Last week I gave a description of 20 highly recommended brand new books that have arrived here in the Dallastown shop. These were mostly theological or spiritual books, overtly Christian, and very important. They are almost all books that will become well known (and you may have even heard of them here, first!) If you missed that random list of good Christian books, please go back and look through that previous BookNotes. And order a few — they are tremendous.

Here is a deeper dive into some other titles that have come in. Some of these you may have heard of, most are not on faith-based publishing houses (although a few are) and, a few may not be destined for the best-sellers list. But, again, even if a few are a bit off the beaten path, these are books we think you’d like to know about and we are very eager to recommend.

All are discounted at 20% off for our BookNotes friends. Please use the link to our secure order form at the end of the newsletter to order. We really appreciate your interest (even if some of these books may not be found in your typical Christian bookstore.) Enjoy.

The Overlooked Americans: The Resilience of Our Rural Towns and What It Means for Our Country Elizabeth Currid-Halkett (Basic Books) $32.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

We have a number of books about what might be called the sociology of place, books looking at new urbanism as well as small town and rural life titles. (In our church section, we also have books about rural churches and small town ministry.) This is considered to be a much-needed reassessment of small town life, done by a major scholar — she was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and holds a chair of Modern Culture at the Library of Congress. As an expert on regional planning, she sees the big picture, but knows that the devil is in the details, as they say.

Richard Florida (a name you should know) says that the book reveals “life in rural America to be complex and varied — and in many cases better off than conventional wisdom would have us believe.” Happily, she will make a case that urban, suburban, and rural Americans may have more in common than we think. Currid-Halkett combines both quantitative research and fine storytelling to offer a new understanding of what’s going on — the grit and the grace — among rural and small town Americans. This just came and I’m eager to study it.

At Home on An Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth Madeline Ostrander (Holt) $28.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I think this may be one of the best written and most compelling books — a page-turner, for me — that I have read in quite a while. In a work that Bill McKibben calls “marvelous” and more than one reviewer calls “compassionate” this investigative journalist has studied (for years) four different places that have experienced a certain sort of very bad impact due to climate change. As she traces the stories of a few key characters in these regions, we learn their backstory, their crisis, their bravery, and their hope for some sort of sustainable living in these changing landscapes.

There is, to begin this whole study, a moving and informed rumination on the meaning of and the importance of a sense of place and a perception of home.

Ooooh, I kept thinking of the masterpiece by Brian Walsh & Steven Bouma-Prediger, Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement which is coming out in September in a newly updated and considerably expanded edition. (Eerdmans; $39.99 – OUR 20% SALE PRICE = $31.99.) YOU CAN PRE-ORDER IT FROM US NOW.

Indeed, the human need for homemaking as a place for the creation and discovery of durable meaning, is explored beautifully. As Bill McKibben puts it “Home may be the most pungent word in the language — and it’s no longer something any of us can take for granted.” Madeline Ostrander makes this clear and oddly exciting.

The four locations and contexts about which Ostrander writes in luminous detail include the wooded rural areas north of Seattle in the Pacific Northwest (and the crisis of forest fires, seen mostly through the eyes of a forest biologist and smoke jumping firefighter), the East coast of Florida and extraordinary drama of life-changing hurricanes (seen, fascinatingly, through the eyes of a woman who works in historic preservation in the oldest European-settled town in America, St. Augustine), a northern California urban landscape plagued by fossil-fuel disasters, including a toxic explosion (seen mostly through the eyes of a black, urban farmer) and, finally, the sea-rise in Alaska forcing the a village of Yupik people to start a decades long effort of moving to a new location as their land warms and erodes beneath them.

As the At Home on An Unruly Planet book cover says, rightly, “Ostrander pairs deep reported stories of hard-won optimism with lyrical essays on the strengths we need in an era of crisis.” Some may appreciate the essays in between the reporting of these four unfolding dramas, although those major four stories had me up late at night, sweating it out.

The author is the former senior editor of YES! magazine, holds a master’s degree in environmental science. She’s a very good writer, vividly doing the best kind of narrative nonfiction, taking us to these four locations to learn so much about the actual influence of a changing climate. What a book!

Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden Camille T. Dungy (Simon & Schuster) $28.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I heard just a tiny bit about this book and knew it would be one we’d love to feature. Reading an advance review or two make me realize this “brilliant and beautiful memoir” was one both Beth and I would want to read. A few years ago we highlighted the world of Aimee Nezhukumatathil (World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments) and when I realized she had vividly endorsed it, I was all in. It arrived just last week and it is high on my stack of summer reads.

The book chronicals several years of her learning to develop an extesnive garden on her propertly. When she first got the idea, the Homeowner’s Association had a rule against such stuff. They were going for homogeneity, not colorful diversity; Dungy, one of the few black homeowners in the association comes to learn that plant biodiversity is a good thing, and I suppose the metaphor can be extended, eh? One sometimes has to work at these things.

Ross Gay, himself quite a writer and author of the much-appreciated The Book of Delights, suggests, in poetic fashion, at what is most deeply going on in this passionate story of gardening: “Soil demands we witness what erodes or frays or severs the stabilizing roots between us. Let us put our hands in and try to listen.”

The Baseball 100 Joe Posnanski (Avid Readers Press) $25.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

This is not a brand new book but it is quite new in paperback. What a fun resource this is, which will afford baseball fans hours of fine, sports-themed reading. (And I mean hours — the speeded up game times this year won’t apply here; if you include the index this is 870 pages long.)  As it says on the back, The Baseball 100 is “longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious.” It is a one-of-a-kind work by this beloved and award-winning sportswriter. If you follow sports journalism at all, you know the name of Joe Posnanski.

It is, quite simply, Posnanski’s “fascinating deep dive” into the careers of those he considers baseball’s 100 greatest players. Counting down from 100 to the obvious number 1.

Here are some of the fun blurbs on the back:

I love baseball, I know baseball, and this book is baseball. It’s the whole story of baseball told through the 100 greatest players of all time . . . But what really makes me say, ‘Give this to the baseball people in your life,’ is that it’s a book that, when you read it, you fall in love with the game all over again. . . . Every sport needs great players, but it also needs great writers, and Joe Posnanski has done something great for the game of baseball with this book. — Tony Dokoupil, CBS This Morning

Stellar . . . Always fun . . . A book for the moment but also for the bookshelf of the future, an old friend that will bring back old times and old arguments again and again…The rankings were all made by Mr. Posnanski, who is contemporary sports writing’s biggest star. He writes with grace and wit, combining an old-time sense of style with the mountains of numbers and factoids and observations that can be found on the internet. — Leigh Montville, The Wall Street Journal

Major League Baseball fans, you just won the lottery. . . . Posnanski presents 880 pages of sheer baseball bliss . . . It’s a true masterwork, and his writing is so good that it’s likely to engross even those who know nothing about the sport. — BookPage

The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History Samuel W. Franklin (University of Chicago Press) $26.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

I sometimes am reluctant to recommend academic press titles for fear they will seem too arcane or scholarly. This book is neither and it is fantastic. Granted, as with other social histories, there is much detail, but it is vivid and the illustrative stories and examples are always set within the broader context of the author’s thesis and what is going on. I can’t tell you how fascinating this is.

Here’s the gist: today it is nearly ubiquitous how often we talk about creativity — there is even a sub-grouping of people whom we call “creatives.” We find in The Cult of Creativity that this is a very recent notion (and even a relatively recent use of the word.) There have always been artists and ingenuity and inventiveness was seen as traits of those gifted with artistic talent or in leadership, but rarely in history has the notion of creativity been applied. And starting after World War II — seemingly almost overnight — it became a topic studied by think tanks and research institutes, there were symposia and confabs and much money was offered by foundations to psychologists to discern what makes for a “creative” person. How this came out of the blue is a major concern of the first chapter or two and they, alone, are worth the price of the book, placing this exciting new cultural invention in the context of resistance to the drab and bureaucratic technocratic culture.

Alas, this new fashion to document who was creative (the amount of money and effort put into this is phenomenal) was not, however, mostly aimed at artists or romantic hippies who would resist mass society (although it foreshadows books like The Lonely Crowd, One Dimensional Man and Where the Wasteland Ends, and near the end cites the worries of Jacques Ellul, which I was glad to see.) In many ways — Franklin shows this impeccably — this new-found passion for progress (by connecting it to creative personality types was part of the Cold War battle against communism and our fears of losing “the space race” as we used to call it. In a way, the cause of and the cult-like status of “the creatives” was embraced by the left and the right, although the original impulse was to deepen the success of our efforts in science, technology, industry, and the economy, with mad-men advertisers in the vanguard of that aspect.

Thought leaders of that era were working on this question of enhancing creativity, again, mostly funded by Rockefeller and Carnegie and executed by psychologists for the sake of the Pentagon, IBM, et al. From Arnold Toynbee to John Gardner to O. Hobart Mowrer to William Whyte to the young Peter Drucker, research and social science was garnered, thought-pieces were floated, articles and eventually TV shows about it all were created, as the ideas trickled down to today’s common parlance, revealing our common assumptions that this is, in fact, a thing.

Who knew? The Cult of Creativity and its “surprisingly recent” history should be pondered by today’s thought leaders, especially within the church, where the assumptions about innovation and creativity sometimes run wild.

Franklin’s amazing historical study reminded me of a book I’ve mentioned before, which also weaves together history, cultural studies, and astute social observation  — The Church After Innovation: Questioning Our Obsession with Work, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship by Andrew Root (Baker Academic; $27.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39.) Not long ago I did a whimsical presentation about the importance of Root’s book at a gathering of church leaders working on their creativity and innovation. It didn’t sell well, shall we say, despite my clever invitation to consider it alongside their valuable theme. Maybe somebody here will pick it up.

Last Light: How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph Richard Lacy (Simon & Schuster) $35.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

Okay, this isn’t brand new (maybe one or two of the only ones on the list that are not.) But it is pretty new to us and it seems new enough to highlight it here. My, my, I have fallen in love with this, perusing it at leisure, dipping in here and there. I really do want to read this carefully and I suspect some of our BookNote readers will, too.

The subtitle tells the whole story; holding the book and its heft in the hand will remind you it is a substantive work, well made, with full color reproductions throughout. It is just what it suggests — it asks how aging influenced the works of six major visual artists. The Director of the Whitney Museum of America Art says, “Lacy’s probing portraits compel us to consider the vicissitudes of an artist’s entire creative life, not just ‘the brand’ of singular works, styles or periods.”

This chronicle of “the varieties of artistic old age” is amazing and, I suggest, will finally be an important read — perhaps transformational for you — whether you are interested in these artists or not, and whether you are yourself in old age or not.

Lacayo investigates Titian, Hopper, Matisse, Nevelson, Monet, and Goya.

How do some great artists stay creative — even innovative — as they get older? Among other things, some become more daring, as Richard Lacy shows in this fascinating book. It’s a secret that’s useful in all walks of life. — Walter Issacson, author of Leonardo da Vinci

God Picks Up the Pieces: Ecclesiastes as a Chorus of Voices Calvin G. Seerveld (Dordt College Press) $14.99  – OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

I suppose it is proper, maybe even sweet, to list this one after the mention of the magisterial Last Light, above, even though it is a small paperback. Seerveld is himself aging, and yet remarkably prolific. He is the preeminent Christian art historian of our time, a writer widely known for his colorful arguments about aesthetics; Seerveld is also a considerably trained theologian (his weeks of late night studies in Europe and his brief meeting with Barth is nearly legendary) and an expert Bible translator. He has written numerous books of Scriptural reflection, including How to Read the Bible to Hear God Speak, Voicing God’s Psalms, How to Read the Biblical Book of Proverbs, a small work offered as a study companion to Song of Songs entitled Never Try to Arouse Erotic Love Until . . . (not to mention his major play, The Greatest Song – In Critique of Solomon written as a perfomance piece of Song of Songs, which is extraordinary) and, recently, a beautiful collection of sermons he preached in Toronto on the book of Revelation, Bewildering God’s Dumbfounding Doings. He is acclaimed well by the likes of the brilliant and prominent Old Testament scholar Craig Bartholomew, and should be read for his quirky, smart, often tender Biblical research.

Which brings us to this: God Picks Up the Pieces, on Qoheleth and the book of Ecclesiastes. It is not a commentary, as such, but a creative re-working of the book “as a chorus of voices.” That is, he believes there should be multiple readers (not unlike his acclaimed Song of Songs project) to get the storied flow of the narratives and this translation captures the performative natures. As Bartholomew puts it in a long, eloquent endorsement on the back cover, “The way they are written performs their message.” Long story short: God Picks Up the Pieces is written out like a paraphrased/re-translated script so that the drama of Ecclesiastes can be read out loud, together. As such, “In the process,” as Bartholomew notes, “Seerveld makes a major contribution to our hearing and thus giving this masterpiece.”

Besides the re-rendering of the ancient book, there is a chapter offering some notes for producing performances and another little section called “post-performance comments.” There is a seriously footnoted chapter which shows his exegetical work, illustrating the logic and intuition of his linguistic and rhetorical choices, there is a meditation on artworks which reinforce insights of Ecclesiastes and a chapter of some personal comments. The bibliography will be useful for scholars and his appendix “on the hermeneutics of holy Scripture wisdom literature” is deliciously studious, not cryptic, but detailed.

King: A Life Jonathan Eig (FSG) $35.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

I have read most of Dr. King’s books and many studies of his work and movement, from his prayer life to his academic influences, his preaching to his organizing. Many of the great biographies about him have been nearly transformational for me. Although books about him keep coming out, no one has done a major comprehensive biography in decades. Decades!

There is no doubt that this is now the definitive volume, a 600 page, landmark magnum-opus, replacing David Garrow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Bearing the Cross, for that honor. Garrow, in a ringing endorsement on the back, nearly says as much, indicating that this is the best original and comprehensive work on King in more than thirty-five years. Drawing on new documentary resources, “the result is a great leap forward in our biographical understanding.”

The new documentary resources mentioned include recently declassified, newly released, FBI data, and Big — a respected biographer — has, in the words of Ken Burns, “pulled off a kind of a miracle.” Burns exclaims:

Here is the leader, the preacher, the orator, the husband, the father, the martyr, the human being — not with melodramatic halo in place, but in all his heroic, tragic glory. Hallelujah!

The book is getting a lot of buzz (there was a good interview and story about the book alongside an excellent review in The New York Times a week or two ago.) Here’s a good podcast interview with author Jonathan Eig. Eig has written very popular biographies of various characters from Mohammand Ali to Lou Gehrig to Al Capone; he is a great researcher and a good writer. We are honored to recommend it.

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them Timothy Egan (Viking) $30.00  – OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

When a National Book Award-winning and bestselling author does an important new book, you know it is a great season to be in the book business. I don’t know how many of our customers will buy this, but we are proud to stock it, happy to suggest it and a new classic in narrative nonfiction. I hope you know Egan as a journalist and historical documentarian, having written that amazing bestseller on the dust bowl (The Worst Hard Time) and a book on a seminal moment in American conservation The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America.

This, too, is a storied — but mostly untold — page-turning adventure, set in the “jazz age” of the Roaring Twenties. It was the height of that uniquely American hate group, the KKK, working less in the old Confederacy but more in the great Midwest. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants (and often, we learn, bought off pastors to preach their gospel of bondage.) The first part of this fever story tells of the rise of D.C. Stephenson and his KKK organizing, mostly in the state of Indiana.  Ahh, but this propulsive story takes a turn as a seemingly powerless woman named Madge Oberholtzer reveals Stephenson’s secret cruelties and eventually, as the dust jacket promises, “brought the Klan to its knees.” This historical thriller is obviously important and sadly still relevant.  We are glad for Egan’s good work; he has been called brilliant as a researcher and lucid as a writer. What a read.

Powerful . . . As a narrative, A Fever in the Heartland is gripping; as a rumination on the moral obscenity of white supremacy — whatever guises it wears — the book is damning. —The New York Times Book Review

A master class in the tools of narrative nonfiction: high stakes, ample suspense and sweeping historical phenomena made vivid through the dramatic actions of individual villains and heroes. —The Washington Post

Egan has done it again, mastering another complicated American story with authority and surprising detail. The Klan here are not the nightriders of the late 19th century, but a retooled special interest group and unusually potent political power. The influence they wielded over states and policy should put a chill in every American. Bravo. — Ken Burns

I Won’t Shut Up: Finding Your Voice When the World Tries to Silence You Ally Henny (Baker) $24.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I hope you have at least heard of Ally Henny, a writer, speaker and activist, a pastor and leader of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, which is an important organization working to equip and empower black Christians in working against racism and liberation from trauma. She has an MDiv from Fuller Seminary (with an emphasis in race, cultural identity, and reconciliation.) She has a good, good following and now more of us can listen in. Hooray.

In this new era when being “woke” is hated and despised by some, and thinking critically about race and racism is suspect in some circles, folks of all races need not only a vision of kind and gracious gospel-centered civility (obviously) but, also, the strength and fortitude to speak up. The blunt title — I Won’t Shut Up — captures something of the necessary tone, especially for people of color.

Perhaps like Kathy Khang’s Raise Your Voice: Why We Stay Silent and How to Speak Up, an often used IVP paperback, Ally Henny offers lots of stories, making this almost a memoir, all the while exposing the forces that tend to embarrass or silence black women, especially.

This book is a love letter to every Black woman and girl who has been told that we are too loud, too angry, too intimidating, too outspoken, too nonconformist, too Black, too feminist, too much. — Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes, clinical psychologist, public theologian, and author of I Bring the Voices of My People and Too Heavy a Yoke

Pregnant While Black: Advancing Justice for Maternal Health in America Monique Rainford (Broadleaf) $26.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

This is nothing short of a groundbreaking and comprehensive exploration of adverse maternal-health outcomes for black women in America. That’s a bit terse, but there it is, the blunt truth. It should be widely known that there is a crisis in health care revolving quite specifically about mistreatment of people of color. (One of the most compelling books about that is one we reviewed and named as one of the best books of 2022, Under the Skin:  The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation by Linda Villarosa — it is now out in paperback, by the way.) One of the arenas where the injustices and perplexities of unjust health care shows itself is in the data about black women and their pregnancies and this book is a popular-level, passionate treatment. It is written by a well respected obstetrician and gynecologist (who studied at U. of Penn and Harvard Medical School) and now works at Yale Medicine.

Anyone seriously interested in race-based inequities in our society needs to know this stuff. Anyone interested in health care needs to know this stuff. Anyone interested in childbirth, midwifery, and the like really needs to know this. I would suggest that married couples of African descent should read this. Kudos to the Lutherans at Broadleaf for bringing such an important book to publication.

Pregnant While Black is the beautiful and profound expansive work on Black maternal health that we’ve all been waiting for. The book guides us through heartbreaking personal stories using data and evidence to help readers understand the full devastating impact of this very American crisis. Dr. Rainford invites us in to work toward a more equitable and just future for Black pregnant people. — Dr. Uché Blackstock, physician, thought leader on bias and racism in health care, and founder of Advancing Health Equity

Personality & Worldview J. H Bavinck (Crossway) $22.99  – OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

We have recommended a few other books by the Dutch Reformed missiologist (and nephew to the great neo-Calvinist Herman Bavinck) and we are delighted to share about this recent one as well. I’m told the translation (by James Eglinton, who wrote the definitive biography of Herman Bavinck, is excellent.) The strength of this fascinating study — originally written in 1928 — is how it navigates the relationship between what were then two fairly new topics of study in theological circles, personality and worldview. To this day, I wonder if any others have so deeply reflected on the intersection. It is asking questions about the deep formation of meaning and, by several accounts, anticipates Charles Taylor’s notion of a communal “social imaginary.” It is offering unique and potent contributions to the conversations around worldview, what is meant by that, and why — in recent years — some find it to be a less than helpful phrase.

Here’s another reason to want to know about this handsome 180 page volume. It has a forward by Timothy Keller (maybe one of the very last things he wrote?) It starts with these two sentences:

I could not be happier that Johan Herman Bavinck’s Personality and Worldview has been made accessible to the English-speaking world. It is an important work, perhaps even what we call a “game-changer.”  — Timothy Keller, Hope in Times of Fear

 

Lived Vocation: Stories of Faith at Work Timothy K. Snyder (Fortress Press) $21.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

I like that Dr. David Jensen academic Dean and Professor of Austin Presbyterian Seminary, calls this author, Timothy Snyder, a “theological Studs Terkel.” It’s a great and appropriate phrase, but for those who may not be old enough to recall, Terkel — sort of a blue collar-type, cigar-chomping, Chicago union guy and award winning oral historian  —achieved all kinds of acclaim when in the 1970s he did a massive and riveting book called Working which was mostly interviews with hundreds of people, many sharing their deep disgust of feeling alienated from their work, often doing dirty and dangerous jobs to little acclaim.

There was in that book the good, the bad, and the ugly, as we used to say, and Working set off a flurry of concern about regaining the dignity of work. This, naturally, set up both mainline denominational folks and socially-engaged evangelicals to speak about vocation and calling, the way work matters in God’s common grace to keep the world flourishing, and how the problems voiced by Terkel’s interviewees night be mitigated by Christian thinking and gospel influence. From Lutheran leaders like William Diehl to American Calvinists like RC Sproul to Dutch Kuyperians in Canada, distinctively Christian views of work were arising in the 1970s and these influences shaped our thinking about the nature of our own calling as booksellers and how we curated our own bookstore’s inventory (with sections for teachers, counselors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, businesspeople, nurses, journalists, and so on.) Lee Hardy took some of this in with us in Pittsburgh in the early 1980s and soon published his enduring book Fabric of Work: Inquirers into Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work and another Pittsburgh friend fro those years, Steve Garber, wrote, eventually Visions of Vocation.

Years later, we we delighted to learn that Tim Keller and Katherine Alsdorf, a congregant who was a corporate executive of some note, started the Redeemer Center for Faith and Work. That sort of center to equip workers in their careers areas has been duplicated all over the country (see, for instance, the stellar work of the Denver Institute on Faith and Work, just for one example) or consider the energetic evangelical efforts of Made to Flourish, founded by Tom Nelson (author of Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work.) Most groups draw on books like Keller & Alsdorf’s Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work and a thorough, serious study by Amy Sherman, Kingdom Callings: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good. A few even order my own edited collection, Serious Dreams: Bold Ideas for the Rest of Your Life which is a great gift for college graduates entering the work world.

Which brings us back to this new collection of inspiring stories of work and faith. I like that Snyder (who teaches at General Theological Seminary in NYC) admits to a lot of rethinking of his own sense of calling and vocation as he explores those who have a sense of vocation about their own seemingly secular work. If Terkel’s interviews gave voice to oppression and dissatisfaction, Snyder hears everyday people affirming a sense of God’s presence in their own lives and how theology is done by common folks in the seemingly mundane. That he interviewed as a Lutheran other Lutheran people is unique, but doesn’t change the urgency of this kind of book for all of us.

It is hoped (or so the back cover suggests) that these interviews and Snyder’s reflections in Lived Vocations “will help leaders empathize with the difficulties of integrating faith in everyday life today and will encourage them to tell stories of their own.” He’s an astute listener and good storyteller and in this sense is, indeed, a theological Studs Terkel, and it is special (although not extraordinary, these days) that he calls for a theology of improvisation, of incarnation, of thinking together about the meaning of God’s call.

Breaking Bread: The Emergence of Eucharist and Agape in Early Christian Communities Alistair C. Stewart (Eerdmans) $49.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $39.99

This is brand new and I cannot say much about it other than to note that the author is known as an extraordinary scholar, impeccable and honest, and an expert in early church studies. He is a working Anglican priest in the UK who does this historical theology. His book The Original Bishops on the development of offices and order of the church is widely discussed among those who study the first few hundred years of church history.

Most of us have heard of the agape feast which we are told was a common practice in the earliest communities of Christ-followers. How and when did eucharist, as such, develop? What is the difference between Eucharist and agape? How did each “meal rite” come to be? And, importantly, given that the practice and spirituality of these rituals developed and evolved, is it sensible to try to recreate early Christian practice in our contemporary congregations?

Here is what a few key scholars say about Breaking Bread.

Although in the past Alistair and I have usually found ourselves on opposite sides of debates about early Christian worship, his latest book evokes nothing but praise from me for its comprehensive and highly detailed approach to the subject. — Paul F. Bradshaw, University of Notre Dame

Alistair Stewart’s work is always rigorous as well as creative, and the deployment of his acute interpretive skills to the question of eucharistic origins in such a thorough way as this is very welcome. Even where we disagree, his probing analysis does not fail to shed new light, and this account will now be a necessary point of reference for the topic.  — Andrew McGowan Yale Divinity School

Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter Gary Saul Morton (Belknap / Harvard University Press) $37.95 – OUR SALE PRICE = $30.36

While this book is just under 500 pages, it feels heavier, and, for me, will be slow going. But, my, oh my, what an education — like taking an advanced study of Russian history and culture and Russian literature. The introduction alone is nearly 40 dense pages and I had to talk with Beth about some of it (and we both fled to google to look up the various Nicholas’s and Alexandria’s.) No country has valued literature as have the Russians, says Professor Morton, and no people group have loved to argue about the obscurities of the deepest things about the meaning of life than the quintessential Russian; he makes his point with a brief look at “The Grand Inquisitor” piece in Dostoevsky and a famous part of The Brothers Karamazov in which Ivan speaks with Alyosha about Russian boys in a “stinking tavern” talking about the eternal questions.

The history of injustice, the inequities and wars, the Russian genocide and the terrible invention of brutal Soviet communism puts the quest for big answers into extreme relief. At the heart of the second portion are three big chapters exploring what he describes as three types of thinkers, “The Wanderer: Pilgrim of Ideas”, “The Idealist: Incorrigible and Disappointed” and “The Revolutionist: Pure Violence.” Wonder Confronts Certainty covers so much and is such a magisterial force that it will become known as a classic, I am sure.

