Beauty by Roger Scruton

Is it possible to write a rave review about a book that I hestitate to recommend? Frankly, I struggled to like and finish Roger Scruton's Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, because it is a dense philosphical treatise. I understood about twenty percent of it, but that percentage was pure gold! I still think about it almost every day.

In the final chapter, Scruton explains the differences between art and "kitsch." Kitsch is art with no message of its own, in which all the effects are copied and all the emotions are faked. He calls it the "Disneyfication" of everyday life, when people prefer the sensuous trappings of belief to the thing truly believed. It is not an excess of feeling, but a deficiency. The world of kitsch is in a certain measure a heartless world, in which emotion is directed away from its proper target towards sugary stereotypes, permitting us to pay passing tribute to love and sorrow without the trouble of feeling them.... Art cannot live in the same world as kitsch, which is a world of commodities to be consumed, rather than icons to be revered. 

This explains why I have always been uncomfortable with Precious Moments figurines and Thomas Kinkaide paintings. (Forgive me if you love those.) Since reading this chapter, I've seen kitsch everywhere from Hallmark movies to TV commercials, to Facebook posts: content that elicits an emotional response that is not based on deep thoughts or feelings. 

Although this was a very hard book to read, I am grateful that Scruton gave me new ways to think about art and its importance. The day after I finished Scruton's book, I read a post on Facebook about Tolkien's dislike of Disney for cheapening the beauty and power of fairy tales for "universal consumption." A few weeks later I learned that this was an AI generated article. (Ugh!) BUT all was not lost; members of the Literary Life Podcast group led me to an authentic article on the subject. 

One quote from the article: From Tolkien's perspective, Disney was a glorifed salesman who peddled commercialized dumbed-down fairy tale casualties to the masses. 

It sounds like Tolkien and Scruton were in agreement on this. 

My lengthier review of Scruton's book is on Goodreads.

Blessings,

"Adventures Among Books" by Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was a journalist, novelist and literary critic, who is most remembered for the twelve volumes of fairy tales that he did in collaboration with his wife. (Ten of them are free for Kindle as well as dozens of other books he wrote.) Knowing his literary bent, I was intrigued to see this collection of essays on bookish subjects. I will be highlighting only the first essay, which was by far my favorite in the book.

Lang calls this essay his literary biography saying that he has a much easier time remembering books than he does people. He writes, Some are soldiers from the cradle, some merchants, some orators; nothing but the love of books was the gift given to me by the fairies.

From an early age he was surrounded by books and those who loved to read them. He remembers “reading” Midsummer Night’s Dream as a small boy in a candlelit room where someone was playing the piano; he was sitting by the fire looking at an edition with pictures of fairies in it. The fairies seemed to come out of Shakespeare’s dream into the music and the firelight… It seemed an enchanted glimpse of Paradise.

At age four he began to teach himself to read by picking out the words and letters of a poem he had heard so often that he had it memorized: Elegy on the Death andBurial of Cock Robin. At age nine, he read his first novel, which was Jane Eyre. This was a creepy tale for a boy of nine, and Rochester was a mystery, St. John a bore. But the lonely girl in her despair, when something came into her room, and her days of starvation at school, and the terrible first Mrs. Rochester, were never to be forgotten.

He tells how he hated Greek until he discovered Homer. The very sound of the hexameter, that long, inimitable roll of the most various music, was enough to win the heart, even if the words were not understood. But the words proved unexpectedly easy to understand, full as they are of all nobility, all tenderness, all courage, courtesy, and romance…. After once being initiated into the mysteries of Greece by Homer, the work of Greek was no longer tedious.

He summarizes his love of all things Greek by writing, We cannot find any wisdom more wise than that which bids us do what men may and bear what men must. Such are the lessons of the Greeks, of the people who tried all things, in the morning of the world, and who still speak to us of what they tried in words which are the sum of human gaiety and gloom, of grief and triumph, hope and despair. The world, since their day, has but followed in the same round, which only seems new: has only made the same experiments and failed with the same failure, but less gallantly and less gloriously.

“AdventuresAmong Books” was written in 1872 when Lang was still a young man. Near the end of the essay, he writes about how he became interested in folklore and anthropology. Little did he know that his most memorable life’s work would grow out of that interest. The first “Fairy Book” was published in 1889.

Blessings,

The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip and Carol Zaleski

My greatest challenge in reviewing this 500-page book (600 if you count the endnotes) is knowing what quotations to leave out since the whole thing was so wonderfully written.

Philip and Carol Zaleski have given us a great gift with their painstaking research on each of the major inklings (J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield) and how their lives and writings intertwined. The name “Inklings”, according to Tolkien, was little more than a “pleasantly ingenious pun suggesting people with vague or half-formed intimations and ideas, plus those who dabble in ink.” But History would record that, however modest their pretensions, their inkblots were no mere dabblings.

The group came together at a strategic time. WWI had left many in despair, but in others it had instilled a longing to reclaim the goodness, beauty, and cultural continuity that had been so violently disrupted. The Inklings came together because they shared that longing; they believed, as did their literary and spiritual ancestors, that ours is a fallen world yet not a forsaken one, which was a belief that set them at odds with many of their contemporaries. Lewis described the Inklings to Williams as “a group of Christians who like to write.” The Zaleskis add that they shared more common characteristics than that including intellectual vivacity, love of myth, conservative politics, memories of war, and a passion for beef, beer, and verbal battle.

