Saturday Review of Books: March 19, 2011

“Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.”~Ezra Pound

SatReviewbuttonIf you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Here’s how it usually works. Find a review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week of a book you were reading or a book you’ve read. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1. Reading to Know (The Collected Tales of Nurse Matilda)
2. Reading to Know (Practicing Affirmation)
3. the Ink Slinger (A Call to Prayer)
4. Bonnie (Death of a Peer)
5. Florinda @ The 3 R’s Blog (The Weird Sisters)
6. Barbara H. (The Damascus Way)
7. Donovan @ Where Pen Meets Paper (All the Pretty Horses)
8. Collateral Bloggage (Gregor and the Code of Claw)
9. Collateral Bloggage (Armageddon Science)
10. Carol in Oregon (A Time To Be In Earnest)
11. Albert Mohler (Love Wins)
12. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Lazybones)
13. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (The Sign of the Four)
14. Alice@Supratentorial(Creed or Chaos)
15. Charlie @ The Worm Hole (Desires Of The Dead)
16. Krakovianka (NoName)
17. Lemme Library (Inside Out & Back Again)
18. Lemme Library (Saving Zasha)
19. Lemme Library (Words in the Dust)
20. Lazygal (Carmen)
21. Lazygal (Girl Wonder)
22. Lazygal (The Family Fang)
23. Lazygal (The Ragged Edge of Silence)
24. Lazygal (Minding Ben)
25. Lazygal (Chime)
26. Sarah (The Invisible Man – HG Wells)
27. BookBelle (The Way of the Pilgrim)
28. jama’s alphabet soup (Eggs Over Evie)
29. jama’s alphabet soup (Just Being Audrey)
30. Beckie@ByTheBook (Against All Odds)
31. Beckie (The Mountains Bow Down)
32. Beckie@ByTheBook (Angel Lost)
33. Beckie@ByTheBook (Smart Chick Mysteries)
34. Therapy by Sebastian Fitzek
35. Word Lily (An Incomplete Revenge)
36. Library Hospital (That Dodger Horse)
37. Library Hospital (The Distant Hours)
38. JHS (Born Under a Lucky Moon GIVEAWAY)
39. JHS (Home to Woefield)
40. JHS (One Bird’s Choice GIVEAWAY)
41. Swapna (Deep Down True)
42. Swapna (Fall for Anything)
43. Swapna (Pictures of You)
44. Swapna (Radio Shangri-La)
45. Swapna (The Anatomy of Ghosts)
46. Swapna (Veracity)
47. Swapna (Assassination Vacation)
48. Melissa Wiley (2 picture books we love)
49. GReads (Anna and the French Kiss)
50. Lena (Playing Hurt)
51. Bookish (When the Thrill Is Gone)
52. Cynthia (Between Shades of Gray)
53. Kara (Marriage Forecasting)
54. IndieReader (Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest)
55. IndieReader (Irish Fiction)
56. Picky Girl (The Girl in the Green Raincoat)
57. Nicola (Winter’s Child by Cameron Dokey)
58. Nicola (The Dragon Seer by Janet McNaughton)
59. Nicola (Missile Mouse: Rescue on Tankium3 by Jake Parker)
60. Nicola (DC Super-Pets! Super Hero Splash Down)
61. Nicola (Vermonia #4: the Rukan Prophecy)
62. Nicola (Cryer’s Cross by Lisa McMann)
63. Nicola (Wonderful Wizard of OZ Graphic Novel by Eric Shanower)
64. Nicola (The Deadly Conch by Mahtab Narsimham)
65. Polly Castor (The Three Weissmans of Westport)
66. Hope (A Green Journey by Hassler)
67. Polly Castor (Safe Haven)
68. Bluestocking(Forget-Her-Nots)
69. Bluestocking(The Unknown Ajax)
70. Marie (The Secret Science Alliance)
71. Cindy Swanson@Cindy’s Book Club (Frank Delaney’s “Ireland”
72. Sheri @ Life on the Farm (Island of the World)
73. Lucybird’s Book Blog (Our Tragic Universe)
74. violet (Read and Share Bible)
75. Jessica (Oath of Fealty by Elizabeth Moon)
76. Book Journey (Dream When You Are Feeling Blue)
77. Ben House (Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer)
78. Susan (Exodus)
79. Boston Bibliophile (The Outside Boy)
80. Paul Wilkinson (52 Lies Heard in Church Every Sunday)
81. Fleurfisher (Everything and Nothing)
82. FleurFisher (The Burning)
83. FleurFisher (Sacrifice)
84. Ruth (latest four books)
85. FleurFisher (The Seas)
86. Beth S. @ A Foodie Bibliophile in Wanderlust (Wither)
87. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (picture books about Abraham Lincoln)
88. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Ava’s Man by Rick Bragg)
89. Amber Stults (Tyger Tyger)
90. Amber Stults (The Bells)
91. Yvann (Molvania)
92. Yvann (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet)
93. Diary of an Eccentric (Delights & Shadows)
94. Diary of an Eccentric (Staying at Daisy’s)
95. Diary of an Eccentric (Inkblot)
96. Gina @ Bookscount (The Witches Lottery)
97. Gina @ Bookscount (The House at Riverton)

