about it is its desire to marry the contemplative with the active, the mystical (if you will) with the missional. As I said in my inside-cover endorsement of the book,

Frank Viola is the heir apparent to classic Deeper Christian Life teachers, faithfully bringing their core ideas into the 21st century with his own fresh insight. Visio Dei meets Missio Dei in this passionate examination of what motivates the very heart of God!

Check it out. I’d love to hear your thoughts. And for a list of reviews and endorsements, check out the booksite.