A compelling and necessary book. Drawing on a vast fund of knowledge of Russian history and literature and a fine understanding of Russian fiction, Morson joins together two large subjects: a riveting — and scary — account of the Russian cult of murder from nineteenth-century terrorism to its continuation in Soviet state terror, and its humanistic antidote in the great Russian novelists. — Robert Alter, author of The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary

An impeccable contribution to literary criticism, social philosophy, and philosophical anthropology. Against debilitating nihilism and secular and religious fundamentalism, it affirms dialogue, conversation, and the ‘polyphonic’ expression of rich and diverse personal points of view. Morson embodies the best insights of the Russian literary tradition he sets out to illuminate. — Daniel J. Mahoney, author of The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation

A profound, passionate, and wholly original celebration of Russian realism as both literary school and way of life. Invoking bitter historical precedent, Morson shows us that reality itself —t he sensual, moral experience of living and loving actual humans — requires an able defender in the face of alluring theoretical abstractions, perfect futures, and idealized visions of humanity. And who better to defend the prosaic elements of lived experience than those writers whose unprecedented achievements depended on their ability to describe it so well? — Yuri Corrigan, author of Dostoevsky and the Riddle of the Self

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There are generally two kinds of US Mail options, and, of course, UPS. If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be slow. For one typical book, usually, it’s about $3.85; 2 lbs would be $4.55.
• United States Postal Service has another option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50,  if it fits in a flat rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Just saying “US Mail” isn’t helpful because there are those two methods, one cheaper but slower, one more costly but quicker. Which do you prefer?

BookNotes

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Welcome to one of these big omnibus BookNotes where I list a whole bunch of new books that have recently arrived here to our shop in Dallastown. Some are brand spanking new! I haven’t read many of them carefully yet, but a few I have and a few are on my bedroom stack, along with novels and old books and manuscripts of forthcoming works friends have sent that I promised I’d look at.

Still, with what a friend called the “spiritual gift of bibliography” and a bit of intuition gleaned from years of honing the art of skimming — starting with footnotes, naturally — we want to announce these with vigor. They aren’t the only new books that have showed up here at the shop this month, but they sure seem fabulous; most are sure-fire recommendations. We’re glad to amplify their message a bit and give these worthy authors a hearty shout-out.

Please use the order link at the bottom of this column. I’ll answer back promptly to confirm the details. All books will receive our BookNotes 20% off. Thanks for being a reader.

Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters Carmen Joy Imes (IVP) $22.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

I am only going to give a big shout out here to this recent release because I so badly want to do a longer review soon. It is perhaps the most important Biblical studies book I have read all year, and one that is interesting, accessible, clear, and written with a rare grace and charm, despite professor Imes’s serious scholarship. Beth and I met Dr. Imes at the big Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh where she opened the conference with one of the best talks on “creation” as the start of the big Biblical story we have ever had at that longstanding Jubilee conference. It is not insignificant that J. Richard Middleton (who has also graced the stage at Jubilee) wrote a lively and helpful forward to Imes’s book. He, as you may know, wrote the definitive scholarly account of what it means to be made in the Imago Dei. She stands on his shoulders and re-articulates much of his vision of responsible humans caring for God’s world.

This is as foundational as nearly anything as we ponder our role in the complex world, our relationships, our sexuality, our politics, in deed, the texture and direction of our salvation. Being God’s Image is a book that helps us understand redemption.  Believe me.

You may know her first popular volume, the excellent Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters. This backs up from the giving of the law to the meaning of being made in God’s image. She looks at the creation narratives and plumbs their meaning for gender relations and work, certainly for our care for creation and, yes, the nature of our eternal destiny. Throughout, by the way, she has Bible Project video links, which is very helfpul. Contemporary scholars from Nijay Gupta and Amy Peeler grace the back cover with raves. This is a great, grand, book and I am almost positive you will learn new things and I am surely positive you will be inspired and glad. Highly recommended.

Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McCannally-Linz  (Viking) $29.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

This is a fascinating book, thoughtful and pleasantly written by three honest guides inviting folks to consider and more deeply embrace what they believe about the deepest questions of life (and how to live well.) It is very much related to a popular class they teach at Yale. They say up front (in a very helpful introduction explaining their approach and what to expect) that they are Christians and that inevitably shapes and informs (as any worldview perspective would, always) their opinions of things, but that very perspective calls them to be gracious and honest and present all views as fairly as they can. This is not a world religions handbook, although it draws on various classic world religions and cites philosophers and thinkers from a variety of views. (Just because they explain them and even commend them doesn’t mean they agree with them all.)  It draws on varying perspectives who help readers sort through what matters most, what to decide about key topics about a meaningful life.

It is more winsome and varied in view, say, than the excellent, succinct and eloquent The Great Quest: Invitation to an Examined Life and a Sure Path to Meaning by Os Guinness (which would make a great supplement to the Volf volume.) Although Life Worth Living isn’t a handbook of primary source readings, it seems to share a vision with the magisterial collection released by Eerdmans a decade ago, Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be edited by Mark Schwehn & Dorothy Bass. Know what you believe, who you are, and what you sense life is to be about or not, Life Worth Living seems like a resource you should have about. Buy it and I am sure it will come in handy, for you, or a person you are guiding.

Nourishing Narratives: The Power of Story to Shape Our Faith Jennifer L. Holberg (IVP Academic) $25.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

This, dear friends and fellow BookNotes followers, is surely one of the great books of 2023 and one of the books I’m enjoying most, a great, great read and a great gift for this tired soul. I’ve been waiting for it and opened it with glee when an early copy arrived. What a great writer she is, and what a great book this is. It is beautiful without being overly luminous, creative without being eccentric, academic without being heady, and delightfully full of Holberg’s own good-humored and poignant stories while still being somewhat of a college text. I’m guessing there was some in-house discussion within IVP if it should even be on their academic imprint because it is so very readable and so very enjoyable, whether one is likely to care about literary criticism, close readings of poems, or not. She is an English prof at Calvin University, but, whew, this sure doesn’t come across as a dry tome or treatise. What a blast.

Nourishing Narratives is so delightfully written and it will be loved by anyone who likes authors who draw on great literature. Already in the first few chapters Dr. Holberg — alongside tender stories of her girlhood, the death of her mother, and then her dad, and myriad personal remembrances — she cites Flannery O’Conner, Frederick Buechner, Marilyn Robinson, Dante, Mary Oliver, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, T.S. Eliot and George Eliot, and more. All the greats, ya know?

She weaves good Bible reflections, insights from John Calvin, Walter Brueggemann and Julian of Norwich, and, again, she is just getting started. What a thoughtful, well-researched and excellent example of uniquely Christian, faith-formed scholarship.

I suppose this book will eventually be stocked in our “books about books” section, but, actually, it may have to go under worldview formation since it is not literary criticism as such. Her thesis is that we live by stories, that humans are “story-shaped creatures.” We are encouraged not only to “understand how stories nourish our faith, but to discover how our stories are part of God’s great story.” This is narrative theology by a lover of poems, story-shaped worldview by a teacher of great novels.

Just listen to these wonderful blurbs about the book which are just so enchanting:

Threading her own stories with rich reflection on biblical narratives and on the novels and poems she has taught and loved, Jennifer Holberg offers here a beautiful way of understanding what it means to live by stories. Nourishing Narratives is a rich celebration of cookbooks, dog walking, Dante, college life, embracing solitude, and living in communities bound together by shared stories that equip them to see one another through whatever life brings. Every page offers food for thought and thanksgiving. — Marilyn McEntyre, author of Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies and When Poets Pray

Pull up a chair and let this master storyteller gently question and correct the destructive stories we often rely on to make sense of our lives. In an age marked by narratives of stress-inducing scarcity and individual achievement, Jennifer Holberg invites us to instead live out truer narratives of abundant friendship and restorative hope.  Holberg is a wise guide to the faithful, life-giving stories that Christians are called to inhabit. — Jeffrey Bilbro professor of English at Grove City College, author of Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry Into the News

Not only is Jennifer Holberg a clear, compelling, and beautiful writer, but her words in Nourishing Narratives are also filled with truth and goodness. I can’t remember the last time I read a book that made my heart sing along as this one did. Nourishing Narratives will open your eyes, grow your faith, and feed your soul.  — Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well and the forthcoming The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis

Funny and approachable, erudite and smart, this book is not merely a celebration of literature —i t is an invitation to learn how to read as if our faith lives depend on it. Jennifer Holberg shows us why we love stories and, more importantly, why we need them. — James K. A. Smith, editor in chief of Image journal, author, You Are What You Love

The Spacious Path: Practicing the Restful Ways of Jesus in a Fragmented World Tamara Hill Murphy (Herald Press) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This author is a serious and thoughtful Anglican spiritual director who writes for thoughtful journals like The Englewood Review of Books and Plough. She honors writers like Michelle Van Loon and Marlena Graves as literary mentors, thanks good people like my friend Ned Bustard, and has a forward by W. David O. Taylor (whose book Bodies of Praise, which I celebrated a month ago, is one of the most fascinating books of the year.) This book seems as spacious as the title implies and the footnotes (ranging from Wendell Berry to Scott Russell Saunders to Tish Warren Harris and Esther de Waal) are delicious. Her breadth of reading is notable and her depth of insight is profound. I admire Tamara a lot.

The book is about a lot of things but at its heart is the invitation of The Spacious Path to develop a rule of life. Yes, it is about slowing down and taking up counter-cultural practices but that means being intentional about discerning ways to enter into life-giving rhythms. She knows well what she’s talking about. In this, finally, I think it is finally about finding freedom. I can’t wait to read this carefully.  Perhaps you will too.

Everybody Come Alive: A Memoir in Essays Marcie Alias Walker (Convergent) $27.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

I was so excited when I first heard that this was coming and have been anticipating it ever since. The author is the creator of the famous Instagram sensation and blog Black Coffee with White Friends (and has a Substack newsletter, Black Eyes Stories.) She is a hip writer, cool and funny and incredibly talented as a vibrant wordsmith. Some of the moving essays are creative nonfiction and wild. Others are pretty much memoir, pieces about her being raised (in a mostly white town) in Ohio in the late 1970s and coming to terms with becoming a black woman. The cover of the book just shouts that era, doesn’t it? What a hoot.

This is provocative and good, a call to be inclusive and present and alive. There are endorsements from all manner of edgy recent writers, from Karen Warlord (The Lightmaker’s Manifesto) and the great J.S. Park, a hospital chaplain whose book The Voices We Carry got a rave review from BookNote a year or so ago.

Sara Rao, co-author of White Women, says “Everybody Come Alive is, quite simply, a work of art — beauty, pain, humor, and gospel wrapped into one stunning book.”

“Everybody Come Alive is, quite simply, a work of art — beauty, pain, humor, and gospel wrapped into one stunning book.”

Why the Gospel? Living the Good News of King Jesus with a Purpose Matthew W. Bates (Eerdmans) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I hope you have at least heard of professor Matthew Bates (a Protestant theology teacher at a Catholic university) and his two recent, much-discussed books. Salvation by Allegiance Alone is a major project and Gospel Allegiance is a more brief and accessible version. Both are, as the titles suggest, about how fidelity to the covenant known in the Kingdom of God are central aspects of our discipleship following King Jesus.

This short book asking “why?” is easy to read and yet thoughtful, a Bible primer on what he means (and more importantly, what the Scriptures mean)s by the phrase King Jesus. Salvation and grace and forgiveness of sins through the atonement are central, of course, but the cross and resurrection and ascension of our Lord signals something more: the inauguration of the reign of God. Somewhat aligned with the work of N.T. Wright and Scot McKnight and Michael Gorman, say, this slim book invites us to ask why Christ came and why the gospel is good news. Skye Jethani says “Matthew Bates has written the book our generation needs.” This is the radical message of Jesus and the Apostles and it will not surprise you to hear me say that it is a book most churches really, really need. There are plenty of discussion questions after each chapter making it ideal for a book club or small group study or a Sunday school class.

Anyone who sense that the gospel they’ve received is a tepid and ineffective counterfeit to God’s revelation of grace and power will benefit from Bate’s bold reminder that Jesus is King.” — Amy Peeler, New Testament professor at Wheaton College; author of Woman and the Gender of God

Ancient Echoes: Refusing the Fear-Filled, Greed-Driven Toxicity of the Far Right Walter Brueggemann (Fortress Press) $16.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.56

Have I mentioned this? I featured it at two off cite events a few weeks back but maybe haven’t highlighted it here. There is also a new collection of Brueggemann prayers (Acting in the Wake: Prayers for Justice) that just came out and by the end of the week we hope to have his brand new collection of essays about words — The Peculiar Dialect of Faith which will be quintessential; as one reviewer notes, Walt makes us feel that we truly are “deputized  to speak in a new tongue.”  Pre-order it now.

This small recent one called Ancient Echos is easy to explain; get this: Just a few years ago journalist and critic Kurt Anderson did a major book, Evil Geniuses, which was an expose and study of eight “truth claims” of the far right. In Ancient Echos Brueggemann replies to these assumptions and assertions of the radical right with long-standing ancient wisdom, direct from the Bible.

Of course these eight claims are not the only thing being said by the far right, and Anderson’s collating of them is not the only way to summarize their worldview. But it is a start, as far as it goes, and Brueggemann is succinct, clear, and prophetic in is standing in and under the Word of God At moments he offers nuance. Other times he thunders. This is a must-have little book.

Now I Become Myself: How Deep Grace Heals Our Shame and Restores Our True Self Ken Shigematsu (Zondervan) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Anyone who follows the last few decades of writings about spirituality and spiritual formation will know the language of recovering our “true selves.” It goes back in the literature (Merton, for instance) and even though it isn’t my favorite formulation, it is rich and popular. Ken Shigematsu (a former international business executive, Regent College grad and pastor in Vancouver) wrote a remarkable book on slowing down and encountering God, and another, God in My Everything which is a fantastic study of cultivating a sense of GOd’s presence in all things. He has drawn on some Eastern influences (he worked in Japan) and is a delightful preacher and teacher. This new one looks sweet, with a lovely forward by Max Lucado.Endorsements on the back cover are from John Mark Comer, Danielle Strickland, and Rich Villodas.

Listen, for instance, to what Rich Villodas says:

“The universal struggle with shame is so multilayered that we need an integrated, robust approach to be free from it. Ken Shiegmatsu has offered us just the gift.”

The Anxiety Opportunity: How Worry Is the Doorway to Your Best Self Curtis Chang (Zondervan) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

We’ve already got some orders of this brand new book and we can say that the author is extraordinarily smart. His first book, Engaging Unbelief, a few decades ago used Aquinas and Augustine as seminal figures in formulating a way to engage skeptics of faith being taken in by postmodernity and postmodernism. Now he is a “consulting faculty member” of Duke Divinity sSchool and a senior fellow at Fuller Theological Seminary (and somewhat of a journalistic gadfly, showing up on NPR or PBS or The New York Times.) He hosts a significant podcast called Good Faith that helps Christians understand the wider world.

He is our kind of guy in many ways,

And yet this is a book about suffering from anxiety; Chang himself has experienced these nagging feelings and deep worries. The book’s main thesis is in this question, emblazoned on the back: “What if instead of battling anxiety, we saw it as a profound new way to relate to Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and those we love?”

Or, as psychiatrist and author Curt Thompson puts it, this book offers, “A doorway that leads to the God who is waiting for us in the very presence of our anxiety.”  Or, as Dan Allender says, it is “Tender, theologically vibrant, and psychologically wise.” Not bad, eh?

“Tender, theologically vibrant, and psychologically wise.” — Dan Allender, Redeeming Heartache

There is in the back of the book a link to a 7-week course (the first week free) based on The Anxiety Opportunity.

The Augustine Way: Retrieving a Vision for the Churches Apologetic Wisdom Joshua Chatraw & Mark Allen (Baker Academic) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Perhaps you saw my reference to the above author, Curtis Chang’s older book on Augustine as a basis for modern apologetics. He has a rave blurb on this one, as do many other important thinkers, from Rowan Williams to Sarah Coakley, Kristen Deede Johnson to Keith Plummer.

This book is essentially a thought experiment: what would Augustine likely say or do as a pastor today; how would he articulate and defend the faith?  As Alister McGrath puts it, “This ‘’apologetics of retrieval’ opens up some theologically rich and apologetically compelling approaches.”

I love how Justin Ariel Bailey (who wrote Reimagining Apologetics: The Beauty of Faith in a Secular Age notes that Chatraw and Allen “calls us to recenter the local congregation and to renew the polluted cultural ecosystems where we live.”  He explains how it offers not merely a sophisticated plan to control a conversation (or win an argument) but offers,

“A more excellent way: a non anxious posture of persuasion that is critical and contrastive, intellectual and imaginative, humble and hopeful.”

Guerrillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle 40th Anniversary Edition Ted Loder (with art by Ed Kearns) (Fortress Press) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Ahh, I recall selling this at a UCC event when FOMOG (First United Methodist Church of Germantown) pastor Ted Loder presented maybe 35 years ago; it was a different publisher but we were enamored by his deep prayer language, his poetic cadence, his rich vocabulary, his honest, public theology, his passion for the poor and for inclusive and justice. There was, as there is now, a lovely blurb on the back by Robert Raines, then director of Kirkridge Retreat Center.

These prayers are “tough and beautiful” — earthy. They are honest and intimate. The old Provident Book Finder (a Mennonite review) said the free verse prayers are “complemented by abstract art that invites participation. These modern-day psalms are sometimes jolting in their colloquialism and other times moving in their sublimity.” The St Anthony Messenger noted that these prayers can be so savored (and shared) because they were “blended with penetrating honesty.” Hooray for this new edition.

Activist, scholar, pastor, and writer, Rev. Dr. Theodore W. Loder died in Philadelphia in 2021 at age 90.

Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth Jennifer Banks (Norton) $27.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.36

Okay, I’ll admit I wasn’t sure what to make of this at first. We are interested in childbirth, midwifery, home birth, and the like but we weren’t sure if this was a “how to” guide or a more philosophical treatise. I thought it might be something like Showing by Agnes Howard (Eerdmans) or Motherhood: A Confession by Natalie Carnes (Standford University Press.) Well, not quite. The blurbs on the back — which are just splendid! — by visual artist and cultural leader Makoto Fujimura (who called it a “resplendent tapestry”) and award winning poet Christian Wiman (who said it was “lucid, provocative, and groundbreaking”) are curious and inviting. Both are authors of Christian faith, also interesting. Sumana Roy (How I Became a Tree) says, “I will read Natality again and again to feel alive, to be reborn.”

It is said to be “an exhilarating exploration of natality, a much needed counterpoint to mortality, drawing on the insights of brilliant writers and thinkers.” Okay, get that: natality, a counterpoint to mortality.

It is not, then, I have come to realize, about childbirth baby-care as such. Yet, stories about our birth, about being alive, are haunting and formative; it is a fact, after all, that we were all born. This is not seriously explored much, it seems, and Banks is a remarkable storyteller, diving deeply into previous unplumbed narratives of Adrianne Rich and Sojourner Truth and Hannah Arendt and Mary Wollstonecraft and Toni Morrison, among others. I suppose it makes sense that the first person to pre-order this from us is a political philosopher, the second, an anti-poverty activist with a PhD in economics.

I noticed in Jennifer Banks’s acknowledgements that she thanks the exquisite editor of Comment, Anne Snyder, and, not surprisingly with chapter titles like “The Soil is Still Rich Enough” and “The Workshop of Filthy Creation”, Norman Wirzba.  I think this looks really important and rich and singular. She works in editorial at Yale University Press.

Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul: How to Change the World in Quiet Ways Dorcas Cheng-Tozun (Broadleaf) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

When I ordered this before seeing it I figured it would be a lovely, gentle, gracious invitation to make a difference in the world without agitating and protesting, sort of a kinder, gentler sort of activism. Slow, behind the scenes, quiet. And it is. Sort of. But, oh my. I’ve been learning so much, reading much out loud to my wife in the evenings.

You see, this book is actually about those who are understood as “highly sensitive” and/or introverts. I can’t tell you what that looks like on the Meyers-Briggs assessment scale or what Enneagram number that comes to (okay, Cheng-Tozun tell us that she is an INFJ and an Enneagram 4), but it is a certain sort of person, including the highly empathic. It is a rather cumbersome set of traits, what kids today say is a thing. The author gives some definitions and stats early on.

For instance, those who are highly sensitive have “sensory processing sensitivity” or “high emotional sensitivity” — which includes more easily triggered nervous systems and cognitive processes which are quickly and frighteningly affected by incoming stimuli. “They tend towards,” she explains, “shifting emotions, anxiety, and being withdrawn, as well as an openness to experiences.” (Yes, that seems a bit counterintuitive, but I know it can be so.) She reports that scholar Dr. Elaine Aron “estimates that up to 20 percent of the population are HSPs.” (And, by the way, she reports that recent studies of serotonin- and dopamine-regulating genes have shown that high sensitivity is predominantly innate. Cheng-Tozun writes, “We are simply born this way, preprogrammed and hard-wired to be more attuned to stimuli and to more deeply process them.”)

Well, whatever you may know about or think about those with this personality quality, there are many — given their tendency to empathy, too — who want to make a difference in the world, repairing the evils. They want to speak out about injustice, stand up, be involved. But as introverts or HSPs, how can they take on the struggles? And if they are people of faith, how do they respond in fruitful ways to the call of the prophets, the stories of Good Samaritans, the mandate to love our neighbors and seek the common good? Such beckoning calls from the Bible and pulpits can be daunting for any of us on a good day. And this doesn’t even consider (as this book does) questions of compassion fatigue and burnout.

Of the hundreds of books I have read on social justice concerns, I don’t think I have ever had one anything like this. Dorcas Cheng-Tozun (who has worked with various nonprofits, social enterprises, and faith-based organizations) has been involved in many campaigns and projects and knows what social change advocates go through.

Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul is a winner of a book adding something truly new to the literature, inspiring all of us, any of us, I’m sure. It celebrates the unique gifts and talents of those who are highly sensitive and introverted.

I think those who see themselves in this way will be inspired. If you see yourself in this way, and have a desire to stand for justice, this book is really for you. You will celebrate it and appreciate it so much. You will feel heard and seen and will be guided into ways to serve the public good in your own particular ways. Certain creatives might find good insight here too, on discerning how best to be involved in change making activism. This is not the same as honoring those who are neurodiverse, but that seems like a close, parallel conversation as well.

I think if you are a HSP or introvert and you don’t care much about social justice issues, this book could invite you into the journey. There are other books that make the faith-based argument perhaps with greater focus but because this one speaks your language, you might find it particularly compelling. As Anita Nowak (author of Purposeful Empathy and a lecturer at the prestigious McGill University) puts it, “Cheng-Tozun offers a brilliant thesis and a timely message penned with the authenticity of lived experience.” It is, Nowak continues, “part love-letter and part manifesto; it is a must read.”

Thirdly, if you are an extrovert or eager activist who is not familiar with those who are HSP or overly empathetic and prone to anxiety attacks or burnout and the like, it would be useful for you to have this under your belt. Leaders must be aware of what others are going through and rather than belittle the under-committed or judge those who can’t show up for your big events, you could use the insights offered here to create space for and collaborative partnerships with those with unique gifts. This really is a matter of justice itself and if we want to build a more inclusive, gracious world, we might want to consider how our own movements treat those with personality uniqueness.

Buy Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul today. We can “change the world in quiet ways.”

Living That Matters: Honest Conversations for Men of Faith Steve Thomas & Don Neufeld (Herald Press) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I do not have to explain much about how there was, a few decades ago, a whole raft of books, a boatload, yeah, a truckload of books about men. Most were earnest, evangelical, common-sensical, and many had this sort of sub-text or vibe implying a conventional tough sort of masculinity. You should read (I beg you to read) the wise historical study Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez which exposes some of the militaristic and far right ideologies that came into the Promise Keepers organization and shaped too much of the evangelical focus on men’s ministry. All that dried up, it seems, and there are now a few more balanced books and a few more thoughtful guides about being faithful men. (For instance, see the recent IVP release Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering Healthy Male Sexuality by Zachary Wagner. From another perspective, I’m eager to consider The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes by Nancy Pearcey, coming this summer from Baker Books.)

Living That Matters, though, is not just about “non-toxic male sexuality” (a la Wagner) and it isn’t about gender reconciliation from a conservative Reformed worldview (as Pearcey will be) but covers a whole range of issues, inviting men to be faithful to Christ in a exceptionally engaged, spiritually alive, gentle sort of way. That the authors are Mennonites means a lot to this project — one runs a pacifist martial arts school, the other is a social worker and therapist who coordinated Mennonite Men in Canada. They invite honest conversations about what matters most for men, “with a focus on following Jesus, forming community, and building peace.” There are short reflections on over seventy topics which will help individuals (or, better, small groups) deepen relationships, with God and others, and equip guys to be agents of Christ’s shalom in the world, even for and within creation.

There is a website that goes with the book and there are links to bunches of short videos that further explore some of the topics. There are good reflection questions. This is mature, thoughtful, and delightfully offering what Presbyterian pastor Joel Blank describes on the back as “an alternative vision that men of faith can embrace — a vision that involves community, contemplation, conversation, and faithful action.” This book is a treasure trove full of ideas, devotional-like meditations, conversations starters, and an appendix full of experiments, resources, and discernment exercises.

The Gift of Restlessness: A Spirituality for Unsettled Seasons Casey Tygrett (Broadleaf) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This brand new book comes from an author we very much appreciate, a director of spiritual direction practice for Soul Care (“which helps church and nonprofit leaders restore health to their souls.”) His IVP book Becoming Curious was a great blast and The Practice of Remembering, also IVP, was quite moving to me; rich and thoughtful. This new one looks very good.

It is asking how we can imagine our faith and sense an openness to growth even “when pressed into restless seasons in our relationships, work, or faith.” In those times, he says, we know we “can’t go back” but we feel like we “can’t stay here.” But what if we sort of could?  That is, working in the tradition of contemplatives like Henri Nouwen or even Barbara Brown Taylor, he wonders if restlessness isn’t a problem to be solved but an invitation of the soul. The back cover promises that Casey “turns over our innermost questions and holds them up to the light.”

