Adam Shields

Short Review: I am considering going to formal training to become a spiritual director. Because I am who I am, I decided to read widely about spiritual direction as part of the decision making process.

This is a classic (originally published in 1982). The authors are Catholic, but it is widely ecumenical in language and approach. The first two chapters are describing what spiritual direction is and what is supposed to accomplish. The rest is instruction for spiritual directors. This is the most helpful book written for spiritual directors I have read so far.


A slightly longer review is on my blog http://bookwi.se/the-practice-of-spiritual-direction/

Short Review: This is a good short introductory biography of O'Connor. I have previously read an edited edition of her grad school journal (A Prayer Journal) and one of her collections of short stories (A Good Man is Hard to Find). But I knew little about her and after reading the short stories thought I needed to know more before reading more by her.

My plan is to read A Subversive Gospel: Flannery O'Connor and the Reimagining of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth and then the Image Journal edition of her college journals and then her first novel, Wise Blood.

My slightly longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-terrible-speed-of-mercy/

I want to love this book more than I do.

The art is great. The story to accompany the prayer visually is good. But I am not sure that the story really matches the concept of the Lord's Prayer as well as it should.

Short Review: I like Cary as a lecturer. His History of Christian Theology course I think is my favorite of the Great Courses. This was one was good as well. I think the later lectures were more helpful than the earlier, but they needed the whole course to build on one another. And the later lectures were helpful to me to round out the modern philosophy course that I listened to earlier this year.

my slightly longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/philosophy-and-religion/

I have used this edition of the book of common prayer as my devotional for the past several years. I highly recommend it.

The scriptures are in line with the daily reading. The prayers are all included without flipping. The days are well marked with links from the table of contents and at the start of each month and it is cheap.

Short Review: I am wholeheartedly egalitarian. I believe women should be pastors and elders and leaders of para-church ministries. I think that not only are women fully created in the image of God, that men can't really be fully representative of the image of God as intended without women.

I am not Wendy Alsup's primary target audience. But I have read her blog for years with great benefit. I am in a private facebook group with her and very much appreciate her voice. Theologically, especially around biblical method, we have some significant disagreements.

And there were many areas that I wanted to push back on this book. I think she does not present some of the views that she disagrees with accurately, but that is common with all of us. I think that like pretty much all biblical interpretation methods, there are holes and we do not live up to our stated interpretative ideals because all methods end up with problems.

The method would be different if I were writing the book, but a lot of conclusions I would agree with, especially the final chapter. But I would also go much further (as you assume by my first couple of sentences.)

Because I know and trust Alsup, I continued reading even when I may not have continued reading others. That does point out a problem in myself that I probably would have not continued reading others. But I need to honestly admit that weakness if I am going to learn from authors like Alsup.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/is-the-bible-good-for-women/

Short Review: This is the fourth book I have read by Michael Eric Dyson in just over a year. Dyson is a cultural critic, essayist, theologian, and professor. What Truth Sounds Like is a follow up from his earlier Tears We Cannot Stop. That earlier book was a direct theological argument toward White Christians about the importance of racial justice.

What Truth Sounds Like is a different approach roughly based on an actual meeting with Robert Kennedy in 1963 that was arranged by James Baldwin. James Baldwin was asked to pull together a group of African Americans, not political leaders, but others that would truthfully talk to Kennedy about the Black experience. Kennedy wanted to share his urban political program, but Kennedy was unprepared for the truth telling that went on in that room. He initially left frustrated but later understood, at least in part, that the frustration shared that day was honest and necessary for Kennedy to hear.

Dyson uses the meeting as a jumping off point to express how politicians, artists, intellectuals, celebrities, and activists have historically, and today, shared the truths of the world.

One note that is important to the reading of What Truth Sounds Like. Dyson, as is common among many minorities that write and speak about race, uses the word Whiteness or White in two broad ways. Occasionally Dyson is merely being descriptive about the skin color of a person. But more often Dyson is using the words White or Whiteness as a descriptor of the cultural understanding of Whites as superior to people of other racial groups, not completely unlike the concept of White Supremacy. White readers often hear minority writers and speakers complaining about Whiteness and understand them to be complaining about White people as individuals or a group. But what people that use White or Whiteness in this way are actually decrying, is a cultural understanding that physically or psychologically or socially harms non-White people because they are valued as either less than or ‘other'.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/what-truth-sounds-like/

Short Review: This was fascinating, detail, occasionally boring and still left me wanting more with some areas. I spend five months slowly working through this. There is about 450 pages of main content, which did feel both too long and not long enough. There is so much that could be written. But in an overview, you cannot talk about everything.