Powered by… Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets.

Crazy Love by Francis Chan

O.K. I must admit that this book, and other books like it, frustrate me. It’s a book about being totally, completely, abandoned-ly, sold out for God, about loving Him with your heart, mind, soul and strength. That’s good. I want to love God like that, although I admit that I don’t really. Not always. Not even most of the time.

“He is asking you to love as you would want to be loved if it were your child who was blind from drinking contaminated water; to love the way you want to be loved if you were the homeless woman sitting outside the cafe; to love as though it were your family living in the shack slapped together from cardboard and scrap metal.”

Fine. I’m sure Jesus does ask us to love that way, to that depth. But how does this sort of sacrifice work out practically speaking, or even impractically speaking?

Do I tell my kids no more extra classes–dance, piano, canoeing, drama–no more candy or doughnuts, heck, no more meat, until the entire world is fed and clothed to a certain minimal standard?

Do I quit buying clothes EVER and just wear mine until they fall off me in rags? (Not a great sacrifice for me because I hate shopping, and I wear clothes way past their style-date anyway.)

Do I sell my computer and my TV and my household appliances and give to the poor?

Do I turn off the air conditioning in Houston in the summer to save money to give away to those who are, I admit, much more in need of basics than I am in need of air conditioning? What would my husband, who suffers from the heat much more than I do, think about that sacrifice? Why not just turn the electricity off completely?

Do I tell my mom no more eating out together once a week because it costs too much?

Do we sell our house and crowd eight people into a two-bedroom apartment? Including my 77 year old mother who lives in a small apartment behind our house?

Do we sell our cars and walk? Or are bicycles OK and acceptably sacrificial?

Do we tell our kids “no college” because we’re giving that money to feed orphans in India? (Not that we can afford college anyway!)

Do I give all of my time and energy to serving others and leave my family to fend for themselves?

Do I refuse to read a book or watch a movie because I could be spending that time in prayer and Bible study, and if I really, really loved God, I’d want to spend all of my time with Him? Should I even have read Francis Chan’s book?

Maybe it’s Jesus himself I’m frustrated with. Mr. Chan says, and wisely so, that he can’t tell his readers what sacrifices or what obedience God is calling them to. He says he has enough trouble discerning God’s will for Francis Chan’s life and ministry. However, I’m not sure how to understand what Mr. Chan is preaching in this book. If it were really my family starving in that shack, I would immediately give up ballet lessons, vacations, fast food, meat, cake, books, movies, and anything else I could find to get my family fed, clothed, and loved. But am I to ask my real family to give up everything so that other families and children can have what they need? And where is the line? If there is no line, if total self sacrifice is the call (and I think it is), how do I do that and still remain faithful to the family in which God has placed me? I get the idea that I’m not doing enough, not giving enough, not serving enough, not sacrificing enough, but what’s enough? I can’t out-give God, who gave and gives Himself for me, but what AM I called to give?

I want a checklist and a pencil.

Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell what you own and give the money to the destitute, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come back and follow me.”
But when the young man heard this statement he went away sad, because he had many possessions.

Is that me?

“The one with two talents also came forward and said, ‘Master, you gave me two talents. See, I’ve earned two more talents.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy servant! Since you have been trustworthy with a small amount, I will put you in charge of a large amount. Come and share your master’s joy!’

