Heaven Without Her by Kitty Foth-Regner

Heaven Without Her: A Desperate Daughter’s Search for the Heart of Her Mother’s Faith by Kitty Foth-Regner.

I’ve had this memoir on my TBR list for quite a while, recommended to me by someone or another, but I couldn’t find it at the library. I put off buying a copy because I had some vague idea that the “her” of the title had been kidnapped or lost, and the daughter was searching for her. I just didn’t know if I was in the mood for that sort of a story.

It turns out that Heaven Without Her is a spiritual memoir, a conversion story, and I love a well-written conversion story.

“Kitty Foth-Regner was living the feminist dream—a successful copywriting business, the perfect live-in boyfriend, beautiful garden, and a nice house. But when her beloved developed a fatal illness, she found herself on the brink of despair with nothing but questions: Could there possibly be a God? If so, which God? And might heaven really exist?”

The book is as much a Christian apologetic as it is a memoir, but Ms. Foth-Regner’s personal story of her search for God gives shape and meaning to the academic and scientific investigation that she undertook to find out who God might be and whether He could be found in any of the major (and some minor) religions of the world. Her motivation for the search was her desire to be with her beloved Christian mother in heaven, if such a place really exists. But through that motivation, the Hound of Heaven was certainly pursuing Kitty Both-Regner “down the labyrinthine ways/Of [her] own mind; and in the mist of tears.”

The memoirist writes about the Bible and the historical and scientific reliability thereof. She includes quite a bit of information about the evolution/creation debate and presents solid evidence for both intelligent design by a Creator God and a young earth view of history. She compares the truth claims of Christianity and of other world religions, show ing that Christianity is the only belief system that has verifiable evidence supporting its dogma. Then, she goes on to tell about how she came to believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a historical fact, and that the gospel, faith in God through Christ and the receiving of His grace to cover our sins, was the only way to heaven and to Truth. (That’s in chapter 20, by the way, if you want to skip to the climax. But I’d suggest you read the book straight through.)

Heaven Without Her would be a great gift for an unbelieving friend, provided that friend was somewhat open to the gospel. Kitty Foth-Regner herself says that her efforts to share the wonderful news of her new-found faith with friends and associates met mostly with polite, but definite, disinterest, sometimes outright hostility. “Amazingly, many if not most, declined. And not always politely.” “My friendships with several hyper-feminists were among the casualties of my conversion. Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut. But I figured a friend doesn’t let a friend live without hope; a friend shares the gospel with the people she cares about.”

So, use your own judgment and the guidance of the Holy Spirit as to whether or not to give the book away to friends and neighbors, but I would say that having a copy to read yourself and another to give away if so led would be an excellent investment. It’s a book in the same category and genre with Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ, Josh McDowell’s More Than a Carpenter, and Letters from a Skeptic by Dr. Gregory Boyd. Ms. Foth-Regner has a list of books that helped her to understand and accept the Christian worldview and that she recommends to others for the same purpose. Her list is worth the price of the book itself.

Thank to the author for sending me a copy of her memoir for possible review. I plan to keep one copy for my library and purchase another for giving away.

Murder in the High Himalaya by Jonathan Green

Feb5

Murder in the High Himalaya: Loyalty, Tragedy, and Escape from Tibet by Jonathan Green.

What I most took away from this book was the sheer, monumental tragedy of the goals and aspirations of almost all of the people in the book: the Tibetan refugees whose lives were/are dedicated to the Dalai Lama, a mere man who is worshipped as a god; the Chinese police who follow orders to torture and kill for the sake of a good salary; the Western mountain climbers whose goals seem to be a mixture of fame and a personal transcendent experience at the top of one of the highest mountains in the world; the guides for both the refugees and for the climbers who also pursue fame and fortune at the risk of their own lives and to the detriment of their moral compass. I did not find one truly admirable person among the lot of them, unless it was the girl Kelsang Namtso who died or her friend Dolma who lived to tell the story. Even they, although highly courageous and idealistic, seem to my eyes to be so dreadfully deluded and blinded to the truth; their hope rests in reincarnation, “a good rebirth.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, b. February 4, 1906

Feb4

Born in Wroclaw (Breslau), Poland, Bonhoeffer was a German pastor, theologian, spy, and martyr to the faith he professed and to the patriotism that led him to be involved in the attempted overthrow of the Nazi regime in Germany near the end of World War II.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy by Eric Metaxis.