The publisher says this about it, noting that some of the book is a study of the Lord’s Prayer:

“In that ancient prayer’s pleas for belonging, purpose, sustenance, mending, protection, and rescue, we find freedom to ask basic human questions and permission to befriend our longings. Each chapter offers profoundly spiritual practices that, when taken together, create a spirituality sturdy enough for our unsettled seasons.”

In a culture that values happiness and self-actualization, we often race toward the pat resolution or the quick fix. But in doing so, we miss the subtle gifts of unsettled times. Remaining in restlessness, rather than rushing toward the next job, vacation, or partner, moves us deeper into the life of the Spirit and our own belovedness.

This book is honest and raw and real, unafraid to wade into the waters of restlessness, to help us understand that it is not a pain to be avoided but a gift to be received. — James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful God

Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics for Everyone — The Doctrine of God: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners & Pros Marty Folsom (Zondervan Academic) $36.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $29.59

We had a blast selling Volume 1 of this “guided tour of one of the greatest theological works of the twentieth century.” This is the eagerly awaited Volume 2. It offers 370 well- designed and expertly-realized, informative pages. Hooray.

I described in great detail in our first BookNotes description of the first volume just how this works, a clear-headed and non-technical overview of Barth’s Church Dogmatics written with astute insight but in plain language. It breaks down and clarifies Barth’s notoriously complex magnum opus better than any other overview of which we know. Along with the first one, (Volume 1, on The Doctrine of the Word of God) this is simply a must-have resource for anyone interested in Barth studies.

What is also fun is that after the major section, it features brief reflections on the value of Church Dogmatics for “creative discovery in other academic disciplines.” This new Volume 2 includes brief reflections by Chris Tilling (biblical studies), David Guretzki (systematic theology), Earl Palmer (pastoring), James Houston (spiritual formation), Andrew Howie (mental health), Ross Hastings (science) and Jeremy Begbie (the arts.) Wyatt Houtz delightfully weighs in representing “ordinary people.” Three big cheers.

A Burning House: Redeeming American Evangelicalism by Examining Its History, Mission, and Message Brandon Washington (Zondervan) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

Although I have only begun this, I have been anxious to see it. Anxious because I am glad that, like several other recent books, many evangelicals are themselves in a process of self-reflection and even repentance, and that may be some hard owing up to things for some of us. Although we serve a lot of mainline denominational congregations and have always been a part of mainline churches, our spiritual and intellectual roots have generally been more evangelical in nature. So this may be too close for comfort.

Washington is a black church leader that graduated fro Denver Seminary (and features a prominent quote on the dust jacked by their former President and a personal hero of mine, Dr. Vernon Grounds. I met Dr Grounds at an event with Ron Sider decades ago and before he passed he would call us from time to time, just to check in. He was a gentleman and a scholar, as they say, and an evangelical of the sort that was wholistic, deeply rooted in the gospel of the Kingdom, and cared about a good witness in the culture.) If Washington honors Vernon Grounds, I’m interested.

Also, just to offer a bit of a framework, Brandon Washington also contributed to the edited volume on black apologetics by Eric Mason called Urban Apologetics: Restoring Black Dignity with the Gospel; his thoughtful chapter was “Philosophy and Worldview.”

Some of this looks at the foible of various aspects of the evangelical tradition — the role of reason, say, missing, too often, the whole gospel message, the question of what he calls “ortho-balance” and right practice. It is really good, I think, for ex-evangelicals or those pondering the viability of their faith. Many others have said some of this, but it is important that it comes in this book, framed as it is by the complicity of evangelicalism in the sin of slavery and racial injustice.

In a way, this is a study of evangelicalism’s role in what Jemar Tisby has so eloquently documented more broadly in his now classic Color of Compromise. Can a faith tradition somewhat compromised by the sin of racism be redeemed? How do we move away from the weaknesses of compartmentalization and embrace — as many early evangelical leaders did! —a healthy merging of right belief and right behavior.

Black urban pastor from Philadelphia, Eric Mason, wrote an excellent forward to this book. He says it is “enormously important in our time” calling it “a seminal tome.” There is hard hitting scholarship as well as great godliness and grace. I’m not just anxious to read this, I’m excited. Thanks be to God for this.

All God’s Children: How Confronting Buried History Can Build Racial Solidarity  Terence Lester (IVP) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

We have so, so many books about racial justice and we hardly tell you about most. If you heard of one, chances are we have it. We don’t sell enough of them, but every now and then one comes along that seems so right, so helpful, so good that we have to tell you. There are those that are really readable, clear-headed, frank, Biblical and gracious, by an author we respect. All God’s Children is one of those great, new books and Terence Lester is a fabulous author whose books we are eager to promote.

We have told you about his two previous works, wonderful little books by a guy about whom anyone who has met him seems to rave. He is the founder of Love Beyond Walls, an anti-poverty movement in Atlanta and wrote I See You and then When We Stand. He’s said by everyone who knows of him that he’s a really good guy.

In this new one, he explains how “the more you understand someone’s history, the better you can see their humanity.” That is the premise of his early I See You and here he turns it towards those of us who really need to “fill in the gaps of our collective knowledge” so we can deepen our understanding. This fills in some of those gaps with the too often buried history of the struggles of Black people have faced against unjust systems.

Just realizing those who commend this book should make you want to pick it up. We should listen to these leaders who rave about it — Lisa Sharon Harper, Marlena Graves, Jemar Tisby, Rohandi Nagassar, Heather Thompson Day, all great authors we respect.

Bulwarks of Unbelief: Atheism and Divine Absence in a Secular Age Jospeh Minich (Lexham Academic) $32.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

I love books with the big picture, the long flow of ideas, that explore the very architecture of culture and how and why we got this way. I even like big books. I didn’t have the patience though, to try to understand Taylor’s massive A Secular Age but I loved Smith’s summary. I suppose I’m not going to read a new one we just got in — The World: A Family History of Humanity by Simon Sebag Montefiore, even if Simon Schama says it is a “staggering achievement.” It may be a tour de force but it is 1300 pages!

Bulwarks of Unbelief, though, is less than 300 pages, counting endnotes, and seems slim, if solidly hefty. It is, I think, a major work that I hope some of our readers will want to know about.

The forward is by Carl Trueman, who writes that “This is an important book both in its argument and its proposals, a significant contribution to recent conversations about modernity, faith, and what it means to be human in a technological world.” It is the heady theology prof at Westminster-West Dr. Michael Horton who says “If you found Charles Taylor’s analysis persuasive, I think you’ll find Minich’s even more so.”

Wow. That’s quite a prediction.

From what I can gather, Minich offers a serious study of the spiritual condition of modernity which is shaped, in part, by material factors, factors that allow atheism (and other sorts of disbelief) to be so plausible, even attractive. One of these ideological factors emerges, again, from material facts; in this case, the rise of technology. (I love that he uses the phrase, referring to the rise of atheism, “a technocultural phenomenon.”  This, I think he will argue and explain, creates the likelihood for a nearly commonly-shared experience of the felt absence of God.

I was struck that Alastair Robert (connected to the remarkable Theopolis Institute) says that this book “resists temptations of nostalgic laments over disenchantment.” It has been called not only suggestive, but daring.  Hmmm.

Carpe Diem Redeemed: Seizing the Day, Discerning the Times Os Guinness (IVP) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

This deep but brief book came out in 2019 and I reviewed it favorably then. It has just now come out in paperback so wanted to announce it again. Os continues to be one of my favorite writers — even if I might push back a bit about a few things in a few of his recent books. But this? Oh my. I have read it three times now, and believe it is very important, if it is at places a bit dense. It is a studious meditation upon various philosophies of time, drawing a bit on Abraham Heschel’s remarkable book — Eugene Peterson once told me it was one of his favorites, ever — The Sabbath which explains how the ancient Hebrews “sacramentalize time.”  With clever plays on words and lots of quotes from both popular culture and ancient thinkers Os notes how our ubiquitous concerns about speed and efficiency  — its the water we swim in so we hardly realize how odd it is — is eroding not only Christian wisdom and truth but even human scale sanity. We seem to make idols of choice and change, buying into the very forces of modernity that are erode our personal health and our civilization’s standing. He calls us to a prophetic untimeliness, a radical sort of awareness of how clocks and computers influence us and then — yes — what it means to wisely discern the times so that we may seize the day.

There is nothing wrong with stepping up to our responsibilities in our own age and time. Os’s book The Call remains one of the great resources for all of us wanting to understand how God calls us into His world. Certainly we can use technology and be judicious about cultural artifacts and there are always pressures from the society in which we live. However, to wisely seize the day, we have to know what is worth seizing and what that means in our context. Can God use us to redeem the times, to serve Christ’s purposes in our generation? This small book will give us plenty to think about and much to ponder.

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As a small-town bookseller with a bit of a national customer base (as they inelegantly call our friends and BookNotes fans) I fret a lot over some things. For instance, I do not want to appear as if we are capitalizing on a national tragedy. We have a good list of books about gun violence and thoughtful titles about faith-based resistance to the idolatry of weapons, but we never want to run a post on that right after a school shooting or episode of mass violence. It just feels unseemly, and even though folks are more likely to buy books about that, then, I don’t want to be seen as exploiting a tragedy.

Similarly, we rarely try to sell the books of authors who have recently passed. (My two recent BookNotes posts about the writings of our dear friend Leslie Bustard being exceptions.) For instance, I just couldn’t bring myself to create a list of books by my friend Ron Sider when he died not long ago, although I wanted to and will eventually. We don’t want to seem pushy or callous to the grief of family members of folks that most of us don’t really know personally, even if it would be timely to offer such a list. From Frederick Buechner to Mike Gerson to Albert Borgman, this past year has seen the loss of important writers and spokespersons for the sort of faith perspective in which we stand. I hardly wrote at all about their good books, sensing it was just too soon.

A trusted friend or two suggested, though, that it might be helpful for folks to learn about the good books written by the late Timothy Keller. The internet is ablaze with great tributes and testimonials, some very well done and important.  See, just for a few (these shared by the excellent Faith Angle Forum) for instance:

David Brooks, “Tim Keller taught me about Joy” (New York Times)

Francis Collins, “A tribute to my friend, Tim Keller” (BioLogos)

Collin Hansen and Matt Lewis, “On Tim Keller’s legacy” (The Matt Lewis Show)

Michael Luo, “The far-seeing faith of Tim Keller” (The New Yorker)

Michael Wear, “The surprise of Tim Keller” (Comment)

Peter Wehner, “My friend, Tim Keller” (The Atlantic)

I met Tim several times, and talked to him on occasion, but we were nowhere near being close. Yet, I am mad about that cancer and sad for his family, friends and colleagues. I hope that our sharing this list doesn’t seem opportunistic. We think highly of his work and think our community of readers should consider his stuff (even for those of us, like myself, who have some misgivings about some of his views and disagree with some of his positions.) Here, then, is a list of most of his major works.

You can, as always, order these by using the link (scroll down to the end) to our secure order form page at our Hearts & Minds website. We will deduct our BookNotes 20% off all orders for any book listed and write back personally to confirm everything before we ship from our central Pennsylvania shop. We would be delighted to serve you in this way. Order on!!

ABOUT TIM KELLER

The City for God: Essays Honoring the Work of Timothy Keller edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I’ve reviewed this at length at BookNotes and have to remind you now that this came out less than a year ago, a great collection of inspiring and thought-provoking pieces by colleagues, friends, and those who simply take seriously his model of ministry. You will find pieces from Bill Edgar and Denis Haack, from Annie Nardone and Charlie Peacock, from Katherine Alsdorf and Jenny Chang, to name only a few. There is a great forward by Russell Moore. This is not as well known as it ought to be —it’s really, really good.

Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation Collin Hansen (Zondervan) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

Again, this has garnered rave reviews, including a big shout-out at BookNotes where I exclaimed that it is absolutely fascinating. Whether one knows the authors and teachers and movements which have influenced Tim or not, it’s very cool to have this astute genealogy of his influences. He is not your typical evangelical megachurch pastor nor is he a typical social activist or edgy provocateur. His nonpartisan balance and winsome wisdom and insight makes him unique as an evangelical leader, His passion for a gospel-centered sense of grace which motivates folks to love God by serving neighbors in all sectors of life is nearly unique — perhaps seen within the Dutch strains of neo-Calvinism — and this book traces his varied influences. It is simply marvelous, recommended by the likes of historian George Marsden and African-American Bible study leader, Jackie Hill Perry, and the ever gracious Richard Mouw. Agree fully or not (who would?) this is a great read, and very highly recommended.

APOLOGETICS

Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism Timothy Keller (Penguin) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

Published first in hardcover in 2008, this was, I think, his break-out book, with over a million copies sold. It is elegant, rigorous, culturally savvy, and provides intellectually credible replies to those with standard questions such as “Why does God allow suffering?” or “How can there only be one true religion?” or “Does a loving God send people to hell?” Library Journal called it “convincing and refreshing” and The Washington Post’s review said it was “A tight, accessible case for reasoned religious belief.” He describes the “new age of skepticism” and replies with thoughtfulness and grace. A few suggested he is a new C.S. Lewis, faithfully bringing together reason and imagination, cultural and literary awareness, who drew on Tolkien.

Making Sense of God: Finding God in the Modern World Timothy Keller (Penguin) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

A few years after Reason for God released, Keller tells us, he started to realize that the answers proffered there didn’t seem to take, weren’t the same questions the secular elite in his Manhattan circles were then asking. He had to dig deeper, back up, invite folks to ask questions about their presumed secular starting point and very notion of God. Considered “revelatory and thought-provoking”, Making Sense is for undecided seekers, secular skeptics, (and believers needing to understand the contemporary zeitgeist and the presumption that talk of God is not even sensible, let alone true or good or beautiful.) In many ways, this is more than a radical update to Reason for God but a prequel, a study of whether faith and religion can offer anything in the modern world, more foundational than the previous one. Deep and very, very impressive.

Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter Timothy Keller (Penguin) $17.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

Those who have peeked at my adult Sunday school class on my Facebook page the last few weeks know that I have highlighted this with enthusiasm. It is a personal favorite, a delightful (if rigorous) exploration of the Biblical notion of hope. Christian hope, of course, is grounded in the reality and truthfulness of the vindicating bodily resurrection of Christ. In that regard, this explains Easter and explores what resurrection means. He says N.T. Wright’s magisterial Resurrection and the Son of God cannot be bettered as a Biblical and historical foundation, so he did not try; rather, this is pastoral, sermonic, an explanation of the aspects of hope we can embody, now. There are twelve excellent chapters and I love how near the end he cites Noel Paul Stookey’s old song “Building Block.” That’s it! Hope in Times of Fear is a great, great book.

Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ Timothy Keller (Penguin) $16.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

This is short, even as a compact-sized paperback (shaped like some of his others, like Prodigal God or Counterfeit Gods, for instance.) Still, it is mature and thoughtful, a sophisticated exploration of the historical reliability and fullest meaning of the Christmas narrative. Concise, yes, but thoughtful. Publishers Weekly says it is “a great gift book . . . Keller achieves his pastoral goal of teaching Christmas’s most important message –God alone has the life, truth, and joy that we lack and cannot generate ourselves — and in doing so, provides solace for those who seek it.”

CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT

The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters Timothy Keller (Penguin) $17.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

A short, very powerful must-read. He is not the first to look at this trio of contemporary idols, but what is so good is how he looks — as he often does — at sort of the cultural big picture and yet invites us to consider the deepest matters of our own hearts. His gospel-centered approach becomes clear when he insists that if our identity or trust is in these things, that is supplanting authentic trust in Christ. It’s the “sin beneath the sin.” None of these things in the good creation are bad in and of themselves, of course, but if we build our lives around their empty promises, we fall into danger. Excellent.

Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just Timothy Keller (Penguin) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

So odd that some feared that Tim was “woke” and talking about urban problems, race, and justice too much — a patently silly and even offensive concern. This shows his deeply gospel-centered approach: Generous Justice spends considerable time explaining the cross and the doctrine of justification which then propels us to work for justice. We experience God’s generosity and can therefore be gracious; we know His justice so we become those who are just in the world. Short and exceptional.

Every Good Endeavor: Connection Your Work to God’s Work Timothy Keller (Penguin) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

In many ways, this is one of his most important books. Co-author Katherine Leary Alsdorf worked in the corporate world for many successful years before trusting Christ as an adult and being grasped by a full-orbed, Reformed world-and-life view and helping Tim start the Redeemer Center for Faith and Work. Lots has been written on this topic of relating faith and spirituality to our work in the marketplace but this remains the cream of the crop. A must. I thank God for this most potent study.

Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference edited by Timothy Keller & John Inazu (Thomas Nelson) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This is a book that came out of a lovely evening at Redeemer with Keller and Inazu speaking together on what some political theorists called “principled pluralism” and John’s stunning University of Chicago book Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference. More than mere civility but a deeper struggle to create space for varying worldviews and to thereby speak winsomely into the cultural divides, this vision led them to compile a book that is fun and exciting, mature and wise. A great handful of writers, artists, thinkers, and other public advocates share their stories about living well, letting their light shine in healthy ways. That Keller used his New York (and national and even international) platform to amplify John’s book and that they collaborated on inviting other young thinkers – from hip hop artist Lecrae to writer Tish Harrison Warren to justice advocate Kristen Deede Johnson and more — to contribute to Uncommon Ground is a great gift. A fabulous, readable, inspiring book. Keller has two relatively short pieces in here, by the way, an important introduction and a great concluding chapter.

How to Reach the West Again: Six Essential Elements of a Missionary Encounter Timothy Keller (Redeemer City to City) $4.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $3.99

This is a 2020 manifesto of sorts, perhaps a talk given, where Tim outlines the nature of authentic and fruitful missionary encounters. Of course those who follow his work, and the missional shoulders he stands on (from Bavinck and Kuyper to Lesslie Newbigin to James Hunter) will notice that our winsome witness among our North American neighbors for the gospel must take some lessons from global missionary thinking and practice. Since we live in a post-Christian culture, we have to build bridges and serve well. How can we make the gospel plausible and attractive? This sweeping document offers great insights.

CHURCH LIFE AND MISSION

Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City Timothy Keller (Zondervan)  OUR SALE PRICE = $36.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $29.59

This book is a slightly oversized hardback textbook laying out Keller’s vision of the role of a missional in the city. There is so much in here that I can hardly believe any pastor would want to be without it. We have one or two left, but it is out of print. That is fine, though, as they took the three parts of the book and reprinted them in three separate paperback volumes (see immediately below.) In this newer, three-book series they have asked other authors to give feedback and friendly critique to Tim’s important work to which he has added a new chapter in response. This makes the three paperbacks so much better than the one big hardback. Hooray.

Shaped by the Gospel: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City Timothy Keller with additional chapters by Michael Horton and Dane Ortlund (Zondervan) $15.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

This is the first unit of the big Center Church with two extra chapters pushing Tim on what he means by “balanced, gospel-centered” ministry. You may know Horton as a seriously Reformed scholar and writer and you may know of Dane whose recent Gentle and Lowly has been hugely popular. They each contribute some new content for this paperback and then Tim responds. Shaped by the Gospel is an updated, expanded version of Part I of Center Church.

Loving the City: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City  Timothy Keller with additional chapters by Gabriel Salguero, Daniel Strange & Andy Crouch (Zondervan) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Oh my, this is a paperback reprint of the big middle section of Center Church which added three great pieces by three extraordinary writers deeply engaged in cultural renewal. I assume you may know the names of Gabriel Salguero and Daniel Strange and Andy Crouch, each who have done good books. Tim’s reply is humble and in robust conversation with them. Loving the City is the expanded version of Part II of Center Church. Yay. My favorite of the three.

Serving a Movement: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City Timothy Keller with additional chapters by Tim Chester, Daniel Montgomery, Mike Cosper, & Alan Hirsch (Zondervan) $18.99     OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This one reprints the third portion of Center Church that offers a somewhat ecumenical and somewhat global vision of connecting your own congregation to what God is doing in other churches, organizations, and movements, inviting us to understand our missional efforts as part of a larger movement for renewal and social change. As with the previous two, Serving a Movement reprints a portion of the big hardback, adds four pieces by four stellar activists and thinkers, with a concluding response by Tim. This is Part III of what was formerly Center Church, with the extra content. Yes!

Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road Timothy Keller (P&R) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

Many don’t know this one, but it was Keller’s first book, written before he went to New York. On one hand, this offers a wholistic vision of missional care, especially for the needy and outcast; we need solid, clear books like this and it is fine. In his seminary years Keller was deeply influenced by the likes of Harvie Conn (whose intense little paperback Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace remains a classic in my book.) Besides the Biblical basis for social concern and wholistic outreach around human need, Keller here offers some specific advice for deacons and those doing compassionate ministry. It was updated a bit a few years ago with a new forward. Nice.

(Speaking of firsts, I am not positive about this but I think his first published chapter was in It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God published by our friends at Square Halo Books.)

Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism (Penguin) $17.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

This is another of those small, compact sized paperbacks that are so handy to hold. But don’t let the size fool you — this is a substantive, fine book on preaching, and is good for anyone who teaches Sunday school or does youth ministry or works in chaplaincy or campus ministry. He believes in expository preaching but also knows that many who are not ordained do public proclamation of the gospel, so this is good for all.

I think it is all quite good but one chapter is worth the price of the book. In Keller-esque fashion, he explores the nature of the context of our speaking; naturally, he looks at the secularization of the times and draws (of course) on Charles Taylor. Tim was very impressed with How (Not) to Be Secular, James K.A. Smith’s serious summary of Taylor’s nearly impenetrable philosophical text, The Secular Age, but for those whom even Jamie’s book was a bit much, this one chapter in Preaching which shows the usefulness of knowing just a bit about professor Taylor’s take on contemporary culture and belief is very, very good.

Worship by the Book Mark Ashton, Kent Hughes & Timothy Keller (Zondervan) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

You may not think of this as a Keller volume, since he only wrote one third of it. Three different gentlemen offer their own stories of how they have arranged the worship experiences in their growing congregations. Ashton is a liturgical Anglican; Hughes is a more free church evangelical, and Keller is a classy Presbyterian. I think this is the only accessible place where Keller spells out his style of worship which has been so successful in Manhattan. This is a very informative little book, interesting no matter your worship style.

DEVOTIONALS

Songs of Jesus: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms Timothy and Kathy Keller (Viking) $21.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.80

Written with his wife during his first cancer diagnosis, and during Kathy’s illness, this year long devotional is handsome, smart, faithful, inviting us into a daily. Routine of reading and praying the Psalms. A compact sized hardback with a ribbon marker, it’s a lovely gift, too.

God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Book of Proverbs Timothy and Kathy Keller (Viking) $21.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.80

This is arranged like their popular Songs of Jesus devotional, offering here reflections on the Proverbs. It, too, is a compact sized hardback with a ribbon marker, making an excellent gift and useful guide to this book of practical faith.

A Year of Daily Devotions Timothy & Kathy Keller (Viking) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

This is a lovely, smallish hardback (with a classy ribbon marker) that draws on their book The Meaning of Marriage. As you might expect, it is a bit more intellectual and culturally savvy than many less sophisticated devotionals for couples, but, besides their solid Biblical theology, there is great joy and tenderness and honesty. Very nicely done.

BIBLICAL STUDIES

Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God Timothy Keller (Penguin) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

First released as Kings Cross this is drawn from the gospel of Mark. It is truly excellent writing and should be better known and used. In just under 250 pages there are 18 chapters, each with a one-word title. A great introduction to Jesus. Fantastic. Don’t miss it.

The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith Timothy Keller (Penguin) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I don’t know the national sales figures but it is my sense that this is Keller’s most beloved book, and for good reason. Along with Henri Nouwen’s Return of the Prodigal Son (which Keller applauded approvingly) it is one of the best-selling books among the many books on the parables of Jesus. Two things stand out, besides its thoughtfulness and brevity. He notes to whom the parable was offered — the judgmental Pharisees. Which is to say that the prideful, rule-keeping big brother is who the story is really about; we all need God’s grace and that religiously proper guy didn’t get it. Secondly he tells us what the word “prodigal” means, suggesting that God is the prodigal. What a book.

Encounters with Jesus: Unexpected Answers to Life’s Biggest Questions Timothy Keller (Penguin) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I suspect that many don’t know this one; its pale cream-colored cover, nice as it is, doesn’t seem to yell at us to pick it up, either. You should. It is a collection of ten stories of those who met Jesus in the gospel of John. The first half is a series of talks that Tim gave in the UK to Oxford University college students. The second are talks he gave — again, people who encountered Jesus in the gospel of John —mostly to a secular group of interested business execs in midtown Manhattan. His introduction alone is worth the price of the book, and his exposition of any one of these stories could be life-changing for somebody you know. Buy a few to give away.

Rediscovering Jonah: The Secret of God’s Mercy Timothy Keller (Penguin) $17.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

I’m not going to lie. I haven’t read this yet — I’ve just been waiting for the right time. It was first released under the fabulous title The Prodigal Prophet but many were apparently confused, so they got prosaic with the new title of the paperback release. It is a study of the Bible, of mission, a reflection on cross-cultural work, a call to mercy, but of course it is a study of God and the gospel of God. One thrilled customer told us recently it was the best Keller book she has read. Wow.

Galatians For You Timothy Keller (The Good Book Company) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

This offers short and easy to read exposition, line by line, part of a larger series of “for You” commentaries. You can imagine that this Reformed preacher has a blast with the freedom of Galatians.

Judges For You Timothy Keller (The Good Book Company) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I find it a bit perplexing, but I’m told by some Redeemer Presbyterian old-timers that when Tim and Kathy started services in New York City in the 1990s he started by preaching through the book of Judges. It was decades later when the Good Book Company started this commentary series, but I suspect the book emerged from those now classic sermons.

Romans 1–7 For You Timothy Keller (The Good Book Company) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Yep, this is a Romans commentary by Keller. Who knew? Part one.

