Adam Shields

Short Review: I have read three or four books on the creed (and watched a video series). Ben Myers' book is the best of the bunch. It is clear, to the point, with short chapters that would make for great devotional reading or small group discussion. It is clearly ecumenical in tone and content, which is important for what is probably the most important ecumenical statement of faith. And it is well written and oriented toward introduction of the creed without being anti-academic or condescending. I have a seminary degree and have read several books on the creed and I both learned a lot (see my highlights) and would gladly recommend this as a discussion book for high schoolers.


My slightly longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/apostles-creed-2/

Summary: A historical look at the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments in the context of reconstruction history.

I am a big fan of Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 by Eric Foner. I have yet to read his biography of Lincoln or his book on the Underground Railroad, but those are both on my list to get to eventually.

The Second Founding is mainly looking at the history around the Reconstruction Constitutional Amendments, the 13th, 14th, and 15th. The Second Founding, in some ways, is a book-length exploration of what Akhil Reed Amar did in a single chapter in his America's Constitution: A Biography.

The real difference is the greater space given to the historical context in Foner's Second Founding. There is a theme throughout Foner's work of the reconstruction being a second founding, and he views that broadly. The way he conceives of the second founding is the expansion of what it means to be a citizen and who is allowed to be citizens so that the promises of liberty and freedom that are implicit in the founding of the US expand gradually, starting in reconstruction to include more and more people. Foner suggests that the implications of the reconstruction amendments are still being felt today (as with the Obergefell case).

But whatever its chronological definition, Reconstruction can also be understood as a historical process without a fixed end point— the process by which the United States tried to come to terms with the momentous results of the Civil War, especially the destruction of the institution of slavery. One might almost say that we are still trying to work out the consequences of the abolition of American slavery. In that sense, Reconstruction never ended.

The Cincinnati Commercial Gazette wondered why the federal government was “strong enough to give all men their freedom [and] make them citizens with all that the word implies . . . and yet not strong enough to protect them in the enjoyment of those rights.”

“Johnson denied that blacks were qualified for American citizenship and denounced what today is called reverse discrimination: “The distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race.” Indeed, in the idea that expanding the rights of nonwhites somehow punishes the white majority, the ghost of Andrew Johnson still haunts our discussions of race.”

The country has come a long way toward fulfilling the agenda of Reconstruction, although deep inequalities remain. Yet key elements of the second founding, including birthright citizenship, equal protection of the laws, and the right to vote, remain highly contested. And in a legal environment that relies so heavily on precedent, crucial decisions of the retreat from Reconstruction, with what Harlan called the Court's “narrow and artificial” understanding of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, remain undisturbed.

Summary: Both an introduction to female heroes and an exploration of selfless values.

My four year old son has started discovering Marvel superheroes. A couple days ago we were using some of his left over birthday money to pick out a few new kid's oriented Marvel books. I picked out this one at the same time, both because I want my son to know that Superheroes are not all male and for my daughter to have female superheroes as role models. It is important that both my son and my daughter see women as potential superheroes.

I do not often post about the books I read with my kids, but I am both encouraged and a little bit angry about this book. The book itself is great. It has a 2 page introduction to 14 different ‘heroes'. Each introduction has enough to sort of introduce who the character is (some really need more introduction) and something about the value that the character holds. The values focus on selflessness, fighting for the weak and powerless, being innovative (for the greater good), working together, supporting others, etc.

All of these values are good and I want to encourage them. But the combination of stretching really far to get 14 heroes to profile (Pepper Potts, Peggy Carter and Mantis are not really super heroes) and the fact that I have never seen a book oriented toward boys that emphasizes similar values does make me a bit angry. There are a few other heroes that I think could have been chosen instead, but not that many. The under-representation of female and minority heroes that are not comic sidekicks does matter. As my daughter was asking who different people were, in almost every case, my first thoughts were about how they were related to a male in the story. She is Black Panther's sister, she is Iron Man's girl friend, she is Captain America's girl friend, etc. Even when there are cases that some of these have story lines of their own, they were developed as side characters not as independent heroes.

And it isn't that I am upset at a book like this is focused on good values that place community, responsibility, service toward others, empowering those around you, etc. at the fore, I am upset that both this is the first book I get for my daughter and that I haven't seen an equivalent for my son. I want my daughter to have these values. But I also want them for my son. And I want my son to have fun with superhero stories, but I want that for my daughter as well.

I know that we are in a time where more effort is being put into diversifying book shelves and giving women and minorities of all sorts more representation. But the fact that we are doing this now does matter. And it also matters that even with the fairly low level of representation that is coming up, there is still backlash.

originally posted on my blog at http://bookwi.se/what-makes-a-hero/

Summary: Democracy in Black addresses the ‘values gap' between the claimed idealism of equity and democracy and the reality of history.

One of the problems with many White people in thinking about issues of race is that Black and other racial groups are still ‘other'. That ‘other'-ness is otherness in part because of the assumption of monolithic thinking. As with every topic, the more you know about an issue, the more nuance that you can see. The more comprehensive your approach to an item, the more variance within the subject that you can identify.

If you discuss Christianity, you have to ask what about Christianity is universal and what is particular to a subgroup. Catholic and Southern Baptist responses to one issue may be virtually identical, but nearly unrecognizably different in another. The very nature of worship and what the centerpiece of worship service of oriented around is different between Southern Baptist and Catholics, but they do still both worship the same God.

