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I just finished re-reading (listening) to Little House in the Big Woods for the first time since I was a kid. I picked it up cheap on a whim from Audible recently. I loved the whole series when I was a kid so I thought it might be fun to revisit at least this first one. There was something soothing about it. I'm sure nostalgia has something to do with it.
If you take the nostalgia factor away though, and I was reading this for the first time as an adult, I'd probably only give it two stars, because really, it's just okay is more my reaction to it now.
I really enjoyed listening to the audiobook, read by Leonard Nimoy himself. It made me want, all the more, to go back and watch all of the episodes from the original series and finish watching all of the Star Trek movies too. (I've only seen the first three at this point.)
I thought I would like this a lot more than I did. It was amusing at times and I loved the concept/premise but I was disappointed in the execution. But I was able to listen to it through my library so that's a plus.
There are definitely disturbing parts in this book, but in the end, the theme of redemption is what kept me engaged with this story and made it worth my time. I didn't love it, but it was okay, and was fairly well written.
I loved the Berenstain Bears books when I was a kid! So I'm on a bit of a nostalgia kick and revisiting the ones I have easy access to on ebook.
I loved the Berenstain Bears books when I was a kid! So I'm on a bit of a nostalgia kick and revisiting the ones I have easy access to on ebook.
I hated the way this ended. I had a negative reaction to the series as a whole as I just found it to be so depressing.
When I read this book for the first time in 2012, I was still fairly early in my own deconstruction process. So Rachel's book challenged me and encouraged me in so many ways. I identified with so much of her own background. I've read it three more times since then. The most recent time I listened to Rachel read the audio book version as I drove to her funeral. This was both devastating and comforting at the same time.
The bottom line is, I would recommend this book to anyone who was raised in a conservative evangelical way, especially if they have ever had questions or doubts along the way.
We need to learn to ask questions and we need to know we are not alone in this.
I am so thankful for this book and the rest of the writing Rachel shared with us.
This book had a really big impact on me when I first read it in 2013. It didn't have the same impact on me in 2015 because I was at a different point by then my ongoing faith journey. But when I first read it, it gave me permission to doubt. It helped me be less afraid of where the journey might take me.
The first time I read this back in 2011, I gave it 5 stars and considered it one of my favorite books. It had a lasting impact on me because of the philosophical and theological conversations and ideas in the book.
However, my re-reading experience has not held up to my memory of the first time. The first time, I remember being invested in the characters and the story, and the murder mystery. This time I was bored for most of the book, other than those philosophical/theological conversations. I'm not sure if it was because I primarily listened to the audiobook this time instead of reading the physical book as I did the first time, or what.
I'm not sure I would have completed this second reading at all if I wasn't meeting with some friends locally for a couple of book club discussions about the book. The first one was great fun and I'm sure the one tomorrow will be as well.
Even though I struggled to get through the book this time, I still think this is a book that is worth reading. But if you don't have the time or patience to read the whole thing, you should at least read the section called “The Grand Inquisitor”. This is a poem that Ivan recites which questions the possibility of a personal and benevolent God.
The other section that has stayed with me all this time is when Ivan is railing against a God who would cause or permit the suffering of children. I can understand why some, thinking that believing in God means believing he wills every horrible thing that happens in the world, have abandoned belief in God entirely. Ivan says, “I renounce the higher harmony altogether, it's not worth the tears of ... one tortured child.”Memorable quotes/highlights:“The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love...““Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others.”“I love mankind, he said, “but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.” “Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to dear, kind God'!”“I don't want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price.”“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
Quotes that stood out to me:
CHAPTER 1: God, I Guess
“God can get tiny, if we're not careful. I'm certain we all have an image of God that becomes the touchstone, the controlling principle, to which we return when we stray”
“Anthony De Mello writes, “Behold the One beholding you, and smiling.”
“God would seem to be too occupied in being unable to take Her eyes off of us to spend any time raising an eyebrow in disapproval. What's true of Jesus is true for us, and so this voice breaks through the clouds and comes straight at us. “You are my Beloved, in whom I am wonderfully pleased.” There is not much “tiny” in that.”
