For the Love of Books: 2012 Reads

Books I read in 2012...

Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

Todd Burpo & Lynn Vincent, 2010

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

Nicholas Carr, 2010

   This was a book from Christmas 2010. I began reading it on the shuttle from our apartment complex to campus when I was still doing the "going to class" thing. Then, Christopher's accident happened, I put down the book, and I haven't gotten into much that has to with my field since. Since we had a long car trip down and back from Arizona, I decided I was going to read, loaded my suitcase with books, and hoped I would get around to this.

   As it had been more than a year since I read the first half of the book, I started over. It's not an incredibly difficult read, but you'll probably want to be awake because of the way Carr walks through the brain's plasticity and the historical perspectives around various written and (now) mediated technologies, leading to the Internet. It's a great narrative, missing some of the technological skepticism from his first novel, The Big Switch. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, and definitely deserving of the nomination. 

In Praise of Prejudice

Theodor Dalrymple, 2007

The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoevsky,1868-1869

 
The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

   One of four absurdly large volumes that I received for Christmas (by request), I'm eager to dive into the world that Conan Doyle created that still captivates millions today. I love that, while the opening and closing tales are quite lengthy, the middle is constructed of several shorter stories concerning the world's most infamous fictional detective, which make for easier swallowing and less preoccupation - things I don't think I'll find so much in Eliot's Middlemarch or Dostoevsky's The Idiot. I'm fairly certain that my desire to read the classics increases almost every time I pick up a modern piece of fiction, and I love that Barnes and Noble has simple editions that make them readily accessible!

The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

   After finishing the first volume of this collection, I'm diving into the second. Aside from the odd adventures and cases, the stories when assembled like this present an interesting literary delight. The combination of Watson as narrator and his telling of past cases and Holmes is an interesting juxtaposition. It's written as a biography of sorts, which makes the stories all the more interesting for me because there are so many layers. It's no surprise that people at the time thought the stories and Holmes were real, as they seamlessly are woven into the London of Doyle's day.

The Prodigal God

Timothy Keller, 2008

Til We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

C.S. Lewis, 1956

   Lewis' last piece of fiction, published after the last of the Narnia series (The Last Battle) and just before his marriage to Joy Gresham, is perhaps my favorite - but certainly for much different reasons than his other fiction. The book retells the myth of Cupid and Psyche and, though not allegorical, has always managed to cause me to delve into the deep places of my soul looking for the light of the living God.

   I finally purchased a new copy for myself, but am trying to read it on car trips with Christopher, which means that it is taking quite a while to get into... 

Now is Gone
Geoff Livingston, 2007

   One of the most influential books for my study of communication on the current organizational level, I'm re-reading this one as I begin my ventures back toward finishing my thesis. Livingston's understanding of how public relations is changing in light of new media strategies and online communities is without comparison in my opinion - particularly as he is one of the few who approaches the subject in a practical way for everyday media managers. Excited at the prospect of reading his latest release, Welcome to the Fifth Estate: How to Create and Sustain a Winning Social Media Strategy after I finish.

The Fitting Room

Kelly Minter, 2011

As with Minter's No Other gods, I have found myself re-reading this volume of her wit and wisdom. When I first read through the chapters on forgiveness and peace last summer, I was challenged in how I work through things - particularly past hurts. This winter, with everything that has been going on, I've been challenged to live and believe differently while navigating this season. There is something about Minter's tone, charm, warmth, and understanding of reality that just draws me in and invites me to read her books over and over.

 
Emily Climbs

L.M. Montgomery, 1925

   If you haven't figured it out, I have a serious love for Lucy Maud Montgomery. It's just one of those things that I feel I need as a part of my daily diet. Having read and re-read the Anne of Green Gables series, a friend loaned me the Emily of New Moon series, which are proving a slower read because I'm unfamiliar with them (unlike the others, which I zip through because I know them so well!). There's a simplicity to Montgomery's work that is so refreshing. She wasn't necessarily trying to impress people - she just wanted to convey everyday life and the extraordinary people that inhabit it. As a result, I'm quite enjoying the series and looking forward to adding them to the pile of Montgomery reads that I re-read more regularly than I probably have time to do.

Emily's Quest
 L.M. Montgomery, 1927

The Golden Road
L.M. Montgomery, 1913 

Kilmeny of the Orchard
L.M. Montgomery, 1910 

Short Stories: 1896-1901

L.M. Montgomery, 1896-1901

   I find Montgomery's short stories to be the perfect endcap to a day. Each is beautifully executed in the same style as the rest of her work and is self-enclosed, which means I can put it down when my time to go to sleep arrives. All available for free on Kindle. Awesome.