Democracy in Black is a political philosophy of societal change. Glaude is the Chair of the African American Studies Department at Princeton. He is the current president of the American Academy of Religion. His Ph.D. is in religious studies, and this is a book informed by Christianity. However, it is more focused on the methods and theory of cultural interaction and politics. In some ways, I think this is probably a book written a couple of years too early. It is rooted in a discussion of the role of race in the Obama era, and that is a critical discussion. But it does not fully engage with the racial backlash that gave rise to Trump.

Glaude wants to talk about values more than racism. It is not that racism is not shaping our values, but that the gap in our values is more extensive than mere racism, at least as many conceive of the meaning of racism.

“We talk about the achievement gap in education or the wealth gap between white Americans and other groups, but the value gap reflects something more basic: that no matter our stated principles or how much progress we think we've made, white people are valued more than others in this country, and that fact continues to shape the life chances of millions of Americans. The value gap is in our national DNA.”

Merely discussing racial gaps in wealth, education, health, or other areas often reveals how we think about race. There are those that continue to deny that actual disparities exist. Some admit the variations but place most of the blame on individuals. Others suggest that racial differences are rooted in history, culture, systems, resources, or some mix of many different causes. But Glaude, while not glossing over the complexity, wants to ensure that we see that these disparities are not abnormal, but ‘who we are'.

“Most Americans see inequality—and the racial habits that give it life—as aberrations, ways we fail to live up to the idea of America. But we're wrong. Inequality and racial habits are part of the American Idea. They are not just a symptom of bad, racist people who fail to live up to pristine ideals. We are, in the end, what we do.”

One of the most common complaints about the 1619 Project from the New York Times is that the project roots slavery as one of, if not the most important feature of US history. Glaude would fully embrace that rooting because slavery and the belief in the superiority of White skin and culture are pervasive in US history.

But like Michael Eric Dyson's book The Black Presidency and Ta-Nehisi Coates' We Were Eight Years in Power, part of what is most helpful for me is to see the internal discussions within the Black community about how to approach the world we live in. There is some uncomfortableness in being a voyeur on these discussions. The point is not to watch the talks abstractly but to genuinely learn about the history and systems of the Black as well as the White community.

One of the more critical sections of the book is Glaude's discussion of the importance of the role of Black institutions, especially the church. That is, of course, not a new subject since the rise of Trump. Many people have been discussing the same issue because an unintended consequent of pluralism is the destruction of institutions that empower ethnic communities, not just of Black churches, but also institutions, languages, traditions, and cultures of many different ethnic groups.

“What will happen if these institutions disappear altogether? What will provide us with the space to imagine ourselves differently and to courageously challenge white supremacy in this country? Or, as James Baldwin put it, “what will happen to all that beauty?” Baldwin asked this question as he grappled with the political nature of race. Color, for him, “is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.” The political reality was and remains that as long as white people valued themselves more than others because they were white and refused to examine their habits and assumptions, others would have to come together, build institutions, and act politically on the basis of color. The question about the status of “all that beauty” is one about what our experiences tell us about being human, and how they offer a pathway for democracy in which the lives of black people matter as much as everyone else. As white supremacy digs in its heels, as the complexity of black identities betrays the lie that all black people are alike, and as the economic crisis continues to devastate black America, we can't help but ask “what will happen to all that beauty?” We haven't reached any kind of promised land. We stand between lands, desperately holding on as we see so many people we love fall into poverty, go off to prison, or end up in the grave. In other words, declarations that we no longer need black America without a systematic dismantling of white supremacy amount to requests that black people commit collective suicide.”

One of the positive and negative features of Chicago, when I lived there, was the ethnic communities. There is excellence in that; cultural values are empowered, the restaurants are authentic and not just ‘fusion.' But there is also ethnic prejudice that exists in those communities, as well as about those communities.

Democracy in Black is a call to empower Black (and other ethnic communities) while at the same time breaking down prejudices that keep neighborhoods or people apart. It is a clear call to see the inherent white supremacy (by this, I mean the overvaluing of white skin and culture in his understanding of values gap, and not just White Nationalism or racist organizations.) Part of the point of Glaude's call to understand the values gap is to see that every time we view this gap as an aberration instead of intentional creation, we further entrench the intentional ‘disremembering.' (For more about this understanding of disremembering, David Blight's Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory is an excellent introduction.)

The irony, of course, is that the active forgetting—the disremembering—is one of the crucial ways white supremacy in the twenty-first century sustains itself.

Summary: “Spiritual formation is a process of being formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others.”

I am now halfway through my ‘Intro to Spiritual Direction' class, the first class in my two-year program to become a spiritual director. I am intentionally participating in a Catholic (Ignatian) program because I want to learn in a different tradition so that I can be pushed to understand a different perspective, different language, and different emphasis. I want my blind spots exposed as I grapple with the translation process. As I read books on Spiritual Direction that are written by Catholic authors, I have to continually evaluate whether what I am understanding is accurate to the intent of the author. Are the words carrying different connotations as I interpret them in my Evangelical lens?

What has been helpful, because I am only taking one class at a time, is to read a couple of books that are thematically similar, but from an Evangelical perspective. That allows me to process related content in different Christian streams at approximately the same time, which creates a conversation.

I have had Invitation to a Journey for a couple of years, but had not read it yet. Mulholland is not directly writing about Spiritual Direction, but spiritual formation, a more general concept. I like both his definition of spiritual formation and how that definition develops throughout the book. For Mulholland, “Spiritual formation is a process of being formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others.”

Mulholland is directly taking on the individualism of much writing on spiritual formation. Spiritual formation is not for our own sake alone, although there is individual value. Spiritual formation is not particular methods or structures, but the developing of a relationship with Christ by becoming like Christ. And in the process of becoming like Christ, we are doing that not for ourselves, but for others.