“This is a chapter on God, I guess. Truth be told, the whole book is. Not much in my life makes any sense outside of God. Certainly, a place like Homeboy Industries is all folly and bad business unless the core of the endeavor seeks to imitate the kind of God one ought to believe in. In the end, I am helpless to explain why anyone would accompany those on the margins were it not for some anchored belief that the Ground of all Being thought this was a good idea.”
“Perhaps we should all marinate in the intimacy of God. Genesis, I suppose, got it right—“In the beginning, God.” Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, also spoke about the task of marinating in the “God who is always greater.” He writes, “Take care always to keep before your eyes, first, God.” The secret, of course, of the ministry of Jesus, was that God was at the center of it. Jesus chose to marinate in the God who is always greater than our tiny conception, the God who “loves without measure and without regret.” To anchor yourself in this, to keep always before your eyes this God is to choose to be intoxicated, marinated in the fullness of God. An Algerian Trappist, before his martyrdom, spoke to this fullness: “When you fill my heart, my eyes overflow.”
“So, son, tell me something,” I ask. “How do you see God?”
“God?” he says, “That's my dog right there.”
“And God?” I ask, “How does God see you?”
Willy doesn't answer at first. So I turn and watch as he rests his head on the recliner, staring at the ceiling of my car. A tear falls down his cheek. Heart full, eyes overflowing. “God... thinks... I'm... firme.”
To the homies, firme means, “could not be one bit better.”
Not only does God think we're firme, it is God's joy to have us marinate in that.
“The poet Kabir asks, “What is God?” Then he answers his own question: “God is the breath inside the breath.”
Willy found his way inside the breath and it was firme.”
“Meister Eckhart says “God is greater than God.” The hope is that our sense of God will grow as expansive as our God is. Each tiny conception gets obliterated as we discover more and more the God who is always greater”
“Behold the One beholding you and smiling.” It is precisely because we have such an overactive disapproval gland ourselves that we tend to create God in our own image. It is truly hard for us to see the truth that disapproval does not seem to be part of God's DNA. God is just too busy loving us to have any time left for disappointment”
“God seems to be an unwilling participant in our efforts to pigeonhole Him. The minute we think we've arrived at the most expansive sense of who God is, “this Great, Wild God,” as the poet Hafez writes, breaks through the claustrophobia of our own articulation, and things get large again. Richard Rohr writes in Everything Belongs that nothing of our humanity is to be discarded. God's unwieldy love, which cannot be contained by our words, wants to accept all that we are and sees our humanity as the privileged place to encounter this magnanimous love. No part of our hardwiring or our messy selves is to be disparaged. Where we stand, in all our mistakes and imperfection, is holy ground. It is where God has chosen to be intimate with us and not in any way but this”
“ When the vastness of God meets the restriction of our own humanity, words can't hold it. The best we can do is find the moments that rhyme with this expansive heart of God”
“God, I guess, is more expansive than every image we think rhymes with God. How much greater is the God we have than the one we think we have. More than anything else, the truth of God seems to be about a joy that is a foreigner to disappointment and disapproval. This joy just doesn't know what we're talking about when we focus on the restriction of not measuring up. This joy, God's joy, is like a bunch of women lined up in the parish hall on your birthday, wanting only to dance with you—cheek to cheek. “First things, recognizably first,” as Daniel Berrigan says. The God, who is greater than God, has only one thing on Her mind, and that is to drop, endlessly, rose petals on our heads. Behold the One who can't take His eyes off of you. Marinate in the vastness of that.”