Short Stories: 1902-1903
L.M. Montgomery, 1902-1903

Short Stories: 1904
L.M. Montgomery, 1904
 

Short Stories: 1907-1908

L.M. Montgomery, 1907-1908

Short Stories: 1909-1922
L.M. Montgomery, 1909-1922 

Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way

Shauna Niequist, 2010

Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life

Shauna Niequist, 2007 

Redeeming Love
Francine Rivers, 1991/2005 

What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage

Paul David Tripp, 2010 

Media Monday: "The Shallows"

Over the last three years, I have read a lot of very interesting books and articles in my quest to get my master's degree. The result is that I have fed my nerdiness. While trying to ease my way back into studying and reading things related to my field so that I can get back on track toward finishing my thesis (and consequently, my degree), I picked up The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr.

It's a book I received for Christmas in 2010, which I started and then put aside with all of my field-related studies when Christopher got hurt and we bought/started renovating our home. I picked it up again over spring break and finished reading it shortly after returning home. I was blown away, and immediately started synthesizing the book's content.

The premise pertains to how the Internet is completely changing how our brains work, particularly with regard to how we remember things and how we engage with life. Carr deftly describes how our cognitive functioning is interacting with the change in how and where we gather our information:

Imagine filling a bathtub with a thimble; that's the challenge involved in transferring information from working memory into long-term memory. By regulating the velocity and intensity of information flow, media exert a strong influence on this process. When we read a book, the information faucet provides a steady drip, which we can control by the pace of our reading. Through our single-minded concentration on the text, we can transfer all or most of the information, thimbleful by thimbleful, into long-term memory and forge the rich associations essential to the creation of schemas. With the Net, we face many information fuacets, all going full blast. Our little thimble overflows as we rush from one faucet to the next. We're able to transfer only a small portion of the information to long-term memory, and what we do transfer is a jumble of drops from different faucets, not a continuous, coherent stream from one source. (pp. 124-125)

Carr details how this change has happened in his own habits - how he writes, reads, works - and contrasts it with historical perspectives and understandings of the brain (something he does really well in The Big Switch, his first book). Breadth of knowledge may be increasing, but there are signs pointing to a decrease in depth of knowledge (hence, Carr's title).

The book is a great read, engaging and thoughtful. It was even a Pulitzer finalist. These are reasons I encourage you to pick it up yourself and give it a read. I will, however, share one of the most fascinating sections from my trip through its pages:

It's not hard to see why books have been slow to make the leap into the digital age. There's not a whole lot of difference between a computer monitor and a television screen, and the sounds coming from speakers hit your ears in pretty much the same way whether they're being transmitted through a computer or a radio. But as a device for reading, the book retains some compelling advantages over the computer. You can take a book to the beach without worrying about sand getting in its works. You can take it to bed without being nervous about it falling to the floor should you nod off. You can spill coffee on it. You can put it down on a table, open to the page you're reading, and when you pick it up a few days later it will still be exactly as you left it. You never have to be concerned about plugging a book into an outlet or having its battery die. (pp. 99-100)

Now, it is certainly no secret that I love books, or even that I love real, printed ones. But a lot of what Carr relates about how the format of the book has changed as it has made its way into interactive platforms is mind-boggling to me. It ceases to be just reading. We lose our ability to simply be lost in whatever it is that we're reading.

Sure, we all know that it can be easy to lose one's train of thought while reading a book, but you realize it when you come to recognize you don't have a clue what is happening on the page and either put it down for a time when you can concentrate or get back on track. With a lot of electronic and interactive book platforms, there are more than our own trains of thought going while we read:

Christine Rosen, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, recently wrote about her experience using a Kindle to read the Dickens novel Nicholas Nickleby. Her story underscores Johnson's fears: "Although mildly disorienting at first, I quickly adjusted to the Kindle's screen and mastered the scroll and page-turn buttons. Nevertheless, my eyes were restless and jumped around as they do when I try to read for a sustained time on the computer. Distractions abounded. I looked up Dickens on Wikipedia, then jumped straight down the Internet rabbit hole following a link about a Dickens short story, 'Mugby Junction.' Twenty minutes later I still hadn't returned to my reading of Nickleby on the Kindle."

When we step outside of the traditional book platform, we step into a world filled with rabbit trails. They all lead to information of some sort or another, but is it good information? Is it actually leading to a depth of knowledge, a depth of understanding? Do we actually understand the book better?