Romans 8–16 For You Timothy Keller (The Good Book Company) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I’m surprised we don’t get more calls for this part of easy to read, solid Bible commentaries. This is, obviously, part two.

FAITH AND PERSONAL LIFE

Walking with God through Pain and Suffering Timothy Keller (Penguin) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

In my longer review of Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering I noted that it is basically three parts. The first is the philosophical and intellectual questions about theodicy. He helps us “understand the furnace” and various “cultures of suffering.” “Where is God when it hurts?” is a universal question and everyone tries to offer some explanation; he is naturally strong here but suggests that if one is in deep pain or sorrow, it may not be most urgent to tackle. The second part is less heady, focusing on how we face the furnace, theological insights galore. Thirdly, there is the most pastoral portion, studies of characters in the Bible who faced the fire, and survived. There are varieties of suffering, he reminds us, and there are different ways to walk with God through it all. What a meaty, thorough, vivid work.

Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? Timothy Keller (Viking) $27.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

This is the most recent book Tim wrote and I refer you to my BookNotes review a month or so ago. Like any of his books — a feature I love — he starts with the bigger picture, exploring how forgiveness is understood in our very contemporary culture. He cites media figures and philosophers, artists and public intellectuals as they each offer the pros and cons of forgiveness. Can we forgive and still demand justice? What of those who have been molested or abused — must they forgive? How do we resist exploitation or racism with a call to forgive? He is wise to struggle with these big questions before getting down to the deeper gospel-centered notions of offering mercy to others and personal guidance for those who may find it hard to live in this sort of grace.

Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God Timothy Keller (Penguin) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

One one hand, it makes perfect sense that a God-centered, gospel-oriented, Trinitarian preacher who focused less on self-improvement or even social reforms but more on the character of God and His glory, would be drawn to prayer and would write about this intimate bit of spirituality. Not everyone, though, thinks of Keller (the theologian, the apologist, the activist church planter, the advocate for pluralism and civility) as a man of prayer, but this book makes it clear that he knows what he’s talking about. It is extraordinarily sound and inspiring and practical.

Keller’s opening section — “Why Write a Book on Prayer” — is wonderful. I disagree with his assessment of the usefulness for thoughtful beginners other contemporary books on prayer and prayerfulness (although am glad he says “the best material on prayer has already been written.”) And he knows a lot. Highly recommended.

The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller (Penguin) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I don’t really need to emphasize up front that I disagree with Tim and Kathy’s view of gender roles or authority in the family structure. I need not dwell on that because even though they are complementarian, their day to day living, it seems, and their advice in this serious Manuel, is more congenial to egalitarians than you may think. In any case, this is a Keller-esque argument for marriage, an appeal to those in the high-minded and fast-paced Manhattan scene where they discovered to their dismay, many young adults didn’t even want to get married. This book is for anyone — married or not, they say — showing forth a Biblical vision of relationships and trust and family to a culture that is unclear and unsupportive of these ancient ways. It’s a Biblically-based apologetic and a practical guide, strong and in many ways lovely.

The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness: The Path to True Christian Joy Timothy Keller (10 of Those Publishing) $4.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $3.99

Do you know this little booklet? It is a hugely popular resource in some circles and is hard to explain. It is about joy and goodness, about grace and gospel, about what happens when our identity is derived less from who God says we are, but rooted in false ideas and bad assumptions. Of course, the counter-cultural sting is here: Jesus says we find ourselves by losing ourselves. The gospel gives us great gifts but at the cost of this upside down idea: we find freedom when we forget about ourselves. To say this is an essay on humility doesn’t do it justice, but that’s the gist. What a great little book, unlike nearly anything he’s done, and deeply foundational for all that he’s done. You should know it.

DVD VIDEO CURRICULUM

Gospel in Life: Grace Changes Everything Video Study DVD Timothy Keller (Redeemer City to City /Zondervan) $41.00 for DVD and Study Book combo  OUR SALE PRICE = $32.80

This is one of my all time favorite DVDs to recommend for Sunday school classes or small groups. Gospel in Life is eight weeks and Keller lectures clearly, but briefly (about 10 – 15 minutes on average.) Much of the content has to be processed with Scripture and study questions that come up on the screen, but then, further, with more Scripture and short excerpts of essays that are in the excellent study book. Some DVD curriculum is so vibrant and entertaining that you hardly need a study book — you just sit back and watch. This is not designed to be used in that way. To plumb the depths of the excellent content one has to reflect and process it, so everybody needs their own study book. (Gospel in Life: Grace Changes Everything  Study Guide; $12.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $10.39.)

Keller’s eight-week study of the gospel and the ways to live it out in everyday life explains how Scripture can change people’s hearts, the community, and how Christians live in the world. It starts with the theme of place (“the city”) and our home now, the world as it is. It ends with the eternal city, that which is to come. In between, “you will look at how the gospel changes your heart (including the “sin beneath the sin” of idolatry) changes your community (“the context for change” he insists) and how we witness to an alternative city, a Kingdom way of life. There is a presentation on work (“cultivating the garden”) and one on justice (being “people for others.”) This is the best curriculum offering an overview of the Christian life that I know of.

The Prodigal God: Finding Your Place at the Table Video Study DVD Timothy Keller (Redeemer City to City /Zondervan) $41.00 for DVD and Study Book combo  OUR SALE PRICE = $32.80

This six session program is Keller at his best, eloquent and elegant, standing in front of a large, modern, uncluttered table. It is a good staging design for the set and, of course, is based on his book exploring what he thinks may be Jesus’s best known and yet least understood parable.

This is captivating stuff, and the participants guide has good questions helping your small group or class “glean insights from each of the chapters in Jesus’ parable; the irreligious younger son, the moralistic elder son, and the father who lavishes love on both.”

The first session offers the full film which runs about 40 minutes. The remaining sessions then each offer a 2 – 3 minute excerpt or recap, to help with continuity and further deeper discussion.

The Meaning of Marriage: A Vision for Married and Single People Video Study DVD Timothy & Kathy Keller (Redeemer City to City / Zondervan) $41.00. $41.00 for DVD and Study Book combo  OUR SALE PRICE = $32.80

This is a six session curriculum based on the best selling book. It features a real small group that has gathered with Tim and Kathy who both speak and share. The six sessions are each about 20 – 25 minutes long and the study book is excellently put together.

Topics include Service (Marriage Isn’t About You). Covenant (Created to Make Promises), Roles (Loving Through Mutual Submission), Singleness (Strengthening the Spiritual Family), Sex (The Act of Covenant Renewal), and Hope (Seeing the Great Horizon.) Lovely, thoughtful, fun, even, watching them laugh and teach together. Interestingly, in the group are some who are not convinced of Christian beliefs but find the principles compelling.

The Reason for God Video Study: Conversations on Faith and Life DVD Timothy Keller (Redeemer City to City /Zondervan) $41.00 for DVD and Study Book combo  OUR SALE PRICE = $32.80

In this six-session small group DVD study, The Reason for God, captures live and unscripted conversations between Tim Keller and a group of people gathered to address their doubts and objections to Christianity. Throughout, Keller and the group candidly explore the questions of the plausibility and truth of Christianity.  He brings his particular theological tradition and winsome style to bear on these questions — each session is about 15 – 20 minutes or so: “Isn’t the Bible a Myth?”, “How Can You Say There Is Only One Way to God?”, “What Gives You the Right to Tell Me How to Live My Life?”, “Why Does God Allow Suffering?”, “Why Is the Church Responsible for So Much Injustice?”, and “How Can God Be Full of Love and Wrath at the Same Time?” You are invited to chime in, sharing your own replies and your own evaluations of Keller’s arguments. What a great conversation to have with skeptics, seekers, or believers…

I heard a recording of Reverend Keller getting an award for his contribution to publishing and he noted that he is a public speaker and preacher first and a writer only secondly. He has worked hard at the craft of writing and applauds his editors. As usual, he is humble and neither prideful nor self deprecating; just honest. What you see is what you get. Interestingly, when asked not long ago about his legacy he didn’t seem to be very interested in the question. I do know he hope people read his books and are somehow drawn to Christ through them all. Not a bad legacy, really, eh? What a catalog of resources to help you grow and for you to share with others.

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BookNotes

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20% OFF

I suppose I should note the irony that I write this review about two lovely, rich, joyous, earnest books under some degree of bookseller stress. It’s just me, I suppose, but I want to be a good cheerleader for these two books and don’t want to botch it. They invite us to take a deep breath — really, they do — and yet my heart is unhelpfully pounding faster than my fingers on the keyboard. And that’s pretty fast.

Maybe you, too, are under some duress, or at least stress, maybe sadness and pain. These are hard days and I am sure I am not alone in wanting some good, calm reading, spiritually rewarding, centering. Sometimes I do want to go gently into a good night, and need fine writers to accompany me.

Such books by such authors dare not be too mystical to be of real-world good (even the mystic Thomas Merton was clear about that) and they dare not disregard the real pains of this broken world in which we live.

In a lovely, passionate, profound commencement speech given a week ago my long-time friend Steve Garber (author, most recently, of The Seamless Life) invoked authors as diverse as Saint Augustine and Martin Luther King, Abraham Kuyper and Mother Theresa, to illustrate that the biggest questions in life have haunted and motivated some of the most wonderful Christian thinkers that we know from the past. He reminds us that life is too complicated, the days too important, the needs too great, to accept cheap, private faith. Enjoy that great talk (starting about 22 and a half minutes in HERE.)

And so, it is in that spirit — that Holy Spirit — that I invite you to buy two of the best books of the season, one just out, one coming May 30th, each about our interior lives, but each leading towards a whole-life sort of lived discipleship. I’ve savored them both. Actually, I devoured them, fast, like gulping a gallon I really needed, and then I settled down and read them again, more slowly, more carefully, enjoying their wisdom and allowing these writers to speak to my soul.

Both are 20% off. You can scroll to the bottom of this column to find the link that takes you to the secure Hearts & Minds order form. Please don’t forget to tell us how you’d like them shipped, as explained below. Thanks for reading.

 

The Language of the Soul: Meeting God in the Longings of Our Hearts Jeff Crosby (Broadleaf Books) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

Oh, how I enjoyed this book and oh, how I’ve been eager to tell you about it. As with some of our very favorite books, knowing a bit about the writer is helpful, offering context and a reason to buy. Some authors have such integrity and are so invested in their project which flows so naturally from their good lives that it almost doesn’t matter what the book is about. There are some people we ought to read because whatever they offer is going to be great, both well-written and well-considered. Jeff is one of those guys that I would read any book on anything he writes. I admire him greatly, and this, his first published book, is a masterpiece.

Yet, to say The Language of the Soul is a masterpiece might imply it is weighty and dense. It is not. Although he draws on deeply profound writers from Parker Palmer to Ruth Haley Barton, from Richard Foster to Henri Nouwen, it is not heady or obscure — not in the least. Marilyn McEntyre, who knows something about crafting important, beautiful, prose, says it is “open-hearted and accessible.” Frederick Buechner scholar, Jeff Monroe, naming it as a gift in his own life, says Language of the Soul “is a wonderful piece of spiritual writing.” But I am ahead of myself.

Jeff is a fascinating fellow because (amongst other things) he has worked in the book industry much of his life. He became a follower of Christ and grew in his early days as a believer (he rarely, if ever, went to church as a kid, as we learn in the book) through the products found at a local Christian bookstore. He bought a lot of contemporary Christian music, he once told me, that really mattered and formed him even as he read lots of popular books, good books, of the 1970s and 80s. He ended up working in that indie store (and marrying into the family; his wife, Cindy, herself, is a published author, most recently in natural history.) Jeff later worked for a large book wholesaler, then in a respected publishing house (where he became the chief executive at IVP) and now serves as an industry leader as CEO of a professional publishing association (the ECPA.) Jeff has visited our store, served us well when he was at IVP, and now is a model leader who has advised us and so many other indie faith-based bookstores. He is a book-loving guy many of us in the religious book industry know who is schooled in excellent leadership practices, and now, happily, you can benefit from his years of paying attention to some of the best writers of our time. Language of the Soul is simply fabulous.

Crosby doesn’t drop names casually — although he could, and, to be honest, I probably would — but he knows many of the best contemporary religious writers, women and men from across the theological spectrum, of various ethnicities, from various corners of the publishing world. That he has surrounded himself with great pages by great authors and has sought out some of them for personal mentoring and friendship illustrates why he is a voice to consider. He has learned much, and shares his wisdom gently, humbly, earnestly. I can hardly think of a better person poised to write this kind of a book. He has been carefully working on it for years and we are delighted to welcome The Language of the Soul into the world.

I mentioned that Jeff likes music — and does he ever! His Facebook pages are a blast to follow as he sometimes cites great classics from decades ago — Earth Wind and Fire! Jim Croce! Jackson Browne! Cat Stevens! Aretha! — and moves from fun, one-hit wonders to deeper and more aesthetically important work, from Bruce Cockburn to Yo Yo Ma.

So get this: he has a playlist for each chapter of this new book, and it is a blast, including tunes that relate to the theme of each chapter, from Nanci Griffith (a gorgeous, important song, “Trouble in These Fields”) to Dvorak to the stellar acoustic guitarist Brooks Williams to moody Van Morrison to a rare hymn from a Lutheran hymnal. It’s not everybody who recommends Nat King Cole and Tracy Chapman, Harry Chapin’s powerful “Mr. Tanner” and “If You’re Ready” by the Staple Singers, right next to a Celtic ballad by the Chieftains and a Kyrie by Hildegard von Bingen. These chapter-by-chapter lists are worth the price of the book, believe me!

Although he doesn’t overdo it, Crosby does work with a musical theme a bit, at least in the start of the book. He describes a specific genre, saudade (a Portuguese word), referenced in writing about and even in the songs of samba, jazz, fado, and bossa nova music — and he names some artists, a musical education I appreciated.  What is its indolent allure, he asks in the gripping introduction; how is it connected to his own spiritual journey?

To explain that is to invite you into the theme of the whole book. It is a great hook and it resonated so, so nicely.

Saudade [pronounced sow-dodge-ee] you see, is a sort of salsa music that evokes a bit of melancholic reminiscence, almost a kind of nostalgia. But unlike nostalgia, it isn’t merely recalling the past, remembering better days. It playfully evokes a future, too. It is, as one music scholar puts it, wistful. Have you had that experiencing of wistful longing, that dreaming, maybe for something that hardly exists, but might?

When Jeff asked a Brazilian friend about his understanding of saudade, he reports, “tears filled his eyes. The connection was immediate and deep and anything but distant.” To further explain it, his South American friend invited Jeff to consider the longing described in Luke 24, the famous “road to Emmaus” story. Jeff’s pages explaining the usefulness of this word, this curious and almost sublime feeling, are wonderful and they frame the book beautifully. I had me humming Van Morrison’s “Inarticulate Speech of the Heart.” The Language of the Soul really is an invitation to listen to the longings of the heart, inarticulate as they may be.

There are several nearly universal longings that Jeff identifies and while there could be others, and some may be more noticeable in your own life as you quiet yourself to think on these things, he is spot on in naming the ones he does. His stories are clarifying, the authors he mentions are perfect, and the writing is engaging and clear, earnest and profound. I was all in. I think you will be, too.

In the first portion of the book (after that great bit about saudade) he documents a few key longings that he calls “our interior longings.” These include excellent chapters on “The Longing for Home” (which was beautiful and poignant, honest and rare), “The Longing for an Undivided Life” (brilliant, perhaps a favorite chapter), “The Longing for Freedom from Fear and Anxiety”, The Longing for Forgiveness”, “The Longing for Spiritual Transformation”, and “The Longing for Peace.” In each he tells stories from his own interesting (and not always pleasant) life, cites authors (those religious and some less so, those with solidly evangelical bona fides and others — what a delight!) And there are those playlists.

I love how this weaves together good stuff about our interior lives without it seeming to be overly contemplative. Sure, he quotes The Holy Longing by the marvelous priest and writer Ronald Rolheiser, but Jeff’s no monk. His invitation to an “undivided life” and his concerns about meaningful work and finding “freedom from anxiety” (about which he knows a bit, we find) are nearly commonplace and quite ordinarily human; quotidian, we might say. Who doesn’t struggle with regret, with forgiveness, with a longing for peace — in the world, in our families, in our own broken hearts?

Part II of the book offers insight about what Jeff calls “Our Exterior Longings.” These three strong chapters are exceptional — honest and poignant. Again, he has spent years relating to writers, and he knows just how (and when) to cite just the right author who brings just the right extra layer of insight. From Frederick Buechner to Robert Benson, from Howard Thurman to Steve Garber, from Adel Ahlberg Calhoun to Lewis Smedes, from T.S. Eliot to Maya Angelou, he garners just the right quote or anecdote. In this section you will be thrilled and learn much as he looks at our “Longing for Community”, “Longing for Friendship” and “Longing for Meaningful Work.” There is so much to say about each of these chapters — each is chock full of stories and wisdom, Biblical insight and, yes, a few song references.

The final chapter is the sole piece in Part III, “The Longing for Heaven”, framed by the section title of “Our Eternal Longings.” It is a very good chapter on a much-considered topic, and not to be missed.

Like me, you might want to read this through a second time.

Jeff has served as an editor for many authors that Hearts & Minds knows and loves, and has left his behind-the-scenes fingerprints on many a title that you, too, may know. As a long-time bookman he expertly understands how to craft a readable and enjoyable read. He is not Richard Foster; he is not Christopher de Vinck; he is not Parker Palmer — but he draws on them, speaks of them, even as he guides us to new ideas that are fully his own. The book has garnered great comments before publication — James Bryan Smith, for instance, who wrote The Good and Beautiful God and others, says, in an afterword, “I will treasure this book for the rest of my life.”

This is the kind of book we really love to promote as it is so very well done, well-rooted, informed, connected, and a joy to read. He shows his work, so to speak, and yet, artist that he is, breaks new ground. Although it is about all various aspects of our lives, finally, I think, it is about our great need to be loved (by God and others) to find ourselves in a story that is coherent, to bask in the meaningful vision of the Kingdom coming, even as our wistful saudade reminds that it is simply not yet.

There is a great forward by Enneagram teacher and author Suzanne Stabile (The Journey Toward Wholeness and The Path Between Us) who writes,

The reason I have come to love this book so much is because Jeff Crosby has given me language for feelings that I carry with me everywhere I go but have struggled to name. And I promise it will do the same for you. 

As the luminous writer Marilyn McEntyre (of Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, among many others) puts it, “This book is worth reading slowly, as an invitation to feel and reflect on our own deepest longings and where they may lead us.” Are you in touch with your own yearnings? Are you eager to move more deeply into the future, finding “our heart’s true home”? This book is for you.

Beside the fabulous playlists accompanying each chapter there are good discussion questions, making this useful for personal pondering and reflection, but, better, to be read in a group, an adult ed class or book club. I know you’ll enjoy it.

Sacred Strides: The Journey to Belovedness in Work and Rest Justin McRoberts (W Publishing Group /Thomas Nelson) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

not yet released  RELEASE DATE – MAY 30, 2023 PRE-ORDER NOW

This, too, is, as I have said, a book I’ve read twice, now — a devouring, eager, quick gulp, and, now, a slower, more attentive read. It is so worth it, and, again, like Jeff’s above, I read this book firstly, just because I love the author. Secondly, I need the insight, the encouragement, the provocation to do what the author suggests.  Yep. This one is important. And a blast.

If Mr. Crosby is an experienced executive in the book industry and knows mature authors like educator Parker Palmer and writer Christopher de Vinck (one of dearest friends of Mr. Fred Rogers) Justin, former rock star that he almost was, tells goof-ball stories of being on tour with the likes of ska band Five Iron Frenzy, and doing passionate Compassion International pitches at youth events and speaking at outdoor festivals and failing to organize advance housing for a ski trip with punker kids. He is sometimes a bit shaggy, maybe tatted a little, and has one of the best hearts of anyone in the biz. (And, I will add, he is more articulate and wise and faithful than most buttoned-down, big-name preacher celebrities.) I’d follow this dude anywhere; naturally I will read anything he writes, edgy/bohemian as it may seem. And even if he uses sentence constructions like “I. Was. So. Tired.” At the very least, I know it will be good for a laugh and probably a good cry. But more, you will be inspired to live in the newness of life. You should check him out, for sure.

If high jinx and funny stories and voguish writing seem less serious than it should be for a book about belovedness, let me assure you that cultural creator and  spirited artist and hip entrepreneur that McRoberts is, he is also very truly insightful about the wayward ways of the human heart and — citing Brennan Manning and a lot of Bible stories — he knows that God loves us anyway. At the heart of this wild and uproarious book is the exceptionally profound notion of being beloved, of being held dear. The book is written very directly to the reader, and Justin makes it clear that he wants us to get it, to understand it, to live it. He has hopes for us, his readers.

I. Love. That. About. Him.

In the prologue he speaks of his deceased father, telling of going on a run with him when his father was not strong or healthy. After this moving tale, Justin notes,

Maybe you’re like me and devotion or rest or prayer doesn’t come naturally. Like my dad’s bad knee, that’s my “weak side.” I hope that, as you read, you sense the Spirit of God come alongside you and say, I’ve got you. Just stay with me. That’s all I want.

Justin has shared in an earlier book — in a book full of stories of gonzo pranks and epic fails and remarkable adventures and solid guidance on opening up our creative selves — a bit about the suicide of his father, when Justin was a very young adult. He’s touched on some of this anguish and angst in some of his songwriting and recording. In Sacred Stride he tells us a bit more and it seems as if he is, over time, coming to terms with more of this part of his family’s story and now has heart-felt things to share about it. There are lessons learned in this great sorrow and, yet, as always, he is mostly upbeat and glad to be a guide. He’s real (that is, not contrived or showy) and can talk about tragedy without being morose. He knows how to weave a story from tears to laughter over the course of a chapter and you will appreciate both his candor and his hope.

I loved that last book, It Is What You Make of It: Creating Something Great from What You’ve Been Given, which I’d recommend to almost anyone — especially younger adult readers, I suppose  — but it is about creativity, making something of one’s life, despite all. It has universal themes, for sure, but it sold mostly to those wanting to explore their creative sides. Maybe it was mostly aimed at makers and entrepreneurs and activists and artists.

Sacred Strides: The Journey to Belovedness in Work and Rest, though, has a broader appeal, at least for those who enjoy a lot of zany stories and honest anecdotes of the, uh, colorful sort. It is, finally, a book about rest, about a Sabbath lifestyle, about meaningful and life-giving work, and about knowing we are loved no matter what. It is, he notes early on, decidedly not about balance.”That’s not how life works or how God designed you to live,” he say. You can read that section to see how he unpacks it, but his simple analogy — about running with two feet — is very good.

No, he is not particularly balanced and that’s okay. He explains why that isn’t even a helpful way to think about these demanding aspects of our lives. He explores these themes with depth and maturity, even if in casual and conversational style. The book is full of stories where, as they say, he learned the hard way.

Justin is an amazingly smart guy, and the footnotes show the deep reading and research he has done as he approaches this complicated field. I know he likes The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan (an excellent book on keeping Sabbath which, by the way, starts off with an excellent chapter on work.) More deeply, perhaps, McRoberts draws often on The Active Life by Parker Palmer, which explores the old question (also voiced by Thomas Merton) on how to be an active contemplative (or a contemplative activist.) Justin wants us to live well, to work hard, to get stuff done, to make a difference as we bear witness to the reign of God, coming. (There is a reason he keeps getting invited back to the Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh each year.) But he knows also, deeply, that we need to remain healthy, generative, refreshed, or, as he puts it in one chapter title, “Exhaustion Isn’t Professional.” From Seth Godin to Julia Cameron to Walter Brueggemann’s exceptional Sabbath As Resistance, McRoberts invites us not just to “take a breather” but to a better way of life.

I love Justin’s verve as a writer. I like that a lot of college-age-ish young adults especially appreciate him — he has a lot of stories about doing youth ministry when he was younger and the style shows it. His stories of his own youth, the tragedy of his father’s death, even his hard work to be a good dad to his own kids, are vivid and honest and very touching. This would be a great book to get for any young adults you care about, even though it is not only for that age-group.

It is hard to explain why so many readers like Justin’s books. There is a cool style and a creative mind, just a bit experimental at times. And yet, it isn’t shallow or silly. In fact it is serious stuff that for some us who are older (ahem, that would be me) it has taken a lifetime to figure out.

I might point out that Justin co-authored two books with his good friend, artist/illustrator Scott Erickson. Those two largely visual books capture a lot of his poetic style but yet are very different than the writing in Sacred Stride. But you can catch his vibe in the marvelous and creative Prayer: Forty Days of Practice and May It Be So: Forty Days with the Lord’s Prayer (both Waterbrook; $16.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59.)

In the chapter in Sacred Strides on “pacing myself” (where he starts off by telling of a heart-attack-like episode during this own college years that led him to the hospital because — wait for it… he was drinking waaaay to much coffee!) he finally gets around to the question of limits, even as we embrace fully the God-given callings that we have, doing good and important work.

He asks,

Can I give myself wholeheartedly to work that lights me up and makes me happy? Yes! And so can you. Because God’s love runs deeper than ours, and we join God in it when we work.

Can I set down my agenda and even my hopes and dreams and just rest? Yes! And so can you. Because God’s love runs deeper than ours, and we join God in it when we Sabbath.

This is the important heart of this important little book — if we really believe that God’s love runs “deeper than ours” and His grace really is sufficient, then how might that revolutionize how we live our days, from work to rest and everything in between?

Another thing that is so good about Sacred Strides, besides the mix of outrageous and tender stories, and besides the mix of good stuff on both work and rest, is that Justin call us to what we all know (it is one of those universal desires Jeff Crosby writes about) but few seriously pursue: we long to have friends, colleagues, fellows in fellowship, or (as he puts it in one unforgettable story), “Running with Others.” In it, he tells of “Ninety pounds of rice and making lasting friendships.” How did he get a ninety pound bag of rich and how did it deepen a friendship? You’ll have to read it to find out, but you don’t want to miss it.

