2011 Reading Challenge~Book #15

At the end of Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World, N.D. Wilson calls his book "abnormal." Abnormal may be a bit too strong, but Notes is certainly an odd book. And that's why I liked it. Wilson covers everything from insects to death to Nietzsche to the Resurrection to death to sand castles to Plato to the Incarnation to kittens to death to heaven and hell. There were places I found myself nodding in agreement and thinking, "Ah, so someone else does see it the way I do!" and there were places that are still big question marks, sections in which I didn't quite get what he was driving at.

Wilson uses the earth's rotation around the sun as it also spins on its axis (hence the titular tilt-a-whirl) to frame his musings on life and death, heaven and hell, salvation and damnation. Part philosophy, part theology, part apolgetics, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl reveals Wilson as a well-educated, thoughtful man who has eyes and heart opened to God's revelation of Himself in the world He has made. He helps us to have the same.

N.D. Wilson is the son of the well-known and oft controversial leaders of the modern classical Christian education movement and revitalized Reformed wing of Christianity, Douglas and Nancy Wilson. His writing style and presumably his thinking have obviously been influenced by his parents, or at least the same authors that influenced them, which is not at all a bad thing. :-) Wilson's writing is witty and insightful. I enjoyed this book a great deal.

You may recognize Wilson's name from his children's books, all of which Girl of the House has read (and loved, I might add) and none of which I have read: Leepike Ridge, 100 Cupboards, Dandelion Fire, and The Chestnut King. They sound like perfect summer reading and will probably make it on my list for this summer.

Family Culture III

Here are some more quotations from books and/or movies that we liberally sprinkle our conversation with. Can you guess where they come from?

You're a likely looking girl and have a right smart way of steppin'. I don't want no lazy woman.

No blame can be attached to him.

Capital, capital!

I don’t wanna, and I’m not gonna!

Oh, help! Oh, bother! Oh, help and bother!

It burns, precious, it burns!

Enough pills to make me rattle.

You're a fine, steady hand.

I'm a child, a child.

Keep your knees opened and closed!

That's no S-M-F-O.

It's a particular morning thing. It has to be done in the morning.

Cabbage has a cabbage smell.

That has nothing to do with me.

Sit down. That's what chairs are for.

They can’t possibly need all these trains!

Who's going to make the sums come out at the end of the month?

My poor nerves!

Apocolyptic!

It's levi-OH-sa, not levio-SAH!

You'll shoot your eye out!

We think it never happen for you!

2011 Reading Challenge~Book #14

The weather is too glorious for a long book review today, but I'll at least give you a brief sketch of this week's book. On Christian Liberty by Martin Luther (also known as The Freedom of the Christian) is an early work, dating from 1520. Luther composed it between challenging John Tetzel with his Ninety-five Theses in 1517 and his refusal to recant his teachings at the Diet of Worms in 1521. Luther makes the case for justification by faith alone, the doctrine that set off the Reformation and put him and his followers on a collision course with Rome. I was intrigued reading Luther's own words (well, a translation anyway) explaining this doctrine that I could recite in my sleep I've known it so long. It was hard for me to remember while reading this book how revolutionary his ideas were as they have been part of my very core for decades now.

Luther also lays out (for the first time, I think?~if anyone knows for sure, please comment!) the famous Lutheran doctrine of Law and Gospel, which says in summary that the Law reveals to us what sinners we are as we are unable to keep even the smallest part of it. It crushes us under a weight of guilt and despair. But then the glorious Gospel of Christ~justification by grace through faith~lifts us up, washes away our sin, guilt and shame, and redeems us through Jesus's death on the cross on our behalf. Without the Law first condemning us, we wouldn't know our need for a Savior, who in contrast appears all the more glorious! And that's where our liberty comes in~we are freed from sin, death, and condemnation as well as laboring for our own salvation. Christ is our Sabbath.