These are all good questions, and I think Carr has some good thoughts on how our brains are changing with our constant and overflowing influx of information and stimuli. If you want to read it, I recommend a paper copy. Might even let you borrow mine.

Treasure on a Tuesday: "Till We Have Faces"

There is a simplicity in the work of C.S. Lewis. His writings are either straight-forward and literal (A Grief Observed, The Four Loves, Mere Christianity) or directly allegorical or interpreted (The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters). It is rare that he breaks from these two molds.

But Till We Have Faces is more Tolkein-esque, relying upon an entirely separate world with no modern ties and steeped in layer upon layer of indirect allegory. It is beautiful and haunting, and I have loved the tale's pages since I first read it nearly a decade ago.

This retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche is set in the barbaric realm of Glome. We find ourselves in the presence of a king with daughters - one ugly, one beautiful, and one a saintly figure seemingly destined to save the kingdom in one way or another - and the king despises them all, for they are not sons.

While I won't visit all of the details of this "myth retold," it is certainly worth a read. Lewis believed that the power of myth was that it all pointed back somehow to the truths of what has happened since the commencement of our world - and he has buried so many thought-provoking pieces of truth in the depths of this incredible novel that make me come back to plumb the depths of my soul time and again.

This is definitely not a child's story, but neither was Tolkein's Middle Earth. Its darker, heavier, and more honest look at the lengths men will go to in order to preserve themselves before earthly and divine powers. It illumines the heart and base condition of man as being anti-god. I see in its pages a shattering glimpse at my own heart, and my own desire to pretend that God doesn't exist.

After re-telling the traditional iteration of the myth in his note at the end, Lewis describes his process in crafting his version:

The central alteration in my own version consists in making Psyche's palace invisible to normal, mortal eyes - if "making" is not the wrong word for something which forced itself upon me, almost at my first reading of the story, as the way the thing must have been. This change of course brings with it a more ambivalent motive and a different character for my heroine and finally modifies the whole quality of the tale. I felt quite free to go behind Apuleius, whom I suppose to have been its transmitter, not its inventor. Nothing was further from my aim than to recapture the peculiar quality of the Metamorphoses - that strange compound of picaresque novel, horror comic, mystagogue's tract, pornography, and stylistic experiment. Apuleius was of course a man of genius: but in relation to my work he is a "source," not an "influence" nor a "model."

The tale captivated Lewis, as I'm sure did the truths within it. And it captivates me, too. After revisiting Lewis' "myth retold" for the third or fourth time, I am in awe of his ability to weave both story and truth into a tale that still draws me in and splits me open.

Weekend Workroom: Library & Cataloging

I love books.

I don't know that anyone who knows me at all would fail to understand that statement. The seasons where I let myself read, I read voraciously.

And for many, many, many years, my dream has been to have my books cataloged and organized and in matching shelves.

Chris has tried to make this dream a reality for several years. In our first year of marriage, at our second residence, he "built in" bookshelves (as much as he could in a rental) to give us a bit of extra storage space and a nice piece for our living room. We added a bookshelf that we used as pantry space at our next residence (since the house we lived in had ample pantry space). Then we migrated everything over to our last apartment (man, we've moved a lot) and just used the same configuration of shelving because a) we had no money, and b) we decided it wasn't worthwhile until we had a permanent address again.

When we moved into our home (yay for permanence) last spring, one of the things I set my heart on was to finally purchase some matching bookshelves and create my long-dreamt-of library, but it was one of the last indoor things we could do because it wasn't an essential piece of making our home work. Because IKEA has finally made its appearance in Colorado, we figured through all the pieces we desired and a timetable in which to purchase each of them.

But we've continued to purchase other things that have been more needed in the meantime, so the project has continued to be pushed off by our circumstances.

For my birthday, Christopher's parents purchased the bookshelves and Christopher assembled and put them in place in our home.

And it is freaking awesome.

This post will kind of do double-duty because there's so much more of my heart wrapped up in it than there probably should be, so it fits here but it also fits over at the renovation blog. There will be other stuff featured at the reno blog, though, if you want to check out some of the other things we've been up to lately (who am I kidding? You can see what Christopher has been up to...).

Our garden level/den looked like this when we moved in:

 

Yes, the paint on the walls was high gloss. It was everywhere, which is one of the main reasons we painted EVERYTHING. We replaced the light when we moved in, and the carpet and the stairs this past spring, but I digress...