McRoberts has good teaching, moving from anecdote to insight and back again. He wonders why jet lag often hits some of us (those who travel, obviously) so hard and guesses that it could be that we are so exhausted prior to the trip. Why do we manage our lives this way? He has a section advising “disconnect and repair” and he calls for a new sort of leader, being a front-runner who offers “true compassion and learns to lead with love.”

There is this lingo and metaphor of running a race throughout (sacred “strides” — get it?) He says (and, of course, tells a story about) that we sometimes have to be gutsy enough to “reroute” the race. Wow. He draws on Brueggemann here, noting the subversive resistance that sabbath practice suggests.

Of course, it often comes down to this:

Seeing yourself as part of God’s beautiful Story requires you to relinquish your control.

God bless him, he finally, near the end, has a chapter asking, “Why Am I Running at All?” where the takeaway truth is “It is only the love of God that lasts.” It’s a hard, honest chapter about the dazed and intoxicated feeling that had him “able to muster just enough attention to stay slightly engaged” while, frankly, he felt dead inside. “I felt absent from my own life for weeks and then months. I wasn’t ‘there.’”

Justin continues,

…my mind would start spinning with anger and sadness at all the ways I wished things had gone. I was haunted by the guilt of knowing I’d let people down and even more by the feeling that God had done the same to me. It scared me to relate to my dad that way, to experience despair. I knew that, at some point, I’d face a lot of what he had faced and in some of the same ways.

But it would be different for him, and this wise, energetic, easy-to-read (but at times remarkably profound) collection of stories serves as a downpayment for it to be different for all of us, if only we read and learn.

A sort of underground church which was a safe place for a lot of wounded people — in a way, church as it is meant to be — that McRoberts helped found and pastor imploded. It was hard, really hard. Justin writes, in a section lifted in a sidebar quote,

On the other side of dying with (and dying to) a work I thought would define my life, I’ve come to more fully give myself over to ‘the hidden wholeness’ that Thomas Merton and Parker Palmer wrote about — that which is behind and beneath and above and before both work and rest.

What is beneath both work and rest? It is, as he puts it, in the book’s very last line, “That Which Is Permanent” — the very love of God.

There are extraordinarily honest questions following each chapter which guide us into what we might ponder in these fresh chapters. Some of the reflection questions will be helpful, I know even if a few may be a bit too raw for you or your friends. It’s an honest book — even if written in a witty and casual style — so the questions are going to push you to be real. Want to really consider the question of rest? Want to take some “sacred strides” as you run your race? Can you move behind less than fulfilling models beyond “The Hustle” on one hand and “Self Care” on the other?  What makes you tick? Do you believe the abundant and healing story of the Bible?

Give this book a read and consider afresh just how abundant that Biblical love story is, and how it might shape your work, and your rest. And then call up some friends and read it with them. I’m sure it will generate fabulous, maybe life-changing conversations.

Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a sweet epilogue, another fabulous story of his fathering his youngest daughter. One night she wants to read Arnold Lobel’s great story “The Garden” in the classic Frog and Toad Together. Do you know it? You just might want to order one of those, too. Hooray.

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN AND CLICK ON THE “ORDER HERE” LINK BELOW.

It is very helpful if you tell us how you prefer us to ship your orders.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options, and, of course, UPS. If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be slow. For one typical book, usually, it’s about $3.85; 2 lbs would be $4.55.
• United States Postal Service has another option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50,  if it fits in a flat rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Just saying “US Mail” isn’t helpful because there are those two methods, one cheaper but slower, one more costly but quicker. Which do you prefer?

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It was just one week ago when we sat in a large sanctuary in Lancaster with other mourners, lamenting the loss of our friend Leslie Bustard. (For the record, it was called “A Service of Faith and Beauty in Honor of Leslie Anne Bustard.”) As I said in my adult Sunday School class the next day, it was one of the most memorable such services I’ve ever attended as it was grueling and at the same time deeply beautiful with a vivid sense of both loss and redemptive hope. I wept from the moment the good preacher of the Bustard’s church (Wheatland Presbyterian) greeted the guests saying that he was, and that we all may be, outraged by the awfulness of death. We are offended, he said, on behalf of the three strong, beautiful young women who will no longer have Leslie’s motherly guidance and friendship. Luke insisted that we are also offended on behalf of Ned, who lost his very dearly beloved. Death in the Bible is an enemy, and I felt that profoundly.

There would be no sweeping our pain under the chancel rug, it seemed, and while Reformed folks are often glad to rejoice even in suffering, knowing God has things under control, they resisted cheap sentiment or trite assurances. Pastor Luke said that this is not the way it is supposed to be — I am grateful for the book on sin and our fallen condition by that very name by Cornelius Plantinga — as he helped us all stare Death down, knowing of Christ’s victory. I don’t recall that he cited Hebrews 2:8, but he might have, strongly assuring us of Christ’s resurrection and reign, even if we don’t yet see all things made right quite yet.

(I am so glad for robust, generously orthodox theology that equips pastors and liturgists to lead us well in times such as these. There was no cheap talk about how spiffy it is that she is in heaven and certainly no pablum about God needing another angel, whatever the hell that means. I’ve heard some awfully dumb stuff at funerals — from fundamentalists and mainline liberals alike — and one is strengthened when solid gospel vocabulary is used, admitting pain with an eye to the new creation. Surprised by Hope, indeed!)

A few days before she died — she died on Good Friday if you counted by way of the Orthodox calendar — I posted this BookNotes column, naming a few good chapters Leslie had contributed to books, celebrated the one about children’s literature that she edited with two other women (Wild Things and Castles in the Sky, of which she was very proud and about which she was endlessly excited) and I recommended her recently published — and very good — poetry volume, The Goodness of God in the Land of the Living (Square Halo Books; $12.99.)

We are grateful that in response, some of the Bustard’s extended family of friends and Square Halo Books loyalists ordered her books. We are glad that some who never heard of Leslie (or even Square Halo) ordered some, to support them, and just to check out an author we had recommended. It was nice, and even a bit healing, getting to send her books out to you all even as she was in hospice care. Thank you.

Some readers, I have learned, didn’t realize that she has since died and I felt like I should mention it here.

Of course the funeral/memorial service bulletin had a linocut on the front done by husband Ned. It was an art piece named The Church and was “originally created to remind Leslie of a conversation she had with an older woman in the faith, in which the wise sister had impressed upon Leslie that in the midst of the storms of life Jesus was not looking down from heaven or even walking on the water beside her, but was actually in the boat with her.” Ned continues (in his note in the workshop booklet), “In Christian art a boat is often a symbol for the Church, and here Saint Peter (representing the Old Testament faithful) holds both the keys to the Kingdom and the symbol for Baptism while Leslie (representing the New Testament faithful) holds the Bread and the Wine.”

Opening the page, there were throughout the booklet tenderly chosen and expertly arranged poems and citations, prayers and song lyrics (including the lyrics to the very cool Innocence Mission song called “Bright as Yellow” which was, we were told, somewhat of a mantra for Leslie. Obviously.) It was performed live by her friend, the lead singer of that Lancaster-based band.

Ned, always the graphic designer, gave it his all, and I am weeping now even as I try to share with you, my friends and BookNotes readers, how beautiful this all was. From “Pied Beauty” by Hopkins to an essay by Luci Shaw to a paragraph by Henri Nouwen to “Whatever Is Foreseen in Joy” by Wendell Berry, the poems and reflections were remarkably helpful. That readers dear to the Bustard family (including the daughters) recited some of them was a great gift.

Of course some of Leslie’s own works were printed out, and some read. I can’t imagine how the readers handled themselves with such poise and recited so wonderfully. This — among other things, of course — is what poetry is for. We say “words cannot express…” and normal words sometimes cannot. But, creatively arranged in allusive, aesthetically-rich ways, the gift of well put words is a gift indeed.

They did not mention it, but for what it is worth, I think I’d recommend the recently acclaimed Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World edited and explored by Padraig O Tuama (Norton; $27.95) or, perhaps for better days, Joy: 100 Poems, edited by Christian Wiman (Yale University Press; $20.00.) For thinking nicely about how the imaginative arts can help Christian people in their Kingdom journey, you might appreciate the nice paperback (enhanced with art selected by Ned), Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God by Leslie’s poet friend, Malcolm Guite (Square Halo Books; $18.99.) I am fond of the small Square Halo volume called Naming the Animals by Stephen Roach (Square Halo Books; $11.99) and the very impressive, recent release, Why We Create: Reflections on the Creator, the Creation, and Creating edited by Colorado culture-maker, Brian Brown (Square Halo Books; $18.99.)

The whole, long service was informed by this kind of theology with fruits of amazement and wonder, and it is notable how good liturgy and wise insights shaped our experience of saying goodbye to our sister and friend. Those who have immersed themselves in this kind of good thinking, using poetry and song and well-crafted prose are equipped, deep in their bones, it seems, to rise to the occasion of creating such a tragic/beautiful memorial service.

Many of you know how fond we are of (and how we were early adopters, for a while one of the only bookstores stocking) the Rabbit Room’s Every Moment Holy and Every Moment Holy Volume II: Death, Grief, and Hope, both expertly crafted by Douglas McKelvey. I cannot here tell you how rich and remarkable these two prayer books are.

Ned, as you may know, did the artwork within and the layout and design of both volumes. Leslie and Ned’s good friend, Douglas McKelvey, who, as I’ve said, wrote the prayers and litanies and liturgies in both Every Moment Holy volumes, arrived from Tennessee to participate in the service. Most of us are not fortunate enough to have poets/prayer-writers at our funerals or memorials, but these books are of immense help in honoring the spirituality of the ordinary (the first volume) and the hardship of our days, for the dying as well as the grieving (the second.) The Bustards used some of the prayers in these two prayer books consistently, and were glad for specific prayers about medical examinations and for use before surgeries and such.

At Leslie’s service Doug prayed, carefully, slowly, at times (painfully so), the following:

O Christ Who Reclaims What We Have Lost, even here at the epicenter of our sorrow, kindle afresh our eternal hope. Remind us that this song of lament we sing today will not endure forever. At the last, its discordant strains will be unmade, and changed, and woven back into the perfect patterns of a greater melody of joy and praise. This story does not end where some would say it ends, upon this funeral day. Make of us, O God, a people shaped even now by these songs of your coming redemption. For today’s goodbye is like the pause that stalls a single line of poetry, and we feel for a time the tension of that phrase suspended, unresolved.

But you, O Christ, are the Poet King, who crafts, creates, and labors to bring all things right — so that even this briefly interrupted line will find its great, fulfilling rhyme in the time of that glad wedding feast, when you, our God and groom, receive your bride. And all the gains that death had ever made will be reclaimed in resurrected life. And so this one we love will rise again, alive, remade, complete and whole, and robed in those eternal glories. So will we all, who hold your love more precious than our lives.

Now, even as a sailor in the dark of night might chart a true course by the brightest star, so let us navigate the sadness of these hours with hearts fixed upon the light of the hope of that promised and pending resurrection. Amen.

There was more poetry scattered throughout the service (before words by Ned, sharing Leslie’s own pre-written comments to her three lovely daughter, and a stellar sermon by Rev. Luke LeDuc.) We read or heard poems by Seamus Heaney, by Luci Shaw, by Anne Bradstreet and more. There was a live rendition of a Charlie Peacock song (of course — it was used each year at the celebration/remembrance of the Bustard girl’s baptisms) and a very cool duo performing a great version of the great take-off on the 23rd Psalm (“The House of God Forever”) by Jon Foreman (of Switchfoot fame) as done on an acoustic album of his. (Here is another version, live, shot in black and white.) Give it a view and say a prayer for all those who need this promise today.

Ned and Leslie loved the albums of Indelible Grace and Beth and I were glad to sing — hard as it was through our masks and tears — the upbeat, folkie version of “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go”, which gets to me even on a good day. (Here’s a live version, also quite nice.)

Their Wheatland musicians led us well and when, near the end, they opened to the chords of a congregational favorite, the Sandra McCracken tune, “We Shall Feast in the House of Zion” from her Psalms album, and there was hardly a dry eye in the place, even as we rejoiced in the hope of the gospel.

We will feast in the house of Zion

We will sing with our hearts restored

He has done great things, we will say together

We will feast and weep no more

 

We will not be burned by the fire

He is the Lord, our God

We are not consumed by the flood

Upheld, protected, gathered up

 

We will feast in the house of Zion

We will sing with our hearts restored

He has done great things, we will say together

We will feast and weep no more

 

In the dark of night, before the dawn

My soul, be not afraid

For the promised morning, oh how long

Oh God of Jacob, be my strength

 

We will feast in the house of Zion

We will sing with our hearts restored

He has done great things, we will say together

We will feast and weep no more

 

Every vow we’ve broken and betrayed

You are the faithful One

And from the garden to the grave

Bind us together, bring shalom

 

We will feast in the house of Zion

We will sing with our hearts restored

He has done great things, we will say together

We will feast and weep no more

You may have heard the story of what happened with the extraordinary painter who used to teach at Gordon College, the good, good artist and friend, Bruce Herman. (There will be a new Square Halo volume, The Art of Bruce Herman: An Unguarded Gaze, showing his work, coming soon, we’ve heard.) He sensed one morning that he was to paint a portrait of Leslie. He knew she was sick and he had been praying for her, but had no idea how very special this painting would become. Amazingly rich and exquisitely artful, he finished it and sent it to the Bustard’s where it arrived during a discouraging time a bit before Leslie’s final turn for the worse. What a joy it was, and so very appropriate for an art-appreciating family like theirs. It was quickly photographed and shared on social media, becoming somewhat of a banner for the Bustard’s end-of-life missives and a rallying point for those of us who love them.

The world-class poet/priest from England, the Reverend Malcolm Guite, saw it and wrote a poem for her, recalling his time spent with them in Lancaster this past winter and inspired by Bruce’s portrait:

Out of the turbulence, out of the wild

Haphazardness of background strokes, the brush

Still finds its form and forms her face:

So full of life and, lovely, like a child

Still making her own mischief, with a rush

Of energy. And yet we also trace

A woman’s wisdom in her concentration

On the still point, the whole point of it all,

Which was and is and always will be love:

Creative love and love in all creation.

This painting finds the poet in her, all

The heighth and depth she bodies forth as form,

To find her balance on the point of love,

When lovers know there’s nothing left to prove.

This recent poem isn’t found in any of his many books, but we wanted to share it here. Thanks for reading along.

Most of us don’t know famous poets, of course — I don’t — but it might be wise for all of us to think well about the real things of this fallen but being redeemed world of wonder, and prepare ourselves with Kingdom imagination, about how to honor those who die and support those in grief There are very good books on dying well and thinking about funerals — send me an email and I’ll create a list for you. I think, at the very least, you should have that second Every Moment Holy Volume II: Death, Grief, and Hope. Just to remind you, both of those handsome volumes come in two editions — the full sized leather hardbacks ($35.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00) and in soft, flexible leather in compact sized editions ($25.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00.) When sending us an order, please be sure to tell us which volume you want and which size/edition you prefer. Thanks.

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN AND CLICK ON THE “ORDER HERE” LINK BELOW.

It is very helpful if you tell us how you prefer us to ship your orders.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options, and, of course, UPS. If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be slow. For one typical book, usually, it’s about $3.85; 2 lbs would be $4.55.
• United States Postal Service has another option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50,  if it fits in a flat rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Just saying “US Mail” isn’t helpful because there are those two methods, one cheaper but slower, one more costly but quicker. Which do you prefer?

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In our last, heart-felt BookNotes I highlighted several good chapters and a book by our very dear friend Leslie Bustard, who is now, as her bereaved but hopeful husband Ned, put it, “on mercy’s shores.” One brand new book, Why We Create (published by Square Halo Books, where Leslie was intimately involved) included a new piece by Leslie on how having cancer made her more attentive, more grateful, and  more generative. It was a wonderful chapter and that it was released to the book buying world just days before her death seemed somehow — what? — I can hardly find the word. Appropriate. Blessed, maybe. So I wrote about it, gladly, if through my own tears.

It was a blessed thing, too, that many wrote to me, noting their concern and interest in this marvelous Lancaster-based woman. Her family was happy to hear that, and it was meaningful for Beth and me and our staff here. Thanks for caring. (You can read her obituary, here.)

This fascination with a good story of a good writer inspired me to finish up a BookNotes post I’d been working on the previous week about memoirs, mostly memoirs about folks going through loss or other painful, complicated stuff. I’ve read a few stellar ones these last few weeks, and am in the middle of two others. If I remind you of a few I raved about a few months ago, I’ve got a nice compilation of 10 great stories. As I often say, the best-written memoirs are almost as imaginative and surely as enjoyable as a fine novel.

Please allow me to tell you about these — all announced here at 20% off. If they aren’t your cup of tea, no worries, although I am sure many will love hearing about these.

To order just scroll to the bottom of the column and click on the “order” link which takes you to our secure order form page at the Hearts & Minds website.

Lessons and Carols: A Meditation on Recovery John West (Eerdmans) $25.00                                OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

I start with this one but want to say it may be the most demanding of reads on this good list. It is, doubtlessly and assuredly, very well written. The author, John West, has himself been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and this memoir is poetic, nuanced, at times allusive, even, at times, staggeringly perplexing. And yet, it is one of the most brilliant bits of creative writing I have come across in a long, long time. It is clearly in a genre that transcends the categories of autobiography, even the category of memoir, and into sheer literature. Of a ragged, raw sort.

Indeed, one reviewer noted his “sensitivity and wild intelligence” suggesting he “enters a psychic and emotional netherworld.” It is gentle and reflective and and extraordinary achievement.

The title of the book comes from the loose format — if one can call it that — of being arranged around the traditional Anglican Christmas service of stories and songs; it is, admittedly, genre-bending, as the flyleaf promises.

Maybe redemption is not a place you find, but a system of mapmaking. Sketch a land. Pencil in dragons. Imagine it real, resplendent, and broken under a waxing moon.

Some of the story, as the subtitle promises, explores “the aftershocks” of alcoholism. That is true. Also, the author struggled with mental illness, and the anguish of that — told through “a fresh look at the powers of poetry, ritual, and community” is gripping.

Mark Wunderlich notes that West,

…moves among the shades of addiction, the fog of confusion, to emerge changed, connected to life and to love and to art…. Lessons and Carols is not a conventional story of adversity overcome, but the narrative of the author’s commitment to the making of a soul.

The “ritual” and “community” that is alluded to is a routine of gathering friends to read and sing the “lessons and carols” service — sometimes with what seems like a degree of camp, sometimes with flamboyant earnestness, even though, in some years, the participants are all atheists, or trying to be. The book isn’t only or even mostly about these yearly enactments, but they anchor the narrative a bit. West was young and wild and sexually active, when he started this yearly gathering;  later, through much of the narrative, he is a struggling new parent. It’s been many years since I held my own newborns, but, geesh, this evoked some feelings about that. And more.

Very impressive literary figures have endorsed this set of episodes — Mark Wunderlick, Megan Maynhew Bergman, and the always wise Sven Birkerts. But listen to this assessment by James K.A. Smith, editor of Image and author of, most recently, How to Inhabit Time. Jamie writes:

In poetic prose of spare, searing beauty, John West helps us see Christmas as another name for the human condition. These haunted, humane meditations are at once elegy and hymn, psalms of ascent and lament. West finds possibilities for language that birth possibilities for how to be. A singular book.

Where the Waves Turn Back: A Forty Day Pilgrimage Along the California Coast Tyson Motsenbocker (Worthy Publishing) $27.00              OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

This book, quite simply, drew me in, caught me up short, made me think, made me laugh, and blew me away as I was struck by the unique style of prose (and the fabulous story.) I had felt this before (if rarely) and it struck me; maybe he’s a modern day Holden Caulfield, or at least a hip, artistic writer with an J. D Salinger vibe. Maybe I’m misreading, but I think the last time I felt like this was reading the first book by Donald Miller, and then, later, reading his second, mega-seller, Blue Like Jazz. Donald doesn’t write like that any more and I’ve not found anybody to replace that iconic space in the edgy-cool, post-evangelical world of faith and doubt and journey and discovery. Rachel Held Evans came close at times — I loved her searching story Searching for Sunday — but Miller, and certainly Motsenbocker, have a lot of attitude. And, yet, Motsenbocker’s attitude, when it isn’t exuding wide-eyed wonder at this strange and beautiful world, is, mostly, humble. Honest, raw, and humble.

He is open to everybody and everything and, even though this is a road-trip / hiking story of loss and doubt, he is generous and guileless, almost zen-like. He is not jaded, even if he is bitter.

The short version of the remarkable book is that his artsy, eccentric, Christian mom died (in her mid-50s) when Tyson, a rising singer-songwriter (on the circuit, opening for Switchfoot and doing sold out shows, gathering acclaim from Americana critics and NPR), was in his early 20s. Days after the funeral he takes up his mom’s enigmatic challenge to “do something irresponsible” and sets off to hike from San Diego to San Francisco. And like Kerouac, just like that, he’s on the road. Walking with bad sneakers and even worse knees, ill-prepared, carrying a film canister hosting her ashes.

The book follows his sometimes dramatic journey — part pilgrimage, part walkabout, part irresponsible, romantic gesture to honor his mom — on the Camino Real trail, created (and now nearly forgotten) by the controversial Father Junipero Serra. Everybody in California knows of this eighteenth-century monk who “dedicated his life to the idea that tragedy and suffering are portals to renewal” and created a series of still-standing adobe missions throughout the state. We learn just a bit about this Franciscan missionary (who came, we have to admit, as part of the repressive colonization of the abusive Spanish Empire) and we learn a lot about the geography of California. Each chapter in Where the Waves Turned Back has the name of a town or place as its main title, towns many of us have at least heard of, from Capistrano to Ventura to Santa Barbara to Big Sur. I couldn’t put it down.

Tyson has a great eye for detail and he vividly and earnestly tells of his explorations of run-down barrios, blue-collar, working-class harbor towns, smoggy industrial ports, busy superhighways, and multi-million dollar coastal estates which, further North, gives way to scenic vistas, bad weather, and incredible forests. He seems to be able to have good conversations with everyone, including cops and railway workers, Marine-base guards, hapless surfer dudes, folks who live in homeless encampments, not to mention other hobos and hikers and a fair share of diner waitresses, bar-tenders, and baristas. He connects with a few old friends along the way (and his well-told stories of these encounters are unforgettable) and he stops in a few sports bars to watch his beloved Seattle football team; his conversations along the way are reported in an often staccato way, he said, she said, I said. It works strikingly in a light-hearted way, funny, even, until he hits you with the punchline that is often much more than bravado, offering something approaching profound.

He has this way, pondering even the most mundane thing which gets him thinking about this or that, and then again wondering how things really are, rejecting truisms of American culture. He’s got an artist’s temperament and it is captivating, perhaps especial for those readers who are more conventionally logical and left-brained.

Where the Waves Turn Back is gloriously written when he describes the flora and fauna of the coast, the glories of the sky, the sea, the wind, the rain. As one who has done a few weeks of this sort of thing — hitchhiking from Pittsburgh to the West Coast and home again, back in the day — I only wish I had such gorgeously articulated memories of the changing scenery and Motsenbocker’s capacity for friendly conversations along the way. This book rings true, and the big, big backstory — a smart young man’s searching for a renewed faith and a healing from the loss of his mother — is not only entertaining, but important. It certainly captures the style and approach of a certain sort of young adult writer, a socially conscious, melancholy guy caught maybe between Coupland-esque Gen X searching and Millennial hope.

Another part of the story is how he weaves together — as if it is floating in his own memory as he walks and walks, with time to think — stories of his past, especially his time in war-town Haiti as a child; his parents were medical missionaries there until they were evacuated by the UN. His awareness of a toxic sort of religion, too, comes up, and his move away from simplistic fundamentalism is assumed. He has a good heart, though, a gracious attitude, child-like, at times. What a character he is!

I do not mean to be cheap or pretentious to say that this book could very well be this generation’s Blue Like Jazz. I hope the right crowd discovers it, the sorts of bohemian readers who would appreciate his wit and stream-of-consciousness ponderings, his non-dogmatic worldview.  Where the Waves… has more cussing in it than Blue but the questioning of pat answers is similar; the honest and unashamed open-mindedness goes beyond the general evangelical orthodoxy of Mr. Miller’s books. This spiritual memoir, based on his own frank and colorful on-the-road journals, will — as the flyleaf rightly promises — be a “thrilling and deeply satisfying read that asks questions that will resonate with readers seeking meaning in an utterly disorienting age.”

“One of the truly beautiful and terrible things about being human,” he says, “is our capacity to sense the gap between what is and what should be.”

My copy is loaded with little post-it notes marking sections I’d want to cite if this were a longer review, noting pages to read out loud if I had the chance to tell about it in detail. Like most books there are a few lines that left me scratching my head, but whole paragraphs are artfully quotable (and, again, many are glorious, and some are lots of fun) So much is so well done, in this unique style. I want to start over and read it again.

For now, though, listen to these two great blurbs, who each capture something right about this moving story:

Where the Waves Turn Back is a mash-up of things that don’t always go together: it’s heartbreaking and funny, honest about doubts even as it’s deeply hopeful, beautifully written and addictively readable. I’m so glad Tyson went on this wonderfully irresponsible journey, and I’m glad he wrote about it so we could, too. I loved this book.  — Andrew Peterson, sing-songwriter and author of The Wingfeather Saga and Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making

With the curiosity of a traveler, the lyricism of a songwriter, and the hard-won wisdom of a griever, Motsenbocker brings us on a journey of honest reflection and healing. Stark, gritty, and authentic, Motsenbocker’s words sweep readers up into a story as varied and vast as the landscape he describes. This book will be a gift to anyone who has know the pain of loss and the joy of hope rediscovered. — Amanda Held Opelt, author of A Whole in the World.

If you are a fan of indie-rock, new folk stuff, you should listen to his several EPs and full-lenth albums (like his pal David Bazon, on Tooth & Nail, by the way.) 2016’s Letters to Lost Loves is about his coming to terms with the death of his mother and alludes, at times, to his epic pilgrimage, written about now in this new book. Check it out. I’m a fan.