Luther then goes on to write about the role of good works in the Christian's life and how he is now through Christ at liberty to serve others, and here he brings in his doctrine of vocation. I wish I knew if this is the first place he wrote about it; I did a little digging but was unable to find out. According to Luther, good works flow out of the Christian's vocation(s)to serve his neighbor, who needs his good works just as the Christian needs the good works of his neighbor. But never is the Christian to think that he is justified before God by his works. That would mean he is no longer justified by faith alone.

Luther writes with great pastoral concern and care. I suspect he had no idea that in just a few months he would be called before an ecclesiastical court to denounce his teachings and submit to the errors of the Roman Catholic Church at the time. It is fascinating to read the actual words of people who made history. It's quite different than reading about them. C.S. Lewis knew what he was talking about when he said we should read old books!


And speaking of old books, I also read an even older "book" this week: The Didache: The Lord's Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations. But since it's less than three 8.5x11 pages on both sides I'm not going to count it as a book in my tally. The Didache is a treatise dating from the end of the first century or the beginning of the second and is a record of the Apostles' teachings regarding sin, church organization, and rituals and practices within the Church. Reading about how the earliest Christians conducted themselves and their churches was engrossing and convicting. I was sometimes surprised how different modern Christianity looks from that practiced by the first Christians. As with Luther's On Christian Liberty, I was fascinated getting the story straight from the horse's mouth (in translation, of course). This is a quick read (under an hour) that gives modern Christians a look into the earliest Christianity. Well worth the time and easily available online.

Hmmm . . . this wasn't so short after all!

Sit Down

Allow me a teeny rant, please. It used to be that a standing ovation was given only at truly great and wondrous performances. A regular concert-goer should expect to give possibly ten in his whole life. I myself have only twice been so awed by a musical performance that I felt compelled to stand, and they were both when I was in college. How is that I can't recall a single performance of the past decade that has not resulted in the audience leaping to its collective feet? High school musicals, preschool Christmas pageants, the Vienna Boys Choir, Aunty Tilly playing "The Old Rugged Cross" on her musical saw at the church talent night~~they ALL receive standing ovations. It is now a meaningless gesture. Stop and think about this for a moment: If we honor Aunt Tilly and the VBC equally with a standing ovation, what is left when we as an audience really do sense that we've just witnessed something extraordinary and want to express our awe and appreciation? Or can we no longer distinguish what is truly outstanding? As much as we might enjoy Aunt Tilly's saw and love Aunt Tilly herself, we should not honor mediocrity that way. Applaud till your hands fall off if you wish to, but stay seated. Don't budge, even if you are the only one in the hall still sitting. Resist the peer pressure if you don't think in the depths of your soul that a standing O is warranted. I've done it many times and have never been mobbed afterwards. We must stem the tide of over-praising and this is as good a place to begin as any. Stand with me! Errrr . . . I should say, Sit with me! ;-)

2011 Reading Challenge~~Book #13

I first read~no, devoured~Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life by Margaret Kim Peterson two years ago and have been eager for a re-read ever since. Each of the one hundred sixty-five pages is a gem! Peterson delves into the theology of housekeeping and shows us why it matters, even in its repetition and ordinariness. In fact, it is because of those things that it matters in the first place. We are embodied creatures. On the sixth day of creation God made Adam in all his physicality and declared him "very good," and it is precisely because of our creatureliness that things like beds and lunches and clean underwear matter. We live in this world through the medium of our bodies, and our bodies demand certain things. Because we are not only bodies, these things nurture our souls as well, our whole being. Keeping House is a book about the why's of housekeeping. Our modern age has done us a great disservice by teaching us that housekeeping is mindless drudgery resulting in little to show for our efforts. This couldn't be more wrong. We are not gnostics.

What is more basic to our physical well-being than food, clothes, and shelter? The Bible is replete with passages in which God clothes us in His righteousness, feeds us with His own flesh and blood and is preparing the ultimate feast for us, and shelters us both here and now and in His kingdom to come. Peterson brings together numerous biblical passages that use imagery related to the household (the parables of Jesus, for instance) and shows how integral the idea of home is to Christian theology. Jesus has gone to prepare a home for us, and our homes here are a dim reflection of the future glorious home that awaits each Christian.