I think that one weakness, which is also a strength within Invitation to a Journey, is the broad perspective on spiritual formation. Mulholland says, “Once we understand spiritual formation as a process, all of life becomes spiritual formation.” That comment, in context, is trying to remind the reader that our spiritual life is not fixed, but a journey. And if a journey, it is a process that develops over time. That ‘over time' perspective is right. We are never finished growing as a Christian. But if everything if spiritual formation, then it is easy to not pay attention clearly to how spiritual formation happens.

One of the aspects of Ignatian understanding of spiritual formation is that experiences should be understood as gifts from God, and therefore a type of grace. In my early experience with Ignatian understanding of spiritual formation, the difference is the intention. All aspects of life can be spiritual formation, but you need to intentionally work on incorporating all things as grace into your spiritual formation. Practices like the Examen, a prayer method that reviews your day to see where God worked, where you sinned, how your experiences have been a gift, and how you have received them only work when you do them. Ignatius recommended everyone work through Examen at least twice a day to incorporate our daily life into our spiritual formation.

Invitation to a Journey I thought was a beneficial book. It was the type of books I needed to help me process more clearly the different issues in Evangelical and Ignatian understandings of spiritual formation. Both incorporated community well. Mulholland's quote, “There can be no wholeness in the image of Christ which is not incarnate in our relationships with others, both in the body of Christ and in the world,” feels Ignatian to me.

And one of the strengths of the Catholic tradition is a reliance on Christian tradition as a corrective. Ignatius was not particularly concerned about violating tradition when he thought it appropriate. But he was not a complete radical. Ignatius both submitted to authority and violated authority. But over time, he emphasized tradition and the institution more and more.

“Without a holistic corporate spirituality, there is a powerful tendency to become heterodox or heretical. Corporate spirituality is essential, because privatization always fashions a spirituality that in some way allows us to maintain control of God. Without brothers and sisters to call us to accountability, we will work powerfully to maintain that control.”

Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation by M Robert Mulholland Jr Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

Summary: A collection of portions of Howard Thurman's sermons, prayers, talks, and teaching.

Jesus and the Disinherited is Howard Thurman's most influential book. It is the only book of Thurman's I have read so far, but I have an autobiography and a collection of his meditations and sermons that I will get to eventually.

When I think of Thurman, I think of him primarily as a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr. And because King died in 1968, and Jesus and the Disinherited was published in 1949, I think of Thurman as someone from the first half of the 20th century, but Thurman lived until 1981.

The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman is a collection of sermons, prayers, and talks with introductions to different sections by Alice Walker, Vincent Harding, and several others. The openings were helpful because many of the contributors relate personal stories about Thurman as part of their sections.

Because these are all actual recordings of Thurman and not narrations of his written work, the quality is not as high as most audiobooks. However, the ability to hear him, in his voice, makes up for any weakness in audio quality. Many of these are from his time as pastor of the Church of the Fellowship of All Peoples. This church was an early, intentionally interracial church, started in 1944 (before the Kneel in Protests across the country.) Thurman was co-pastor with Alfred Fisk, a White man, until 1953 when he became the Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston College.

The main negative of the collection is that there is very little content more than five to ten minutes long. I would have like many more full-length sermons. I am not sure if the choice to primarily collect snippets was in the interest of a broader range of content, or issues of audio quality. Whichever it was, the decision leaves the listener without full context in many cases.

When I finished The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman, I started a similar collection, The Radical King. The Radical King is mostly full-length speeches and sermons, but it is also only narrated by modern celebrities doing dramatic readings, Danny Glover, LeVar Burton, Leslie Odom Jr, etc. The narration is high quality, and the full-length sermons or speeches are helpful, but I miss the voice of King. So I will be happy with what I have with the actual sound of Thurman words.

Thurman was a mystic. This collection highlights that far more than Jesus and the Disinherited. Mystics, in part, are dealing with ideas and spiritual experience that is hard to communicate. There are definitely sections here that I need to listen to again. The format has a tendency to reduce Thurman to spiritual sage. He certainly was a wise man, and I am interested in him in part because of his elder statement of the Civil Rights movement status. But my impression of him is that while a true mystic and idealist, he was a much more practical man than what ‘spiritual sage' tends to communicate.

The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman is one of those books that I am happy to have, but want more from.

I am going to read this again before I write about it. Probably not until the start of the year.

Summary: Much of the early church was African. The west has largely forgotten its African character and misremembered the importance and reach of the African church. 

One of the important points here is very similar to the one made in this article about the rise of the Nation of Islam that it has been the misuse of Christianity that has led to African (or African American) rejections of Christianity as a White religion. European Christians, especially post Hegalian, viewed the early church fathers as necessarily being European in character because they were essential to the development of Christianity. This ignores the reality that most of the early church fathers were ethnically and culturally African. Most of them spoke Greek and/or Latin, but that is because those were common trade languages. Today we would not say that Bishop Desmond Tutu was European in character because he speaks and writes in English. And that also ignores those that were not writing in Latin or Gre,ek such as St Anthony, who was illiterate, but the only surviving letters we have from him (that were dictated) were in Coptic.

A point which I had not heard before was that the consular format of the early church councils, which are today the basis of what is and is not considered orthodoxy and heresy, were developed by African Christians for use in Africa before they were used in the broader ecumenical councils.

Where I think that Oden gets into a problem is evaluating modern movements. He is a good theologian and historian but tends to paint modern movements too broadly to be helpful. In his section on ecumenicism, there are people that fit into his critique, but many that do not. And because he is not nuanced enough in that critique (and I want to be clear that this would be very difficult), I suspect there are people that will dismiss the clearer theological and historical work as also suspect.