Blood from a Stone: A Memoir of How Win Brought Me Back from the Dead Adam McHugh (IVP) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

I wrote about this before and on more than one occasion tried to convince BookNotes readers to buy this book. (Heck, I even wrote to Tyson Motsenbocker about it, as it seemed somehow connected to his own California journey.)

Blood From a Stone is not the first book by accomplished writer Adam McHugh. He did the well-known and much-appreciated Introverts in Church and then a book which the complicated writing of which gets mentioned in Blood from a Stone, The Listening Life. This, though, is artistically much more creatively written than the other two excellent ones and it is both much more sad and much more funny. And, in a stretch for this reliably evangelical publisher, he cusses his way through doubts, depression, and deconstruction. It is a work of art unlike many I’ve read lately.

Like the young and spunky artist Tyson Motsenbocker, McHugh spends much of this book traveling around the middle of The Golden State. While Tyson is on pilgrimage and swigging water (and when he stops at a bar, beer or espresso) McHugh, as the subtitle says, finds his drink of choice to be the Biblical fruit of the vine. I don’t know what I liked more about this riveting book — the viniculture history, his own story away from pastoral ministry to a job in the wine industry, or his gloriously-written and utterly fascinating studies of Cali culture and the state’s bloody political history (including the mixed-bag influence of the intrepid Father Serro Juniper.)

In any case, Blood from a Stone is, as McHugh puts it, “the story of how wine brought me back from the dead….a corkscrewing tale of how I got to Santa Ynez, eventually, and the questions that came up along the way.” That’s putting it mildly. It is a story told with warmth and wit, though, and a great, great read. He is without a doubt a gifted storyteller.

A sparkling delight, laced with deep and earthy emotion, but ultimately finished with notes of hope and love.  — Alissa Wilkinson, author of Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women

Shattered: A Son Picks Up the Pieces of His Father’s Rage Arthur Boers (Eerdmans) $22.99    OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

I have been waiting to get a hold of this book for months; I have been on the edge of my seat wanting to read it and — of course — tell you, dear readers, about it. I say this for a couple of important reasons.

I believe Arthur Boers is one of the great, wise, working pastors and Christian thinkers writing today. He was mentored, in part, by Eugene Peterson and although we have never met, we have so many interlocking relationships and interesting connections and I’ve read his work and recommended it over the years that I feel like I know him. I bet some of you do, too. I would read any book he did and when I heard he was working on a very personal, intimate memoir, I shuddered. With a working title like Shattered you can imagine that it is not going to be light-hearted.

Secondly, besides the fact that I’d recommend anything Boers does — he is one of those small handful of authors who I trust and appreciate and want to read no matter what he is writing about. — I have heard that this long-awaited memoir, particularly, is exceptionally well written. Unlike his other books of solid, provocative prose, this is said to be a work of art. It is a literary memoir, a spiritual story told in elegant, movingly crafted words.

To back me up on this, in case you may wonder, the forward by Andre Dubus III, the famous novelist and essayist, who writes (in the exceedingly impressive foreword),

Yet this is not simply the impressive work of a pastor who can write really well. It is also a glorious expression of what Arthur Boers has also been for his entire adult life: a writer.

After which Mr. Dubus cites William James and Tobias Wolfe – not bad company for Arthur to be in, eh?

Dubus reflects,

All of our memories are a reaching for the shards of the past experience, a gathering of the fragments that may, in time, make a more meaningful and ultimately more restorative whole.

Indeed, this is one of the reasons, I think, that I find well considered memoirs to be so very rewarding to read; perhaps, for me, more formative than fiction, as important as novels are. Such memoirs help us construe life in a new way — towards that “restorative whole.” In any event, the gathering of fragments is a theme within Shattered, not just in the horrific scene where a glass is shattered, which his pious father violently threw…

Glass itself, too, is a bit of a theme, Boer’s Dutch Calvinist immigrant father in Canada ran a greenhouse design business. Cutting one’s hands in this dangerous work was not uncommon and such danger becomes a working metaphor for much of his own development as son, young adult, pastor, writer.

I mentioned that Eugene Peterson was an intellectual and spiritual mentor to Arthur. One sees that in books such as the brilliant Servants and Fools: A Biblical Theology of Leadership or even his Alban Institute monograph Never Call Them Jerks about healthy pastoral responses to difficult behavior among parishioners. One of Boer’s most beloved books — well written with a bit of a memoirist feel — is  The Way Is Made By Walking: A Pilgrimage Along the Camino de Santiago, one of my favorites of many El Camino books. (That one, by the way, carries a beautiful forward by Peterson and a great back-cover blurb by Marva Dawn, who herself would not have been able to hike the trail herself, but thrilled to read about it in Boer’s reliable storytelling.)

The other person who Shattered is dedicated to, alongside Peterson, is Henri Nouwen, who  with others, even, “became as fathers for me.”  Re-reading the dedicated after the grueling story of his abusive father, is poignant, if understated. You have to be touched by a line like that.

There is much to be said about this book which will surely be on many year-end “best of” lists. It is a different story than last year’s moving Where the Light Fell, the personal memoir by Philip Yancey, but it will be seen as similar, I suppose. It, perhaps like Yancey (if not more so) draws a complex and even tender picture of many of the main characters in this unflinching story. He does not attempt to justify or even minimize the male rage and abuse in this narrative, but it is not bitter. It is a remarkably graceful story, a story of beauty and goodness.

Listen to his friend (and fellow author of considerable writerly gifts), Winn Collier, biographer of Eugene Peterson and author of A Burning in My Bones:

It’s not all that uncommon these days to find a story told with unflinching honesty. But to find a story that’s also wise and tender and honors the complexity of every person, even those who’ve harmed us, even ourselves — now that’s a feat. And when the person who’s putting the words to paper truly knows the craft of writing as the alchemy of art and grace, well, then we have a book to cherish. Shattered is a book you’ll cherish.

And read and ponder this lovely endorsement from reader (and writer) extraordinary, Lauren Winner, who illustrates not only the beauty and grace of this well-done memoir, but how reading such a book can inspire us to consider anew things in our own lives and relationships”

This brave and wonderful book made me feel gratitude, care, and something like quiet awe. And it made me think–about generational inheritance, about the ways violence lingers, about forgiveness, and, most abidingly, about my own dead mother. I think of her, and of myself unto her, differently now that I’ve read Shattered.

Sistering: The Art of Holding Close and Letting Go Jessica Dickey and Danielle Neff (Pilgrim Press) $14.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.96

Oh my, don’t underestimate the power and beauty of this compact paperback from a religious publishing house (Pilgrim Press, one of the oldest publishing enterprises in the country, is owned by the United Church of Christ.) This little book is co-written by a pair of sisters, one of whom works in Los Angeles and New York in the TV biz and the other remained true to her central Pennsylvania roots and is a local UCC pastor. Both are obviously lovely, artful, morally serious people, even if it is laugh-out-loud funny at times. It is, an access who is also a sister says, “a stark-naked love letter to the magic of knowing and being known — to the sisterhood of art and holiness.”

Well. That’s a lot for a short book of back-and-forth memories by some central Pennsylvania gals. But, as Carol Lee Flinders (who wrote Enduring Grace, a classic biography of seven women mystics) puts it,

Like a timeless ballad sung in perfect two-part harmony, Sistering is an absolute delight and unlike anything I think I’ve ever read.

She continues,

It has all of the warmth and momentum of a great love story and at the same time raises searching, serious questions about love itself — raises them, though, in the context of a richly and sometimes hilariously narrated family history.

Trigger warning (and spoiler alert): there are two chapters, one by Jessica and one by Danielle, which tell of Dani’s rape as a 19 year old college student and how they both reacted. These sisters were tight and even now they are able to reflect on their responses to this gross injustice and its traumatic aftermath.

These gals are remarkably self-reflective, have great memories, and can swear like sailors in the vivid telling of teenage high-jinx and broken hearts, body changes and family drama, current callings and dreams of growing old as sisters. As one actor put it, reading this “put a lump in my throat, a smile on my face.”

All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir Beth Moore (Tyndale) $27.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

If I’m making a list of the best-written, most captivating and engaging memoirs I’ve read recently, I have to mention, again, this page-turner of a blessing, the honest life story of the famous Bible teaching lady, Beth Moore. A Southern Baptist until not too long ago, she writes very well, inviting us into her life story, and into very deep and broken places in her heart. It’s a read I will long cherish and which we very highly recommend.

Like others in this list it shares some hard stuff. She experienced anguish and brokenness worse than most and struggled to be faithful to God the whole way through; in this aspect, her well-crafted story fits with the others here that expose deep sadness in the life of the writers. True to form, though, this one — even in the very hard stuff she shares about very personal matters of faith and marriage and illness and abuse — is upbeat and truly inspiring.

Please read my previous review at this BookNotes column, here. And then order a bunch for your book club. It’s fantastic.

Evangelical Anxiety: A Memoir Charles Marsh (HarperOne) $27.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

Oh my, I’ve got to list this one again, a book that I raved about and promoted a bit on social media. I respect Marsh a lot, and really appreciate his ability as a writer to tell a personal story that is so very much set in a certain cultural and social and even theological milieu.

As you may know, he was raised amidst racial terror in the South — his dad, a Southern Baptist pastor, maybe somewhat quietly, but bravely, stood against KKK leaders in his small town. This had, shall we say, repercussions.

On the bright side, it motivated Charles to write several very important books about the civil rights era, such as a historical study of the use of the Bible in the opposing groups, God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Oxford University Press), an unforgettable memoir of his dad’s struggle (The Last Days: A Son’s Story Of Sin And Segregation At The Dawn Of A New South) and a few about social justice and Christian faith, such as the fabulous one he co-wrote with John Perkins, Welcoming Justice: God’s Movement Toward Beloved Community. 

Marsh is also known as a Bonhoeffer scholar. I hope you saw our recent little BookNotes review of the fascinating Resisting the Bonhoeffer Brand: A Life Reconsidered which essentially is Marsh’s rebuttal to some German critics of his best-selling Bonhoeffer bio, Strange Glory.

As the above shows, Marsh is a thoughtful Christian who is intentionally involved in the world around him; he is a teacher at UVA and a scholar of Christian activism. And yet, through it all — we learn in Evangelical Anxiety — he has been in both serious psychotherapy and on medication for anxiety attacks and other mental health issues, perhaps revolving around the strictness of his fundamentalist upbringing. From sexuality to race, from dogmatism in theology to consumeristic trends in contemporary worship, he has seen much and experienced it in his own unique ways. His book chronicles this journey, this struggle, this path of discipleship that is honest and vivid and, at times painful. What a book.

Dinah Miller an author who has written about being a psychiatrist (Shrink Rap), says it is “beautifully choreographed” offering “lyrical prose that dances as he recounts a tormenting anxiety disorder.”  Calvin University philosopher James K.A. Smith (also editor of the arts journal, Image) says  it is “a bold, beautiful memoir.”Another reviewer notes that it “examines Christianity’s fraught relationship to the erotic…”

Darcey Steinke continues,

From the kudzu-strangled landscapes of his Deep South childhood to the spiritual salves of literary novels to the theological integrity of psychoanalysis, Evangelical Anxiety is as transgressive as it is vibrant

Please read my longer BookNotes review here.

Our Hearts Are Restless: The Art of Spiritual Memoir Richard Lischer (Oxford University Press) $34.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $27.96

This big book —over 375 pages counting the index — is one I have yet to start, but my copy is close by. I can’t wait, really. In case you don’t know his work, and why he is so perfect for this kind of book about the art of spiritual memoir, let me remind you a bit:

I so admire Richard Lischer, who first became a literary hero for me when he wrote in 2001, I think, Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery. The memoir of his first small-town pastorate — compared a bit to Garrison Keillor, the patron Saint of Lutheran storytellers — portrayed in rich detail the trials and joys of the young pastor’s first parish in rural Illinois. There still are not enough small town pastoral stories, so this is enduring. Later he wrote the gut-wrenching memoir of the years in which his adult son died, Stations of the Heart: Parting with a Son. I adored his book on preaching (the Yale Beecher lectures, given in years after 9-11, amidst the War on Terror, published by Eerdmans) called The End of Words: The Language of Reconciliation in a Culture of Violence; I read it maybe three times, wanting to believe in the power of preaching, the power of words. I reviewed at BookNotes his 2021 collection of sermons called Just Tell the Truth: A Call to Faith, Hope, and Courage.

In some circles, Dr. Lischer, a distinguished professor at Duke University, is best known for his exceptional volume on the preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr. First written in the 1990s, The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word That Moved America was updated with an expanded edition reissued in 2020. It combines the art of biography, his insights about being a pastor, and his expertise in homiletics and the power of words. Indeed.

Which brings us to the recent and magisterial-looking volume taking the title from the well-known line from Augustine who is said to have written the first modern memoir, a reflective telling of the author’s interior life.

Here is what they promise in this remarkable volume:

(It is) a guided tour of spiritual autobiography that grants readers new insights into and appreciation of the genre.

In this big book Richard Lischer examines the life writings of twenty-one figures from Thomas Merton to James Baldwin, from Julian of Norwich to Emily Dickinson (and even the outrageously lovely Anne Lamott and the equally edgy work of urban pastor Heidi Neumark.) He explores the “uncertainty principle” in John Bunyan and he has a great chapter on Etsy Hillesum. He calls his chapter on C.S. Lewis “Surprised by Death.” I can’t wait to read his bit on illness and healing based on the memoir of Reynolds Price, who I suspect he knew personally. The chapter I will start with first, though, is about the work of a favorite writer of several favorite books, Dennis Covington. Covington’s Salvation on Sand Mountain is one of the most amazing books I have read in my life.  What will Lischer see and what will he say?

Lischer is a perceptive reader and an engaging guide. I’m sure this will be a very rewarding, serious, perhaps quietly life-changing read.

A Living Remedy: A Memoir Nicole Chung (Ecco) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Oh my, this is a book that has so captivated me, I can’t stop thinking or talking about it. I’ve ordered her previous one, and can’t wait. I can’t quite say what it is that makes this so very compelling, but it has moved me deeply. It is a lovely story, nicely written. One LA Times reviewer said she “hit it out of the park.”

Not an overtly religious book, really, the author was raised Roman Catholic and her parents became Orthodox while she was in college.  She writes about the Christian liturgy during his burial with such beauty, it is nearly worth the price of the book, learning about her ill father coming to terms with his own mortality. (Ahh, she was surprised to hear this from the priest, and was understandably in a quandary; her dad knew he was dying? She lived across the continent but surely would have scraped together enough money for more plane fares had she known…) Later in the story, her mother dies (during Covid, no less) and the book is very much about emotional terrain experienced when one loses one’s parents.

This really is a memoir of family but the core of the book, even if anchored by the narratives of grief — is, as with her previous story, about being a Korean adoptee, raised in not only a very culturally white town (in Oregon, a place known historically for its “white only” laws) but raised by loving parents who were instructed by the adoption agency to raise her as white, unconnected to her Asian cultural heritage. She was a compliant child and never told her parents about the Asian taunts, the bullying, the racism she encountered even as a child and as a teen. She just couldn’t wait to leave.

As a working class family, her parents could not afford many of the things her upper middle class friends took for granted. She covered well and her family was loving and active in church. But when it came time to go off to college she hardly knew how to apply.

There are two chapters in this book that tell the story of the difficulties of being the first person from a family to go off to college and it seems to me that anyone who works in college life, in student affairs, in collegiate ministry, should read and ponder her story of economic woes while a student. At least at the East Coast university where she ended up (with hard earned scholarships) she was not the only person of color, not the only Asian.

Besides this being a book about an adopted Korean girl from a poorer, small-town, family, making her way through life, even in a big university (and the complications of marrying, young, a great guy from a family of means) it ends up, also, having a lot to say about the inequities in health care in this country. It is a memoir, of course, a narrative, not a polemic, but the insights just naturally pour out. Had her family been able to afford better preventive health care (including earlier diagnostic efforts) her father would not have died when he did. As Julie Otsuka (author of The Swimmers) put it, she writes “with nuance and empathy about what it means to be ill and economically insecure in America today.” Otsuka continues, “she transforms her rage and anguish into luminous prose on the page.”

She transforms her rage and anguish into luminous prose on the page.

There’s a lot going on, gently at times, told with vignettes that are entertaining and good, good reading. Her mentor Amani Perry (of the much-discussed South to America) notes that A Living Remedy is “brimming with insight about class, race, identity, and politics, it will move and transform readers with its beauty, spirituality, and wisdom.”

A transcendent memoir about family, class, and the contours of loss. . . . In her clear, concise prose, Chung makes the personal political, tackling everything from America’s crushingly unjust health care system to the country’s gauzy assumptions about adoption, a practice that is itself rooted in economic inequality. . . . With this work, Chung offers a luminous addition to the literature of loss, from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Notes on Grief to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. Absorbing, spare and sometimes terrifyingly close to the abyss, A Living Remedy shows us the power of resilience. — New York Times Book Review

A Living Remedy is a bouquet of feeling–Nicole Chung weaves a groundbreaking narrative steeped in love, humor, the infinitude of memory, and the essentiality of community. Chung approaches the kaleidoscope of grief from its many angles, excavating its complexity with heart and candor; but Chung’s prose also soothes, uncovering hidden corners of the heart and its many permutations. A Living Remedy is elegiac and heart-expanding, a memoir that’s both an exploration of loss and a beacon for moving forward. We couldn’t be luckier to have this gift of a book. — Bryan Washington, author of Memorial

This astounding and immensely moving memoir is a gift. It is a chance to think about family, mortality, love, and grief. It is a chance to confront the broken healthcare system we live within. From the most intimate to the most public, A Living Remedy holds gem-like questions about all that matters. — Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning

The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening Ari Shapiro (HarperOne) $28.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

My goodness — who knew? I like Ari Shapiro from NPR but, to be honest, knew nothing about him. He is an empathetic interviewer, an astute questioner, a good reporter. I love his voice, I respect his sense of stories, his balance. I couldn’t wait to read his auto-biography, learning about who he really is.

Well, what a story. Where to even begin. I hardly knew he was Jewish (although, duh, right?) I did not know he was gay. I didn’t know — where have I been? — that he was a singer, touring often with Pink Martinis, a band with a campy, international flavor and following, whose CDs we have carried for years.

Each of these aspects of his identity and his role in the world are shared in the first portions of the book and I was utterly captivated.  Even after the first few pages I kept exclaiming to Beth how very interesting it was, and how joyfully entertaining. I read parts out loud. What an upbeat, clear, and fabulous wordsmith, and what a good storyteller. Naturally. I  truly can’t tell you of a book I’ve so enjoyed, just so enjoyed, in ages.

I suppose not everyone would be entertained by his early chapter about coming out in high school, his nerdy youth and coming of age with some rowdy gay friends in the underground scene in Portland. He was outgoing and mostly popular, although faced some bullying. (He had already come to appreciate being a stand out and even a bit of a performer while spending his earliest grade school years as the only Jewish kid in his Fargo ND elementary school, tasked with explaining Hanukkah to the kids celebrating Christmas.) Being gay in school a few decades ago wasn’t easy, of course, and think what you will of his telling, it is really engaging. He’s a good writer, an honest memoirist, and I kept turning the pages, smiling as I went. I like this guy.

After his journey to Yale he was surprised to get an internship with the great Nina Totenberg at NPR which got him in the door there, long before he became a host of All Things Considered. His stories from there unfold — what a great read, learning about that world. Later, his first day as a real employee was 9-11. Citing the old NPR staff joke that they reported stuff “a day late, and called it analysis” he realized there were so many stories to tell of that awful day. Soon, the nearby Pentagon is attacked and there are creepy vans outside of their own DC offices; employees must move away from the windows. This isn’t the most dramatic account of his journalistic career, but it is a riveting and poignant start.

A lot of his storytelling is a bit self deprecating. He tells of his first day as a White House correspondent when he ended up in the Oval Office by mistake. Ha!  He says good things about his colleagues in the press corp and is always honest about his own goofs, but, as we know, he is a consummate professional, a solid, solid guy, and a reporter with a passion for telling real stories, fairly. The Best Strangers takes you around the world.

Which leads to one of several “musical interludes” as he calls them, describing his role recording, and then singing, and then touring with Pink Martinis. They are the sort of band that brings in eccentric and unexpected guests, including Phyllis Diller, whose “swan song was a Pink Martini collaboration — a recording of the song “Smile” written by her old friend, Charlie Chaplin.” Exactly.

The band has done benefits for gay rights in the 1990s and is known for their peace-through-music vibe. But, as Ari explains,

Although the band doesn’t play at overtly political events today, there’s a clear element of musical diplomacy to what we do. Pink Martini goes to the reddest parts of Texas and sings songs in Arabic. In Greece, the band performs Turkish songs. We’re not opining on the Iran Nuclear deal or NATO from the stage. But as the singer Andra Day once told me, music is the only thing that can enter your psyche without permission. It’s hard to view someone as an enemy when you’re dancing and clapping along to their songs.

And then he tells how they had to curtail their famous all-around-the room Conga lines because of “Her Excellency” demands in a particular Arab country. And other threats and discriminations they’ve faced along the way as they’ve toured the world, from Casablanca to Tunis and Abu Dhabi, singing a song by his friend (A Jordanian Palestinian TV procure) suggesting empathy for Syrian refugees. It didn’t always go over well.

There is beautiful writing here about his marriage to his husband and lots about his personal life, but most of the book is about being a globally-inclined. human interest radio reporter, a world-renowned journalist of the first order.

He tells of eating reindeer stew and sipping Swedish vodka (while covering “a growing extremist anti-refugee movement” in Sweden, alongside a trip to the Fulani people in West Africa, and a story they did among the fisherman of Fraserburgh, a small Scottish town on the North Sea that was working on an ecological comeback by carefully rebuilding their cod fisheries.  From ending up with dramatic illnesses (and ending up in the wrong hospitals) to entering war zones, there is so much he has experienced and goodness he has covered.

Regarding the 2014 murder of a Palestinian youth (in retaliation for Palestinian militant’s murder of an Israeli teen) he writes,

I went to Abu Chedi family’s mourning tent in East Jerusalem, because I had heard that a bus full of sympathetic Jews was planning to show up, sit with the family, and offer condolences. I wondered how the encounter would go and wanted to see whether people would be able to build a bridge across this canyon of religion, identity, and mutual suspicion.

He also notes, “When I arrived, I was surprised to find there weren’t many other reporters there. To me, this seemed like an obvious draw for journalists looking for a break from the dark chronicle of rocks thrown and rockets fired.”  What a story ensues…The Best Strangers in the World explains it all.

Ari is a blast. He knows he is extraordinarily lucky (“blessed” he actually says) and while there’s plenty of fun celebrity stories — singing for Bono, performing a wedding where the Obamas are present — he also talks about curious stuff, from his problem with the sweats, an odd story about a zany, risqué party, all alongside heartbreakingly vital coverage of events such as the Pulse nightclub massacre, live from Orlando.

There’s a great few pages near the end where they ponder the “artificial divide between ‘hard news’ and ‘soft news.’ (He had tackled the topic of journalistic “objectivity” earlier.) He quotes his friend Sam Sanders (who created the podcasts It’s Been a Minute and Into It) who says it is “structurally oppressive — a way of diminishing marginalized groups.” Sanders continues,

All the stuff that the old school voice-of-God journalists want to call the “soft stuff”, that they don’t care about, always happens to be stuff about women, and Black and Brown folks, and gay people.”

Shapiro writes,

Sam and his podcasts are a testament that you can’t understand the so-called hard stories about “just facts” until you understand the cultural significance and emotional stuff that’s in the softer stories.

And, man, Arie is right — how very important are these human interest stories and background pieces, the fascinating, humane, even admittedly sometimes eccentric pieces about the human condition. His story about Zimbabwean freedom fighter, Savanna Madamombe, whose “weapons of choice” are flowers, is classic, and she ends up having influence at the United Nations. He shares it at the close of the book.

He and his NPR colleagues are national treasures, I think, common graces that we should elevate. This book will help. “I feel lucky”, he says, “to carry these kinds of stories.” He is blessed to “carry them with me, as examples of how to confront life’s ugliness with beauty, how to meet horror with humor, and how to smile in the face of whatever comes next.”

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In the last BookNotes I used the word resurrectionary. It was meant as somewhat of a play on the word revolutionary, since the resurrection really is nearly a revolution, inviting us to join the regime change, living all of our lives in ways that bears witness to the peculiar newness of the new creation that Christ’s bodily resurrection illustrates and assures. I listed a few recent books that seemed useful for anyone wanting inspiration for this extraordinary Kingdom calling.

None of the books were simplistic and none were cheap or formulaic. None were academic, but all were thoughtful. I think they would be fun to discuss together, to read with others, to allow them to further empower you to be a resurrectionary of sorts.

Please consider this as a bit of an addendum to that column.

LESLIE BUSTARD’S SPECIAL CHAPTER IN ORDINARY SAINTS

Ordinary Saints: Living Every Day to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

One of the books in that fun list was Ordinary Saints. For those who read carefully, you might have noticed my mentioning a particular chapter in this wonderfully diverse collection that came out from Square Halo Books a few months ago. I said that there were several good reasons to read Leslie Bustard’s chapter on homemaking (not least, I might have said, because it is very well written and, frankly, inspiring for anyone who lives in a house wanting it to be more of a home.) I said it was good and beautiful and true, and I meant that.

What I did not say, and now feel a bit sheepish about, is that Leslie is a dear, dear friend of both Beth and me, and her husband, Ned, is one of my best pals. We admire their three young adult daughters and we love their small, indie publishing venture, Square Halo Books, run out of their row house in downtown Lancaster. I love that house — I even love their dog. Despite the embodied goodness Leslie described in Ordinary Saints about this modest, artful, warm, home she has created on their narrow urban street, I must say (if you have not heard) that as I write, she is in hospice, in something like a coma, dying of one of the cancers that invaded her body several years ago. We are grateful for the many, many folks who have been praying for her and her family. I didn’t mention this horrible matter in that previous review as I was trying to respect their privacy, such as it is.