And now it looks like this:

We used the Billy bookcase system from IKEA. I took the measurements for the room and used their Billy planner (http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/rooms_ideas/planner_billy/index.html) to figure out how to make the best use of the wall space. The bins on the left shelf are a reddish color (also from IKEA, but I don't remember what they're called), and are the perfect storage space for Christopher's shoes. The chair is a Poang from IKEA, and it's super-comfy. We plan to get a second one in time, but it's a great spot to read, rest, and enjoy the coolness (thermally) of our garden level.

Perhaps the largest piece of this, however, was actually cataloging the books. I wanted a system, but not just one of my own... so I landed on the Dewey Decimal system. It's simpler than the Library of Congress system and a lot of more recently published materials actually include the numbers with the publication information. I still have a few more boxes to go before I'm done, but I've made some pretty incredible headway the past few weeks.

I am a little confused over the difference between [Fic] and the 800 classification for literature, and I can only assume that it has to do with intelligence level ([Fic] being more juvenile fiction; 800s being "literature" with a snooty holding of the head). The "younger" books have been moved upstairs with the bookshelves that used to be downstairs. It seems to work well for us. There also wasn't sufficient room for our bibles on the shelves, so they got their own bin on the Expedit.

For the cataloging, I've been using a freeware program called "Book Hunter." I found it through the Apple App Store. It doesn't have a plethora of bells and whistles, but it does the job and has plenty of color to keep me happy when the books' covers are in the system.

Anyway, I keep looking down the stairs and thinking, "Man, that looks good" and sighing a bit because it's pretty cool.

Next task: Replace the desk. We haven't found one we like yet. Give it time.

Treasure on a Tuesday: Favorite Classic "Chick" Books

If you have been over to my "Books" page anytime recently, you will likely notice something: I read a lot. This is partially because I love losing myself in stories (good ones, of course) and partially out of reaction to our culture that seems to encourage illiteracy (perhaps I'll elaborate on that in a later post, but the gist is that we're becoming an increasingly simple and visual culture).

Regardless, the result is that I read a lot. My favorites often include female heroines, but please don't confuse my understanding of "chick" books with either romance novels or feminist agenda pieces - I look for simplicity of lifestyle, gentleness of spirit, a little spunk, and characters that challenge me to be better. So far, I am not an Austen fan. Pride and Prejudice was one of the hardest reads I slogged through for my high school literature classes. I hope to someday try again, as I someday hope to complete either Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, both of which I started in middle school...

Here are two of my favorites:

Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery
Perhaps my favorite book of all time, this beautiful novel and its subsequent series (eight books total) are perennial reads - meaning I take a romp through all eight of them every few years. Anne is an orphan, wide-eyed, imaginative, and searching for a place of her own where she can get away from taking care of other people's twins. On a fluke, she is installed in the home of Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, an older gentleman and his spinster of a sister - who want a boy to help with their family farm.

But Anne, in spite of all the odds, finds a place in their hearts and their home in this amazing tale of finding beauty in the redemption of forgotten things. The simplicity of life displayed in this (and the other books in the series) challenge me to live simply and in faith.

And because there are seven novels that follow, it is a journey that only begins with this volume. The journey's end is just as breathtaking as its beginning. Rilla of Ingleside, the eighth and final volume, concerns the coming into adulthood of Anne's youngest daughter, Rilla, during the tumult and upheaval of the first World War. In many ways, Montgomery seems to have written each of the preceding books in order to get to this one and have it stand as a testament to the changes in daily life and the innocence stolen from the entire world as the Great War fell upon it.

Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
You can easily tell what my favorite books are by the age of the copies on my bookshelf and the fact that I won't let them out of my house. Little Women and Anne of Green Gables easily rank among my oldest tomes. I inherited my copy of Little Women from my maternal grandmother and the pages are so old that the entire thing is falling apart.

But that old book smell is awesome.

I greatly appreciate the March sisters and the way that Alcott so deftly integrates them into the family structure at such different times in their growing up. They are all, first and foremost, family, and then Alcott examines their differences and how they overcome their vanities and faults.

Meg is beautiful and gentle, if a little vain; Jo is intelligent, fiercely loyal, and yet headstrong and independent; Beth is a homebody, a gifted musician, and possesses the most gentle and quiet spirit of any female character I've known; and Amy, the youngest, is impulsive, spunky, vain, and yet somehow endearing in her youthful follies. Their mother is stalwart, raising them and seeking their best in the absence of their father, who has been taken away from them by war.