The book highlights the idiosyncrasies of each member of the group beginning with Tolkien’s rapid, slurring, unintelligible lectures, which students endured because, as one student remarked, “Tolkien could turn a lecture into a mead hall in which he was the bard and we were the feasting, listening guest. Speaking in Anglo-Saxon turned Tolkien’s leaden tongue to gold.” I was particularly interested in the details of Charles Williams' life because of C.S. Lewis' glowing accounts of him in his letters. The Zaleski's paint quite a different picture of him as a very strange man!

They also describe the periodic friction between the members, particularly Tolkien’s impatience with Williams because he disliked William’s fiction, but also because he distrusted Williams’ fascination with the occult. Lewis and Barfield disagreed often (and strongly) on the principles of anthroposophy. At times Tolkien and Lewis clashed in their literary views, but their friendship endured through the decades. When Lewis died, Tolkien wrote, “So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age – like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one, but this feels like an axe-blow near the roots.”

Of course, in 500 pages, you are bound to find lots more information (trivia?) than in other books. It was fun to read that some of the early reviews of The Lord of the Rings called it “juvenile trash” and “an overgrown fairy story” (!)

According to the Zaleskis, By the time the last inkling passed away on the eve of the 21^st century, the group had altered, in large or small measure, the course of imaginative literature, Christian theology and philosophy, comparative mythology, and the scholarly study of the Beowulf author, of Dante, Spenser, Milton, courtly love, fairy tale, and epic; and drawing as much from their scholarship as from their experiences of a catastrophic century, they had fashioned a new narrative of hope amid the ruins of war, industrialization, cultural disintegration, skepticism, and anomie.

For three months this was my bed-time book, and it brought me many hours of pleasure.

Blessings, 

Why Poetry by Matthew Zapruder

I love poetry, and am always interested in how and why it can leave us speechless with astonishment. Anna Quindlen once wrote, People who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust, delicate, muscular. This has nothing to do with how most of us experience it, the heart coming around the corner and unexpectedly running into the mind.

When I saw Zapruder’s book on Kindle Unlimited, I was eager to see what he had to contribute to the discussion. I was delighted with his opening sally that Poetry isn’t in any danger, and never has been. And I’m quite sure there will be poetry as long as there are people who can speak, and probably even after. [And this delightful jab:] Probably even robots will write it, just as soon as they get souls.

The central question of the book is how poetry creates a heightened sense of awareness (what Zapruder calls “a poetic state of mind.”) It happens through the form of the poem, which guides the mind of a reader. It happens through leaps of association. And it happens as the poem explores and activates and plays with the nature of language itself.

He contends that there is no such thing as poetic language. The words used in poetry are every day words, but their energy comes primarily from the reanimation and reactivation of the language we recognize and know. In poetry, we see how language can be made deliberately strange, how it becomes “difficult” in order to jar us awake. One of the ways that poetry reanimates language is in its use of unexpected associations or metaphors. (Like when Emily Dickinson calls a snake a “whip-lash” or when Richard Crashaw writes that “Graves are beds now for the weary.”)

He also insists that poetry is not a secret code, and that it is not written to be deliberately elusive or obscure. (I would agree up to a point since I find most modern poetry to be purposefully vague. Ironically, the second half of the book is filled with examples of modern poems, which Zapruder painstakingly explains because otherwise they make no sense.)

In general, says, Zapruder, poetry requires no special knowledge, only attention. The meaning of the poem resides on the page, and is available to an attentive reader. Paying attention is essential and this close reading of the text is essential not only for literary enjoyment, but he would add, it’s necessary for survival in this modern world. The more we are colonized by our devices and the “information” and “experiences” that they supposedly deliver, the more we need a true experience of unmonetized attention.

The first half of the book was helpful and insightful; he detours off a few times to decry the evils of climate change, terrorism, inequality, environmental issues, etc. which didn’t seem to have anything to do with the topic. And, as I wrote above, the second half had many examples of difficult poetry that, instead of encouraging people to read it, would scare them off permanently. Still, I enjoyed gaining insights into how poetry makes its impact, and look forward to continuing my journey toward understanding it better.

Blessings,

Pages from a WII Chaplain's Diary by Clarence E. Walstad

I am a huge fan of WWII memoirs and was delighted to recently discover Pages from a WWII Chaplain’s Diary.   

At 40 years of age, successful Lutheran pastor, Clarence Walstad, enlisted in the army as a chaplain, leaving behind his wife and their three young children. These are the touching letters he writes to Ruth describing his 2 ½ years of army life.

The overriding theme of the letters is his desire for the men in his outfit to come to saving faith in Christ. As his ship nears North Africa, he writes: (4/14/43) The morale of the men is good. Wonderful facilities are provided to keep them occupied. They have access at all times to shelves of books, magazines, parlor games, several pianos, victrolas, etc. But ultimately, morale must depend, not on escape mechanisms, but upon the ‘soul that is fixed on God’ by faith.

One of his early assignments was to work in a hospital unit in Morocco connected to a German and Italian POW camp. In July of 1943, he tells a poignant story of playing his autoharp in his office and having the men in the hospital tents begin to sing along with him. Many of these POWs understand a little English, he wrote. All could follow the music. Because many of the Lutheran hymns he knew had been translated from the German, some prisoners joined in the singing in their own language. We harmonized on “Fairest Lord Jesus”, “Oh, Sacred Head now Wounded”, “When I Survey”, and then ended up by singing “Silent Night” in five languages. Several of them broke down as the familiar strains floated out on the night air. Afterward I spoke to them a little to say that though we are enemies there are some things we all have in common: home, mother, God and the love of Jesus, who came to earth that Christmas Eve. Poor lads, they too believe in the cause for which they have been suffering in this malaria infested hole, for almost two years.