Semicolon thoughts on Bonhoeffer and the Cost of Discipleship here.

Quotes:

“The blessedness of waiting is lost on those who cannot wait, and the fulfillment of promise is never theirs. They want quick answers to the deepest questions of life and miss the value of those times of anxious waiting, seeking with patient uncertainties until the answers come. They lose the moment when the answers are revealed in dazzling clarity.”

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”

“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘Ye were bought at a price’, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”

“Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.”

“If you believe, take the first step, it leads to Jesus Christ. If you don’t believe, take the first step all the same, for you are bidden to take it.”

“It is remarkable how I am never quite clear about the motives for any of my decisions. Is that a sign of confusion or inner dishonesty or is it a sign that we are guided without our knowing or is it both …The reasons one gives for an action to others and to one’s self are certainly inadequate. One can give a reason for everything. In the last resort one acts from a level which remains hidden from us. So one can only ask God to judge us and to forgive us…. At the end of the day I can only ask God to give a merciful judgement on today and all its decisions. It is now in his hand.”

Lists and Links from January

Jan31

Redeemed Reader: Here Be Dragons, Mega Fantasy and Sci-FI Booklist (all ages)

Amy at Hope Is the Word gives an annotated list of the books she read, both alone and with her children, in January 2018. It’s a good list.

The following articles I thought worth sharing on my Facebook page in January, and now I’m sharing them here:

My Larry Nassar Testimony Went Viral. But THere’s More to the Gospel Than Forgiveness. Interview by Morgan Lee at Christianity Today with Rachel Denhollander.

When Someone You Admire Does Something Disgusting by Russell Moore.

“Notice how, inside and outside the church, people are loudly denunciatory of the evil behavior of their political, religious, or cultural opponents, and yet, when the same thing is true of their allies, they are muted or even found attempting justifications for the behavior. Whenever this is the case, you can be sure that these people don’t believe in morality or truth or justice, but in their allies. They believe in power. They believe in themselves.”

The Greatest Showman (or at Least, the Fairly Decent Showman) by Jenna Badeker at The Rabbit Room.

“It is by no means lesser to indulge in a speedier denouement. We all need breaks from our waiting seasons. We are drawn to fiction for varying reasons, and happiness is a good one. I am not in the camp of the stuffy critic (who is an actual character in the movie). I have already listened to the soundtrack a few times since seeing the movie and probably will again. The Greatest Showman provides an uplifting experience to its viewers, and there is a place for that. But . . .”

Why We Forget Most of the Books We Read by Julie Beck. January 26, 2018, The Atlantic. (This article, without referencing Charlotte Mason or homeschooling at all, presents a good, research-based argument for Charlotte Mason-style short lessons and readings.)

“The lesson from his binge-watching study is that if you want to remember the things you watch and read, space them out. I used to get irritated in school when an English-class syllabus would have us read only three chapters a week, but there was a good reason for that. Memories get reinforced the more you recall them.”

And a couple of blog posts that I thought were inspiring or informative:

To Whoever Took Our Bike: We Are Praying For You by Jennifer Love.
To Whoever Took Our Bike Part II: Unexpected Happy Endings.

Thriving in a Special Needs Marriage at Ambling Grace.

I’m looking forward to February—and more growing, learning, reading, and becoming.

The Poldark Saga by Winston Graham

Jan29

So, I’ve finished the twelve volumes in the Poldark series by Winston Graham, and I must say that the books were fascinating and absorbing all the way through. From the first book, Ross Poldark, in which the dark and handsome eponymous hero returns from the wars in America to his home in Cornwall, only to find his beloved Elizabeth affianced to his wealthier cousin, to the final novel, Bella Poldark, in which Ross’s children are grown up and making their own ways in the world, I was swept up in the historical verisimilitude and the romance and the drama.