I must say (if you have not heard) that as I write, Leslie is in hospice, in something like a coma, dying of one of the cancers that invaded her body several years ago.

Many of our BookNotes readers and Hearts & Minds customers have purchased Square Halo Books books from us. (They kindly published my own book for recent college grads, Serious Dreams: Bold Ideas for the Rest of Your Life, which many of you know.) I know you see their names pop up here from time to time. For instance, I have routinely mentioned a marvelous book Leslie dreamed up, edited, and compiled (with her daughter, New York City educator Carey Bustard and Pacific Northwest writer Thea Rosenburg), Wild Things And Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children (Square Halo Books; $29.99 – OUR SALE PRICE =  $23.99.) See my previous BookNotes rave reviews here or here. I know Leslie is very (rightfully) proud of this major volume.

Leslie’s upbeat, Biblically-based chapter called “Homemaking” near the end of Ordinary Saints is thoughtful, important, theologically well-informed, and a genuine delight to read but it does not capture the sadness of these last few months. Those that know the Bustards — and they are known and loved by many — realize that they have lived rich lives these last few years, aware that Leslie’s remaining time might be short. They have worn it well. Leslie has been braver than you could imagine and a model of a faithful Christian facing the throes of dying. But, still, the chapter’s author and the book’s editor knew more about the spiritual haven that their home could be than they wrote about in that chapter. With no mention of her situation, it is simply a beautiful piece of writing and highly recommended.

(There are, importantly, several good chapters in Ordinary Saints, about coping with hard stuff; the Bustard’s dear friends and Square Halo business partners, Alan Bauer and Diana DiPasquale, each have good chapters that include some heart-rending anguish; another contributor has a chapter on chronic pain while another is glorifying God through the notion of limits. But there is nothing about dying. Perhaps it was too close to the bone, knowing what was coming, and now is.)

THE BRAND NEW WHY WE CREATE — WITH A NEW CHAPTER WRITTEN BY LESLIE BUSTARD

Why We Create edited by Brian Brown & Jane Scharl (Square Halo Books) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

If Leslie’s great chapter in Ordinary Saints didn’t reveal her journey of trusting God amidst anxieties about her cancer journey, her brand new chapter in the brand new Square Halo Book release, Why We Create (edited by Brian Brown & Jane Scharl) was written exactly about that. As our dear Ned and his daughters sit with Leslie as she rests in hospice care this very week, she may not be aware that this book was just released. With Ned and his Square Halo colleagues so distracted by this personal Via Delarosa, they may not have known that the book has been released, is out in the wild, and is here at Hearts & Minds.

With their encouragement, I highlight it now, sharing what Leslie (and Ned and their daughters) would want: a good review of yet another good Square Halo Book. And this one really is in their wheelhouse — Why We Create is a thoughtful, substantive, introduction to the topic of creativity, imagination and the arts, emerging from a serious reflection on the essential creatureliness of our world and God’s call to culture-making, imagining, naming, making.

I am not ashamed to admit that I dipped in first to read the piece by Leslie, a piece I did not expect to see in this collection. I was gobsmacked, as they say, when she started the essay with a memory of being at a local restaurant in early 2020, sharing with close friends about her dual cancer diagnoses.

“One friend leans close and asks me, “Can you keep looking for beauty in this time? Will you share it with us, this new beauty you find?””

“Can you keep looking for beauty in this time? Will you share it with us, this new beauty you find?”

I could not stop reading, even as tears streamed down my cheeks. I knew how she would answer.

Leslie notes right away that these questions could seem rude, even heartless, given that she was staring at a death sentence. “But to me, — and my friend knew this,” she reports, “they were right on the mark.” Spot on, as her friend Malcolm Guite might say.

She continues,

This was the real core of the matter: how would I, who has continually sought after beauty in my everyday, ordinary life, continue the quest when the road turned into the valley of shadow?

This, I am sure, is a large part of what it will mean for any of us to be a resurrectionary, a person so taken with the truth of Christ’s bodily resurrection and the creedal affirmation that we, too, will “rise in glory” and live in a physically (re)new(ed) earth; the quest looms large: how will we continue the search for goodness, for truth, for beauty, even when life is hard in this sin-sick world?

We are, as we all know, “between the times.” In Christ, God’s Kingdom has come, but yet is not yet fully known or seen. Leslie loved that song “Mary Consoles Eve” by her friend Katie Bowser (singing with Rain for Roots) on their kids Advent album Waiting Songs, with the repeated chorus of “almost – not yet – already.” Indeed, we take great hope in the truest truths of Advent and Christmas and Easter, the realities of incarnation and resurrection. But still: how do we embrace hope in this good but broken world where the gospel is true but not fully realized?

Leslie writes maturely in this good new chapter called “Gratitude: The Foundation of Human Creativity” in Why We Create. She draws deeply from the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper — she bought the books from us, I’m tickled to say — who proclaims, “To be conscious of gratitude is to acknowledge a gift.” Ooooh, there it is: she sees gratitude as one of the chief cornerstones of the human capacity to create and make. And to nurture the virtue of gratitude one must be clear about the abundance found in the conviction that life is a gift.

Bustard says:

Walking through that shadowed valley of cancer and seeking after beauty — everywhere from my backyard to my doctor’s office— became a journey of discovery for me, a life-lesson of how attentiveness leads to gratitude. This is the means of grace God offered me. He offers this means of grace wherever he calls His children to go.

Who writes stuff like this except one who has struggled with the deep intellectual questions, and, having rejected the options of stoicism, say, or nihilism, or hedonism, is thoroughly rooted in a Christianly-conceived and Biblically-informed worldview? Someone like Leslie Bustard.

She wisely cites Pieper a time or two more, moves (not surprisingly) to the dappled things of Gerard Manley Hopkins (and in a lovely surprise, cites one of the lesser known lines of that majestic poem), and tells us the plot and glory of the film Babette’s Feast. She offers a few of her own lines of original poetry and reveals a bit about her own heart as she struggled to remain on the look-out for beauty — she could have used Barbara Brown Taylor’s line about being a “detective of divinity” — and to learn to be grateful, even in her time in what she calls “cancer-land.”

Her candid, personal chapter is a gift in this rather meaty volume. The book is compiled by the Colorado-based Anselm Society and it is laden with world-class thinkers asking foundational questions about the Creator and His sub-creators. Yes, there are a lot of Tolkien-esque conversations here, with footnotes from Silmarillion, Leaf and Niggle, his essay on fairy tales, and more, alongside citations from Catholic philosophers, Orthodox mystics, and modern thinkers such as Dorothy Sayers, N.T. Wright, Norman Wirzba, and Esther Lightcap Meek. It’s that kind of a book.

The other contributors to this volume include Jessica Hooten Wilson, Marilyn McEntyre, Peter Leithart, Hans Boersma, Anthony Esolen, and more. (I loved a piece by Grace Olmstead — “The Art of Cultivation” — author of the much-discussed Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We’ve Left Behind.) Near the end, Jeromie Rand, an Anglican priest and admitted story-lover, asks and answers, finally, the title’s lofty question: why we create. His answer is rich and good, drawing on Alexander Schmemann and reflecting on the eucharistic life for the sake of the world.

Why We Create and its many thoughtful authors illustrate nicely much of what can be said of the tagline of Anselm’s project: seeking “A renaissance of the Christian imagination.”  It fits nicely next to other key books like this in the Square Halo backlist catalogue — It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God, It Was Good: Making Music to the Glory of God, Intruding Upon the Timeless: Meditations on Art, Faith, and Mystery by Gregory Wolfe, and, for instance, Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God by Malcolm Guite.

(No book is perfect, not even Square Halo ones, and I could offer some small criticisms. Ensolen takes a swipe at a feminist artist that was gratuitous and needless; Brown suggests the Trinity is hierarchical, dancing near heresy; in an otherwise beautiful chapter on time, the author fails to cite Jamie Smith. But Leslie makes up for the oversight by citing both the remarkable Created and Creating by jazzman William Edgar and German luthier Martin Schleske’s beautiful The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty. Hooray!)

Here is a good interview with Anselm Society’s very impressive Brian Brown conducted by Lancia Smith at the Cultivating Project (which Leslie wrote for, by the way) in which he talks about the book.

I am glad Leslie was honest in this chapter about some of her pain as she walked through the Shadowlands. In any case, “Gratitude: The Foundation of Human Creativity” is a short piece that will be cherished, of course, by friends of Leslie, but, more, by any who suffer. And, even more broadly, by anyone wanting to cultivate the sort of character, the virtue, the interior life, that is able to do this sort of good, good work. Leslie has long been a great grace to Beth and I, as she has time and again shown an almost child-like curiosity, a eager and open mind, and a deep faith in her very solid, Reformed theology. And has always done so with lots of smiles and generous hugs.

(You may enjoy knowing that Square Halo may very well be compiling a larger collection of her recent writings — the cancer journey evoked much in her, including a remarkable outpouring of poems and prose, published mostly online. Say a prayer that it may be so.)

THE GOODNESS OF THE LORD IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING

The Goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living Leslie Anne Bustard (Square Halo Books) $12.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $10.39

I have commented on this before in previous BookNotes, but, again, I might not have been fully forthcoming. When it was clear that Leslie was not (short of an extraordinary supernatural miracle) destined for a long life, Square Halo Books released (just a few months ago) a beautiful collection of her poetry. As she notes in “Gratitude: The Foundation of Human Creativity” (in Why We Create) her diagnosis accelerated her exploration of what was already an obvious gift — her ability to appreciate and explain and, eventually, write poetry. She had long been a teacher and a lover of words. (She and Ned and Beth and I partially bonded over an appreciation of good pop/rock lyrics and somewhat out-of-the-mainstream faith-based contemporary music; she and Ned even had the great Charlie Peacock play at their wedding, which makes me smile to this day.) In her recent years she has deepened her love of wordsmithing and has advocated for women, especially, getting published in hip on-line journals and cool poetry sites. The Goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living is a gift to the world, a wonderful collection of various sorts of poems in various sorts of styles and themes, most quite recent.

Her friend Hannah Anderson wrote in a fascinating preface that:

Leslie has the ability to see beyond the world’s appearances to its realities and in doing so, remind us of its enchantment. With this, her first collection of poems, Leslie does the work of safekeeping, pointing our eyes back to those “unexpected items of world or unworldly enchantment” that we dare not lose.

There are too many poems to describe (and how does one do that, anyway?) and she playfully experiments with a handful of good styles here. The first portion walks through four seasons and these are very strong, rooted, placed. A few are about her cancer — one about a small scar below her breast — and a few of those are very powerful. Yet most are not directly about her season of illness. Most are about — as the old William Cowper song puts it, which inspired her own poem (”Light II”) — “sometimes a light surprises.” Indeed. And sometimes, these poems just might help you be surprised by the light of things, bright and dark.

And then there are two major sections, one in a unit she calls “Found” poetry, which is only to say they are inspired by other writings. There is a great one inspired by E. B. White’s own writing guidebook; there are several pieces inspired by Rilke, one “after Edith Stein, The Soul of a Woman (with Response)” and one inspired by Denise Levertov.

There are poems of Ekphrasis, which are poems inspired by works of art; for instance, there is a fascinating one after Rembrandt’s ‘Simeon and Anna in the Temple’ a good few on Cezanne’s works, some inspired by Rouault, and a couple that I am particularly fond of on her beloved Pennsylvania painter Andrew Wyeth.

And then there are tanka poems that are thirty-one syllable poems written in a five-line form — who knew? These are offered one for each letter for the alphabet (maybe an homage to Ned’s own alphabet books, such as Church History ABCs.) There are some lovely little poems about ordinary things, a few about theological topics and some offer nice words for friends like Luci Shaw and Karen Paris. But the ones for Carey, Maggie, and Elspeth, and for Ned, even now make me cry. There are great little works of art, and you will enjoy reading them over and over, even if you do not know Leslie or her family.

Numerous other wordsmiths, writers, and poets have weighed in with their great appreciation for this artful collection. From Karen Paris (Lancaster based singer with the band Innocence Mission) to Luci Shaw to Aaron Belz, thoughtful, respected artists have celebrated this beautiful, moving anthology. Although I’ve noted it before here at BookNotes, it seems timely to share about it here, now.

As her friend Margie Haack (another fabulous Square Halo author, whose This Place inspired Leslie’s own “Homemaking” chapter in Ordinary Saints) writes in her comments, the book is mostly about the threads of redemption running through the poems “carrying joy tinged with beauty.”  After beautifully written affirmations of Leslie’s attentiveness to the beauty found in ordinary things, the very goodness of creation, Margie continues:

But what makes Leslie’s poetry more deeply relevant is another thread that carries the faint tinge of illness and death. She stares into the hard facts of cancer with its unpredictable evil accompanied by its unpronounceable drugs. Her faith is not sentimental, rather it is strong enough to stand against the dark possibilities of her future.

It has been our privilege to be one of her favorite bookstores and we invite you to buy a book or two in her honor. We will be sure to pass the word to Ned, so he can lovingly whisper the news into her ear. Leslie Anne Bustard continues to bless the world with her good, good words.

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A few years ago in a BookNotes post after Easter, I used the word “resurrectionary.” I’m not even sure it’s a word, but it ought to be.  Who knows, maybe it will become seen as something akin to, but different than, “revolutionary.” In the light of the risen Lord who defeated Death itself, we can live as resurrectionaries.

I wanted to suggest some books this Easter day that might help us think about living out the truth of resurrection. There are so many good resources for deepening our discipleship and claiming the charge we are giving to harbingers of the Kingdom, but I thought I’d list a few recent ones that might move us in this direction just a bit.

As always, you can scroll to the end of this column to find the easy-to-use, secure order tab. As always, we are grateful for your support. Happy Easter!

Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life Eugene H. Peterson (NavPress) $9.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $7.99

Many years right after Easter we suggest this small book, a grand study of three post-resurrection encounters. It is Eugene Peterson at his down-to-Earth best, inviting us to three practices learned from these three Bible stories. He teaches us about resurrection wonder, resurrection meals, and resurrection friendships. As it says on the back, we can “discover how the practices and perspectives of resurrection life transform your daily job, your daily meals, your daily relationships.”It is very good.

There’s a lovely foreword by one of Eugene’s sons, Presbyterian pastor Eric Peterson, too, speaking about his father’s death and the power of resurrection. Wow. I love this little book.

If the Tomb is Empty: Why The Resurrection Means Anything Is Possible Joby Martin & Charles Martin (FaithWords) $17.99                                       OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

This is a thoughtful work by an evangelical megachurch pastor — at least it seems like a megachurch, The Church of the Eleven22 — and a bestselling inspirational novelist. Despite the grandiose subtitle, this is not promoting prosperity thinking or offering easy, formulaic miracles, but it is convinced that resurrectionary living should have us poised for the previously unbelievable.

This book offers a deep dive into the history of salvation by highlighting seven stories that happen on mountains where God reveals himself. As it says on the back, “As he describes each encounter with God, Martin shows us how the interaction on each mountain laid the groundwork for the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary.” Not only has God revealed promissory notes on these mountain-top encounters (Mount Moriah, Mount Sinai, Mount Carmel, the Mount of Beatitudes, the Mount of Temptation, the Mount of Transfiguration, and Mount Calvary) but he asks if we really understand the final words, “it is finished.” Is it? What is finished?

An Invitation to Joy: The Divine Journey to Human Flourishing Daniel J. Denk (Eerdmans) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I knew that Eerdmans would not release a book that was cheesy or simplistic and I knew that with a foreword by Biblical scholar and justice-worker Christopher J.H. Wright (of the Langham Partnership) it would be solid, but I had little idea how badly I needed to read this myself. This guy gets the reasons why many of us are not overjoyed, he knows better than most the suffering found in this world — he has worked all over the world, including Eastern Europe, and has seen more injustice than most ever will. He is an introvert and not inclined, he tells us, to be that gushy or emotive about his intellectual faith. With blurbs on the back from scholars like George Marsden and Joel Carpenter, I felt like this guy was the sort of thoughtful leader I could trust to invite me to regain lost joy.

I appreciate Garwood Anderson’s note (from Nashotah House) that this book is both one we can learn from and that we can truly enjoy. It is, he says a gift “our rejoicing God wills to give us.” Indeed.

And listen to this recommendation from poet Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, who says:

Daniel Denk’s An Invitation to Joy: The Divine Journey to Human Flourishing is a powerful tool in these times of tremendous sorrow and pain, a book grounded in the word of God and in all we know as the foundation of our faith in Jesus Christ. I see this book in church libraries everywhere, in Bible study classes across denominations, at theological seminars, in classrooms, and on every family shelf. This is a powerfully urgent and long-awaited book. — Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, poet, academic, and author of Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems.

Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters Carmen Joy Imes (IVP Academic) $22.00                OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

In an informal adult ed Sunday School class I help teach (you can watch it on Facebook if you want) I am doing a class next week on the ways a resurrectionary faith will lead us to be Earth-keepers and those who care well for creation. There are bunches of solid eco-theology books but this new one moves more deeply and more widely. It asks what it means to be human, what our essential calling is, our own purpose, identity, and significance.  Studying the imago Dei is certainly a key part of knowing our relationship to the creation itself. And this new book is, I suspect, the new gold standard for ordinary readers.

With a brilliant foreword by the Old Testament scholar, J. Richard Middleton (who wrote the definitive scholarly work on the subject, The Liberating Image), this book serves as a great introduction and meaty exploration of our identity and calling (and all it means for work, gender relations and more.) Recovering our core calling as humans is part of what it means to be redeemed, one of the huge consequences of Easter, with the image of Christ restored to us as we live in Him.Some readers may recall that she spoke at Jubilee 2023 and did a great, great job. This is going to be a key book for resurrectionaries.

Ordinary Saints: Living Everyday Life to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Well. I’ve highlighted this before and have gotten some very nice notes back saying how readers so appreciated it, a few folks naming their favorite chapters. There’s a lot here, and it is, I might suggest, a rare project — and almost a handbook for this movement of resurrectionary faith. How does the truth of the Empty Tomb and the Risen Lord influence us, really, day by day by day. Well, for starters (as one long introductory chapter explains) we are to give God glory, connecting faith and God’s reputation, bearing witness with our whole lives of the heaviness of the reality of God’s own reality. It seems almost a given, to say that God gets the glory. But what might that look and feel like for ordinary folks, doing what they do?

There are plenty of short chapters — a few quite heavy, but many nearly whimsical. There are pieces of how to glorify God in reading comic books and in roller skating. There are chapters about work (and I wrote one about the complexities of retail and living within economic systems.) There are chapters on things like knitting and drawing and there are rich chapters on suffering well, on bearing up under chronic pain; there is one about depression and one about therapy. From Calvin Seerveld’s wise, deep entry on knowing to Steve Scott’s piece on storytelling to Tamara Hill Murphy’s chapter on napping, to Curt Thompson’s amazing piece on “Presence” each shows how creaturely life can be lived well as ordinary saints. For a handful of reasons, you should read Ned Bustard’s intimate piece on lovemaking and for a handful of other reasons you should read Leslie Bustard’s wonderful piece called “Homemaking: Houses of Cedar and the Home of God” which, like the author herself, is good and true and beautiful.

Rethinking Life: Embracing the Sacredness of Every Person Shane Claiborne (Zondervan) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Ever since Shane’s fabulous book that took the religious publishing world with such vigor and joy nearly two decades ago (Irresistible Revolution) we have promoted each of his new volumes. I’ve announced this one before, a month ago. Shane hasn’t written that much, though — he is too busy serving the poor in his Camden neighborhood, teaching blacksmithing and welding to young folks there (so they can, in one of his most well-received projects, literally turn guns into garden tools) and travelling around speaking out against the brutalities of the death penalty and the unbiblical incongruities of the religious right. His journey away from a right-wing fundamentalism to an “ordinary radical” as a “consistent life ethic” evangelical, informed by Dorothy Day and Ron Sider and Walter Brueggemann, say, is itself quite a story. We are fans, even if we don’t live the radical life he has so boldly chosen.

This recent book is key for anyone wondering about the social implications of a resurrection faith. Of course we talk about how the risen Christ has defeated death. The very power of Life breaks out of the tomb and animates his followers. What a way into this topic by asking what it means to seriously embrace the sacredness of every person.

This is not mostly a book about abortion; indeed, Shane starts with a discussion of wonder and awe (by way of talking with the Eastern University astronomer Dr. David Bradstreet) and draws in insights from Jewish thinker Martin Buber and agrarian theologian Norman Wirzba. As you can imagine, he is big on nurturing the prophetic imagination and invites us to think about being for “life” when topics like poverty and racial injustice and gun ownership come up.

Please read each of these endorsements by four different sorts of faith leaders and consider if you, too, should get this one on your reading list.

At a time of deep divisions, when religious faith is too often reduced to a marker of political allegiance and lines are too quickly drawn between friend and foe, Shane Claiborne offers a voice of resistance. Drawing on biblical teaching and church history, Claiborne invites readers to grapple with difficult issues with honesty, compassion, and courage. Rethinking Life is not just a book for progressive Christians but is for all Christians who seek to discern how to live faithfully in troubled times. This challenging, clear-eyed, and hope-filled book is a gift to the American church. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Calvin University, author, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

My friend Shane has written another terrific book. He is once again insightful and clever and has filled these pages with predictably kind and sometimes hard words. Shane is a voice I trust. I deeply value his insights, and I know you will as well. — Bob Goff, Love Does, Everybody Always, and Dream Big

Rethinking Life is an intervention. In a moment when the politics of life is leading to death, master storyteller and public theologian Shane Claiborne leads followers of Jesus on a brave pilgrimage through the meaning, ethics, and politics of life–and death–and love. This is one of those books you will cherish and quote for the rest of your life. — Lisa Sharon Harper, president and founder, FreedomRoad.us; Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World and How to Repair It All

I resonate with this book in the marrow of my bones! In Rethinking Life, Shane Claiborne shows us what a genuine pro-life theology, ethic, and practice demands of us and looks like in practice. Authentic Christianity has always been robustly pro-life, but it must be more than a politicized slogan selectively and narrowly applied. In Rethinking Life, Claiborne’s thinking is as keen as his heart is compassionate. And best of all, Jesus shines through on every page. — Brian Zahnd, author, When Everything’s on Fire

By Bread Alone: A Baker’s Reflections on Hunger, Longing, and the Goodness of God Kendall Vanderslice (Tyndale Momentum) $17.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Bread is central to the Easter story — think of the last supper on Thursday night and the stories of meals at that post-resurrection breakfast or after being on the road to Emmaus. Kendall has understood this well, even, we might say, in the marrow of her bones. As she puts it, she has “struggled with hunger ever since she can remember — hunger for bread, yes, but also of community and the ability to “test and see” the goodness of God.”

She has learned that break offers a “unique opportunity to heal our relationship to the Body of Christ — and to our own bodies.” It seems to me that if Christ’s bodily resurrection teaches us anything it is that daily bread for our bodies matters, and that we live our faith together. Vanderslice teaches about this in her Edible Theology Project (which brings together the communion table and the kitchen table, so to speak.) She is a graduate of Wheaton College, Boston University, and Duke Divinity School, and wrote the excellent little Eerdmans book, We Will Feast: Rethinking Dinner, Worship, and the Community of God. I have talked before about this new book — part memoir, part “soulful, searching glimpse at trusting the goodness of God.” It seems perfect to move us towards authentic resurrectionary living. Hooray.

I am grateful for Kendall Vanderslice’s By Bread Alone — a sustenance of hope, a needed nourishment for us hungering to create beauty faced with the bitter gaps of our divided cultures. Her words give rise to our tenderness, and her memorable chapters fill our hearts with compassion. Every page of this book (full of recipes) is brimming with refractive colors shining through the broken prisms of her life, a communion journey of service in tears, as a sojourner baker, a fellow maker into the aroma of the new.            — Makoto Fujimura, artist and author of Art + Faith: A Theology of Making

Faith Like a Child: Embracing Our Lives as Children of God Lacy Finn Borgo (IVP) $18.00      OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

This is brand new and I can’t wait to read it. We stock everything in the spirituality-themed IVP “formatio” line and this new one in that imprint looks gentle and lovely and thoughtful and rich — that it carries an endorsement from Richard Foster speaks volumes, eh? It is about innocence and joy and wonder and trust and more. We hear much about this call to a “child-like” (although not childish) faith and this is one of the very few books about it. As Borgo puts it, “it’s often difficult to remember the natural patterns of our childhood selves that enabled us to live freely in God’s wonder-filled presence.”

Here is a big part of what this book will be about: “As we welcome our childhood selves, we allow God to heal our wounds so we can live in freedom with Jesus as our companion.”

Lacy Finn Borgo has written curriculum for children’s spiritual formation and is a spiritual director of the Renovate Institute. She works at Haven House, a transitional facility for families without hoes. I love her wholistic faith (and that she got her certificate in spiritual direction from Portland Seminary.) She is most well known for her excellent Spiritual Conversations with Children which we have touted. And the recent children’s book All Will Be Well.

“This book is a gift from a mother who sees the world through a lens of grace.”  — Linda Taylor, Episcopal priest and spiritual director.

Becoming the Church: God’s People in Purpose and Power Claude R. Alexander, Jr. (IVP) $18.00   OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

As you may know we have a huge selection of books about the nature of the church, about church revitalization, about small church life, about ministry, and tons for pastors and preachers. We affirm the Lordship of Christ over all areas of life and the priesthood of all believers, so our store has stuff on science and art and politics and sports and business and gardening, and so much more. But let’s face it — most of our customers are involved in churches and congregational life is certainly something that captures much of our time and attention.

I could name a dozen recent books on church life, but wanted to share at least this. For those of us inspired by the new life of Easter, whose imaginations are captured by the promises of the Risen Lord, we simply must, of course, pay fresh attention to the health of our communities of faith. Resurrectionary life is rooted in the local, worshipping body.