Or am I managing what God has given me to the best of my ability, allowing HIm to use me where I am?

I could still go for the list and the pencil.

Poetry Friday: Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins

40 Inspirational Classics for Lent

Mr. Hopkins and I share a birthday, and I’ve posted poems by him before:
At the Wedding March
Pied Beauty

And here’s another:

Easter Communion

Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast:
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips,
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu’s; you whom the East
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships,
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased,

God shall o’er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease.
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent:
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees.

Hopkins’ poetry is somewhat difficult to read and understand because he uses words in odd ways and plays with syntax and sentence structure until it’s almost unrecognizable. However, his poems are worth the effort. Read them aloud. Play with the poems as Hopkins plays with your understanding. You might come away inspired.

The poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Writings of St. Patrick

40 Inspirational Classics for Lent

I have written in past years about this poem, The Breastplate, attributed to St. Patrick, but probably not actually composed by him. However, we do have a couple of written pieces that most probably were the work of St. Patrick, one of which is his spiritual autobiography, St. Patrick’s Confessio. For today’s Lenten reading, I suggest you take a few minutes to read through Patrick’s confession.

“I was like a stone lying in the deep mire; and He that is mighty came and in His mercy lifted me, and raised me up, and placed me on the top of the wall.”

“For beyond any doubt on that day we shall rise again in the brightness of the sun, that is, in the glory of Christ Jesus our Redeemer, as children of the living God and co-heirs of Christ, made in his image; for we shall reign through him and for him and in him.”

For a fictional treatment of Patrick’s life and work, I recommend Stephen Lawhead’s novel, Patrick, Son of Ireland.

And here’s a list of picture books for St. Patrick’s Day from Amy at Hope Is the Word.

And yet another list of St. Patrick’s Day picture books from Mind Games.

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset

40 Inspirational Classics for Lent

Yes, I’m including fiction, too, in this series of posts about recommended reading for Lenten learning and devotions. I learn a lot from fiction.

Because I have been so steeped in our own 20th/21st century cultural milieu and, of course, in stories with Hollywood endings, I truly thought that this novel of a medieval Norwegian teenage girl who “follows her heart” and marries the man who sweeps her off her feet (and also seduces her) would end in a happily ever after for the couple. Even though I know that’s not usually the ending in real life for that sort of beginning, I also have seen enough movies and read enough books in which following one’s emotions in disregard of parents, church, and community is rewarded.

Undset is more realistic than all of those Hollywood-influenced writers. Not that Kristin lives a completely horrid and pain-filled life after her youthful fall into sin and indiscretion; she doesn’t. She simply reaps what she has sown. Kristin chooses to marry an irresponsible but charming man, and as the two have a family and grow old together, her husband remains untrustworthy and quite attractive at the same time. Kristin remains both willful and desirous of spiritual riches. This combination makes for a life and marriage filled with joy at times, but also plagued by disaster and the consequences of poor choices.

I’m afraid that I’m not making this book sound good enough to induce you to pick it up and read it. The book is three volumes long, over a thousand pages, and it takes commitment to even begin such a hefty narrative. However, I believe you will be rewarded both intellectually and spiritually if you decide to read Kristin Lavransdatter. And I’m not the only one:

Mindy Withrow: “The internal seasons of Kristin’s soul change with the frozen winters and golden summers of Jorundgaard. Here Nunnally’s translation abilities stand out—clearly Undset gave her unparalleled material in the original Norwegian—with gorgeous word choices in soaring descriptions of natural beauty, descriptions that are never extraneous but always reflective of Kristin’s heart.”

Superfast Reader: “Despite the alienness of 13th Century feudal Norway, Undset’s books feel fresh, immediate, and alive, thanks to her depiction of Kristin, an exceptionally complex character.”

Word Lily: “One of my favorite aspects of this trilogy is how it is set so long ago and yet so many of the characters’ lessons are applicable to life today. The portrait the story paints of life in the Middle Ages both confirms and challenges my perception.”

Shelflove: “Kristin and her family step living from the pages, imperfect, stubborn, loving, exhausted, praying, scolding, laughing.”

