Month: October 2013

Books I’m Reading for Fun

Run with the Horses (Peterson) – a book on character, endurance, and faith through Eugene Peterson’s reflections on the prophet Jeremiah. A favorite quote:

“We have so much more experience in sin than in goodness that a writer has far more imaginative material to work with in presenting a bad character than a good person.”

MaddAddam (Atwood) – I’ve been an avid Atwood fan for years. In addition to good writing, and bits of sic-fi, Atwood always weaves in thick descriptions and philosophical reflection. This book is the third and final volume in the series. My favorite in the series was the first, Oryx and Crake.

Survival of the Prettiest (Etcoff) – a fascinating study of beauty, compiling disturbing statistics on self-improvment beauty, while exploring various answers to the question: “Why do we desire beauty?” Her answer is ultimately shaped by Darwinism. We desire beauty because it ensures procreation. This, of course, does not account for our longing for non-sexual beauty.

The Pastors Justification (Wilson)- an edifying read for any pastor or leader, but perhaps equally important for the church to read in order to understand and help their pastors thrive and serve the church well.

Here are three Quotes I pulled from it.

The Man in the Black Hat (Klosterman) – a curious exploration of what makes a villain evil, and what makes evil bad, through the unorthodox writing and pop culture reflections of Chuck Klosterman

 

Could Every Day be Marvelous?

This morning I stumbled out of bed after waking up twice to the moans of two of my children. Our two year old is in a “climb out of her bed at midnight and get in mommy and daddy’s bed” phase. My eldest son woke up nauseated and dry-throated. By the afternoon, I was driving to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, that the doctor didn’t charge us to prescribe, and paid fifteen dollars for a ten day cure for my son’s strep throat.

After breakfast, I went for a walk in our neighborhood trails, tree covered and cool, with my wife and kids. My two year old repeatedly said “Hold you,” which means she wants me to hold her. I carried her tiny body around, taking in stretches of plant green, wide-bladed St. Augustine, splinter bark of junipers poking out and up, and guided her tired body through the crushed granite maze. Over a year ago, we received about thirty thousand dollars to make our home affordable.

After a few slices of pepperoni over lunch with an old friend, we walked over to his office, where I got to talk about the unbelievability and hope of the resurrection with the designers at Ptarmak, who are working on covers for my two new books. You just feel creative in their space. They took me on, not because of the profitability of my work but because they are genuinely excited about the projects. I walked away with every confidence that the great art will wrap up the great truths I’m trying to unpack.

I ate dinner with my family, and enjoyed their company, before heading out to teach a class on interpreting poetry to a community I know and love. Together, we got into, under, and around the word so that we can live the truly good life, the blessed life, as we delighted in God’s law and marveled at its wisdom and grace, manifested supremely in the faithful and true Psalm one Man.

Today was marvelous. Sometimes it didn’t seem like it. Interrupted sleep. Sick children. Suspense on cover art. Curious if my teaching would be clear, true, and most of all, carried by the Spirit into the hearts of our people.

Looking back, it was marvelous because Christ was sustaining the created order for me to enjoy, sustaining me to enjoy my kids, well ahead of me in lining up a design firm and a gospel opportunity, present as his word was taught, compelling us all to be fruitful trees planted in the life-giving counsel of Christ. I wish I saw every day like this, backwards, through the eyes of Jesus.

Gravity: A Brief Review

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Gravity is so superbly shot you will walk away needing a massage. At times I felt like I was floating, then spinning, but for most of the time just tense. And I do mean just. Tendons strain and muscles tighten under moments of intensity only to release a feeble message. The actors handle the script like pros. Clooney and Bullock were believable, and unbelievable when need be. It’s a classic case of a mile wide and inch deep messaging. So for the wide-ranging exploration of our raison d’ etre, Alfonso Cuaron gets a nod. He covers a lot of space in the human exploration for meaning in life.

Curaon gives us a stunning view of the earth. The sunrise, the silence, and burning urban towers that dot our geography, paint a gorgeous backdrop for the film. In a film about space, the earth takes up an awful amount of space, and I am grateful. These shots endeared me to our remarkable planet, to its beauty and diversity and uniqueness. All this comes to a screeching halt, when Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock) collides with a series of obstacles. She runs gamut of coping solutions as she encounters trial after trial. Humor, human connectedness, anger, sorrow, resolve, and spirituality. While searching her soul in a moment of clarity, she remarks “I’ve never prayed. Nobody every taught me to pray.” If that’s not a call for evangelism, I don’t know what is. We get a darting glance at a couple deities–Buddha and Jesus–but Ryan moves quickly past God to her deceased daughter.

Interestingly, she recognizes the need for a mediator to talk to her daughter, presumably because she is with God or in heaven of some sort. Her choice isn’t someone who can bridge the chasm between God and man–the Christ–but her late friend and astronaut, Matt Kowalksi. She asks him to tell her daughter that she loves her, and that she found the red shoe she was looking for under the couch. It is touching, and anyone who has lost a child will be able to identify with the longing to have one last word. Isn’t is curious that her Matt-mediated prayer she mixes the mundane and the profound–a shoe and love? What a great reminder to cherish the mundane moments with our children, to love them in the ordinariness of legos and lost shoes.

Moving on from the past and into the present, Bullock forces her way through each obstacle with tremendous will power. She battles each demon with fierceness of spirit and determination to “have one hell of a ride.” Matt’s voice seems to prod her on to survive, and survive she does. One of the closing shots says it all, a forceful foot in the mud, bearing the weight of her tense and wobbly, gravity-ridden body, she sticks her landing to put two square feet on the ground. I made it. You  can do it. We will survive. However you want to say it, the film is a cinematic beauty, tense thriller, and an ode to the human will to survive. Unfortunately, it is vaporous on why we should will ourselves through this life. There is no fixed truth, no depth of contact with the divine, no summit of human purpose. But to its credit, many of these issues are raised, and in an age of comfort, distraction, and hype, that’s much more than we are used to.