CHAPTER 2: Dis-Grace
“Author John Bradshaw claims that shame is at the root of all addictions. This would certainly seem to be true with the gang addiction. In the face of all this, the call is to allow the painful shame of others to have a purchase on our lives. Not to fix the pain but to feel it. Beldon Lane, the theologian, writes: “Divine love is incessantly restless until it turns all woundedness into health, all deformity into beauty and all embarrassment into laughter.” (89)
“Guilt, is feeling bad about one's actions, but shame is feeling bad about oneself. Failure, embarrassment, weakness, overwhelming worthlessness, and feeling disgracefully “less than”—all permeating the marrow of the soul” (46)
“I watched this kid move, transformed, from Sniper to Gonzalez to Cabrón to Napoleón to Napito. We all just want to be called by the name our mom uses when she's not pissed off at us.
Names are important”
“Hey, the priest knows my name.”
“I have called you by your name. You are mine,” is how Isaiah gets God to articulate this truth. Who doesn't want to be called by name, known? The “knowing” and the “naming” seem to get at what Anne Lamott calls our “inner sense of disfigurement.”
As misshapen as we feel ourselves to be, attention from another reminds us of our true shape in God”
“Out of the wreck of our disfigured, misshapen selves, so darkened by shame and disgrace, indeed the Lord comes to us disguised as ourselves. And we don't grow into this—we just learn to pay better attention. The “no matter whatness” of God dissolves the toxicity of shame and fills us with tender mercy. Favorable, finally, and called by name—by the one your mom uses when she's not pissed off”
CHAPTER 3: Compassion
“God is compassionate, loving kindness. All we're asked to do is to be in the world who God is. Certainly compassion was the wallpaper of Jesus' soul, the contour of his heart, it was who he was. I heard someone say once, “Just assume the answer to every question is compassion.”
Jesus pulled this off. Compassion is no fleeting occasional emotion rising to the surface like eros or anger. It's full-throttled. Scripture scholars connect the word to the entrails, to the bowels, from the deepest part of the person. This was how Jesus was moved, from the entirety of his being. He was “moved with pity” when he saw folks who seemed like “sheep without a shepherd.” He had room for everybody in his compassion.”
“Pema Chödrön, an ordained Buddhist nun, writes of compassion and suggests that its truest measure lies not in our service of those on the margins, but in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them”
“When they were caught and I found I knew them, it was excruciating not to be able to hate them. Sheep without a shepherd. And no less the real deal. But for lack of someone to reveal the truth to them, they had evaded healing, and the task of returning them to themselves got more hardened and difficult. But are they less worthy of compassion than Betito?”
“The strategy of Jesus is not centered in taking the right stand on issues, but rather in standing in the right place—with the outcast and those relegated to the margins.”
“Outcast. Victim and victimizer. Sheep without a shepherd. Memo finds his core wound and joins it to the Pritchard core wound. Entrails, involving the bowels, the deepest place in Memo finds solidarity in the starkest wound of others. Compassion is God. The pain of others having a purchase on his life. Memo would return, with other homies, to Pritchard many times. A beloved community of equals has been fostered and forged there, and the roofs just keep getting ripped off. Soon enough, there won't be anyone left outside.”
Chapter 6: Jurisdiction
“Sometimes you're thrown into each other's jurisdiction, and that feels better than living, as the Buddhists say, in the “illusion of separateness.” It is in this place where we judge the other and feel the impossibility of anything getting bridged. The gulf too wide and the gap too distant, the walls grow higher, and we forget who we are meant to be to each other.”
“Maybe there are eight of us or so when the meal finally gets served. Plenty to go around and just as tasty as it could be. Everyone brought his flavor to this forbidden pot of iguana stew, and keeping anyone away and excluded was unthinkable to this band of prisoners. Alone, they didn't have much, but together, they had a potful of plenty.”
“it always becomes impossible to demonize someone you know”
“Close both eyes; see with the other one. Then, we are no longer saddled by the burden of our persistent judgments, our ceaseless withholding, our constant exclusion. Our sphere has widened, and we find ourselves, quite unexpectedly, in a new, expansive location, in a place of endless acceptance and infinite love.
We've wandered into God's own “jurisdiction.”