Oden makes a very good case for the diversity of the continent and the need to account for all of the continent when discussing history, but I think he then becomes much more narrow when discussing the modern church, which has an equally diverse and messy origin. I want to affirm the historical work of the church in Africa, but modern Christian movements that have been influenced by Europe or the United States do not cease to be African. I want to affirm his point that many of these modern movements would benefit from a rediscovery of ancient African Christianity, but it does become paternalistic to argue against a modern African post-colonial or post-modernist approach as less African than historical African Christianity.

And I think this is where his initial inclination that he should not be the one writing this book matters. Where he is most helpful is the historical work. Where he is the least helpful I think, is the modern evaluation and suggestions. Where White outsiders should help is equipping more  Africans for language and cultural studies. And writing books about history and cultural studies may be appropriate. But I do think that Oden was right to be hesitant as a scholar from the US to enter into this area of research. That being said, this is worth reading. There is very much that is good here and only small portions that I think verge into unhelpful.

There is a helpful section (really about 1/4 of the book) at the end that is a brief timeline that helps walk the reader through the African contributions to Christian history. Several reviews complain that this is just a bare introduction, and that is right. There needs to be much more, but I don't think that Oden was the one to do that (he has since passed away). He provided much leadership in getting the western White mainline and evangelical church to pay attention to the ancient church, which is what led to his work on the early African church. It is interesting to me that this is a path that I have seen many others follow as well. The church is far more diverse, and that history and content really does matter more, than what many US Christians believe. It matters that many protestants view church history as the early church through the age of the apostles and then skips to the reformation. It also matters that even those that want to understand broader Christian history tend to only want to look at the Western church. And it also matters that even those that do want to read Augustine or the Desert Fathers or others want to make them into proto-Protestant Europeans instead of African Christians that existed before the east/west split or the Catholic/Protestant split. The work Oden is doing here is essential, but this book isn't written for the average Christian but the scholar. That isn't to say the average person cannot read it, I certainly did, but it is not targeted at me.

I am not going to do a full post on this. After a full day of class discussing this, I appreciated it a bit more. But while there was good here and while I, even on my own, appreciated parts, this isn't a book on spiritual direction I would highly recommend. There are too many books that are good for me to recommend one that I had issues with.

The main issues: 1) I am resistant to how some want to universalize Christian spiritual direction. Other religious traditions can do something similar to SD and I am all for that. But as a Christian that is trying to train to become an SD, I don't really want a broad approach, I want a narrow one that assumes Christianity and assumes the work of the Holy Spirit as the primary driver. 2) I was irritated by the interaction with culture and modernism/postmodernism. She was not simply taking a modernist approach and opposing post-modernism or vice versa, but to me, it felt like she was on the wrong side of several different issues. 3) I understand the difficulty of using mystical language and the problems of describing the mystery of God. But I also think that there is a lot of unnecessary confusion added with sloppy language. 4) I also discovered through my class that she was using some language based on one of her mentors that I just wasn't familiar with. So I probably was reacting too strongly against her at times.

I probably should read it again. But not soon.

Summary: A companion to the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises.

Finding God in All Things was an assigned book in my Introduction to Spiritual Direction class. Barry is a noted author on spiritual direction, and this is not the first book of his that I have read. In Finding God in All Things, Barry is using the Ignatian spiritual exercises as a model for spiritual formation.

I paired Finding God in All Things with Becoming an Ordinary Mystic. The two books, both written by Catholic specialists in spiritual direction, were a helpful pairing. Barry is a Jesuit, and Albert Haase is a Franciscan. Finding God in All things was published a couple of weeks ago by Intervarsity Press and Finding God in all Things was published nearly 30 years ago by Ave Maria Press. Neither were spiritually fluffy books. In both cases, I found it hard to read more than a chapter at a time because they were pushing readers toward spiritual reflection.

What I continue to wrestle with is the focus on discernment in Ignatian spirituality. Ignatius assumes that someone that is seeking God will find God. And that God will use all available avenues for that. Imagination, coincidence, feelings, stories, etc. are all methods that God can and will apply to draw us toward him. Theoretically, I am all for this. I believe that God has used feelings, emotions, stories, and coincidence to pull me toward him and to show me areas of service or people that he desires me to pursue. The fact that this is true personally is not the issue; it is the explanation of them that I struggle with.

Traditionally Protestants have been more focused on the Bible; ‘Do not tell me something that cannot be explicitly shown in the Bible.' That, of course, is in itself a problem, but while I see the issue of over-reliance on proof-texting of scripture, the Ignatian methods feel at times way too loose. Ignatius was very conscious of the possibility of being misled. I think many Protestants that would be opposed to Ignatius' focus on discerning God would do well to pay as much attention to ‘the enemy' as Ignatius does.

Ignatius and the spiritual process of discernment that bears his name is reliant on several checks and balances. First, the goal isn't power or knowledge but a relationship with Christ and Christlikeness. Second, Ignatius assumes the structure of the church as boundaries. While Ignatius at times pushed boundaries, he did not refuse direct orders even when he disagreed. If a spiritual director or superior gave an instruction, it was followed. Third, there is an assumed intimacy with both scripture and Christ and the Holy Spirit that is a clear boundary. That intimacy is still too free for many Protestants, but it trusts that even when we do make mistakes and misunderstand the leading of the Holy Spirit, that the grace of God will guide us back to the path of God's choosing. God can redeem, and we need not be paralyzed with fear in discernment because God's grace is there for us even in wrong choices and sin.