What is most helpful is that Amar uses history, comparative legal analysis (with state constitutions, English common law and notes from drafts), legal history from court cases and political science analysis of what was possible to have been based based on political realities on the ground. This is more than just an analysis of what is in the constitution. That is here as well, but the parts around what is in the constitution is helpful to give context to the actual content.

I think the best sections are the sections on the role and politics of slavery. That analysis is was very helpful to understanding not only the sections on 3/5 clause but the politics around other compromises that were impacted by slavery.

It is a bit dry in places. But I am not sure that large sections of the book, could have been cut without harming the larger flow. I did think as I was reading it that it could have been re-organized in places. There was a fair amount of repetition that could have been cut. But most of those repetitive sections made sense if someone was trying to read different areas of the constitution instead of reading the book as a whole straight through.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/americas-constitution/

Short Review: 3 stars is probably a bit harsh. This really isn't a bad graphic novel adaptation. But the source material is one of the best novels I have read. It is nuanced and tragic and enlightening. Some of that nuance gets lost in the cuts that are necessary to move this from a 300 page novel to a 230 page graphic novel. There are some things that a graphic novel can show instead of tell. But traditional print novels are better at telling and some of the best parts of the novel Kindred are about the telling. Slavery was a horrible reality. It was horrible for slaves and Kindred does not at all minimize that horror.

But the novel also touches on how the very nature of a culture that enslaves people degrades all people involved, the owners as well as the slaves. And even those that are not either slaves owners or slaves. The most long lasting impact of slavery in the US has been the culture of white supremacy. Just yesterday there was another local politician recorded talking about how African Americans were genetically predisposed to drugs and crime. It is the reality of a culture of white supremacy that I think gets lost in the graphic novel adaptation.

My only slightly longer review of the graphic novel adaptation is http://bookwi.se/kindred/

My now several year old review of the novel http://bookwi.se/kindred-octavia-butler/

Short Review: This isn't a perfect book, but what book really is. This is however a well documented book about a period of racial history that most do not know anything about and that is yet one more example of how African Americans have had to pay for the sins of white supremecy.

Forsyth County, a county near where I currently live, drove out all of the African American in 1912. From that time until the late 1980s, there were almost no African Americans that even set foot in the county. It was complete racial segregation.

In the 1980s there was a shooting of a Black man on a work picnic at Lake Lanier and several demonstrations around civil rights. But even so it took about 20 years after that until the county, primarily because of demographic pressures of becoming a bedroom community of Atlanta more than anything else, did the African American population start to grow. Today around 3 percent of the 220,000 people in Forsyth County are African American (the state as a whole is about 30%.). But there still hasn't really been a reckoning of the harm.

Oprah, within six months of the start of her show went to Forsyth County to interview residents. One of them said that they thought it was their right to choose who to live around. And while they didn't have anything in particular against Black people, they didn't want to live near them. That sentiment is really what is at heart the problem of standard white racism. In Forsyth, a local and state government that were supportive of segregation allowed this reign of terror to keep African Americans out of Forsyth until other pressures and the delusion of historic population of the county dropped with a very quick population increase from other parts of the country.

But this is a good local example of why there are a variety of examples of why it is not simply good enough to say, African Americans should be doing better. Historic reasons, like being pushed off of their land and being terrorized contribute to the lack of equity today. This is about a very particular local story. But it is an example where the details change, but the result is similar. White racism robs African Americans and other minorities of the fruits of their labor while giving ignorant whites the cover of not understanding the history.

My full, nearly 1000 word description and review of Blood at the Root is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/blood-at-the-root/

Short Review: This is is a book well worth reading. It opens with an excellent summary of history and review of the issues that have perpetuated and encouraged racism and inequality in the US. Then it moves to theology and diagnoses the problem as an overly individualistic understanding of our faith and a rejection of justice in this world as an important feature to our faith. He ends with a discussion of privilege and practical steps of how we can help resolve relationship, minimize our own racist actions and empower those around us that are too often ignored.