Becoming the Church is an inspiring call to not give up on the church, and it starts with a brief reflection on the end of John 20, an early post-resurrection account. Bishop Claude Alexander is senior pastor of The Park Church in Charlotte, NC, and while he serves on the boards of several respected evangelical ministries (including the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities), his primary calling is to the local church.

As Tom Lin, president and CEO of IVCF/USA nicely puts it:

Bishop Alexander’s love for the church inspires and challenges us. With thoughtful imagination and examination of the early church, he masterfully weaves together a tapestry of biblical voices that speaks to a beautiful vision of the church. This book is an essential guide for anyone wanting to help churches become what God intended, beginning with ourselves.

Pentecost: A Day of Power for All People Emilio Alvarez (IVP) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

I know not everyone believes in the ecumenical insights drawn from the historic practice of living into the church year as seen in the liturgical calendar, but most of us know the wisdom of being attuned to at least some semblance of the flow from Advent to Christmas, Lent to Easter, etc. Easter’s resurrection invites us to live anew, and part of this, it might be argued, is to forthwith be paying more attention to these seminal moments in the church calendar.

IVP has done us all a great favor by commissioning wise authors to reflect on key moments of the year. The first in this “Fullness of Time” series was by Esau McCauley (Lent:The Season of Repentance and Renewal) and this one, Pentecost, is the second, just out last week.

(The next one, by the way, which you could pre-order now if you’d like, will be Advent: The Season of Hope, by Tish Harrison Warren. It will be in our store this August.)

Dr. Alvarez (with a PhD from Fordham, a Roman Catholic institution) is the presiding bishop of the Union of Charismatic Orthodox Churches, a communion that stands in the apostolic tradition, both liturgical and Pentecostal. Hooray for that. And, obviously, it situates him well to offer this one-of-a-kind introduction to the day and following season of Pentecost.

Each slim, hardback volume in the Fullness of Time series invites readers to engage with the riches of the church year, exploring the traditions prayers, Scriptures, and rituals of the seasons of the church calendar.

I like the good word from Christine Pohl, who notes that this book “draws on a rich array of ancient and contemporary sources” and that “Emilio Alvarez takes us on a brief and fascinating journey through various meanings and expressions of Pentecost.”

You shall receive power, Jesus promised. Easter may be the highlight, the day of vindication and victory, but the story isn’t over yet. There has been (as this book puts it) “a long legacy of minimizing the Holy Spirit’s role and gifts” which has drained Pentecost of much of its significance. I trust it isn’t too misunderstood (or ignored) in your church. In any case, I’m sure this new book will help.

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In the last BookNotes post I listed some books about the cross of Christ, atonement theories, a few about a theology of resurrection. Most were somewhat heady but I know that BookNotes readers are more willing than many to read widely and to dig deep. (Granted, Greg Beale’s thick, new Union with the Resurrected Christ: Eschatological New Creation and New Testament Biblical Theology is very academic and pretty expensive, even at our sale price.) From Fleming Rutledge’s magisterial The Crucifixion to her big collection of Holy Week sermons, The Undoing of Death, to a host of other books (old and new) we made some important recommendations.

In this relatively short BookNotes hitting your inboxes, as it does, during Holy Week, I want to suggest two very good reads, thoughtful books that are clearly written, combining cultural awareness and theology that can be applied in the deepest part of your own heart. They are about how gospel-centered faith relates to some particular aspects of what Michael Gorman calls “the cruciform life.”

I want to recommend Timothy Keller’s most recent hardback Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? alongside his older, succinct, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just. 

You can scroll down to the end to find the link to our secure order form where you can safely enter credit card info. There, you can tell us how you want them shipped, too. All books mentioned are 20% off, making them cheaper than some big-name internet sites.

Both books, I might add, can be better understood by first reading his excellent Hope In Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter which is not only an apologetic for the historicity of the resurrection but a fleshing out of its meaning for contemporary hope. It is profound, showing how to find a realistic and irrepressible hope. Written during his hard struggle with serious cancer, it is really quite a book!

Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? Timothy Keller (Viking) $27.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

In typical Keller fashion, this new book starts with the big picture and places the Biblical call to forgive in the contemporary cultural context, which is to say, he highlights the current resistance to notions of forgiveness that are prevalent these days. With some degree of apparent sympathy he asks along with social activists and New York Times columnists and respected contemporary ethicists if, in fact, forgiveness — especially the Biblical assumption that we ought to forgive — is not, after all, finally part of the problem. He gives these voices a fair amount of space (even if one knows, surely, it is a bit of a set up as he will soon enough counter their logic and the consequences of their unapologetic worldview.)

Still, this is good at least for two reasons: religious readers who are not in tune with the times maybe ought to hear what some of our leading thinkers are saying about this well-loved bit of pious teaching and, as Keller at least somewhat admits, there really is something to this line of thought: too often the call to forgive has been harmful, especially to victims of abuse — sexual, domestic, racial. We dare not jump to quaint forgiveness without grappling with the real-world consequences of such seemingly noble virtue.

Also, as Keller often does, he shows not only what the culture thinks about Christian teaching, but shows how their insights — through God’s common grace perhaps — are onto something, and can shape a more mature and sophisticated view of the topic under consideration. So, in Forgiveness, the subtitle “why should I?” is taken seriously. He makes his case judiciously and powerfully.

Keller observes:

We live in a world where canceling, ghosting, and insults are the norm. You will experience snubs on a regular basis, and in some cases will experience real injustice. How are you going keep it all from turning you into a wraith controlled by the past? You must forgive and forgive well.

Forgive well? What does that mean? Well, he covers all this — including the copious and fascinating footnotes — in just over 250 pages!

He gives these sort of principles and steps, though, in summary:

We must name the trespass truthfully as wrong and punishable, rather than merely excusing it. Second, (he notes), we must identify with the perpetrator as a fellow sinner rather than thinking how different from you he or she is. It is to will their good. Third, it is to release the wrongdoer from liability by absorbing the death oneself rather than seeking revenge and paying them back. Finally, it is to aim for reconciliation rather than breaking off the relationship forever.

There is, throughout, plenty of Bible teaching. He unpacks popular (and lesser known) Biblical teachings, deftly retelling a parable of Jesus in the setting of those working in the world of  contemporary finance. There’s a lot of inspiring Scripture here.

Importantly, like most of Keller’s work, he is what has come to be called “gospel-centered.” That is, the very core teachings of the gospel — in this case, that we are forgiven through the Christ who offers His life for ours — are the very mechanism by which we are able to forgive wisely.

We have a “faith-sight” of Jesus’s costly sacrifice. As he explains, “That reminds us that we are sinners in need of mercy like everyone else, yet it also fills the cup of our hearts with his love and affirmation. That makes it possible for us to forgive the perpetrator and then go speak to him or her, seeking justice and reconciliation if possible.”

You see, this is a book, finally, about the cross, about atonement — that makes possible our own at-one-ment, as I sometimes put it, with others in a fallen and bruising world. He is not a pacifist and he is certainly not unrealistic. But he knows that only the good news of the gospel itself, related, of course, to the very death and resurrection of Christ Himself, is at the very heart of Christian living.

From his book on suffering to his book on resisting idolatry, from his masterpiece on work to his good guidebook on prayer, Keller comes back to the first things of the gospel over and over. He is considered a culturally-aware and trenchant observer of the modern zeitgeist; this is true. Yet, he offers a gracious and good bit of Kingdom insight about faithful Christian living in the world by primarily preaching the gospel and applying its riches and implications to the quandaries of daily living.

He draws on such a wide variety of authors and insights (from Nicholas Wolterstorff to Gregory Jones to Rachel Denhollander) but, nicely, returns to the mere Christianity of C.S. Lewis. He reminds readers of the great quote from Mere Christianity, noting that redemption is not the same as self-improvement. We can’t merely will ourselves to do the right thing, to be righteous. It isn’t like (as Lewis delightful puts it) trying to badger a horse into flying. Rather, it is more “like turning a horse into a winged creature.”  Lewis continues:

Of course, once it has got its wings it will soar over fences which could never been jumped and thus beat the natural horse at its own game. But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do so: and at that stage the lumps on the shoulders — no one could tell by looking at them that there are going to be wings — may even give it an awkward appearance.

Forgive offers a compelling overview of modern views of forgiveness and relationships and justice and offers a thoughtful Biblical call to understand the imperative to forgive. But, deeply, it offers us great wisdom about allowing God’s forgiveness to so deeply enter our consciousness and transform us from the inside out that we become like that horse. We can forgive freely because we have been forgiven freely. It is just that simply, and it is just that amazingly complicated. There is a lot covered, here, and this book will help, I am sure.

(As you know, we stock lots of other books on this exact topic. Write to us if you need other recommendations.)

Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes us Justice Timothy Keller (Penguin) $18.00             OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

Similar to the way Keller explains how we are able to forgive because we understand forgiveness because we have been forgiven, so, here, he wisely shows that we can be agents of social justice because we understand justice because we’ve experienced justification. That is — get this! — we can be just because we’ve been justified.

Again, this small book — about an essential aspect of the Christian life (since, as the Bible teaches over and over again, the Lord desires justice in His world) — relates the faithful lifestyle of Christian discipleship to the core teaching of the Christian gospel: this book on public and social justice is gospel-centered and based on the work of the cross.

What is the work of the cross? Sadly, some churches have failed to adequately discuss this, mostly avoiding the messiness of it or offering platitudes and simple formulas rather than the rich complexity of the Bible itself; in some congregations there isn’t a widespread understanding of notions of justification or atonement or adoption or liberation or imputation (and the many other principles and metaphors offered in Scripture.) So this book is a fabulous reminder. We simply must connect the graciousness of God in ways that make us more gracious and we become agents of justice in the world by grounding our activism on the firm notions of the justification of sinners, saved by grace through the work of Christ’s death and resurrection. A wild idea, eh?

Again, Keller isn’t cheap and he doesn’t preach this in a fundamentalist sort of way. (Of course not, since few fundamentalists link justification with justice in the world and often separate the two in glaring ways. And there is today an weird ideologically-driven opposition to the very notion of social justice within some off-base so-called evangelicals.) But Keller insists that the words and notions of classic theology can be life-giving and revolutionary. Theology matters, after all.

As it says on the back cover of the compact paperback:

It is commonly thought in secular society that the Bible is one of the greatest hindrances to doing justice. Isn’t it full of regressive views? Didn’t it condone slavery? Why look to the Bible for guidance on how to have a more just society?  Indeed, secular authors like Christopher Hitches said that Christian faith “poisons everything.”

Fair enough. But Timothy Keller challenges these preconceived beliefs and “presents the Bible as a fundamental source for promoting justice and compassion for those in need.” In Generous Justice, he explores a life of justice empowered by an experience of grace — a generous, gracious justice.

I think you will learn a bit about modern views of justice and human rights and you will learn about alternative views, based on what we might term a Christian worldview. And this is good, good stuff. Again, we can be gracious because we’ve experiences grace. We can work for justice because we understand justification. We can be agents of change because we ourselves have been changed.

There is so much in this clear, concise text. He asks what justice even means (and in the end has a great chapter relating peace, beauty and justice.) He looks at the Old Testament and he looks at Jesus. He asks about our neighbors and their unique needs and he asks how we actually “do justice” in our more personal lives and in the public square. He is clear that a passion for this doesn’t emerge from an erosion of essential orthodox teachings about faith and spirituality, but emerges from it.

Some conservative evangelicals have been disappointed in Keller for his clear stance on this topic. Odd, isn’t it? The Bible is so clear about this and Keller — Presbyterian preacher that he is — relates it all to the gospel that is known in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

It’s a great little book to read when thinking about Holy Week, the cross, and the transforming power of the resurrection.

(As you know, we stock lots of other books on this exact topic. Write to us if you need other recommendations.)

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As we move closer to Holy Week and the experience of Jesus in Jerusalem, I hope you have a chance to peek into a book or two about the work of cross. In a way, it all comes down to this, doesn’t it? Christianity simply doesn’t exist without the way of the cross.

There are older classics I’ve suggested before; one can hardly do better than The Cross of Christ by John Stott. Deeper and wider, there is the masterpiece by Michael Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross, now in a 20th anniversary edition with a good forward by Nijay Gupta. I say every year (and have said in an earlier Lenten post) that Fleming Rutledge’s collection of Holy Week sermons entitled The Undoing of Death, is one of my most valued books. You should order it today if you don’t have it. More provocative, but extraordinary, is James Cone’s 2011text, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. And I have regularly recommended the very readable and thorough The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion by N.T. Wright which surveys every major Pauline passage about the cross. It’s a great book, perfect for this time of year.

Here are 10 (mostly) recent ones about the cross, atonement theologies, and, yes, resurrection and hope. Several are pretty academic while a few are quite lovely for more ordinary readers. All are 20% off. Just scroll down and use the order link at the very bottom of this list. May these thoughtful books help you stay, in the words of the old hymn I sang as a child, “near the cross.” And anticipate the victory of resurrection.

Rethinking the Atonement: New Perspectives on Jesus’s Death, Resurrection, and Ascension David M. Moffitt (Baker Academic) $35.00              OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

When N.T. Wright writes the foreword and Richard Hays calls a book “game-changing” and Amy Peeler says it has “not only changed how I view Hebrews but how I conceive of my faith” and Madison Pierce of Western Theological Seminary calls it “spectacular” — well. Wow.

It is, in a way, a collection of connected essays on themes from the ancient New Testament letter called Hebrews. Moffitt teaches New Testament at Saint Andrews in Scotland and is considered one of the great Biblical scholars working today.

Alan Torrence, quite the heavyweight scholar himself, says “It will no longer be possible to write on the atonement, let alone Christology, without engaging in detail with the exegetical arguments that Moffitt presents. I cannot recommend this remarkable volume highly enough.”

The Cross in Context: Reconsidering Biblical Metaphors for Atonement Jackson W. (IVP Academic) $25.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

Anyone who has shared the gospel news with skeptics or unchurched folks knows that we sometimes grapple to offer reasons to believe that connect with our conversation partners. We try this line of thinking and that; we use Bible stories as we can, and move from metaphor to metaphor. The gospel allows us to have our debts cancelled; it frees us from our captivity; it invites us to be adopted; it offers forgiveness from guilt; we are recruited into a better Kingdom; we are washed clean, we belong to a new family, we are reconciled.

How can we gain and share more clarity about the variety of meanings of the cross and how can we be open to the many ways in which it all gets said in the Bible? Firstly, this theologian suggests, we must know the Biblical material. Instead of comparing theories of the atonement, we need to delve deeper into the Biblical story, where we “find a handful of motifs that combine to form a richer, more robust theology of the atonement.”

What would it look like if we allowed the apostle Paul’s statement that ‘Christ died for our sins’ to be truly explained ‘according to the Scriptures’ (1 Cor. 15:3)? In this provocative book, Jackson W. carefully peels back layers of church tradition, systematic theology, and folk Christianity to reexamine what Scripture actually says about the death of Christ. The result is a whole-Bible approach to sin and atonement that mounts a stimulating challenge to scholars and laypeople alike. Whether or not you agree with his conclusions, you will undoubtedly come away with a deeper appreciation for the richness of what Christ’s death accomplished! — Jerry Hwang, academic dean and associate professor of Old Testament at Singapore Bible College

Jackson W. explores the interplay of metaphor and atonement–thus this book is about the core of salvation in the New Testament. Atonement is complex, but this is a reliable and well-written guide through the variety of biblical images. Its contextualization offers the key to understand the core of the mission of Jesus Christ. A must-read for all who want to know what the Christian gospel means in diverse cultures! — Christian A. Eberhart, professor of religious studies at the University of Houston and author of The Sacrifice of Jesus: Understanding Atonement Biblically

The Cross-Shaped Life: Taking on Christ’s Humanity Jeff Kennon (Leafwood Publishers) $15.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

I respect this author a lot — he is the director of the Baptist Student Ministry at Texas Tech. This book, as you might guess, is clear and pastoral and while not without challenge, really uplifting. He cites famous authors, heavy theologians, and a bit of pop culture. It’s a handsome volume, well arranged and a very, very nice book.

Kennon notes that “in the cross, we discover not only who God is but who we are made to be.” We all want to affirm that we are made in God’s image and in doing so —harkening to the inherent dignity and worth we all have — we cannot forget the cross. As he says, “after all, God came, took on our likeness, and died on the cross. So what does it mean to live in the image of a God who is willing to die on a cross?”

That is a huge question, isn’t it? The Cross-Shaped Life takes you into the story of God from creation to salvation, but it culminates in Paul’s words found in Philippians 2: 5 – 11. Unpacking that helps him make his case that the truth is that “we only discover who we truly are when we live lives of humility, service, and sacrifice on behalf of others.”

This is outstanding. Listen to generative scholar and very reliable voice Michael Gorman:

In this insightful and readable book, Jeff Kennon tells the biblical story of how we are made to fulfill our human vocation by living a cruciform, or cross-shaped, life of service and sacrifice-of Christlike love for God and neighbor. Christians of all ages and churches need such a book, and such a life. — Michael J. Gorman, Raymond E. Brown Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology, St. Mary’s Seminary & University, Baltimore Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

The Crucifixion of the King of Glory: The Amazing History and Sublime Mystery of the Passion Eugenia Scarves Constantinou (Ancient Faith Publishing) $22.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $18.36

This book came out just a year or so ago and the author — an Orthodox scholar — has gotten a good bit of publicity, rightly so. She is both a Biblical scholar and an attorney and is well positioned to help us not only explore these events that are so central to our salvation but to frame it all by the first-century historical and religious context in which the Crucifixion took place.

She promises to “put modern readers in the center of the events of Christ’s Passion” bringing the best of modern scholarship to bear (there is a little bit in the beginning on ‘the postmodern mind’) while “keeping her interpretation faithful in every particular to the Orthodox tradition.” It’s a thick, handsome paperback book.

Participation and Atonement: An Analytic and Constructive Account Oliver Crisp (Baker Academic) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

This hardback is scholarly, and claims to “set out a new, comprehensive account of the nature of the atonement, exploring how this doctrine affects our participation in the life of God and in the shared life of Christian community.”

That line is vital, showing how this book (which certainly doesn’t break with the broad tradition of Christian thinking) moves constructively towards a systematic study of how understanding the atonement can help us realize our deeper union with God and our role in the fellowship of the redeemed.

As Lucy Peppiatt (of the Westminster Theological Centre in the UK) says, it is “rich, nuanced, and full-orbed” bringing “new and salient insights to what Paul calls the “things of first importance.”

Gavin D’Costa, of the University of Bristol, noting Crisp’s balanced approach and philosophical mind, says that “this is one of the most important recent treatments of the doctrine of the atonement.”

Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross: Contemporary Images of the Atonement edited by Mark D. Baker (Baker Academic) $24.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

This book is somewhat older and we are pleased to have a few left. It ought to be better known, I think, because there is no other resource quite like it.

Dr. Baker (with a PhD from Duke) is a professor of mission and theology at Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in Fresno, California. Here offers a compendium of about 20 short readings — some quite clever and all very interesting — that offer a glimpse into what the cross is about. Hooray for these varying voices, these different insights, this array of men and women who offer a piece of the puzzle, so to speak. Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross explores the need for “contextualized atonement theology” and offers these creative examples of how the cross can be proclaimed today in ways that are both faithful and relevant. And maybe transformative.

Here we have C.S. Lewis and Brian McLaren; Frederica Mathewes-Green and Rowan Williams; Luci Shaw and Gwinyai Muzorewa; Chris Friesen and Curtis Chang. After each short reading, Baker does an expert job saying why he chose this excerpt, what to see in it and get out of it, and how it fits the larger picture. His words are very helpful and highly recommended.

Perhaps all of us shudder to think how narrow our earliest understanding of the atonement was. Mark Baker’s book offers us a treasure chest filled with complementary truths presented in distinct and surprising packages….This collection is an outstanding contribution to widen our comprehension and deepen our adoration!  Marva J. Dawn, Talking the Walk: Letting Christian Language Live Again

“He Descended to the Dead” – An Evangelical Theology of Holy Saturday Matthew Y. Emerson (IVP Academic) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I have often said, if it comes up, how blown away I was by a long, serious read many years ago on this topic, the brilliant (and still available) Eerdmans book by Alan Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday. It remains a formative read for me and I recommend it.

This one is not brand new but is much more recent. I was captivated by the first page as he cites the moving song “The Fourth of July” from Sufjan Stevens’s album Carrie and Lowell. (Okay, he had me right there.) Also, he has a passing reference to “Drum” by the black poet Langston Hughes, and copies “No Worst, There Is None, Pitched Past Pitch of Grief” by the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. So, yes, as Sufjan’s refrain has it, “we’re all gonna die.”

This fresh book examines this controversy, the meaning of the old phrase “the harrowing of hell”, and attempts to formulate a coherent and theologically plausible for understanding what went on between, as Lewis has it, “between cross and resurrection”  Rave comments from everybody from Fred Sanders at Biola  in California and Michael Bird at Ridley College in Australia. Emerson is a professor at Oklahoma Baptist University.

{As a very germane aside, although not exactly on the death or resurrection of Christ, I really, really like the excellent book by A.J. Swoboda, A Glorious Dark: Finding Hope in the Tension Between Belief and Experience (Baker; $15.00.) which is a honest, raw, evangelical reflection on the Triduum, or the three days.

The publisher explains:

On Thursday as they ate the Passover meal with Jesus, the disciples believed that the kingdom was coming and they were on the front end of a revolution. Then came the tragedy of Friday and the silence of Saturday. They ran. They doubted. They despaired. From their perspective, all was lost. Yet, within the grave, God’s power was still flowing like a mighty river beneath the ice of winter. And then there was Sunday morning.

Real, raw, and achingly honest, A Glorious Dark meets us right in those uncomfortable moments when our beliefs about the world don’t match up with reality. Tackling tough questions like Why is faith so hard? Why do I doubt? Why does God allow me to suffer? and Is God really with me in the midst of my pain? A. J. Swoboda invites us to develop a faith that embraces the tension between what we believe and what we experience, showing that it is in the very tension we seek to eliminate that God meets us.}

Resurrection Hope and the Death of Death Mitchell L. Chase (Crossway) $17.99                      OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Last Sunday in my adult ed Sunday School class I was holding forth about Christ defeating Death. Death in the Bible, I wavered, means not only our own personal morality but the disruption and dysfunction of the whole cosmos. Christ’s resurrection defeats death (and we are given the gift of eternal life) but it also defeats “capitol D” Death, that evil force that has held captive the whole cosmos. Christ’s cross disarms the powers and his resurrection is the “first fruit” of a whole new world that is promised.

I had not read this book as I was preparing for that lesson but it sure seems to provide a good, conservative, Biblical foundation for this bigger picture of what the cross and resurrection accomplishes.

I have recommended before these meaty, small works in the “Short Studies in Biblical Theology” series. They are intentional about showing the unfolding drama of Scripture and the way Biblical truth can be seen from the whole story of God.

In one of the best contributions to the Short Studies in Biblical Theology series to date, Mitchell Chase clearly and succinctly presents what is at the heart of hope set before us in the gospel — unending, embodied, glorious resurrection life on a a renewed earth.  — Nancy Guthrie, Even Better Than Eden: Nine Ways the Bible’s Story Changes Everything about Your Story

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: Exploring Its Theological Significance and Ongoing Relevance W. Ross Hastings (Baker Academic) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

As the back cover of this recent book says, “Believing in the resurrection is one thing. Knowing what it means is another.” I love how this reveals hidden depths of the theological significance and ongoing relevance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ for “our being, our salvation, Christian life this, and our future hope.” I appreciate that he uses language of vocation when talking about our calling to live in light of the risen Lord. Ross Hastings (with two PhDs) teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, BC and knows how to make serious Bible teaching lively and relevant. There are discussion questions, too, making this a good study for a willing book club.

In this book Ross Hastings considers the vitality and importance of the resurrection of Christ in a fully worked out theological account of the Christian life. From discussion of the historicity of the resurrection, to its importance in our understanding of the atonement and our participation in Christ’s work, and on to the implications it has for life today and in the hereafter — this is a work that has a broad sweep, penned by a deft theological hand.  — Oliver D. Crisp, University of St. Andrews; Participation and Atonement

In The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Ross Hastings demonstrates how central the resurrection is to the gospel, to Christ’s identity, and to our identity in Christ. Evangelical readers in particular will have their minds stretched and their spirituality enlarged by the dynamic resurrectional reality to which this book bears witness. — Michael J. Gorman, St. Mary’s Seminary & University; The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant: A (Not So) New Model of the Atonement

This is a book not simply for annual Easter preaching but for everyday resurrection living. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ traces out the creation-affirming, salvation-expanding, hope-declaring theological trajectories and practical implications of Christ’s resurrection for full human living. Learned, pastoral, and practical, Hastings makes much of the resurrection and so makes much of Jesus, presenting a brilliant vision of Christ in all his redemptive resurrection splendor. — Philip F. Reinders, lead pastor, ClearView Church; Seeking God’s Face: Praying with the Bible Through the Year

Union with the Resurrected Christ: Eschatological New Creation and New Testament Biblical Theology G.K. Beale (Baker Academic) $49.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $39.99

This is brand new and I’ve only glanced though hefty table of contents and perused the many footnotes. Years in the making by one of the most prolific serious Biblical scholars writing today, this is a sequel to his renowned (and massive) 2011 A New Testament Biblical Theology.

Here, they promise, Beale “fleshes out nineteen significant theological realities and benefits of the believers union with the resurrected Christ.

Richard Gaffin, emeritus prof at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, notes that “This volume represents the matured culmination of much of Beale’s decades-long biblical-theological work.” After a serious commendation, he says it is “truly a magnum opus.”

This is one of the most significant works, I am sure, on this topic — what Dr. Gaffin calls “a virtual encyclopedia.” It is, nicely, packed with application sections, too hoping to show at least somewhat more practical implications this scholarly theological vision.

“Ultimately,” says one reviewer, “coursing through the pages of Beale’s study is a sense of the victory that Christ’s own share in the new creation and the Spirit.” Just over 550 pages.  Wow.