Reading
Constructive Wallowing
I am a little behind on my goal to read a book a week, but I’m catching up and wanted to share one of my recent finds with you, Constructive Wallowing by Tina Gilbertson. I got it from a clearance table at Barnes and Noble, intrigued by the titled, and it did not disappoint.
Gilbertson writes a funny and easily accessible guide to allowing yourself to feel all your range of emotions, without guilt or regret, and having felt them to move on with life in the best frame of mind and emotional health. One of her niceties that will stick with a reader is her pointing out that the word wallow contains the entire word allow. This is to help free you to let yourself wallow and not be trapped by all the negative connotations we normally reserve for the word. We are allowing ourselves to be ourselves.
For me, after years of experiencing St. Ignatius’ advice on accepting my feelings and exploring them for all available meaning and use (seeking God in all I feel and experience), her advice feels very authentic, doable and constructive. Her book is fun to read and she peppers it with a wonderful array of quotes from notable quotables.
I’ve already passed the book to a friend who was also intrigued by the title when he saw me reading on my lunch break, but the link above is for the book on Amazon, or it would be worth a search at a local B&N.
Enjoy your day, beloveds. Remember that our God is love, not anger, judgment, remorse, regret or hatred. Our God is love and when we pause to ponder ourselves and the word around us, God is loving us more than we can comprehend. Let every voice and noise which threatens to drown out that love be silenced.
AMDG, Todd
Noverim Te Noverim Me
“I would know you, I would know myself!” This is the second week of my gift to myself to read a book a week. I’m going again with a shorter book while I reawaken my reading skills, but shorter does not mean lesser or lighter! This week I read a classic from the late Trappist Monk Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer.
So many quotes I want to share, so many insights and amazing turns of phrase. It’s a book written primarily for those in the monastic vocation, but still accessible by all people. It is a book on prayer, really a collection of short essays on the practice and necessity of prayer: “…all Christians ought, theoretically at least, to have enough interest in prayer to be able to read and make use of what is here said for monks, adapting it to the circumstances of their own vocation. Certainly, in the pressures of modern urban life, many will face the need for a certain interior silence and discipline simply to keep themselves together, to maintain their human and Christian identity and their spiritual freedom.”
Merton reminds us that contemplative prayer will always be at its base simple. I don’t know about you, but that gives me a large measure of hope. I won’t bore you with a synopsis of all points throughout the book, I’m not the best reader or writer to do that. I would like to share however one particular desire kindled in me by the book: to learn some Latin! I so resonate with a simple prayer of the earliest monks: “Deus in adjutorium meum intende!” The opening line of Psalm 70, “Make haste, O God, to deliver me!” And the simplicity of this prayer snippet from St. Augustine of Hippo: “Noverim te noverim me” I would know you, I would know myself. Along with my weekly book reading stack I now have a fresh copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Learning Latin. I’m already into the second chapter. *^_^*
It’s a blessing to have a book in this second week of my book-a-week gift to myself to remind me so pointedly that we are all pilgrims on a journey, no competition to arrive, just a need to keep moving. “We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all of our life!”
AMDG, Todd
A Gift to Myself in 2017
I was inspired recently by a friend who was finishing up a year of reading a book a week in 2016, and I honestly wondered if I could do the same. After some reflection, I’ve decided to take on this challenge in 2017, and I’m starting now in 2016’s Advent Season.
I can’t begin fully describe the deep blessing it has been to choose and read The Wounded Healer by the late Father Henri J.M. Nouwen this week. I’ve read many of his books, and I’ve owned this one for a long time, but I hadn’t applied the effort to read it. It is God’s steadfast grace that Father Nouwen is spending this time with me this week. This is most definitely not just going to be a new year’s resolution, but a gift to myself in 2017.
Father Nouwen has written a guidebook that though several decades old still has these amazing bits of wisdom to instruct and inspire. He focuses on several core values like compassion, presence and hope in ministry. He leads us from an expression of frantic faith based in worry and shame to a living faith in the shadow of our human suffering and joy that affirms our human connection to each other and says to the hurting and confused, “I am here.” He writes, “For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.” Amen.
This is not a book like others of his that I have read in the past; this is a wholly different experience of Father Nouwen’s wisdom and gift. I recall reading his book In The Name of Jesus over and over when Teresa and I were in seminary, but The Wounded Healer strikes a different chord, a more human chord that grounds us firmly in the life of humanity, with all its struggles, failings and beauty. It challenges us to lay aside the formulae of conversion and salvation, the easy words and ritual and habit, and to be fully present, without judgement and recognizing God’s pervading love. “It is not the task of Christian leaders to go around nervously trying to redeem people, to save them at the last minute, to put them on the right track. For we are redeemed once and for all. Christian leaders are called to help others affirm this great news, and to make visible in daily events the fact that behind the dirty curtain of our painful symptoms there is something great to be seen: the face of God in whose image we are shaped.”
I’ve made new year’s resolutions before, and failed. I’ve made new year’s resolutions and succeeded. I make this one with hope and with the joy of God’s blessing on this week’s reading. What will you give to yourself in the coming year? Choose something good, ok?