Finding God in All Things is a book of spiritual wisdom that goes far beyond just the spiritual exercises. There is a great section that riffs on Tolkien's essay On Fairy Stories and the use of imagination to inspire us to understand the theological possibilities of what God can theoretically do, as well as understanding the depths of depravity. Barry attempts to give a lot of freedom in the method of prayer and freedom in not relying on our power for our spiritual growth.

There is a good section on discerning right religion (Christianity) by:

We can distinguish real religion from unreal by contrasting their formulae for dealing with negative motivation. The maxim of illusory religion runs: “Fear not; trust in God and he will see that none of the things you fear will happen to you”; that of real religion, on the contrary, is “Fear not; the things that you are afraid of are quite likely to happen to you, but they are nothing to be afraid of.”

One of the essential parts of the discussion of spiritual formation in Barry and Haase is that they both assume loss and pain and that they do not diminish that loss or grief. One of the areas that I am struggling with is that Ignatius' exercises believe that a retreatant will necessarily desire to seek after Christ's passion (the pain of not just his death, but the whole experience around his death as well). I initially assumed that this was a particularly Catholic presumption. But the longer I thought about it, the more I am not sure this is the case. Or at least if this is a particularly Catholic assumption, whether it should be. In Bebbington's fourfold definition of what it means to be an evangelical, one of those pillars is a cruciform orientation. When I first realized that Bebbington was particularly talking about an orientation toward Christ's death and not just a broader Christocentric focus I balked.

I am still not really at peace with this point. But I am aware that part of the orientation of the book as a whole is that God uses pain and loss and the very nature of human life to illustrate God's love for us. Part of what Barry is doing in referencing Tolkien is to say that we need the pain to understand the joy and vice versa. Neither Tolkien or Barry is saying that God is causing pain; but that God uses the natural grief and anxiety of life to show his grace.

Part of what Barry is asking the reader to understand is that in Ignatius' understanding, using MacMurray's words at the beginning of this quote, is that God is not calling us away from pain, but to God's grace within pain.

Macmurray's maxim of real religion. “Fear not; the things that you are afraid of are quite likely to happen to you, but they are nothing to be afraid of.” The resurrection of Jesus demonstrates real religion. The passion and death really did happen, but, the resurrection of Jesus says, they are nothing to be afraid of. When we receive the grace of rejoicing with Jesus in his glory, then we want to shout Alleluia over and over again.

Summary: Bri, a 16-year-old high school sophomore, wins her first rap battle, but that does not solve any of the problems at school or home.
On the Come Up is Angie Thomas' second book, following the massive success of The Hate U Give. While it took me a little while to get into the book, I think On the Come Up is a better book. It works particularly well as an audiobook. The narration is well done, but the lyric sections of the songs and all of Bri's internal rhyming makes the audiobook the more natural option for the book.

Bri is a 16-year-old. Her father was an up and coming rapper, who was killed when Bri was little. She remembers him more through the stories her family tells her than her personal memories. The tragedy of her father's death was compounded by her mother's depression that eventually led to a severe drug addiction. For years, Bri and her older brother lived with her grandparents, and her brother was her primary caregiver.

On the Come Up is a story of how hard work is not always enough. Bri's mother kicked her drug habit, and after a long legal fight with her in-laws won custody of her children. She has worked hard as a preschool teacher while going to college part-time to be a social worker. Bri's brother also did everything right. He graduated with honors from college, but the best job he can find in the area is at a pizza place. When Bri's mother loses her job because of a lack of funding for the preschool, they move from struggling to desperate.

Compounding the problem, Bri is a student at an arts high school in Manhattan. The students from her neighborhood know they are there as diversity and they are also frequently harassed by school security and teachers. Near the start of the book, Bri is violently taken down and handcuffed by school security, which also cascades into several events throughout the book.

I know that some do not like the language of intersectionality, but On the Come Up is an excellent example of it. The intersection of poverty, racism, sexism, trauma, lack of access to jobs and community support, etc., mean that these become exponential problems, not just the addition of issues. While there is language, violence, or discussion of violence, some romance, this is still a young adult book. Bri is presented as a teen, a child not yet grown, who is trying to make her way in the world but does not have the maturity to deal with the issues she is forced to confront.

As a whole, On the Come Up was a more satisfying book to me than The Hate U Give, not because of the result of the story, but because of the cohesiveness of the relationships. These were real, albeit flawed, people. Children were not able to solve problems that adults were unable to solve as so many young adult books illustrate. And the reality of systemic and individualized discrimination is well presented, not as an excuse for bad decisions, but as an illustration that discrimination removes the access to options.

I spent a year or so reading about the trinity about five or so years ago. I thought I would be interested in picking up another book on the trinity. I really wasn't. So even though it is a short book I am just not interested in finishing.

Short Review: Very well written, but dark children's book.

My full review on my blog is at http://bookwi.se/despereaux/

Summary: Part her own story of sexual abuse at the hands of a pastor and part guide to being with survivors of sexual abuse in your context. 

I have ‘known' Anne Marie Miller for a very long time. I started reading her blog around 12 years ago. I have read all of her books. She ended up marrying the cousin of a high school friend of mine. I have appreciated being able to pray for her regularly as I follow along with her life via social media and the occasional email. I am not coming at Healing Together dispassionately. I was an early reader of one of her earlier books, one where she first detailed her sexual abuse.

Anne Miller is an example of a number of (primarily) women that have taken their abuse public because the desire for a better response by the church. Her abuse was at the hands of a church staff. Rachael Denhollander's was at the hands of a sports doctor; others have been abused by teachers, parents, etc. Regardless of the context, the pain and trauma continue, and the context will be forever tainted. Church-based sexual abuse is particularly a problem because the church should be one of the places that are most responsive to sexual abuse survivors. But even a casual understanding of sexual abuse can see that churches often re-victimize abuse survivors.