Later he is attached to army units in France and Germany where the men are fighting and he has little opportunity for church services. I was complaining to my boys today that there just isn’t an awful lot a chaplain can do here these days as it is suicide to gather men in groups. But one of the fellows spoke up and said, “Chaplain, just seeing you around when the shells are flying, is a help.” One of the soldiers attached to that unit spoke of it as “an awesome sight to see that big man (6’4”) crawling from foxhole to foxhole with a message of comfort and encouragement from the Lord to frightened and anxious soldiers during the heat of battle.”

Walstad’s devotion to his calling, his unstinting acts of service, and his cheerful acceptance of hardships made for heartwarming letters that bolstered my faith.  Without a doubt, this will be one of my favorite books of the year.

Blessings,

The Common Rule by Justin Whitmel Earley

There are lots of books about spiritual disciplines, but this one is unique because it addresses the use of digital media head on. When our phones take up so much of our time, how do we, as Christians, create healthy habits around them?  

Justin Whitmel Earley encourages four daily habits and four weekly habits that are designed to draw us closer to God and wean us away from dependence on social media for affirmation and dopamine hits. The daily habits are 1) Kneel for prayer three times a day, 2) Eat one meal with others, 3) Spend one hour with your cellphone off, 4) Read Scripture before turning on your phone.

The weekly habits are 1) Spend one hour of conversation with a friend, 2) Curate your media (movies/videos) to four hours, 3) Fast from something for 24 hours, and 4) Keep the Sabbath.

The chapter on Daily Habit #3 (Turn of your phone for one hour a day) was the most important chapter in the book for me, not because I don’t already limit my cell phone use, but because it gave good theological reasons for continuing to do so. Presence is the essence of life itself. It’s at the heart of who we are because presence is at the core of our relationship with God. From creation to salvation, the story of the Bible is fundamentally a story of presence. Eden was Eden because the unmediated presence of God was there. God was with Adam and Eve till sin broke the bliss of that presence. After they sinned, Adam and Eve wanted to cover their nakedness and hide. This is the hallmark of life as we know it now.  We hide from each other and we hide from God. We long for the face of God, but we can’t bear his gaze either. Sin has turned a people meant for presence into a people of absence. Fortunately, the story of the Bible doesn’t end there. God in His mercy still pursues His rebellious children.

Although I appreciated this book very much, I found parts of it to be annoying (Earley’s bragging about how good he is at speaking Chinese was one example). Also, the subtitle of this book could have been “Spiritual Disciplines for Social Justice Warriors” because of how often he tacked on social justice issues to each discipline. Don’t get me wrong. I LOVED his emphasis on spiritual disciplines that are rooted in the two commandments to “Love God and love your neighbor.” What better motivation can you have for getting off your phone than to be fully present to those around you and to pursue the goals that God has put into your heart to fulfill His purposes?

But some of the ways he prescribes to do that are just plain odd. In the chapter on curating your media time, he strongly suggests that you watch things that show the injustice in the world so that you can feel miserable about it. But feeling bad about injustice is not biblical justice. (See Voddie Baucham's explanation of the difference in this video.)

Anyway, this book stretched me in a lot of ways and I'm glad I read it. Any thoughts?

Blessings, 

The Four Loves by C.S Lewis

I was intrigued when I heard that C.S. Lewis narrated this book himself, and was pleased to see that my library had it for digital download. But I didn’t realize that there were two versions. The one that Lewis does so wonderfully is a set of four lectures he gave on the radio in 1958, and is basically a rough draft of the final book, which was released two years later. I enjoyed the radio talks so much that I dug out my physical copy to underline favorite bits. I discovered, however, that it was practically impossible to find the same passages because the final book is twice as long as the radio talks. Obviously, he reworked and rewrote quite a bit of it.

The four loves are 1) Storgé/familial love, 2) Friendship, 3) Eros/romantic love, and 4) Agape/Charity. His description of storgé was so endearing that I had to stop listening and write it down. It comes from Greek and refers to affection, especially of parents to children.

It’s usually the humblest of the loves. It gives itself no airs. Storge is modest, even furtive and shame-faced. Storge has a very homely face. So have many of those for whom we feel it. It’s no proof of your cleverness or perceptiveness or refinement that you love them nor that they love you. To have to produce storge in public is like getting your household furniture out for a move. It was all right in its native place, but it looks tawdry out of doors. And the feeling of storge is so nearly organic, so gradual, so unemphatic, that you can no more pride yourself on it than on getting sleepy towards bedtime. It lives with humble, unpraised private things: the thump of a drowsy dog’s tail on the kitchen floor, the sound of a sewing machine, easy laughter and easy tears on some shrewd and wrinkled old face, a toy left on the lawn. It’s the most comfortable and least ecstatic of loves. It is to our emotions what soft slippers and an easy, almost worn-out chair, and old clothes are to our bodies. It wraps you round like a blanket almost like sleep. At its best, it gives you the pleasure, ease, and relaxation of solitude without solitude itself.

Beautiful, right? But just when I was completely enamored, he delineates all the ways this kind of love can be distorted. That is how the book goes. He explains each type of love at its glorious best and then shows how easily it can turn into something manipulative and selfish. His conclusion comes in the final chapter where he emphasizes the importance of self-giving love as the only solution for keeping the other loves from becoming corrupted. In this chapter he writes his famous lines:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable…. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. (p. 121)

Note: The book gets a bad rap for some comments he makes about the differences between men and women, but, honestly, don’t let that keep you from reading it. Anything written by Lewis is worth tackling for his wonderful clarity and depth.  

Blessings,

Stories of Faith and Courage from World War II by Larkin Spivey

I must confess that most of my reading about WWII (over 100 books) is about the home front or POW stories. I know very little about specific strategic battles. When I picked up Stories of Faith and Courage from WWII, I was expecting the personal narratives that I’m accustomed to (i.e., uplifting stories of people whose faith helped them to get through the trials of the war), but it was something quite different.