AMDG, Todd
The Bible’s Yes to Same-Sex Marriage
Book review time! The Bible’s Yes to Same-Sex Marriage: An Evangelical’s Change of Heart.
I’ve been meaning to pick this up and read it for a while; I finally ordered a copy on Amazon and have taken a couple of weeks to read it. The cover and title make no equivocations on the author’s view point and end goal: looking to scripture for a faithful understating of same-sex marriage.
I like the way the author begins by telling some of his own story. Maybe it’s because I’m a GenX’er, but I like to know something about an author before constructing my matrix through which to filter her or his words. Just because it’s in a book and even managed to get published, that’s not so big a deal to me. This author seems to be a keeper. He’s a well-spoken (written) gentleman who carries that special evangelical pedigree that makes his book intriguing. I related with him immediately in his spiritual journey within a church tradition that was non-affirming of our LGBTQ neighbors and in his journey of changed understanding on how we read and apply our scriptures to sexuality and life.
I also related to his central angst: the traditional teaching on how to read our scriptures and apply them to the lives of sexual minorities is not working. In fact, that teaching and its application is damaging countless lives and souls, and it’s hard to synchronize that with God’s grace and love. The author doesn’t have a gay child or family member, and he isn’t coming to terms with his own sexuality… he is coming to terms with his faith.
Often those who have not sought and found a way to read scripture that affirms our LGBTQ neighbors will assume that Christians who do accept and affirm sexual minorities have in some way compromised scripture or adopted a value system that places cultural and social understandings above scripture. Nothing could further from the truth. This author is very relatable in his love of scripture and desire to reconcile our reading and application of it with a God of grace and love who is more than the scriptures. I won’t spoil the whole author’s whole story because he tells it better than I can, but I found him very relatable as fellow Christian-in-process.
How To Read The Scriptures
Reading the scriptures is a central focus for the author, and reading them in a way that gives a consistent and coherent framework for understanding God and making a faithful daily life. The first four chapters are about reading scripture in a responsible and faithful way that allows us to better understand God and ourselves, in both the time of the scriptural witness and our own time. I found his critique and response to proof-texting certain passages to be clear and correct. The use of any verse or passage, divorced from it’s context and intent, and haphazardly applied in universal terms, is fraught with danger.
I especially appreciate the way the author expresses his search for a “good-sense” framework for reading scripture and understanding God. It’s more than encouraging, it’s down right life-giving, to relate to a God of good-sense and love instead of an arbitrary set of codified words on a page. And that does not in any way attack or lessen the authority of God. More than anything it invites us into a relationship with God which resonates more with the scriptural witness that the way most of us were taught in our churches. If you were raised like me, our early faith was summed up in a bumper sticker I saw often growing up, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.”
Honoring God and Marriage
Chapters Five through Nine carry us into the way our author makes sense of scripture and life in understanding homosexual orientations and the gift of marriage. He wants to do more than just dig at one passage or two passages; he wants to develop a deeper view of marriage and what it means to share a love with another person in the way that God so totally and selflessly loves us.
Though well thought through, the book is not a large theological treatise or a heavy scholarly work. There’s not a lot of Greek parsing or mounds of historical footnoting to get through. Many will find that a little frustrating, but others will find it refreshing. His writing style is welcoming and engaging, and he enjoys being consistent and logical. His approach comes across as common sensical.
The author loves God, loves scripture and loves and accepts his gay neighbor, and he has shown that our scriptures do not necessarily keep us from doing all those at the same time. His journey is about better understanding God and following the scriptures in a faithful authentic way that makes the most sense and proclaims the best news for all people. I recommend this easy to read book to everyone engaging in the conversation around sexuality and sexual minorities in the church. I especially recommend it to those have struggled to reconcile a disconnect between what they have been taught the scriptures to be saying on sexual orientation and the amazing faith and beauty they see (or hear about) in their gay friends and family.
AMDG, Todd
Listening to Gay Christians
I won’t try to do deep exegesis in every blog post on LGBTQ inclusion. It’s equally worth our time to step back and be reminded that people are people and their stories do mater. I’d also remind us to be mindful of our own stories. Be mindful our own stories? Oh yes, we all have our stories.
It’s time that gay Christians are heard telling their own stories.
It’s time they are allowed to tell their own stories. I’ve noticed, and in the past have been guilty of, a need that many straight Christians feel to frame (and kinda highjack) the stories of their gay brothers and sisters. And when we do that we almost always frame their stories in a way that excludes wholeness, health (spiritual or physical), faithfulness and sincerity. So we use categories that make huge assumptions and use generalizations that do harm. We talk of the gay agenda, the gay lifestyle and we speak from assumptions that a persona’s sexual orientation is always a conscious choice. We speak of assumed abuses in childhood and will seek someone to blame for the gay person’s orientation, yet that framework just doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
Here are three stories that I want to ask you to engage… I just today saw the video from a new, Perrin, who courageously shares his story of faith and sexuality. That’s his picture at the top of the post. Please hear him out and take him at his word about his journey of faith and sexuality.