Healing Together is doing several things. One is Anne's own story. I primarily listened to the audiobook of Healing Together with Anne reading. I did that intentionally because I wanted to be able to hear her voice tell her own story. Anne is still recovering from a freak accident where she lost several teeth and has had to have multiple surgeries to reconstruct her jaw. Because I have known her for a while, I can hear some of that damage in her voice, but the audiobook is certainly still a good option for this Healing Together.

The second focus of Healing Together is understanding of what sexual abuse is, how the legal system works, simple definitions of terminology, and a guide on how to be in solidarity with abuse survivors. Her context is the church but this is not just a church-based guide. It is a guide that would be helpful for anyone, whether you are aware of abuse in your context or not. The reality is that whether you know it or not, you know people that have been sexually abused.

Anne Miller has pursued removing her abuser from ministry but like many cases it is also a textbook example of how churches tend to not handle abuse well. When she first reported, her abuser was an executive with the SBC International Mission Board. IMB found her abuse credible, but instead of firing him and removing him from ministry, IMB allowed him to resign, and he returned to church ministry within a matter of weeks. When Miller realized years later that he had returned to another denominational position and that he could still be criminally charged, she pursued the criminal case. But while he eventually pled guilty, he was allowed to plead guilty to a minor charge. The sentencing phase made that minor charge worse, allowing him to serve only 30 days in jail, if he meets the terms of his parole, the sexual abuse label will be removed from his record, and theoretically, under current SBC rules, he can return to the ministry and a background check will now show his criminal sexual abuse.

I am aware of many examples of the harassment that Anne Miller has endured in the wake of the criminal prosecution. Even this book was dropped by Lifeway publisher because she refused to say that abuse victims needed to return to the church. So she had to find yet another publisher, turning to one that was owned and controlled by a secular company.

Books like this are not ‘fun'. But they are important. We need to understand how to be in solidarity with people and to do what is necessary, without further victimizing them. The Kindle edition is being kept at $2. The paperback can be bought by the case. Read it and give it to those in your life that need to know.

Summary: An allegory about the body and the body of Christ.

Describing this as an allegory is not quite right, but I heard Yancey describe it as an allegory in a podcast interview and I think that gets at a truth that other descriptions do not. There is not an allegorical story here (like Pilgrim's Progress), but the book is largely taking the wisdom of Paul Brand's years as a surgeon and a researcher into Lepersy and uses that knowledge to apply to the individual Christian life and the body of Christ.

Philip Yancey has rewritten and modernized the two books Fearfully and Wonderfully Made and In His Image into a new and updated book, Fearfully and Wonderfully. The science and many of the illustrations are recent, but the wisdom and stories from Brand are those from the older books.

Even though I read the older ones as a teen, I still regularly think about the central ideas, especially around pain frequently. I am not sure I would have picked this book up if it were not part of the Renovare Book Club, but because it was, I started reading the hardback. I sent the hardback to a friend and finished the book in audiobook.

I am a bit mixed on the updating. The metaphors and illustrations and science are current. But the whole book is also in Paul Brand's voice and he passed away in 2003. The voicing is not particularly distracting, but I do find it a bit odd, but I don't think the alternative of writing it in a different voice would have necessarily been better.

That being said, Fearfully and Wonderfully is a great book of spiritual wisdom. The spiritual wisdom of this sort is not about persuasion, but insight. No one is going to be persuaded to become a Christian because of the spiritual insights into science by a doctor even if he was an accomplished doctor. Instead, I think this type of spiritual insight should be seen as expanding on the understanding of people who are already Christians.

I think this would make an excellent book to discuss in a small group or a Sunday school class. I think the balance of personal story, science, and spiritual work keeps the book moving and interesting. And I think that Yancey, in Brand's voice, particularly hits a number of theological points that are particularly helpful in our current cultural era.

This is one that I will pick up on kindle when it is on sale at some point in the future and read it again.

Summary: Introduction to Soul Care (Spiritual Direction) and spiritual disciplines in the African American church setting. 

I am now roughly halfway through my training to become a spiritual director. I am trying to pick up at least one book a month, not assigned, to round out my training. Over the past few months, I have read books about soul care/spiritual direction to children, an Evangelical intro to Ignatian spiritual direction, a memoir of Howard Thurman, and a collection of his sermons, and a book on prayer. The point of these various looks is to expand my vision of what spiritual direction is and to gain insight by understanding how others have practiced spiritual direction.

Barbara Peacock is writing about spiritual direction from the African American Church perspective. It is both not widely known in the Black church but also not unknown. (One of my classmates is AME.) Spiritual direction books are often split between providing some direction to the reader and describing features of direction more generally. Soul Care in the African American Practice uses mini-biographies as a framing for different soul care practices. There are ten profiles of well known and less well-known figures in the Black church and how their lives illustrated various spiritual practices that either they taught on or exemplified. The practices include Lectio Divina, rest, prayer in suffering, contemplation, etc.

Kellemen and Edwards wrote, “If spiritually famished African Americans were going to convert to Christianity, then they had to convert on the basis of Christ's life, death, and resurrection as revealed in the Bible, not on the basis of Christianity revealed in the lifestyles of the Christians they knew.”21 African Americans who depended solely on the spirituality of their slave masters were apt to be deceived and confused.