Each month covers a different battle or aspect of the war. January covers the European front with a brief historical overview and includes a map which shows where the major battles were fought. The daily readings, though not heavy on military details, mention the battles, and it is very helpful to have the map at hand. Though the readings are mostly personal reflections from diaries, letters and speeches, I appreciated being able to read them in the context of the much bigger picture.

Also, though many of the entries were uplifting and encouraging, many others gave details of the thousands and thousands of lives lost. Intermixed with letters displaying unusual courage were letters admitting discouragement and despair. Accounts of heroism were inspiring yet heartbreaking. It was a very sobering read.

Here is just one example from March 13:

Life aboard a merchant ship in convoy across the Atlantic was a mixture of boredom and fear. Long days and nights passed without incident. However, when something happened, it usually happened suddenly. Life jackets and precious valuables were kept close at hand. There was also the issue of where to sleep.

The civilian Merchant Marines who manned the ships grimly calculated where they slept aboard ship by the cargo they carried. If you were hauling a load of iron ore, you slept on deck for you had only a few seconds to clear the ship once a torpedo hit. If you carried general cargo, you could sleep below decks but kept your clothes on because your survival time was calculated in minutes. If, however, your ship carried a load of aviation fuel, you were free to sleep naked below decks, with the door closed since you would never have the time to escape the certain and sudden oblivion of a torpedo attack.

This is supposed to be read as a daily devotional book, but I had trouble putting it down. It would be an excellent primer for someone who wants a good overview of the history of the war. I am so glad I read it.

Blessings

The Dazzling Darkness by Guy Bowden

I bought The Dazzling Darkness (1950, Longmans, Green and Co.) mostly because it was the perfect size for reading in bed at night. It was also hard cover, inexpensive, and about a subject that I always enjoy. The subtitle is “An Essay on the Experience of Prayer” and the main title is taken from Henry Vaughan’s poem, The Night. I couldn’t find any pertinent information on Bowden so I went into the book “blind,” which was an advantage since I couldn’t judge the content by any pre-conceived notions.

Bowden opens the book self-deprecatingly: Books about golf are usually written by experts; so are books about Prayer. This one is not. It is written by one who has made, by personal experience, most of the mistakes it is possible to make in praying, and has discovered by the method of trial and error a great deal about “How Not to Pray.” His advice is extremely practical and his excellent prose is sprinkled with quotes from a variety of writers such as St. Teresa of Avila, St. Francis de Sales, Anthony Trollope, C.S. Lewis, E.M. Forster, Shakespeare, Dante, biblical authors, and Carl Jung (more about that later).

Although Bowden does not deny the mystical aspects of prayer, he affirms again and again that it is often just plain hard work. Yet it is a "duty" that brings rich spiritual dividends. I loved his constant emphasis on prayer as willful obedience – not as a slave to a master, but as a son to a beloved father. If we wait until we “feel like” praying, it will rarely happen.

To realize His presence is a very different thing from having sentimental fancies of sugary religiosity in which we can imagine ourselves to be enveloped as it were in the eiderdown of His protective care. To seek for an emotional thrill in every prayer is sentimental nonsense. If the emotion comes, it comes; let us thank God for the refreshment, take courage and go forward. If it does not come, it does not; we have to accept the fact.

We must not think, then, that because there may be very little pleasure in prayer, we must, therefore, be failing miserably. To judge the worth or the value of prayer by the amount of pleasure it affords is to apply far too subjective a test. It directs attention to us and our feelings rather than to God and His purpose and thereby makes us the center of interest instead of Him. If we expect prayer to be always pleasant, we are saying in effect, “Every time I say my prayers I ought to be provided with appropriate feelings” – presumably by God. But the assumption that God ought to do anything wrecks the whole relationship between soul and God, because it puts God in the position of a servant who is expected to perform certain duties, whereas He is King and sitteth between the cherubim. (p. 24)

My only quibble with the book is Bowden’s occasional nod to psychology. He never lets it take precedence over true faith, but he interjects a Jungian understanding of the soul when he talks about repression and the subconscious in chapter 10. That did not, however, dampen my enthusiasm for the book. It was a great encouragement to me to be more diligent in this area of my Christian life knowing that God is greater than all my weaknesses. And that the rewards far surpass any effort involved.

Blessings,

What I Read and Watched in November

When I'm overwhelmed, I do more movie viewing than book reading, so November was light on books. I finished the excellent Norms and Nobility by David Hicks, which is a marvelous book primarily about the fundamentals of classical education, but secondarily about what it takes to be a flourishing, virtuous society. (It's pricey so I'm glad my library had a copy.) Next came Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey, which I really liked after getting past the feminist intro and reading the actual diaries (last 1/5 of the book);  then came Rose-Garden Husband (a fluffy vintage novel), which fit the reading mood I was in. Edith Schaeffer's Hidden Art was not difficult reading, but my brain couldn't quite take it in.  

I enjoyed all the films I watched this month. We like the older Hitchcock movies because they are less grizzly and have a good dose of humor in them. Dan and I watched Foreign Correspondent (1940) and The Lady Vanishes (1938) on YouTube. On another date night we enjoyed I am David (2003) for its good acting and filming. By myself I watched the classic holiday film, The Shop Around the Corner, with the wonderful Jimmy Stewart. I also chuckled through Signed, Sealed and Delivered for Christmas.

Ever have months when reading just seems impossible? With less deadlines in December, I'm hoping to improve! 