Justin Lee is someone I have named before, a brother in Christ who grew up conservative Baptist, and had to struggle with his faith sexuality. His book Torn is amazing and I highly recommend it. Justin tells his story in a sincere, gracious and compelling way. He wasn’t abused as a child and tried for years to find a way out of being gay. His story of faith and sexuality is valuable to straight Christians and needs to be heard. Justin is the founder of the Gay Christian Network and has many videos on the GCN YouTube channel.
Matthew Vines is the amazing young man who founded The Reformation Project and has written the book God and The Gay Christian. He also grew up in a conservative Christian home and was not abused. I think he’s done a great job in telling his story and helping advance the conversation we need to have about how we read and interpret our scriptures. Matthew has videos available on his YouTube channel as well.
Even as I share these links and names, I have a lump in my throat. Please, don’t go troll them or say un-Christlike things on their media feeds. As the biblical writer James encourages us, let’s “be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because our anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.” Let’s all seek to learn and listen, and seek God’s righteousness without anger.
AMDG, Todd
Reading As A Pastor
One of the things I struggle to do as a pastor is to sit and read well. I mean to really sit and read. I mean to read with comprehension and transformational engagement. It’s easy to skim, to seek out bold type points or numbered lists and emphases… but it’s much more difficult for me to sit and abide with a text.
There’s always, and I do mean always, a toilet to be fixed somewhere on our congregation’s campus. There’s always a task that is screaming to be prioritized: 1) update the marquee sign out front, 2) finish the bulletin, 3) the bank is waiting on paperwork, 4) print handouts for special events this weekend, 5) get an update on a terminally ill member, 6) mow the church’s lawn, 7) print the bulletin, 8) review the kid’s class material, 9) fix the toilet in the basement men’s room, 10) rain gutter repairs in the courtyard, 11) prep and finish message notes for Sunday, 12) contact volunteers on worship participation, 13) update the website, 14) send an end-of-the-week email on Sunday’s potluck lunch… and I could go on.
When do I stop and challenge the easy reading (which can lead to easy preaching)? When do I stop and read things, and read in ways, that help me stretch and grow? How do I make time for the growth I need as a pastor to continue to be helpful to the people who look to me for theology and insight on things spiritual? Today, I decided that I’d take a chunk of the morning to pick up a book I recently ordered online, and I’d sit and read for at least an hour. I grabbed the book and trooped off to Starbucks, popped in my headphones (with Jewel pulled up on Spotify) and I did nothing but read for an hour and half. Nothing was ticked off my task list, but I’m feeling a revitalization from the exercise.
Specifically, I’m doing some the reading that I need to do for a coming series of messages and blogs on “post-patriarchal Christianity.” Not quite so specifically, I need to make times when I’m not glancing at news feeds, to do lists, Facebook and the emails on my phone, and am focused on my reading with comprehension and intention.
Being “paid to read” is a challenging part of my vocation. It’s a blessing and a curse. It challenges my assumptions about what I am always producing in a day’s work. It pushes me to recognize that I need to read well. Reading for a congregation is just as important as speaking to a congregation. Reading for my congregation doesn’t mean that my congregation doesn’t need to read for themselves, no more than my speaking to or for them about God means that they don’t also speak to and for God. It means that I need to read well. I’m trying to read well.
Feel free to ask me what I’m reading. In fact, please ask me. My maternal grandfather Johnny Watkins often stopped me as a young boy and asked me, “Where are ya at in the Word?” He wanted to know where I was currently reading in the scriptures for growth and knowledge of God. I’ve never outgrown the need to be asked that question. Where am I in the Word? Where am I in the words? Where, when and how am I reading? Reading is a crucial element of my vocation to which I’m renewing my intention and practice. I invite your participation and conversation.
AMDG, Todd
Old Books, Good Friends
On a lighter note, Teresa started rereading one of our favorite series of novels, and I followed suit. We’ve been fans of David & Leigh Eddings for a long time enjoying The Belgariad books and the same host of characters into The Mallorean books. We’ve often read his two related trilogies, The Ellinium and The Tamuli. He’s a masterful story teller, so much that we even read Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress, both retellings of each other and much the previous books. Can’t get enough! One scene in The Ellinium caused me to shout in surprise and almost throw the book the first time I read it. Good stuff.
Digging into the first book of The Belgariad I was struck by a re-introduction to one of the main characters, Durnik the Smith. I would have thought, being the tenth time I’ve read this series over the years, that I couldn’t be surprised by anything. But I had not thought of Durnik in so long, it was like reconnecting with an old friend. Sound silly? We are big re-readers at our house, Teresa and I both. Rereading beloved books series is a comfort. This time is was also a welcome reunion.
Have you reread anything lately? Do you operate with the kind of imagination that relates to the most beloved characters on a level close to friendship and deep affection? Jumping into these novels again has reaffirmed for me the gifting with which some novelists have blessed my life. Of course, the characters are fictional, but the blessing of sharing imagination and fantasy with the likes David & Leigh Eddings, R.A. Salvatore and Frank Herbert over the years has been a tangible, palpable joy.
AMDG, Todd
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