It is a timeless tale of growing up and seeking to know our own hearts, and it has so much variety in its pages that I never seem to be bored with these beautiful, strong, loyal women - and I see the depths of my own heart better through their lens.

Thursday Thoughts: On Forgiveness

I'm going to attempt to limit my Thursday posts to 750 words. That way, I can share a little bit about what I've been learning in a more deliberate and organized way - without just dumping the contents of my brain.

I will normally try to have this include both quotes and scripture references, but there might be some exceptions to that. I've been reading voraciously lately, which means I have a lot of great places that my thoughts come together from... Regardless, I'll try to keep my numbers down and my posts more frequent.

I'm still working on the frequency thing. I somehow managed to pick days for regular features that do not work well with my current schedule, so I'm trying to look and work ahead and just release things when those days come... Just FYI.

*****

Psalm 130

My Soul Waits for the LORD

A Song of Ascents

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O LORD, hear my voice!

Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!

If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O LORD, who could stand?

But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;

My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning,

more than watchmen for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the LORD!

For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.

And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

*****

As they climbed the steps to the Temple each year to celebrate the Feasts of Unleavened Bread, Weeks, and Tabernacles, the Jews would recite Psalms 120-134 - also known as the "Songs of Ascent." What an incredible image that brings to my mind: A people chosen by God, reminding themselves three times each year (with every step) just what role God had played in their lives.

I love this psalm, and I come back to it several times each year as I make my way through the Psalms. There is a beauty in the promises of God's redemption for His people within its words. There is a promise of redemption for me.

This year, the verse, "If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O LORD, who could stand?" reaches deeper. Last summer, God changed the way I looked at forgiveness for both myself and toward others. This winter, He has been doing so all over again with a second trip through Kelly Minter's The Fitting Room.

I love what she has to say about Jesus telling Simon the parable of the two debtors after the undesirable woman has washed Jesus' feet and Simon has scorned her (Luke 7):

Jesus allowed Simon to identify himself with the guy who owed only fifty denarii, while the sinful woman owed five hundred. Of course, this was just an illustration, as sins aren't counted in currency.

But for a moment Jesus let Simon see himself as the "better" guy (the guy with the smaller debt). The problem, which Jesus pointed out, is that if you don't have so much as a penny to your name, it doesn't matter if you owe a dime or the current national debt. If you have no way to pay, both a pack of gum and a shiny red sailboat become equally out of reach. ...

By the incredible grace of God - the grace that did not give in to my desperate fancies - He allowed me to see my fifty denarii. And that fifty was no longer four hundred fifty less than five hundred but an incalculable debt that had once separated me from the love of God.

In the face of my own sins of jealousy, control, and obsession, Jesus was allowing me to see my own debt more clearly. I realized it wasn't really less than the person's who had hurt me, because the truth is that neither of us had a nickel to pay with. Apart from Jesus, we were both equally bankrupt.

This simple understanding reaches depths of me into which I desperately need the light of grace to shine. Having grown up in a Christian home and predominantly as a believer, it is easy to think like Simon - to feel that I only owe 50 denarii or whatever the currency may be - and it is difficult to think that I owe an incalculable debt.

Incalculable. The economy of mercy is so vastly different from our own.

And, yet, understanding that is the first piece of understanding forgiveness and how it can be walked out with others. No one can stand, but in Him there is forgiveness and plentiful redemption. What beautiful promises.

It is not necessarily an understanding of forgiveness that drives my understanding of what it is to forgive - it is an understanding of grace.

Grace offers what none of us deserves - rescue for the morally bankrupt.

And because I know what grace has been offered to me, I can apply that grace to situations with others. Certainly, there are very real consequences to sin, but there is grace (and forgiveness and compassion) to be had for this life and for the next - and wonder of wonders, it was bought by Someone Else.

Reading: Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol. I; L. M. Montgomery, Short Stories 1907-1908
Listening to: Bethany Dillon, Waking Up; Jimmy Eat World, Chase This Light

Treasure on a Tuesday: Phoenix Edition

We were recently blessed to be able to go down to Phoenix and see our dear friends who left us over the course of the last year to do the noble task of infusing a GC church with their energy, love, faith, and talents. It was great to see the fruit that God is bearing in their midst, mostly through relationships.

While we were there, however, we enjoyed the crazy restfulness of tagging along with Eddie and Jen, two of our best friends who just happen to be married to each other. Here are some of the treasures we found along the way...

Treasure #1: Warmth in the Winter
When we left, it was 19 degrees in Colorado. We spent the weekend in the beautiful mid-winter 70s. And it was glorious. Another trip is already on next winter's to-do list.