Carrie at Mommy Brain: “While reading Kristin’s story, I learned so much about the religious customs of the day, about the way government and legal matters were handled, about the day to day life of a woman on an estate, about how children were raised, about how the plague devastated complete towns.”

Carol Magistramater: “I first heard of Kristin Lavransdatter reading a book list; I took note when Elisabeth Elliot named it her favorite novel.”

Also: A Striped Armchair, A Work in Progress, CaribousMom, New Century Reading.

And I’ve also written about this book before. So, if you haven’t read it, what are you waiting for? (I am told by very reliable sources that the Tina Nunnally translation is more complete, more literary, and more readable than the older translation by Charles Archer. Either way, it’s a great and valuable story.)

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

40 Inspirational Classics for Lent

I watched this introduction to Lewis’s classic explanation of the Christian faith just a few days ago, and I think it’s quite good. The speaker is Professor Louis Markos of Houston Baptist University:

C.S. Lewis really is the finest Christian apologist of the twentieth century, and Mere Christianity should be required reading for anyone who is considering the truth claims of Christianity.

I could quote from Mere Christianity all day and not even begin to exhaust the wonderful aphorisms, images and exposition that Professor Lewis brings to bear on the questions of whether Christianity is true and what is its essential teaching. Lewis is not necessarily the “Protestant saint” that some make him out to be, but as a writer and interpreter of basic Christian theology, he excels.

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”

“Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning…”

“Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.”

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

“Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside of the world, who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.”

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of — throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

“Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won’t last forever. We must take it or leave it.”
This truth is a partial answer to the whole Rob Bell controversy over whether there is or isn’t a hell as a place of eternal torment. Wouldn’t it be eternal torment to be an eternal being who chose in this life to live apart from, as a rebel to, the living, loving God of the Universe, the one who loves me so much that He gave his only begotten Son to die in my place, as an atonement for my sin. To know that now and fall down in gratitude and love toward Him is is a humbling experience; to learn that God was so merciful and so patient in the face of my repeated rejection and sin and that He had finally honored my rebellion with His divine wrath would be torment beyond any physical pain.
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. 2 Corinthians 5:10
for He says, “AT THE ACCEPTABLE TIME I LISTENED TO YOU,
AND ON THE DAY OF SALVATION I HELPED YOU.”
Behold, now is “THE ACCEPTABLE TIME,” behold, now is “THE DAY OF SALVATION.”
— 2 Corinthians 6:2

My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers

This book is not one to be read in a chunk, but rather a book of daily devotional thoughts written by Mr. Chambers, a Scots YMCA chaplain before and during World War I. Chambers died in 1917, and his wife compiled this book of daily devotional thoughts from Chambers’ writings.

However, the term “devotional thoughts” may give the wrong impression. These daily essays on how to understand and live the Christian life are not your typical little encouraging stories or aphorisms. Here’s an example, the selection for March 14th:

“His servants ye are to whom ye obey.” Romans 6:16

The first thing to do in examining the power that dominates me is to take hold of the unwelcome fact that I am responsible for being thus dominated. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because at a point away back I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because I have yielded myself to Him.

Yield in childhood to selfishness, and you will find it the most enchaining tyranny on earth. There is no power in the human soul of itself to break the bondage of a disposition formed by yielding. Yield for one second to anything in the nature of lust (remember what lust is: “I must have it at once,” whether it be the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind) – once yield and though you may hate yourself for having yielded, you are a bondslave to that thing. There is no release in human power at all but only in the Redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only One Who can break the dominating power viz., the Lord Jesus Christ – “He hath anointed me . . . to preach deliverance to all captives.”

You find this out in the most ridiculously small ways – “Oh, I can give that habit up when I like.” You cannot, you will find that the habit absolutely dominates you because you yielded to it willingly. It is easy to sing – “He will break every fetter” and at the same time be living a life of obvious slavery to yourself. Yielding to Jesus will break every form of slavery in any human life.

President George W. Bush used to read My Utmost for His Highest each morning when he was president, probably still does. According to Newsweek (2003), “George W. Bush rises ahead of the dawn most days, when the loudest sound outside the White House is the dull, distant roar of F-16s patrolling the skies. Even before he brings his wife, Laura, a morning cup of coffee, he goes off to a quiet place to read alone. His text isn’t news summaries or the overnight intelligence dispatches. Those are for later, downstairs, in the Oval Office. It’s not recreational reading (recently, a biography of Sandy Koufax). Instead, he’s told friends, it’s a book of evangelical mini-sermons, “My Utmost for His Highest.”