This is a book of why's, not how's. The author does not tell us how to do laundry or plan meals, but she does tell us why we should. For practical help, I like Cheryl Mendelson's Home Comforts. (Together, these two books make excellent wedding or shower gifts.) Nor is she another Martha Stewart: there's nary a decorating tip in the entire volume, and in fact, she specifically and intentionally removes the burden of perfection from her readers. Peterson is interested in real people with real lives and real homes that don't look like glossy magazines. That's one of the best aspects of this book.

Not only does Peterson make a sound case for the importance of housekeeping, she writes well. Her prose is lovely and draws the reader along through its sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. She gives the impression that the way she conveys her ideas is as important as the ideas themselves.

This is a book I'd take to the proverbial desert island because even there, there would be a home to make. This second reading has cemented its place as one of my very favorite books and one that I heartily recommend. It satisfies my inner housekeeper.

I want to share a few quotes, but it's hard to know where to begin. A few nuggets fairly randomly chosen:

"There has surely always been a gap between the way people keep their houses and the way they would like ideally to keep them. But many of us, I suspect, are demoralized by the task of keeping house in part because we know that our houses, no matter how well kept, will never look like the palaces in the dream house publications. And so we give up, preferring unattainable ideals to less than perfect realities.

An alternative might be humility and gratitude that in a world in which not all are decently housed, we have been given the gift of a home, plus a willingness to aspire to a more modest ideal and to work to achieve it. Instead of nurturing dissatisfaction with the shortcomings of our present home, whatever we may perceive them to be, perhaps we can turn our energies toward receiving as gifts the homes we have and to creating in them enough order and tidenss to promote convenience and peace and hospitality." (p. 44-45)

"It is this capacity of handwork to make room for joy, room for grief, room for hope and waiting and process, that makes it so valuable a practice in a world that increasingly has no room for any of these things. Many of us have less and less experience with anything that unfolds over time; we expect everything to be instantaneous and are indignant when our e-mail takes more than two seconds to arrive in its recipients' in-boxes. But life in not instantaneous. It takes time, and handwork can be a way to weave temporality and process back into our lives. As one woman says, "Any knitter knows how it feels to pick up those needles at the beginning or at the end of the day and to create something while reflecting on our daily lives--stitch by stitch, thought by thought, moment by quiet moment." (p. 80)

"Embracing--rather than resisting--the daily necessity of feeding a household can be a way of embracing the privilege of participating with God in this aspect of providential care. Feeding a household is not an acheivement that, once accomplished, can be checked off and set aside to make room for other pursuits. Feeding a household is an act of faithfulness, one that requires daily energy and attention and whose pleasures and rewards are experienced in the course of that faithfulness rather than only at the end." (p. 127-128)

Keeping House is akin to Edith Schaeffer's Hidden Art of Homemaking~~real homemaking for real people.

Family Culture II

Let's continue with quotations from books and movies that my family often uses in conversation. The list continues to grow, although at a slower pace, as we think of more so that we are now on page 7! You might think that we never say anything to each other that is not a reference to something else, but we do, we do.

Try to guess which book or movie these are from:

I recall it with perfect clarity.

This here's science. (pronounced "scance")

A good driver doesn't need brakes.

Taters, precious, what’s taters?

There are so many responsibilities on a person's mind when she's keeping house.

Les incompetents

When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey, and when I drink water, I drink water.

Keep your knees opened and closed.

We'll all be ruined!

It's a particular morning thing. It has to be done in the morning.

Clang! Look it up!

I’m going inside. All this fresh air’s getting in my lungs.

What a lot of correspondence you have, my dear.

We could have been killed, or worse~expelled.

I want you to write a theme.

He has no idea of Latin verbs.

After all, passing tests is what school is all about.

A clunkin' great bill

My Africa project employs my whole time.

Oh, little Arthur! He was a charming baby.

What do you want a book for when we've got this perfectly nice telly!

Please, sir, may I have some more?

As you wish.