Blessings,

The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon

I have never understood the allure of food memoirs, but The Supper of the Lamb may have converted me. Capon, an Anglican priest, author and home chef, opens the book with self-deprecating honesty: I am an amateur. If that strikes you as disappointing, consider how much in error you are. Amateur and nonprofessional are not synonyms. The world may or may not need another cookbook, but it needs all the lovers – amateurs – it can get. It is a gorgeous old place, full of clownish graces and beautiful drolleries, and it has enough textures, tastes and smells to keep us intrigued for a lifetime. Unfortunately, however, our response to its loveliness is not always delight: it is, far more often than not, boredom. And that is not only odd, it is tragic; for boredom is not neutral – it is the fertilizing principle of unloveliness. In such a situation, the amateur – the lover, the man who thinks heedlessness a sin and boredom a heresy – is just the man you need.

He continues: The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of a pack of trolls. Indeed, the whole distinction between art and trash, between food and garbage, depends on the presence or absence of the loving eye. 

Hence his emphasis on the importance of slowing down and paying attention to life’s myriad details, including the delights of cooking from scratch. At times he uses a wise grandfatherly tone; at other times he is more like a back-slapping older brother who loves a good joke and a good cigar. Some passages were hilariously funny. He waxes eloquent on the beauty of onions, the necessity of sharp knives and (most memorable of all) the glory that is baking soda.

Capon uses cooking as a metaphor for life. Don’t go for the processed pre-cooked garbage that passes as food because it’s more convenient. The best things in life take time and care, and may even give you heartburn. “Real life” will cost you.

We were given appetites not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great. That is the inconsolable heartburn, the lifelong disquietude of having been made in the image of God. All man’s love is vast and inconvenient. It is tempting, of course, to blunt its edge by caution. It is so much easier not to get involved – to thirst for nothing and no one, to deny that matter matters and, if you have the stomach for it, to make your bed with meanings which cannot break your heart. But that, it seems to me, is neither human nor Divine. If we are to put up with all other inconveniences out of love, then no doubt we must put up with the bother of love itself and not just cut and run for cover when it comes.  

The last 25% of book is recipes, which are a pleasant, but non-essential addition. The main "recipe" is in the first 250 pages and it is on how to live life to the fullest.

 May your eyes be open “to see the bounty of small things.” 

Blessings,

12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke

"Owning a smart phone is similar to dating a high

 maintenance attention starved partner."

Every few years I read a book on how technology affects the brain so I can remember why to limit screen time. This year it was Tony Reinke's 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You. Frankly, I was surprised at how pro-technology the book is. 

Reinke contends that technology is morally neutral and that it began in the garden of Eden. Technology is the reordering of raw materials for human purposes.... Musicians re-order notes and sounds into music. Novelists re-order the raw material of human experience into stories. Technology pushes back the results of the Fall (less pain in childbirth, easier ways to plant and harvest, etc.) He admits that technology unhitched from fear and obedience to God quickly becomes a pawn in human power plays and uses the tower of Babel as an example, but, says Reinke, it is the human heart and not technology that is at fault. (If you've read anything by Paul Kingsnorth or Jacques Ellul, you will not agree that our constant upgrading in mechanization is "neutral" or, even, indeed, a sign of human progress. But I digress.)

In each chapter Reinke highlights one way in which our phones are changing our habits. In Chapter 1, he shows how we have become addicted to distraction; in Chapter 2, he writes about how our super-connectedness has robbed us of real relationships. Chapter 8 deals with easy access to porn. You get the idea. 

Although I didn't agree with everything he wrote, I always appreciate someone who makes me think through my habits with more clarity (and less self-delusion!)  

In the chapter on how our phones are making us illiterate, Reinke writes, If you want to internalize a piece of knowledge, you've got to linger over it. But we have been trained not to linger over digital texts. Our lack of self control with digital "marshmallows" malnourishes our sustained linear concentration. Deep reading is harder than ever. What we have today is not illiteracy, but aliteracy: a digital skimming that is simply an attempt to keep up with the deluge of information coming through our phones rather than slowing down and soaking in what is most important. He contends that this way of imbibing the written word leaks over into our Bible reading. The more time I spend reading 10-second tweets, the more it affects my attention span, weakening the muscles I need to read Scripture for long distances.

My favorite emphasis of the book was on how online distractions rob us of our ability to experience deeper pleasures: [As] we feed on digital junk food, our palates are re-programmed and our affections atrophy.... The more we take refuge in distraction, the more habituated we become to mere stimulation and the more desensitized to delight. We lose our capacity to stop and ponder something deeply, to admire something beautiful for its own sake. By seeking trivial pleasures in our phones, we train ourselves to want more of those trivial pleasures. These become the only pleasures we know. Our capacity for deep enjoyment is thus destroyed.

One of the biggest ways my phone has changed me (even though I limit my time on it quite a bit) is that I now have the attention span of a gerbil. The irony is not lost on me that I listened to this book on my phone at 1.25 speed so that I could get through it quickly and move on to other things.

I'd be interested to hear any thoughts you have on this book or on your own digital habits.

Blessings, 

The Valley of Vision by Arthur Bennett

The Valley of Vision is a powerful antidote to the popular teaching that Christianity is primarily about personal success and happiness. My husband and I have been reading a prayer a day for the past year and have often been overwhelmed with the beauty and clarity of each one. 

The focus is always on Christ rather than self. An example from the prayer on repose: Thou art so good, wise, just, holy, that no mistake is possible to thee... I yield to thy sovereignty all that I am and have; do thou with me as thou wilt. Thou has given me silence in my heart in place of murmurings and complaints. Keep my wishes from growing into willings, my willings from becoming fault-finding with thy providences, and have mercy on me.