Treasure #2: Annual VNSA Used Book Sale
The Volunteer Non-Profit Service Association (VNSA) has put on an annual used book sale for 56 years now, collecting books throughout the year by way of drop boxes throughout the city and using the proceeds to help the Arizona Friends of Foster Children Foundation and the Literacy Volunteers of Maricopa County. We went on a whim, thinking it would be a few folding tables on the streets downtown - and we missed the mark a bit on our expectations.

The sale had more than 500,000 items this year, from books to movies and music, and the selection is something quite impressive. If you know what you want, there's a good chance that it'll pop up somewhere in the well-organized sale. And, even though we stood in line for more than an hour just to get in, going with friends allowed for a great chance to talk in the sunshine. It's a good thing we came with room in our bags because if there's anything that Chris and I love, that would be books at a great price.

Check out http://vnsabooksale.org for more and details on next year's sale!

Treasure #3: In-N-Out Burger
I didn't used to understand the appeal, but maybe I grew up or spent more time on the West Coast or something, because I do sincerely enjoy the simplicity of the burgers at In-N-Out. Arizona is close enough to a distribution center that they have quite a few - not bad when you live in a state where there are none.

from Arizona State Parks web gallery

Treasure #4: Sedona
True, Sedona isn't in Phoenix, but it's an easy day trip when snow isn't a consideration. We stopped by the Chapel of the Holy Cross, which is built in the rock formations just outside of the city, and drove a bit further north to Slide Rock State Park, which was a great little afternoon hike. The water's a bit chilly to take advantage of in the middle of the winter (even in Arizona), but it's still incredible to look around at the glory God has displayed through His creation.

The Antiques Plaza, from Google

Gotham City Comics, from Google

Treasure #5: Main Street Mesa
While a lot of the church played Ultimate on Sunday afternoon, a few of us ladies wandered to Main Street in Mesa. We checked out the Antique Plaza, a coffee shop, and Gotham City Comics. It was a great way to spend the afternoon, but be aware that not everything is open on Sunday afternoons. Saturdays or weekdays are better days to see even more of this great downtown.

Treasure #6: Desert's End
This growing group of believers is full of good friends, both newer and older, and has a heart centered on the Gospel in great ways. It's a great place to stop in when visiting the city or to suggest to someone who is looking for a church in the area. There is good fruit growing here, and that is perhaps the greatest and most encouraging treasure of all. Every Sunday includes a service, pot-luck, and Ultimate - all resulting in life-giving fellowship. For more info, check out the church's newly launched web site at http://desertsend.com.

For the Love of Books: 2011 Reads

Books I read in 2011...

Sink Reflections

Marla Cilley, 2002

Knowing God by Name: A Personal Encounter

Mary A. Kassian, 2008

   This simple study (I've used it as an opening devotional) is so great, I've just finished my second trip through the content. It's a great way to get to know the names of God, as well as more deeply process what that means for me as I try to know better the God whom I serve daily.
    If you're trying to purchase a copy, go through Lifeway (either a store or online), as it's only $11.95 for a new copy. People on the Amazon marketplace have some strange conception that a book still available is worth $90 on the second-hand market.

The Swan Thieves

Elizabeth Kostova, 2010

   Kostova's first novel, The Historian, was incredibly executed in its combination of history with its suspenseful plot. I'm working my way through her follow-up, which has been reviewed as very similar in style (and is, in my brief time with the book thus far).

   The way in which Kostova weaves several seemingly separate stories together is magnificent. Remembering the outcome of her first book, I find myself examining each piece of narrative for clues as to what is really happening as Dr. Marlow (psychiatrist) seeks to uncover the root of his patient's madness (the near-mute artist, Robert Oliver), as Kostova traverses the landscape of artists and styles that marked 19th century French culture.

When God Writes Your Love Story

Eric and Leslie Ludy, 2009 (Expanded Edition) 

The Princess and the Goblin

George MacDonald, 1872

The Fitting Room: Putting on the Character of Christ

Kelly Minter, 2011

No Other gods: Confronting Our Modern Day Idols

Kelly Minter, 2008

Water into Wine: Hope for the Miraculous in the Struggle of the Mundane

Kelly Minter, 2004

Chronicles of Avonlea

L.M. Montgomery, 1912

Emily of New Moon

L.M. Montgomery, 1923  

Further Chronicles of Avonlea

L.M. Montgomery, 1920

 

The Story Girl

L.M. Montgomery, 1911

Spectacular Sins

John Piper, 2008

    Chris and I read this on car trips, one chapter at a time - because it generates some really great, purposive discussions. It's an interesting (and short, which is unusual for Piper) examination of how the great sins of people in the Bible were meant to display the greater glory of God. It may be short, but it's deep. Super-deep.