But, and I think it is a pretty big but, I am not sure that the book will be understood by many. Wytsma I think is theologically right here. But many that currently reject issues of race and inequality as important will reject his theology as outside of their bounds of Christianity and therefore reject his history, sociology and prescriptions because they reject his theology.

I do not know what we do with that. It is overly simplified to be a ‘liberal' issue. Wytsma's quoting of James Cone and his discussion of justice as essential to the gospel, while good and theologically right in my mind, means that he will be dismissed as ‘focused on identity politics' or ‘marxist analysis'.

That being said, ‘liberals' are not necessarily better at race issues. So even if this is a book that only impacts the left side of the evangelical world, it will still be important.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/myth-of-equality/

Short Review: I am rounding up a little for content. This is well written and important. I think there are a few places where a tighter connection could have been made. The biggest hole for me was why the North that had been consistent in its economic support for slavery shifted toward a greater support for abolition. (My impression is that the north was mildly abolitionist and had the South not seceded and started the Civil War that slavery would have lasted much longer in the US.)

But that one hole in the book did not over shine the overall helpfulness. There was a lot of focus on what slavery was really like, primarily by focusing on slave accounts. The economics really is the important part that I have not understood previously. The early US economy, especially that in the south was far more modern than I previously believed. Banks were much more wide spread. Slave expansion was a largely financed event. Slaves were a form of liquid capital that was in many ways the root of US economy.

This is part of slavery that I think is not understood.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/half-has-never-been-told/

Short review: This is a helpful book of wisdom about virtue written from a godparent to a godson. That the godparent is Hauerwas is why we are reading it. But this type of wisdom transfer I think is something we need to encourage and is important to the development of virtue. Virtue needs to be encouraged and worked out over time. I think for those elders that do show evidence of virtue, we need to be mining them for wisdom, stories and experience, and time to help us understand both how to acquire virtue, but also realistic issues of weakness. Perfection is not part of the deal as humans. So I think there needs to be more discussion of the limitations of striving after virtue.

But what is here is helpful and accessible. I listened to the audiobook mostly, which was good. But this is a book that is probably better to read slowly and reread again later.

my full review about 850 words is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/character-of-virtue/

Short review: Looking Before and After was very briefly on sale for $0.99 on kindle and I picked up any book by Alan Jacobs that is only $0.99. This is a short book, just under 100 pages of main content. There is an introduction to the concept of testimony and Jacobs' conflicted feelings about them. And then four chapters. The last chapter is I think the one that I am most interested in and conflicted about. Jacobs is using Nouwen's book Adam (and the person that the book is about) to interact with as a way to think about what it means to have a testimony and trace God's work in our lives. Adam was a profoundly disabled man that Nouwen worked with a L'arch, a group home for disabled adults. I would like to hear some response by someone that has done theological thinking and/or writing about disability and the image of God.

This isn't a must read book. I think there was some very interesting thoughts, but it was also a bit more disjointed than some of Jacobs' books. I am glad I read it, but 100 pages isn't much of an investment.

My slightly longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/looking-before-and-after/

Short Review: It is surprising that there are not more biographies of Madeleine L'Engle. There is a children's biography by her granddaughters, a book of remembrances by a variety of people, but that is about it. A Light so Lovely is biographical, but not really a full biography. It is more an exploration of her work and her influence on others, especially writers and artists that have been impacted by L'Engle's work in the arts.

Most of the chapters are about tensions in L'Engle, tensions that she wanted to be both/and not either/or, Science and Faith, Art and Religion, Icon and Iconoclast. There are also many remembrances and comments about her influence.

All of that to say, don't go into this expecting a detailed biography, this isn't that kind of book. But it is well worth reading because L'Engle is fascinating and influential and important.

I have been reading a number of biographies and memoirs particularly to mine spiritual wisdom. Her Crosswick Journals were some of my favorites last year. And I was glad to have the story of her life complicated here. I suspected as I read the Crosswick Journals that her vocation as a novelist led her to complete stories and simplify them in ways that others around her would not.

This is well worth reading if you have been influenced by L'Engle, especially if you are an author, artist or book lover.

My longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/light-so-lovely/

Short Review: This is an era that I just didn't have much historical background on. This was the book that several people recommended to me as the best starting place. I picked up the audiobook because that is what is most likely to get done quickly. The audiobook is the first edition. I would have preferred a later edition because I would like to think some of the repetition and was cleaned up. But I don't know.

The audiobook was poorly done. Lots of mispronounced words, bad editing and uneven sound quality. I got through it and it wasn't the worst audiobook I have listened to, but I certainly can't highly recommend it.

The main book was very helpful. The common perception is that Reconstruction was a failed experiment. But Foner suggests that it was cut short because of an inability for many Whites to put away their understanding of White Supremacy. Whether Whites supported slavery or not, many Whites assumed that former slaves were little better than animals and could not be fully equal.

In addition there was serious economic problems in the country as a result of the war, high government and personal debt, rampant economic speculation and government graft. The graft is largely assumed to be only on the Republican side, but it was on all sides. The Republicans were punished for it because they were in power, as they should have been. But the Democrats were not really interested in putting an end to graft but getting into power.

And there was reluctance to enforce Black voting right, especially after the rise of the KKK. So while many Northern Whites said they were for Black voting rights, there was not any interest in federal enforcement of Black voting rights so effectively, political violence was the final nail in the coffin of Reconstruction.

There is far more here than I can easily summarize. But this was very helpful and gave me a number of areas to explore further.

My 2000 word review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/reconstruction/

Short Review: Still Evangelical is worth reading. Part of why it is worth reading is that it is well balanced and actually has as many women and minority authors as White males. And for this discussion that matters. I mentioned each of the chapters in my full review, but the best chapters is Allen Yeh's chapter, which while about more than just this, is about the importance of retaining the orthodoxy we have while adopting a greater focus on orthopraxy. Mark Galli's chapter was most frustrating for me, but I think that it was also a necessary chapter as being the most standard critique of the state of Evangelicalism (not paying enough attention to the non-elites and roughly parallel argument for economic and cultural anxiety as the reasons people voted for Trump).

There were many other chapters that were also quite good. Roughly the line of argument throughout the book is that Evangelicalism as a group matters, that it is a worldwide movement and that the critique of the term in the US doesn't listen enough to those outside the US, or the term's history. But that there is a reason for the critique inside the US.

I really was not incredibly interested in this discussion and was planning on skipping the book. But I picked it up mostly because of Karen Swallow Prior talking about it positively. I gave it a chance and it was much better and more helpful than I expected it to be.

My full review is on my blog (about 1500 words) at http://bookwi.se/still-evangelical/

Short Review: I am skeptical about the enneagram for reasons that I can't completely understand. I picked this up because it was on sale and as part of my exploration around spiritual direction. Spiritual directors tends to be fans of the enneagram as a system because it focuses on weaknesses and sin as well as strengths. And I can see how the system would be helpful in spiritual direction.

This was a good overview but I think it wasn't until the end where he connected the different types to how a person connects in prayer that it started to click for me. I am going to read another book on the enneagram before I really try to evaluate it as a system.

I listened to this on audiobook. The narrator was competent and clear. But his voice wasn't well matched to the material. He felt like he would have made a good narrator for a thriller. And the deep tones of his voice made it hard to hear in noisy environments like my car. This is content that probably also would be better read in print. But I wouldn't have gotten to it if it was just in print.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/sacred-enneagram/

Short Review: I think this was the better of the two books I have read so far on the Enneagram. I am still a bit skeptical of it as a system, but I am a bit skeptical about all personality system. I do see some real value in spiritual direction and spiritual growth. And I think the focus on personality traits as something that both has value to the person and is part of the inherent weakness of the person is helpful. Our greatest strengths are often our greatest weaknesses and show us our need for others to help balance and show our need for others.

I think I know enough now to understand how the system works, but it will be a while before I am really conversant outside of my own type. I do think this is probably a book that is better in print than in audio, but the audio was fine. It is just that this type of content is given toward lists and charts and being able to flip back and forth would be helpful.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/mirror-for-the-soul/

Short Review: This is a scattered book that is on the legacy of King's death more than King himself. There are three interesting mini-biographies of Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton and Barak Obama. And imagined interview with MLK Jr on his 80th birthday and a lot more.