I loved the book so much that I hate to mention my one quibble with it: the occasional emphasis on self-loathing. A humble recognition of our unworthiness to receive God's grace is everywhere in Scripture. Self-hatred is not. Many verses remind us that God has blotted out our transgressions to remember them no more. Who are we to undo what God has done?

That was a minor complaint. Overall, The Valley of Vision is a rich resource for godly, heartfelt prayers that point us to our heavenly Father in trust and worship. A final quote that I loved was, Give me knowledge of thy goodness that I might not be over-awed by thy greatness; give me Jesus, Son of Man, Son of God, that I might not be terrified, but be drawn near with filial love and holy boldness. 

The Gospel Coalition has an interesting post on the origin of these prayers, which were written by Arthur Bennett (1915-1994). Because Bennett uses the beautiful language of the original prayers (adapting them very slightly), it is hard to believe that this classic was first published in 1975. 

Blessings

A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life by William Law

After 30 years of teaching Theology of John Wesley, I finally decided to read A Serious Call because apart from the Bible it was one of the books that most formed Wesley’s thinking about Christianity. Law begins this devotional classic by defining the nature and extent of Christian devotion, which holds little resemblance to what passes for Christianity today. He reminds us that it is a “serious call” after all, and requires every ounce of our being.

The first chapter goes straight to the sticky issue of how Christians should spend their money.  Using our money in any way we please, says Law, shows we lack intention to please God in all our actions. (Wesley followed Law’s advice to the letter by living frugally all of his life and giving money away as fast as possible. He felt that accumulating wealth was equivalent to holding on to hot coals.)

The next chapters encourage a wholehearted pursuit of God by rising early, reading the Scriptures and singing the Psalms. He writes: Prayer is the nearest approach to God, and the highest enjoyment of Him that we are capable of in this life. It is the noblest exercise of the soul, the most exalted use of our best faculties and the highest imitation of the blessed inhabitants of heaven.

Starting with Chapter 16 he adds suggestions for how to take advantage of certain hours of the day for specific prayers. At 9 a.m., for example, a Christian should spend a few minutes focusing on his need for humility. (He follows with a whole chapter on what true humility entails.) In Chapter 20 he recommends using the noon hour to pray for more love toward others, and follows this up with a clear explanation of  the high cost of real love. (This was my favorite chapter in the whole book and I felt it could easily have been re-titled: "How to pray for those whom you despise and learn to love them in the process.")

Chapter 22 advocates stopping at 3 p.m. to pray prayers of consecration and resignation to God’s will. The whole nature of virtue consists in conforming to, and the whole nature of vice in declining from, the will of God…. Whenever you find yourself disposed to uneasiness or murmuring at anything that is the effect of God’s providence over you, you must look upon yourself as denying either the wisdom or goodness of God. For every complaint necessarily supposes ill usage. (Ouch!)

In Chapter 23 he suggests stopping at 6 p.m. to review the day and confess any sins that were committed. Oddly, the updated version of this book removes all mentions of specific times of day (to avoid sounding too Catholic?) and thus robs the reader of a simple method for remembering when and how to pray for these needs. Tripp’s version was also jarringly anachronistic. The language was not updated very much, but the examples were, which resulted in old-fashioned English phrases next to illustrations about people playing video games, wearing yoga pants and watching movies. Halfway through the Tripp version, I switched to the original version and had no problem with the language or the original examples. And the Dover version came with very helpful footnotes.

Once I got hold of a good version (free download from my library), I couldn’t believe how much I loved this book. It is a book to be read slowly and prayerfully that will comfort and strengthen the heart of any earnest seeker.

Blessings,

You Are Not Your Own by Alan Noble

Weeks after finishing You are Not Your Own, its ideas continue to resonate with me. Noble sets out to explain how we Americans have come to the place where hyper individualism is killing us rather than fulfilling us.

He writes, If I am my own and belong to myself, then I must define who I am…. And the terrifying thing is that everyone else in society is doing the exact same thing. Everyone is on their own private journey of self-discovery and self-expression, so that at times, modern life feels like billions of people in the same room shouting their own name so that everyone else knows they exist and who they are – which is a fairly accurate description of social media.

The irony of a culture that promises that you “can be all you can be” without reference to any higher good or higher power is that no plateau is high enough. There’s always some level of perfection or self-actualization just out of reach. The freedom of sovereign individualism comes at a great price. Once I am liberated from all social, moral, natural, and religious values, I become responsible for the meaning of my own life. Hence the lie: If I am completely responsible for my life, then the greatest moral failure would be for me to fail to pursue what I desire most. I owe it to myself to be happy. The only problem with this is that unlimited desire and consumption always leave us exhausted and empty.

But there is good news, says Noble. Christ frees us from the unbearable burden of self-belonging.

An anthropology defined by our belonging to God is diametrically opposed to the contemporary belief that we are autonomous, free, atomistic individuals who find our greatest fulfillment in breaking free from all external norms. Our selves belong to God, and we are joyfully limited and restrained by the obligations, virtues, and love that naturally come from this belonging. This living before God is not easy. It requires sacrifice and humility, perpetual repentance and dependence upon Christ. In a secular age such as our own, it requires an intentional effort to remember that we belong to Christ, and that belonging is not merely a doctrine, but a reality that touches every aspect of our lives.

This is a tremendous book if you are feeling overwhelmed by breath-takingly rapid changes in our society and want to step back and see how it all happened. It is also a wonderful reminder to vigilantly resist the false promises the world offers for self-fulfillment.

Interestingly, I was primed for this book by, first, experiencing ministry burnout and, second, by reading A Gentleman in Moscow. Both experiences caused me to question the frenzy of always doing more, and to ponder ways to live more humanly within our God-given limits. 