You can read these brief, but meaningful daily reflections here.
Wisdom in a Time of War:
What Oswald Chambers and C.S. Lewis teach us about living through the long battle with terrorism by JI Packer.

The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

40 Inspirational Classics

It’s a hot topic (see Universalism as a Lure? The Emerging Case of Rob Bell): universalism, or to put it as a question, will everybody get to heaven in the end? Rob Bell repeats the old mantra, “If the gospel isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news for anybody.”

C.S. Lewis answers this objection to divine judgement and heaven and hell as separate for the blessed and the damned in The Great Divorce.

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

“What some people say on Earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.”
“Ye see it does not.”
“I feel in a way that it ought to.”
“That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it.”
“What?”
“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”
“I don’t know what I want, Sir.”
“Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or you’ll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe.”

However, these two excerpts are only the pertinent quotations in regard to universalism and the complaint that it’s unfair for anyone to go to hell. The book itself is much more, a wonderful story about an excursion bus from hell to the outskirts of heaven. I learned more about heaven and God’s mercy from reading The Great Divorce than from many a sermon listened to in my youth.

Maybe I’m a better reader than listener. Or maybe I learn better through story. A little of both I think. Also C.S. Lewis is just a great writer and thinker. You’ll come across several of his books in this series of 40 Inspirational Classics that I’m recommending for Lent. Now go out and get The Great Divorce; it’s only 125 pages long, but there’s lots of truth in that small package.

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

40 Inspirational Classics

I spent a couple of days re-reading G.K. Chesterton’s spiritual autobiography, Orthodoxy and decided that I should read a bit of Chesterton every few months, if only to remind me that Christianity is a merry and somewhat eccentric philosophy of life. Chesterton says that the “frame” of Christianity, its conservatism and rules, enables us to be like children playing on a cliff with a fence to keep them from falling over. We can range far and wide, “fling [ourselves] into the every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries.”

Chesterton himself was a merry old soul. He weighed over 300 pounds, played the part of the absent-minded professor in his daily life, and enjoyed a beer, a debate, and a nap, but not all at the same time. Nicknamed “The Prince of Paradox,” his verbal gymnastics are sometimes exhausting, usually entertaining, but at the same time full of wisdom and insight into the fallacies of pagan and modern philosophy and into the satisfying rightness of Christian orthodoxy. Here a few assertions and witticisms that grabbed me as I read through Chesterton’s philosophical defense of orthodoxy:

“I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe. I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.”

Of course, I am reminded of the song, Creed, by Rich Mullens:

“Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. . . . That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship only Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within.”
The Jones part is probably what reminded me of Jim Jones who went from rejection of the God of the Bible, to worship of himself, to the insistence that his followers should also worship him as God. They certainly would have been better off worshipping cats.

Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.
If the world and its meaning begins and ends with me, I am of all creatures most tragically unhappy. I have a friend who believes that he will find any meaning that there is to be found in this world inside himself. I pity him.

“The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our Mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same Father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire but not to imitate. . . . To St. Francis, nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.”
What breathtakingly beautiful freedom there is in that order of things. We are not beholden to nor dominated by Nature; we are the stewards, the caretakers. God is still over all and through all, without Nature taking over His role as Creator and Sustainer.

“A characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.”
“It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For Solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.”

In this season of Lent, and certainly as we approach the celebration the Resurrection, take time to laugh. The Story is after all a comedy, and God wins in the end.

“[Modern Philosophy’s] despair is this, that it does not really believe that there is any meaning in the universe; therefore it cannot hope to find any romance; its romances will have no plots. A man cannot expect any adventures in the land of anarchy. But a man can expect any number of adventures if he goes travelling in the land of authority.”
A world without meaning and without Christ at the center is either too terrible to explore or too boring to enjoy—or both. Hence, voodoo dolls and fetishes or Sartre’s existential hell play, No Exit.

Choose the adventure.