The twelve books in the series are:

Ross Poldark (1945) The setting is introduced: Cornwall in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with its tin and copper mines, shipping and smuggling industries, widespread poverty, and burgeoning banks and middle classes pushing their ways into the aristocracy. Ross Poldark is a swashbuckling veteran with unconventional ideas about equality between classes and yet with a sense of his own importance, even as a minor landowner in rural Cornwall.
Demelza (1946) Ross’s true love, Demelza, is a fascinating, but somewhat unbelievable character. She moves over the course of the twelve novels from the lowest class of impoverished beggars to the high and heady upper class, married to a Member of Parliament and a wealthy gentleman. It all requires a bit of believing, but who can resist a Cinderella rags-to riches story?
Jeremy Poldark (1950) The focus of this third book is not really so much on Ross and Demelza’s son and heir, Jeremy, as it is on the continuing feud between the Poldarks and the Warleggans, an upstart nouveau riche family of bankers who, especially in the person of George Warleggan, display a jealousy and rivalry that threatens to bring both families to ruin.
Warleggan (1953) The feud between banker and businessman George Warleggan and mine owner and country gentleman Ross Poldark continues. After writing and publishing this fifth book in the series, author Winston Graham quit writing about the Poldarks and their domestic dramas and turned to writing mystery and suspense novels, about thirty of them, before coming back to Cornwall and the Poldark family in the 1970’s.
The Black Moon (1973) A child is born “under a black moon” to Elizabeth Poldark Warleggan, a child who is destined to become a bone of contention between Elizabeth and her husband, between Ross and Demelza, and especially between Ross Poldark and George Warleggan.
The Four Swans (1976) The “four swans” are four women: Demelza Poldark, Ross Poldark’s rags-to-riches wife; Elizabeth Warleggan, Ross’s first love; Caroline Enys, the wife of Ross’s friend; and Morwenna Chynoweth Whitworth, the parson’s wife.
The Angry Tide (1978) Set in the final years of the eighteenth century, this volume has Ross Poldark beginning his term as a Member of Parliament.
The Stranger from the Sea (1981) Ten years have passed since the tragic ending of the previous book in the series. This eighth installment of the Poldark Saga begins with King George III and his final descent into madness in 1810, and it ends with a marriage proposal for one of the Poldarks, refused, in 1811. The book is really more about Jeremy and Clowdance, the two elder Poldark children all grown up, and less about the stranger, a man rescued from the ocean, who does become more important in later books.
The Miller’s Dance (1982) Jeremy and Clowance continue to live through romance and tragedy, break-ups and love trysts, until, as the Napoleonic Peninsular wars continue in Spain and Portugal, Jeremy makes a fateful decision which turns the course of his life and of that of his friends, placing them all in jeopardy.
The Loving Cup (1984) Both Jeremy and Clowance finally get married, but both of their marriages have significant issues and hurdles to overcome. The loving cup of the title becomes a symbol of the past intruding on the present and of the love that can overcome past mistakes if repentance and new directions are allowed to take precedence.
The Twisted Sword (1992) Napoleon finally meets his Waterloo, and so do some of the characters in this saga, at least two of whom have been living under the shadow for quite some time.
Bella Poldark (2002) Bella, the younger daughter of Ross and Demelza, is all grown up and a force to be reckoned with. The author manages to tie up most of the loose ends in the ongoing story while providing a murder mystery and a bit of family tension to round out the series.

Yes, I believe the twelve novels were worth the time I invested in reading them, despite Demelza’s frequent use of an expletive that I found offensive and some repeated pruriency in the Morwenna story and in the later adult Valentine and Bella stories that could have been dispensed with, in my opinion. I had favorites among the characters, found characters that I identified with, and read of situations that that wrung my heart because they were similar to situations in my own family. The history of the time period as it was woven into the story was exciting and absorbing. I learned a lot, and now I want to read more about the late eighteenth century, especially British politics and culture in that time period. I recommend both the books and the 2015 PBS Masterpiece series. The TV series has already filmed four seasons, although the fourth season hasn’t yet aired in the US, and the story has progressed in the first three seasons through the first five books in Winston’s saga. The fourth season will probably finish out the first six books, and then maybe a fifth season will skip over the ten silent years and bring us the story of the Poldark adult children?

Books worth reading.
TV worth watching.

The Painting by Charis Cotter

Jan27

Annie and her mother don’t really understand one another. Annie likes to look at picture books and imagine and sketch pictures; she doesn’t care about schoolwork. Her mother believes in facts and lists and academic success.

Claire and her mother don’t see things the same way either. Claire’s mother is an artist, and she loves living in a lighthouse near the ocean in Newfoundland. Claire misses her home in the city, and she wants to pursue her education in a good school back in the city.

Annie and Claire, however, do share some things in common. They’re both about the same age, and they both believe in ghosts.

When Claire and Annie meet, Claire thinks Annie is the ghost of her dead sister, also named Annie. And Annie knows she is not a ghost, but why is she able to enter into an old painting and talk to Claire, a girl who lives in a different time? Does the painting have anything to with Annie’s mom’s car accident and the coma that she is struggling to emerge from?