There is some really good content, but scattered and not well integrated. This is the third book of Dyson's that I have read this year. The first two The Black Presidency and Tears We Cannot Stop were excellent. This was just okay.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/april-4-1968/

Short Review: I can't really review a classic book on grief and this is a classic. Wolterstorff (a philosopher) wrote this book in response to the death of his son in 1985 (published in 87). It is quite short (less than 2 hours in audio, about 100 pages in text).

I have never experienced profound grief. So I am writing as someone who is both preparing for the inevitable profound grief that will come someday if I live long enough. And as someone that is aware that we are Americans and I as an Evangelical are part of groups that do not like grief and lament. We tend to want to push people to stop lamenting so that we are not uncomfortable. I think we need to make sure books like this are part of our regular reading so that we do not push people out of lament and can be reminded that lament is part of Christianity because Christians believe in embodiment. We grieve because we think that there is something important about the body.

I don't like reading about grief any more than anyone else. I am very reluctant to pick up books on grief, but I do think they are important and I am reminded of that importance every time I pick one up.

My post about it on my blog is not much longer but it is at http://bookwi.se/lament-for-a-son/

Short Review: Boy of Dreams is the start of a new traditional epic fantasy series.

Much of the reason I have not read a lot of fantasy lately is because the genre seems to be in trouble. Much of modern fantasy just wants to deconstruct old fantasy themes and riff off of old story ideas. I am glad for some good writing. But I tired of the deconstruction.

Boy of Dreams is a traditional epic fantasy. Good vs Evil, young teen discovers he is the boy of prophesy. Many traditional values are encouraged (hard work, perseverance, determination, valuing of every life, etc.)

This is a first novel, and self published. There are some areas I would have done differently. But that is the case with virtually every books I read.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/boy-of-dreams/

Short Review: This is a fairly short spy thriller with all of the action revealed over dinner. A couple, that was about to live together before a large terrorist action, are now meeting for dinner years after the issue. He is still a spy and working on investigating a leak that may have lead to hundreds of deaths in that terrorist action. She is a former spy who may have information. Over dinner, through their narrative or through flashbacks, the whole thing is revealed.

It is a decent book. Not too long, but works okay. Not my favorite of Steinhauer's books, but worth reading.

My only slightly longer review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/all-the-old-knives/

Short Review: This is a series of six short stories (a couple are in the novella length range) and a description of Earthsea. They serve as a bridge between books 4 and 6 with some background on Earthsea and the founding of Roke (school for wizards) and some deconstruction of the mythology hinted at or told in previous books. Wizards in Earthsea are celibate men. This suggests that that tradition was a deviation of the required order. Married couples or women could be wizards, but were not because of tradition.

I read this all out of order. I read the first three books of the series several times as a teen 30 years ago. I re-read the first 5 years ago and then the sixth 4 years ago. And now I picked up the 5th because I thought I had already read the fourth. But I haven't (I don't think). So now I have to go back and read the fourth and see if I can figure out what I have missed.


My slightly longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/tales-from-earthsea/

Short Review: There is no way to really give a short review of Slavery By Another Name. I have been aware of the book for a while and knew the basic idea of the book before I started it. That did not really prepare me for how wide spread the practice of slavery was in the post-civil war era. It was not the same as pre-civil war slavery. But it was still slavery and in some ways it was just as brutal as the pre-civil war slavery. In others ways it was even more problematic because the veneer of freedom existed. The numbers of slaves were relatively low compared to the population of African Americans in the South. But the practice was used not only for cheap labor but as a means of oppressing those that were not physically being held as slaves.

Books like this I want to give to anyone that denies the impact today of segregation or racism. The PRRI polls released this week about discrimination among young adults ( https://www.prri.org/research/mtv-culture-and-religion/ ) show that many Whites, especially White males continue to deny that discrimination has any impact today, and at the same time suggest that it is they that are the ones being discriminated against. Part of that is sheer ignorance. And it can be corrected with books like this. But part is deeper ingrained. At some point I hope we as a culture will adequately come to understand the implications of our past racism, belief in White Supremacy and the legal (and illegal) acts of oppression. But even for someone like me that has been actively searching out understanding, there is so much racist attitudes and ignorance that needs to be rooted out.

The final section of this book is directly about how we can process this era of history and I am glad it was included.

My full (nearly 2000 word) review and description of Slavery by Another Name is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/slavery-by-another-name/