Blessings,

The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 2

I’m finally reviewing my favorite book of 2021. Volume One of the Letters of C.S. Lewis covers his early life and ends with his conversion. In Volume Two (1931-1949), we see how he grows in his faith and begins writing his fiction and his apologetical books. I was drawn in from the very first letter and was kept interested by the variety of his correspondents and his overwhelming kindness and humility. I was taken aback initially by a bawdy joke he included in a letter to his brother, but chortled at his nickname for a project in which he was unwillingly involved (The Oxford History of English Literature) that he referred to as “O Hell!”

There is much to savor in this volume: details of his friendship with Tolkien, his unbelievable patience with Jane (a cantankerous woman who was Lewis’ houseguest until the end of her life), his gentle, wise responses to people who asked him questions about his faith, and the endless list of books he was reading.

In spite of his brilliance as a thinker and writer, his letters are infused with a guilelessness that is disarming. He wrote to a Catholic nun on August 9, 1939, Though I’m forty years old as a man, I’m only about twelve as a Christian, so it would be a maternal act if you found time to sometimes mention me in your prayers.

In another letter written in April of 1935, he is renewing an old acquaintance and sums up his life simply, My father is dead and my brother has retired from the army and now lives with us…. I am going bald. I am a Christian. Professionally I am chiefly a medievalist.

As his fame grew, he was answering seven letters a day year-round and his brother, Warnie, began helping. Thank goodness hundreds and hundreds of those letters have been preserved for posterity. This book was a thousand pages and I loved every one of them.  

I was fortunate to pick this up when it was being offered for a few dollars on Kindle. When I investigated the possibility of purchasing hard covers for my permanent library, I found they are way out of my price range. Happily, the Kindle prices, though still high, are more accessible. Volume 1 and Volume 3 may be my big splurges for 2022.

Blessings,

Anthony Trollope: An Autobiography

I have to agree with my sister that Trollope's Autobiography is for diehard fans. Having read 23 of his novels, I put myself in that category, and, still, this book was an occasional slog. The early chapters were painfully sad memories of his poverty-stricken childhood and how he eked out an education at Harrow where he was regularly beaten. At nineteen, he left school and came home to find his father fleeing to Belgium and his mother dismantling the household in order to pay the creditors. The whole family joined the father in Europe, and since almost all of them were dying of consumption, his mother took on the full support of the family with her novel writing. Trollope's admiration for her knows no bounds:

The doctor’s vials and the ink-bottle held equal places in my mother’s rooms. I have written many novels under many circumstances, but I doubt much whether I could write one when my whole heart was by the bedside of a dying son. Her power of dividing herself into two parts, and keeping her intellect by itself clear from the troubles of the world, and fit for the duty it had to do, I never saw equaled. I do not think that the writing of novel is the most difficult task which a man may be called upon to do, but it is a task that may be supposed to demand a spirit fairly at ease…. My mother went through it unscathed in strength, though she performed all the work of day-nurse and night-nurse to a sick household – for there were soon three of them dying. 

Soon he was summoned to work as a clerk in the London Post office. He gives detailed descriptions of his post office duties through the years and how he managed to begin his own career as a novelist; he recalls his different books and how long they took to write and how much he got paid for them. Sometimes he compares how he felt about them with what the public felt about them.  (He didn’t give a hang about public opinion.) Regarding TheSmall House at Allington, he wrote, In it appeared Lily Dale, one of the characters which readers of my novels have liked the best. In the love with which she has been greeted I have hardly joined with much enthusiasm, feeling that she is somewhat of a prig. 

Chapter Thirteen was a commentary on fellow Victorian novelists and includes Trollope’s fascinating predictions of who would last and who would fade away. His “keepers” are Thackeray and George Eliot. He acknowledges Dicken’s popularity, but vehemently disagrees with it. His predictions for the “losers” were mostly right. He predicted that the novels of Charles Read, Henry Bulwer, Annie Thackeray, Rhoda Broughton, Charles Lever and Charlotte Brontë (!) would sink into oblivion.   

Although parts of this book were tedious, I was sad when it was over. The narrator, Bernard Mayes (with his grandfatherly British voice), did such a good job that I felt like I had just had a long conversation with a good friend that suddenly came to an end.

I will close with a favorite quote from Clifton Fadiman: Above all give me Trollope, from whom I have received so much pleasure that I would willingly call him another St. Anthony; his half a hundred novels are good for five years of bedside reading. Of those who minister to the tired, night-welcoming mind, Trollope is king. He never fails to interest, but not too much; to soothe, but not too much. Trollope is the perfect novelist for the bedside.

Blessings,

Reading Year in Review - 2021

Thank heavens that I came out of the pandemic-induced reading slump of 2020! This year got off to a roaring start because of the Literary Life Podcast group since their reading challenge caused me to attack my most daunting books right off the bat: Kristin Lavransdatter and Anna Karenina! Towards the end of the year I was reading much lighter fare, while dipping into Dante's Divine Comedy three times a week (via the 100 Days of Dante reading project.) It was a great year! (All 90 books, good and bad, are listed on my Goodreads challenge.) 

Here's the rundown of favorites: 

Most work, but worth the effort: Kristin Lavransdatter (reviewed here) After this, Anna Karenina was a cinch!

Best light fiction: A Tangled Web by L.M. Montgomery (reviewed here)

Most fun: All Creatures Great and Small by Herriot (reviewed here), and the first five Lord Peter Wimsey Novels by Sayers (reviewed here)

Favorite audio: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R.A. Dick & Pied Piper by Shute

Favorite re-read: Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury (with the Lit Life group)

Favorite classic: Mansfield Park by Austen (with the Lit Life group)

Unexpectedly knocked my socks off: The Inferno by Dante/Ciardi (To be honest, this was only after listening to the videos explaining each canto.)