Do prayer and spiritual direction in the African American faith community look different from prayer, spiritual direction, and soul care in any other faith context? The answer to this question is twofold: no as it relates to the divine inclusivity of spirituality, and yes in the sense that the African American culture, just like any other culture, is experientially unique...effective prayer and spiritual direction are works of the Spirit, and ethnicity is not a determining factor in how the Spirit desires to operate.

Summary: Collection of sermons on the parables, mostly from the 1950s.

Thurman notes that in the parable of the lost sheep Jesus portrays God as a shepherd who loves and actively seeks out the sheep who is lost. For Thurman, this portrayal of the shepherd and the sheep also demonstrates the importance of community. The sheep was out of touch “with the group that sustained him.” A sense of isolation can occur with human beings who wish to be “independent,” and it also can happen with nations—and have devastating results. The parable teaches that, like the shepherd, God is not passively waiting; God takes the initiative and is always actively seeking and searching for those who are lost. What the shepherd does for the sheep, God wants to do for human beings: restore them to fellowship and the community in which they truly belong.

And then the shepherd, who had many sheep, missed him when he got back to the fold, and he left his ninety and nine—or whatever the number was—and he went out to try to find this sheep that was lost. And Jesus says, “God is like that.” Nothing heavy and theological about that. Very little that is dogmatic, technically, about it. Just that here is a shepherd who loves his sheep, and one of the sheep in doing the most natural thing in the world—and that is to eat the grass—did it with such enthusiasm and over a time interval of such duration that he didn't know when the shepherd called, and he was lost. And why was he lost? He was lost because he was out of touch, out of touch. That's why he was lost. Out of touch with the group that sustained him, the group that fed him, that gave him a sense that he counted. That's all. And as soon as he was out there alone, he said, “I'm just here by myself. Nothing but me in all of this? And I want to feel that I count with the others.” There's a certain warmth in that. There's a certain something that is creative and redemptive about the sense of community, about the fellowship. Now I call your attention to two things about that. The first is that this lost sheep wasn't a bad sheep. And what he did was not a bad thing. It became a deadly thing, however. When [in eating the grass], or in quest of it, he unwittingly paid the price of being cut off from the rest.

I borrowed this from the library and renewed it again and I still only got about a quarter of the way through. There is good here, but this is a mix of speeches and essays. In the audiobook that works its way out as clips from her, her husband and others speeches and then professional narrators reading the essays. Ginsburg is a clear, but dry writer. But she is a super slow and dry speaker. That doesn't mean I wouldn't be glad to hear her speak in person. But many of these speeches are pretty low-quality recordings and her age and natural speaking style is SLOW and very deliberate.

There are lots of other things I am trying to read and listen to right now and this keeps ending up at the bottom of the list. So I am giving up.

I don't know how to comment on this. I read it over too long of a period. There were quotes and ideas that were helpful, but a lot that I just did not get. One of the problems of books on the Christian life is that they can be either trite or unintelligible. This one was recommended by several in my spiritual direction class as helpful. I found it mostly unintelligible. Not unreadable, but I just wasn't really sure what it was doing too often. I probably would get more from it if I read it again more quickly a second time. But it is also intended to be a more advanced book to one of his earlier books. So maybe I should read that earlier books first and then come back to this.

The problem is that I have way too many books. And I never know when a book is worth spending more time on to understand better and when the book is just not for me and I should move on to something else.

Summary: A collection of short thoughts on prayer.

Doors into Prayer is not a book I would have picked up on my own. It is well worth reading, but I would not have picked it up except that it was part of the Renovaré Book Club. (The next book is Interior Castles.)

I do not participate much in the online discussion, and I do not attend a local in-person discussion (although those are available for interested people). But I do read the supplementary articles and listen to the podcasts. Most of that is paywalled and only for those that participate in the group, but this is a free talk that Emilie Griffin gave at a Renovare conference that is worth listening to (Dallas Willard joins her for some Q&A at the end).

These are well designed devotional/prayer books. I didn't do it completely but I did use it regularly and I would probably do it again.

I still like the format of the Book of Common prayer better. But I can't find a kindle version I like.

Summary: Helpful, practical look at what the prayer of examen is, and its structure. 

I think I was first introduced to the idea of the Prayer of Examen by Richard Foster about 12 or so years ago in his book Prayer. Foster's chapter on the Examen is about five pages and cannot go into the detail that an entire book does. I have attempted to do the prayer of examen over the years, but at least in Gallagher's presentation, I have always been missing part of the prayer.

Early in the book Gallagher has a summary of the prayer:

Transition: I become aware of the love with which God looks upon me as I begin this examen.

Step One: Gratitude. I note the gifts that God's love has given me this day, and I give thanks to God for them.

Step Two: Petition. I ask God for an insight and a strength that will make this examen a work of grace, fruitful beyond my human capacity alone.

Step Three: Review. With my God, I review the day. I look for the stirrings in my heart and the thoughts that God has given me this day. I look also for those that have not been of God. I review my choices in response to both, and throughout the day in general.

Step Four: Forgiveness. I ask for the healing touch of the forgiving God who, with love and respect for me, removes my heart's burdens.

Step Five: Renewal. I look to the following day and, with God, plan concretely how to live it in accord with God's loving desire for my life.

Transition: Aware of God's presence with me, I prayerfully conclude the examen.