It occurs to me that I ought to give an answer key for my first post on this topic. Here 'tis:

The proprieties must be observed at all times. (The Quiet Man)

There’s more to him than meets the eye. (The Lord of the Rings)

Is this a kissing book? (The Princess Bride)

Constant viligance! (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

I need two kinds of ice cream. I'm recuperating. (Meet Me in St. Louis)

What does MRCVS mean to you? (All Creatures Great and Small)

Don’t want anymore corpses. Get a reputation. (Bleak House)

Cyril never has any money. (To Say Nothing of the Dog)

No lickin', no larnin'. (The Teacher's Funeral)

Great doctrinal import (Pride and Prejudice)

Things are boiling up nicely. (Bleak House)

Things are not very good around here. (A Baby Sister for Frances)

They’ll be safe with me; I’ve got twelve guns in my room. (Meet Me in St. Louis)

I want some PTA! (One of the Ramona books. I can't remember which one.)

It's a pome. I'm quotin'! (The Teacher's Funeral)

You shall not pass! (The Lord of the Rings, of course.)

Difficulty distinguishing sounds (To Say Nothing of the Dog)

If I had ever learnt, I would be a true proficient. (Pride and Prejudice)

Don’t give any of your startling speeches. (Anne of Green Gables)

The spirits! (To Say Nothing of the Dog)

How did you do? :-)

2011 Reading Challenge~~Book #12

I am addicted to taking Communion. I need it for the health of my soul. For years I have had the great blessing of attending churches where weekly communion was the norm. As a Calvinist, the Lord's Supper was important to me as a visible reminder of what Christ has done for me by taking my sins upon Himself. My faith in His redemption of me was strengthened each week. As a Lutheran, those benefits are still mine, but now I also understand that Christ's body and blood are physically present in the bread and wine. Communion is a vehicle by which God imparts His forgiving grace to me. Cavinist or Lutheran, why would I not want the blessing of participating in this feast each Lord's Day? Alack and alas, the two churches where Man of the House is serving as interim pastor offer the Lord's Supper only twice a month. I sorely miss it the weeks when it's not offered, but the bright side is that on Communion Sundays, I get to take it twice!

The Blessings of Weekly Communion by Kenneth Wieting, a pastor in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, has written a valuable book explaining . . . well . . . the blessings of weekly Communion, how pastors can educate their congregations to desire it, and the history of it in the Church. In fact, the first two-thirds of the book is chiefly about the practices of the Church regarding this sacrament from the earliest days in the book of Acts to now. I was fascinated to learn how some of the abuses in the Church before the Reformation regarding the Lord's Supper came to be, how Luther saw the right understanding of it to be second in importance only to the recovery of the doctrine of justification by faith, and how the early Lutherans and Reformed Christians tried to hash out their differences but were unable to.

The last third of the book lays out the benefits of taking the sacrament, how the liturgy surrounding the sacrament lays the foundation for it, and why a recovery of weekly Communion should be desired and sought. Written by an LCMS pastor, the book is, not unexpectedly, heavily Lutheran in flavor and emphasis. Not everyone will be interested in the specific history of the Lutheran church in America, and not everyone will agree with the Lutheran doctrine expounded therein. I will say this: Pr. Wieting does a better job than most Lutherans I have heard in representing fairly and accurately the Reformed position. I spent nearly fifteen years in the Reformed camp, so I think I have enough background to say that what usually passes for Lutheran analysis of Reformed doctrine is too often inadequate. I challenge my Lutheran friends to do a better job in understanding their Reformed brothers. Pr. Wieting was more insightful than most.

The writing itself is competent though not stellar. Wieting is, after all, a pastor, not a writer. It was occasionally a wee bit redundant, and there was a tad too much detail from time to time for my taste~too many charts laying out minute statistics, for example. Still, this book would be excellent for use in educating a congregation. There are also study questions at the end of each chapter.

The best quote from the book (found on p. 184):

"The forgiveness of sins must never become the grand 'of course' in the Christian life. Of course we have forgiveness of sins, so now let's get on with more important matters. The very name of God in the flesh, 'Jesus,' was given because He would save His people from their sins. God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men's sins against them (2 Corinthians 5:21)." Good stuff!

What are you reading this week? I'd love to read all about it! :-)