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy, 1877

   Since Christopher has been listening to this in the car, I picked up a copy for myself to read (since I both cannot process by listening and I'm not with him most of the time that he's listening). Best $9 I've spent in a long time.

   The book is long (750+ pages in the Barnes&Noble Classics version), but it is easy to get swept up in the picture of Russia that Tolstoy created - and even easier to be entranced by the implications of cultural change and the march of progress. One of the best narratives (whether intentional or not) of the idea that "desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death" (James 1:15). Incredible. 

One Thousand Gifts

Ann Voskamp, 2010

   My beautiful sister-in-law, Elise, sent me this book. I assume that means she has read it and suspected it would speak to my soul! I'm not very far in, but it is already the cause of some stirrings in my heart - a heart that has been somewhat dormant, bitter, and felt forgotten for some time.
    I'm still adjusting to Voskamp's unique style (very similar to Madeleine L'Engle's Crosswicks journals, which are some of my favorite books - but still a very unique style that isn't found in much, so it takes readjustment). I'm also trying to get myself to look past the fact that the text is left aligned and not justified... but that's because I'm a huge dork.

Growing Pains

Does anyone else still struggle to figure out what life is supposed to look like?

I personally have no clue. Factor in the fact that, somehow, in some way, Christ is meant to be at the center of it all, and I find myself floundering even when it comes down to deciding what to do with my life. Should I be an organizational communication consultant? A musician? A mother and homemaker? A professional gift wrapper (still holding out for this one to be remotely possible)? A writer? An artist? A seamstress? All of the above (laugh all you want, but I do try to make it all work in my head sometimes)?

By now, I do know that I can't have it all. On my best days, two of the above seem improbable, if not impossible. Perhaps I have too many interests or perhaps I think I do just so that I can avoid making a decision as to what to do with my time and energy and talents. Perhaps I'm just scared that what I have to offer the world isn't good enough. Really scared.

But there's the crux of the whole issue right there, isn't it? I'm not good enough.

I've spent a lifetime trying to skirt by on my own virtues and successes, in spite of the fact that it is God's supreme sovereignty and grace that has gifted me with everything that I have and am.

Currently, I'm finding my way through Water into Wine: Hope for the Miraculous in the Struggle of the Mundane by Kelly Minter. She is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, for many reasons, but this particular book concerns the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana (from John 2).

One of the most indelible things she has hit thus far has been the perspective of the servants. Her point is that they likely served guests and their masters day after day, year after year, with little variation in the routine - until Jesus showed up and asked them to draw water, which they drew and, somehow in the transfer, it became the best of wines.

But I love what Minter has to say:

What is it all for? Another day of work, another day of showing up, another concert, another wedding, another stone jar of water, another order from yet another person: "Fill the jars with water... Take them to the master of the banquet." The servants had probably been doing this for years. Feast after feast, they served people who were wealthier and higher in status. It was the same rote activity with no shadow of turning.

"Would you care for another hors d'oeuvre?"
"May I recommend the salmon puffs?"
"May I take your plate?"
"Can I get you a refill?"

Day after day. Water in... water out. Routine. Predictable. Monotonous. Mundane. Regimented.
What in the world is it all for?

I don't think I'm stretching things by suggesting that this may have been the servants' dilemma, because it seems to me that this is everyone's dilemma: We all go 'round and 'round, attempting to make life work just so we can get up the next day to make it work again. Whether we act on Broadway or deliver newspapers for a living, life doesn't seem to make much sense or have much value without the conviction that God is divinely involved, able and eager to reach down at any moment and turn the everyday stuff of life into something divine, something that counts for eternity, something that is beyond ourselves.

Beyond myself. I so rarely think in those terms. It's either "I can do this" or "I can't." There doesn't seem to be a fuzzy gray area in between where I discover that "I can't, but God can." I'm not bringing Him my water jars "filled to the brim" and expecting Him to do something bewilderingly amazing with them - such as turning them into wine.

I find every excuse not to fill my water jars. At all. I complain about the water being the wrong temperature, requiring a filter, or splashing all over what I'm wearing - I don't simply obey in offering all that I am and all that God made me to be (which is the same thing, really) for Him to use.