Favorite non-fiction: Christian Faith in the Old Testament by Cockerill

My two top picks for the year were  C.S. Lewis' Letters, Vol. 2 (1,000 pages) and Six Centuries of Great Poetry (600 pages). My daily sips into their contents brought me constant delight. I felt bereft when I finally reached the end of Lewis' letters.

What about you? Have you read any of these? Did you have a favorite book of the year? 

Blessings,

Live Not by Lies by Rod Dreher

Live Not by Lies, by Rod Dreher, contains some of the same themes spelled out in The Benedict Option (loss of support for Christianity within the culture and the necessity of strong religious communities to sustain it), but LNBL is more hopeful. Yes, the situation in our culture is even worse than when Benedict Option was published five years ago, but in this book Dreher recounts stories of families who survived totalitarian governments (chiefly communist countries in Europe), which show the fruit of faithful perseverance. 

I marked so many passages that it would be impossible to touch on everything. My biggest take-away was understanding how American government has increasingly become totalitarian (what Dreher calls "soft totalitarianism") in the way that it rewards/condones certain behaviors and punishes/cancels "unacceptable" ones. (Cake bakers and florists are just two examples.) 

Today's totalitarianism demands allegiance to a set of progressive beliefs, many of which are incompatible with logic - and certainly with Christianity. Compliance is forced less by the state than by elites who form public opinion, and by private corporations that, thanks to technology, control our lives far more than we would like to admit. (p. 8)

In our therapeutic culture, [no belief in a Higher power and with personal comfort as the primary goal] the great sin is to stand in the way of the freedom of others to find happiness as they wish. (p. 13)

Without Christianity and its belief in the fallibility of human nature, secular progressives tend to rearrange their bigotries and call it righteousness. Christianity teaches that all men and women - not just the wealthy, the powerful, the straight, the white, and all other so-called oppressors - are sinners in need of the Redeemer. All men and women are called to confession and repentance. "Social justice" that projects unrighteousness solely onto particular groups is a perversion of Christian teaching. Reducing the individual to her economic status or her racial, sexual, or gender identity is an anthropological error. It is untrue, and therefore unjust. (p. 64, 65) 

When so much of what is being taught (in schools, on the news, on social media) is untrue, how does one stay grounded in reality? In the chapter called "Families are Resistance Cells", Dreher writes of  a Catholic couple, Václav and Kamila Benda, who were part of the Czech dissident movement in the 1970s. On a personal level they prepared their children to resist the lies of communism by filling their moral imaginations with the good. Kamila read to her children for two to three hours a day. She read them fairy tales, myths, adventure stories.... More than any other novel, though, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was the cornerstone of her family's collective imagination. (138)

Finally, Dreher addresses the problem of suffering. He worries that this generation of Americans (including Christians) has become so attached to their comforts that we would submit to government overreach to keep them. A time of painful testing, even persecution, is coming. Lukewarm or shallow Christians will not come through with their faith intact. Christians today must dig deep into the Bible and church tradition and teach themselves how and why today's post-Christian world with its self-centeredness, its quest for happiness and rejection of sacred order and transcendent values, is a rival religion to authentic Christianity. (162)

Even if you don't agree with everything in the book, there are a lot of important ideas to wrestle with in light of ever-decreasing religious freedoms in our present world.

Blessings,

The Tech-Wise Family by Andy Crouch

The Tech-Wise Family by Andy Crouch is not a "how to" as much as a "why to" book on limiting technology. This book is about much more than just social media, or even screens. It's about how to live as full, flourishing human beings. Maybe it will even turn out that in that quest for flourishing, technology in its proper place can actually help. Crouch's definition of a family, and what it takes to make a family healthy, made this a strong four-star read for me. Technology must serve the needs of the family, and not be its master. Technology is in its proper place when it helps us acquire skill and mastery of domains that are the glory of human culture (sports, music, the arts, cooking, writing, etc.) When we let technology replace the development of skill with passive consumption, something has gone wrong.

I appreciated his many insights into the false promises of technology to make life easier. Easier and flashier platforms, games, and programs often encourage us to opt out of activities that take more mental and emotional energy. These harder activities are the ones that enrich us and help us grow. The last thing you need when you are learning, at any age but especially in childhood, is to have things made too easy. Difficulty and resistance, as long as they are age appropriate and not too discouraging, are actually what press our brains and bodies to adapt and learn.

I was completely taken aback by the last chapter on how Christians must live in incarnational community, including the dignity of "low-tech" dying. This probably wouldn't have hit me so hard if it hadn't been for the families I know who suffered the loss of a loved one due to COVID and could not be with them at the moment of their passing. Crouch writes, We are meant not just for thin, virtual connections but for visceral, real connections to one another in this fleeting, temporary, and infinitely beautiful and worthwhile life. We are meant to die in one another's arms, surrounded by prayer and song, knowing beyond a doubt that we are loved.

Crouch wrote so winsomely of his daily, weekly, and yearly fasts from his devices, that I decided to get on board by making Sunday a no-screen day. I had no idea how hard that would be. Ignoring my TV and computer was a cinch, but because I use my cell phone as a kitchen timer and podcast source, and my Kindle's white noise app for taking naps, the temptation was always there to  mindlessly scroll through social media when I picked up these tools. This is a fast that I'm still determined to learn how to do.

I never dreamed that a little book on the dangers of technology overload would be so inspiring. Definitely another of my favorite books of 2021.

Blessings,