These five steps are expounded on in the first section of the book, and then additional thoughts are later. But what I think is often missing in Protestant presentation are these two reminders:

This practice begins when, like Ignatius, we grasp the unique role that a faithfully made examen can play toward fulfilling this desire. More is involved in the practice of examen than desire alone, and this book will explore these further issues. But the root of the practice of examen will always be desire: a desire that is an awareness of the immense love of the God who is ever close to us, a desire enkindled within us when we wish to respond daily, moment by moment, to God's love, and a desire that is, finally, a gift to be sought in humble and trusting prayer to the God who promises that searching hearts will find their desire (Luke 11:9).

and

For Ignatius, God's love is always the first consideration, and all else is viewed after and only in the light of this love.3 The first step in the examen, and the basis for all that follows, is simply to notice the endless outpouring of God's gifts of love to us in the day. When the human heart knows that another heart loves it deeply, faithfully, and unconditionally, it loses all fear. It may ask with trust for any forgiveness it seeks because it already knows that it is unshakably loved. The prayer of step one (gratitude) is uniquely powerful in preparing space in our hearts for the prayer of step four (forgiveness).

One other aspect that I have never noticed in my prior understanding of the Prayer of Examen is that Gallagher suggests that it is ‘most difficult...and hardest to sustain when we are spiritually alone.'  Because I was reading this in the context of my class on spiritual direction (and because Gallagher is a teacher of spiritual directors), this is where I naturally go. But Gallagher also is assuming that the prayer of examen is done within a life that is in the church.

“On reflection, one finds that these five steps actually are the five successive moments in any dynamic movement of personal love: what we always say to a person whom we truly love, in the order in which we want to say it: 1. ‘Thank you. . . ' 2. ‘Help me. . . . ' 3. ‘I love you. . . . ' ‘I really do love you, in spite of the weaknesses and failure in my response. . . . ' 4. ‘I'm sorry. . . . ' 5. ‘Be with me.' ”

I may come back and write more about this later, but I am behind on writing.

This is a report on lynching and as a report, it is very well written. There is a good (short) history. It is clear about what was going on with lynching. It has a clear perspective of lynching as a form of racial terrorism and I think that clearness is helpful on a relatively short document like this. Not everyone that has not read anything about this will be convinced by this relatively short book, but I think it is a good jumping-off point for discussions and as a prep for visiting Montgomery with a group, which is why I read it.

Summary: The struggle to find identity and meaning as a Potawatomi woman who grew up with a better understanding of Southern Baptist Church culture than her Native one.

I preordered the Kindle edition of Native and then picked up the audiobook free as a promotion for pre-ordering. Like I prefer, Kaitlin Curtice narrated her own book. As I have frequently said, almost always, the author can tell their own story better than a professional narrator. (There are exceptions and fiction is probably better for professional narrators, etc). Curtice is not a professional narrator, but the book calls for emotion and feeling in this personal book and she carries that out.

This is a far better book than I can write about right now. But I want to hit on one point that I think she talks about well. The US has always prized assimilation. But it never really occurred to me how much assimilating something requires giving something else up. It may not be you directly that is giving something up. But to assimilate impacts not just you, but your extended family and descendants as well. If you assimilate into another culture, you are separating your children from their heritage. That isn't to say all cross-cultural change is bad, but that traditionally the only thing talked about was the movement toward unified White culture as a positive. But the loss of ethnic culture is a loss. Some have lost their ethnic culture because of forced migration and slavery as many African Americans have in the US. Many Native Americans were removed from their homes as children, forced into boarding schools, punished for speaking their native languages or expressing their culture and encouraged to adopt White norms.

However, those who today identify as White also have been assimilated and lost their individual ethnic identity. My grandmother, just two generations from me, and a woman I knew fairly well into my 20s came to the US from Finland as a 12-year-old. I have zero connection to Finnish culture, language, or heritage. There is a loss that has to be accounted for, not just the gain of her assimilating into US culture via NYC and rural Pennslyvania.

For so long, the only right way has been the American way, and the American way was always to assimilate into culture, to stop learning our language, to stop telling our stories, to fit in, to look as white as possible. It's what my ancestors ended up doing in Oklahoma, and it's why I grew up knowing nothing about Potawatomi culture but everything about Southern Baptist culture and about a white missionary Jesus. It's why I grew up not knowing how to pray traditionally or how to speak our Potawatomi language. What does it mean to be Indigenous and to have ties to the person of Jesus without being tied to the destructive, colonizing institution of the church? It is a constant decolonizing.

When whiteness runs the narrative, we have to ask how and why. Why aren't stories of Indigenous resistance taught in schools? Why aren't our cultures celebrated for what they contribute, even to modern-day society? Because the Indigenous story has been buried under the white story, it will take a lot of work to uncover it. It will take more than Indigenous peoples to do the work—it will take all people. Decolonization doesn't mean we go back to the beginning, but it means we fix what is broken now, for future generations. If you're a teacher, it means you read books by Indigenous authors and you teach differently. If you're a church leader, it means you change the narrative about reaching Indigenous nations and other forms of missions and recognize that, often, evangelism is erasure, and a listening relationship is something altogether different. If you're a professor, it means bringing resources to your students that will challenge them to look outside the white narrative. If you're a business owner, it means you work to diversify the workplace and root out toxic masculinity. If you're an activist, take to social media and begin listening and following Indigenous people, and let that influence your everyday life. If you're a parent, introduce your children to the idea that Indigenous peoples are still alive, still thriving, still creating and contributing to the good things that happen in the world. If we cannot begin where we are, we will have a hard time changing anything outside of us. Decolonization is always an invitation.

Summary: A 12 part video study based on the original book.
I continue to think that The Color of Compromise is an excellent short introduction to the role of the church in historic racism in the US. I read the book originally last year.

I am not going to address the content here but only talk about the format. There are now several options. The book has paper, kindle (ebook) and audiobook versions. There is also an audio-only version of the video study and the video study on either DVD or digital format.