Not every day will be extraordinary. The servants at Cana likely waited a really long time before that one incredible day that Jesus was there. But I need to expect that God both can and will provide in miraculous ways for my life here and there. I need to expect that He can and will divinely speak into my life about what it should look like, where I should work, how I should serve those that I love (and some that I struggle to), and when to simply rest.

So this is what being grown-up feels like, huh? Still working to fork over to God the things that are already rightfully His... and praying that I might occasionally, by His grace, be able to do so.

Excerpt from Water into Wine: Hope for the Miraculous in the Struggle of the Mundane by Kelly Minter. Minter also wrote No Other Gods: Confronting our Modern Day Idols, which I read earlier this year and which was an instrument God used to reveal idolatry that had/has made a home in my own heart; and The Fitting Room: Putting on the Character of Christ, which just came out in April and which I will be starting as soon as I finish Water into Wine.

Like I said, one of my newest favorite authors. See kellyminter.com for more.

Why I'm leaving Facebook after 7 years as a user...

There was once a time that Facebook was simple, and so (to be honest) was my life. I went to classes and came home, seeing all the people I really knew in the dorms, catching up with them at dinner, and enjoying late night chats in the lounges. The few people I didn't see regularly, I began to keep up with on "the Face", which gave me a little bit of insight to their lives when I gave them a phone call and got caught up that way.

Life's now a little more complex, however, and so has become my Facebook habit.

Now, I've never gotten into the games. When I first saw that my father had planted corn (in Farmville, as I later found out), I was really confused because my parents' neighborhood won't let them plant anything edible. And when I tried to get into playing Scrabble with the family, I would forget to check on the game and ended up force-forfeiting almost every one I ever tried to play.

So, obviously, I'm not talking about that.

What has gotten quite absurdly out of control has been my need to know every tidbit about every person that I both do and do not hang out with on a daily basis. It wouldn't be so bad if I actually took the time to seek out each individual to see how he or she was doing, but the fact that it is so readily supplied and I do not need to initiate any type of communication (or relationship), is ridiculous. No wonder I feel cut off from people - almost every relationship is mediated and nothing is genuine.

So, why now?

I've been toying with this idea for a while. It is nothing new in the back recesses of my mind, though perhaps not purely in this light. My original stance was going to be for privacy, but Facebook fixed some things and that's not really a hill I wanted to die on.

This, however is:

Do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty. [1 Samuel 12:21]

Those that cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. [Jonah 2:8]

When we put it plainly like this - as a direct choice between God and our stuff - most of us hope we would choose God. But we need to realize that how we spend our time, what our money goes toward, and where we will invest our energy is equivalent to choosing God or rejecting Him. How could we think for even a second that something on this puny little earth compares to the Creator and Sustainer and Savior of it all? [Francis Chan, Crazy Love]

Now, I don't want to say that Facebook is entirely empty or without value - it certainly can be useful when handled with the correct heart. I simply do not currently have that heart.

Facebook can be a great communication tool, but I am not using it as such. It can be a great way to keep in touch with old friends at various distances, but I often find discouragement, heartache, and even bitterness in what appears in my News Feed.

My heart is not centered heavily on Christ right now - and I'm finally seeing that to be the root of the problem. I need Christ, but I do not see my need for Him.

And this must change.

In the next few months, I'm hoping to seek the stripping away of "worthless idols" - those things that are empty, that do not "profit or deliver" me to the foot of the cross. I want to choose my Creator over the created things that He has so graciously given me. I want to know again the desire to sit at His feet and be fully known by Him. I want to boldly come before the throne of grace - and, right now, I do not remember what that looks like.

Therefore, the first thing to go is Facebook. More will certainly follow, though it will certainly be a process that requires honesty with myself where (especially) my media use is concerned. Only as things are stripped away will I see what needs to go next.

My life has become a constant refrain of, "If only I get to keep (fill in the blank)... (fill in the blank)." We were created for so much more - if there is "no greater loss" than to lose myself in the One who was broken and died on a cross so that He could conquer death and my sin in His resurrection, then I need to change how I live, for my life does not currently reflect this.

On September 15th, I will pull the plug on my Facebook account. Until then, I'll be trying to gather as much contact information as I can so that I might possibly cultivate relationships again, rather than seeing my reading of status updates for people I know as "relationships".

Regardless, you can still get ahold of me here, at my e-mail address, akatereynolds[at]yahoo.com, on Twitter [akatereynolds] or by telephone.

Listening to: Mumford & Sons, Sigh No More
Reading: Jan Karon, In This Mountain [among other things]