The Painting is a convoluted, time-slip, mother/daughter ghost story that kept me guessing until the very end. Is one of the two girls a ghost from the past or from the future? Did Claire’s sister, Annie, die in an accident, and was she reincarnated as a present day Annie? Or is Annie’s mom in the hospital really Claire’s mom, too, or Annie-who-died’s mom or only Annie’s mom or what? As long as you’re OK with ghostly time travel and very short chapters that change perspective back and forth from Annie to Claire and back to Annie again, this book is a winner. I didn’t like the quick perspective changes, but I did enjoy the story in spite of them.

If you like this book, there are several other middle grade ghost stories you might want to check out:

The Swallow: A Ghost Story by Charis Cotter.
The Children of Green Knowe by L.M. Boston, and its sequels.
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce.
The Court of the Stone Children by Eleanor Cameron.
The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co., #1) by Jonathan Stroud, and sequels.
The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing by Sheila Turnage
The Saracen Lamp by Ruth M. Arthur.
Children of the King by Sonya Hartnett.
The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn by Dorothy Hoobler.
Grave Images by Jenny Goebel.
Locked Doors: A Pameroy Mystery in Wisconsin by Brenda Felber. Part of a series of ghostly mystery stories that will eventually include one mystery ghost story set in each of the fifty states. Pameroy Mystery series.

The Children Act by Ian McEwan

Jan26

McEwan’s book is about a judge who must decide a case concerning a minor whose Jehovah’s Witness parents don’t want him to have a blood transfusion that could save his life. It’s a book that garnered a lot of notice and a fair amount of praise back in 2014 when it first came out. I’ve been planning to read it for a while, but when I found a copy at Goodwill the other day, I decided to go ahead and do it. It’s only little over 200 pages long, so it’s not that much of a commitment.

The point of view protagonist is Fiona May, a British High Court Judge, almost sixty years old (my age!), and specializing in family law, custody disputes and decisions involving the “best interest or welfare of the child.” Unfortunately, at the same time that she is deciding a controversial case about a seventeen year old, Adam Henry, who is refusing, along with his parents’ approval and consent, a life-saving blood transfusion, Fiona May is also dealing with her husband who asks her permission to have an affair because their marriage has grown stale and sexless.

These two crises are supposed to be related somehow, I think, but really I could only see that they were related because they both were happening at the same time in relation to Fiona. The judge uses the complexities of the Jehovah’s Witness case to escape from her tumultuous thoughts about her broken marriage. And maybe she becomes personally involved in Adam’s life, visiting him in the hospital before making her ruling on the merits of the case, as some kind of demonstration to herself to prove that she is not as cold and passionless as her husband accuses her of being.(?) Otherwise the two plot strands are really separate events, and Fiona is curiously passive in both her relationship with her husband and her relationship with the boy, Adam. And yet, at the same time, as a judge, she plays God and berates herself for not being all-knowing and all-wise enough in her chosen role.

I thought the novel brought up many interesting themes and questions. How is a secular court to decide what is the “best interest” of a child whose parents can’t agree? Especially when religious doctrines and secular philosophies clash, both the religion and “philosophy” are deeply held beliefs, and the court cannot favor one over the other. But, of course, it inevitably does favor one religion over the other (secular) religion because the court, or the people who administer justice, have their own religion, usually secular, and their own values, usually valuing peace and safety and enjoyment in this life over any eternal values that some religions may claim to hold as more important. Thus, Adam’s fidelity to his convictions as a Jehovah’s Witness, a faithfulness which he believes will usher him into eternal life and right standing with God, is not as important as his earthly physical life which is in danger unless he has the blood transfusion.

The book doesn’t really solve the dilemma of competing worldviews and values, but it does give the reader something to think about. The secondary plot having to do with Fiona May’s marriage is less interesting and not so thought provoking.

Race to the Bottom of the Sea by Lindsay Eager

Jan25

Pirates. Sharks. Treasure. A librarian. And a girl genius inventor who’s kidnapped by Merrick the Monstrous so that he can take advantage of her oceanographic skills to find a lost gift—at the bottom of the sea.