Links:
The ‘Ample’ Man Who Saved My Faith by Phillip Yancey at Christianity Today.
The American Chesterton Society
Semicolon thoughts on The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton.

Saturday Review of Books: March 12, 2011

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all of the miseries of life.”~W. Somerset Maugham

SatReviewbuttonIf you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Here’s how it usually works. Find a review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week of a book you were reading or a book you’ve read. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1. Carol in Oregon (No Dark Valley)
2. Carol in Oregon (The Guynd)
3. europeanne (All Over but the Shoutin’)
4. Beth@Weavings (Otto of the Silver Hand)
5. Beth@Weavings (Forge)
6. Bonnie (Clutch of Constables)
7. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)
8. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (The Founding)
9. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Ship Breaker)
10. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (picture books about George Washington)
11. Page Turner / Heather (The Railway Children)
12. Page Turner / Heather (The Reluctant Dragon)
13. Collateral Bloggage (The Christian Atheist)
14. Yvonne@fictionbooks (Love Letters)
15. Barbara H. (Book Lover’s Devotional)
16. Barbara H. (One Thousand Gifts)
17. Donovan @ Where Peen Meets Paper (Ecological Intelligence)
18. Diary of an Eccentric (You Can’t Scare Me!)
19. Diary of an Eccentric (Captain Wentworth’s Persuasion)
20. Diary of an Eccentric (The Linen Queen)
21. Judy @ Seize the Book Blog (Angel Sister)
22. Judy @ Seize the Book Blog (Meet Einstein)
23. Judy @ Seize the Book Blog (Letters From Home)
24. Judy @ Seize the Book Blog (Tandem)
25. Janet (The Everlasting Man)
26. Charlie @ The Worm Hole (Deed So)
27. Upside Down B (Unbroken)
28. Alice@Supratentorial(The Lost Cyclist)
29. Sarah Reads Too Much (The Bluest Eye by Morrison)
30. Beckie@ByTheBook (Beneath The Night Tree)
31. Beckie@ByTheBook (Jane Austen Ruined My Life)
32. Dana (Norton Book of Friendship)
33. Born Under a Lucky Moon GIVEAWAY
34. Hope (The Battle of the Books by Swift)
35. Heather @ Books For Breakfast (The Clever Wife)
36. Nicola (Nura:Rise of the Yokai Clan, Vol. 1)
37. Nicola (The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White)
38. Zee @ Notes from the North (Treachery in Death)
39. Nicola (Daytripper by Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba)
40. Nicola (The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth by Scott Hahn)
41. Nicola (The Chestnut King by N.D. Wilson)
42. Nicola (Silly Lilly in What Will I Be Today TOON Book)
43. S. Krishna (The Night Bookmobile)
44. S. Krishna (The Heroine’s Bookshelf)
45. S. Krishna (The Merlot Murders)
46. S. Krishna (Law of Attraction)
47. S. Krishna (Madame Tussaud)
48. S. Krishna (Where the Dog Star Never Glows)
49. S. Krishna (Clinton St Baking Co Cookbook)
50. Megan @ Leafing Through Life (Home to Woefield)
51. Word Lily (The Mountains Bow Down)
52. Laughing (BattleHymn of the Tiger Mother (2) The Help)
53. 5 Min. for Books (The Paris Wife)
54. 5 Min. for Books (A Mountain of Crumbs)
55. 5 Min. for Books (Scaredy Squirrel has B-day Party)
56. 5 Min. for Books (Another Dawn)
57. 5 Min. for Books (Trouble with Chickens)
58. 5 Minutes for Mom (A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood)
59. Girl Detective (The Finkler Question)
60. Reading to Know (In Japan the Crickets Cry)
61. Reading to Know (Rabbit Hill)
62. Reading to Know (Tugg and Teeny)
63. Reading to Know (Marriage Under Fire)
64. Reading to Know (The Kitchen Boy)
65. Amber Stults (Tyger, Tyger)
66. BookBelle (A Dog Named Slugger)
67. Between the Stacks (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother)
68. Kristin (The Sandalwood Tree)
69. Woman of the House (How Right You Are, Jeeves)
70. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Ava’s Man by Rick Bragg)
71. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (picture books about Abraham Lincoln)
72. Woman of the House (The Blessings of Weekly Communion by Kenneth Wieting)

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