Eleven year old Fidelia Quail, daughter of the famous marine biologists, Dr. and Dr. Quail,has been inventing science tools and studying ocean life since she was old enough to walk. Now she has built her own miniature research submarine, the Egg, and Fidelia and her parents are out on the ocean on the last day of the year for tagging sharks before the Undertow comes in and puts an end to ocean research off the coast of their island home, Arborley Island. Little does Fidelia know that her life is about to change with the loss of both of her illustrious parents, a new home with Aunt Julia, the librarian, and worst of all, a kidnapping by Meriick the Monstrous, the most infamous pirate in the world.

I found this story a delight, appealing to shark enthusiasts and to those who love a good pirate story. Oh, and there’s also romance and adventure and a satisfactorily bittersweet ending. The books clocks a hefty 423 pages, but the print is nice and bold and well-spaced. The morals that can be drawn from the story are not deep:
Life is an adventure.
Even evil pirates may not be all bad.
Books can only take you so far.
There is no cure for a black heart.

Still, Race to the Bottom of the Sea is a grand adventure story with a spunky, intelligent protagonist. Ms. Eagar, who lives in landlocked Utah, certainly knows a lot about the ocean and about sharks and about marine life. She says that a teacher had her read Shark Lady by Ann McGovern when she was in grade school and started her on a lifelong obsession with sharks. Be careful what you have your children read; you never know where a book might lead them.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Jan24

At first I thought the author was trying too hard to be relevant, and cool, and “this is how black teenagers live and talk in the ‘hood”. But I kept reading.

And even though some situations and characters were indeed stereotypical and maybe exaggerated, I was completely absorbed in the story and the people in it. And I came to the conclusion that this book provides an important perspective on current events, contemporary racial issues, and violence in our communities. And the author does try to be “fair” by including as supporting characters a black uncle who is a (good) cop and a white boyfriend who tries to understand the perspective of his black sixteen year old girlfriend. The girlfriend, Starr, is the central viewpoint character who sees her best friend, Kahlil, murdered by a white policeman during a routine traffic stop.

From Gina Dalfonzo’s review at Breakpoint:

“Thomas’ realism also means that the book is very heavy on profanity and on damaging, sometimes dangerous behavior. In Starr’s community, people help and care for each other, often to the point of great and admirable sacrifice; but the community also is full of broken families, men who beat their girlfriends and children, fighting, and promiscuity.”

And:

“None of this means that Angie Thomas is telling this story from a secular perspective. Thomas is a churchgoing Christian, and her faith influences her work. Starr often refers to Jesus as ‘Black Jesus’, a cultural construct she was raised with that nonetheless doesn’t seem to change her understanding of who Jesus is. We see her and her family praying together and attending church, her parents teaching her to ‘keep doing right’ no matter what.”

What she said. It’s worth reading and discussing, maybe with your teen, if you can deal with the language and the violence and the open talk about sex and relationships.

Mandala by Pearl S. Buck

Jan23

Oh, my. I have read and enjoyed several novels by Pearl S. Buck, but this 1970 novel set in in India wasn’t one of them. I did read about 4/5 of the story before I skipped to the ending and put myself out of my own misery.

The book presented such a cliched view of India, of Americans, of British, of priests, of men and women, of sex and sexuality. The entire book was hard to read, not because it was philosophically difficult, but because it wasn’t—but tried to be. Prince Jagat, the male protagonist, is a man of the “new India”, full of ideas about how he will fit his life into the changes that have come about since the ending of the British Raj. And yet he expects his wife and his daughter to passively respond to his every whim and demand. And for the most part, they do.

Other cliches and stereotypes include the bluff, good-hearted American Bert Osgood; the mysterious and beautiful American lady Brooke Westley (really, Westley because she’s a Westerner, get it?); the rebellious daughter Veera who eventually gives in with a pout; the ghostlike Moti, Jagat’s wife, who glides about in her traditional sari, drinking tea and mumbling wise proverbs; Father Francis, the priest who has sublimated his sexuality in doing good works among the poor; and of course, beautiful, mysterious, esoteric India itself. Common Indians are “poor but happy”, uneducated, stuck in the past, unwilling to give up customs and religious practices that are damaging to their own well-being, but at the same time essential to their Indian heritage. They are stuck between the past and modernity, and no Westerner can truly fathom the depths of the history and heritage that have made the Indian culture what it is. Ah, it is a mystery.

300+ pages of Eastern mysticism combined with agnosticism, adultery and religious speculation is just too much. The end: “Believing and unbelieving, he gave a great sigh. ‘I do not know,’ he said, and believing and unbelieving, he went his way.”