Chapter 7: Gladness
“Dorothy Day loved to quote Ruskin, who urged us all to the “Duty to Delight.” It was an admonition, really, to be watchful for the hilarious and the heartwarming, the silly and the sublime. This way will not pass again, and so there is a duty to be mindful of that which delights and keeps joy at the center, distilled from all that happens to us in a day”
“We bask in God's unalloyed joy, and we let loose with that same joy in whoever is in front of us”
“We breathe in the spirit that delights in our being—the fragrance of it. And it works on us. Then we exhale (for that breath has to go somewhere)—to breathe into the world this same spirit of delight, confident that this is God's only agenda.
We want to cover our bets, though. A battle gets waged between disparate takes on God's hidden agenda. What seems to vex us is our tendency to conjure up a tiny God”
“Leon Dufour, a world-renowned Jesuit theologian and Scripture scholar, a year before he died at ninety-nine, confided in a Jesuit who was caring for him, “I have written so many books on God, but after all that, what do I really know? I think, in the end, God is the person you're talking to, the one right in front of you.” A mantra I use often, to keep me focused in delight on the person in front of me, comes from an unlikely place. I find it in Jesus' words to the good ladrón nailed next to him. He essentially says, “This day . . . with me . . . Paradise.” It's not just a promise of things to come; it is a promise for the here and now . . . with Him . . . on this day, in fact . . . Paradise”
“Thich Nhat Hahn writes that “our true home is the present moment, the miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment.” The ancient Desert Fathers, when they were disconsolate and without hope, would repeat one word, over and over, as a kind of soothing mantra. And the word wasn't “Jesus” or “God” or “Love.” The word was “Today.” It kept them where they needed to be.”
“Thomas Merton writes, “No despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there . . . We are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.” The cosmic dance is simply always happening, and you'll want to be there when it happens. For it is there in the birth of your first child, in roundhouse bagging, in watching your crew eat, in an owl's surprising appearance, and in a “digested” frog. Rascally inventions of holiness abounding—today, awaiting the attention of our delight. Yes, yes, yes. God so loved the world that He thought we'd find the poetry in it. Music. Nothing playing”
Chapter 8: Success
“I find myself heartened by Mother Teresa's take: “We are not called to be successful, but faithful”
“If you surrender your need for results and outcomes, success becomes God's business. I find it hard enough to just be faithful”
“Sr. Elaine Roulette, the founder of My Mother's House in New York, was asked, “How do you work with the poor?” She answered, “You don't. You share your life with the poor.” It's as basic as crying together. It is about “casting your lot” before it ever becomes about “changing their lot.”
Success and failure, ultimately, have little to do with living the gospel. Jesus just stood with the outcasts until they were welcomed or until he was crucified—whichever came first”
“as Mark Torres, S.J., beloved spiritual guide at Homeboy Industries, says, “We see in the homies what they don't see in themselves until they do.”
Chapter 9: Kinship
“Greg writes, “Kinship [is] not serving the other, but being one with the other. Jesus was not ‘a man for others'; he was one with them.” How are the two different, and how does Greg integrate this distinction into his work?”
“Mother Teresa diagnosed the world's ills in this way: we've just “forgotten that we belong to each other”
“Soon we imagine, with God, this circle of compassion. Then we imagine no one standing outside of that circle, moving ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be erased. We stand there with those whose dignity has been denied. We locate ourselves with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless. At the edges, we join the easily despised and the readily left out. We stand with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop. We situate ourselves right next to the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away”
I loved the Berenstain Bears books when I was a kid! So I decided to revisit this one because it's seasonal and I was able to read an ebook version. (I think I still have the paper version somewhere...?)
I chose this from audible because of Spike, I mean James Marsters. =)
It was well worth it. A very humorous, enjoyable, quick read/listen.
Another one of my absolute favorite scenes from The Chronicles of Narnia is in The Silver Chair. This is the book that comes after The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It is Book 4 in the correct order. (I wrote about this more here: https://www.jenniferneyhart.com/2014/10/c-s-lewis-silver-chair-hope-in-darkness.html )
The story takes place decades after The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in Narnian time, but less than a year later in England. Therefore King Caspian X is an old man. As the adventure begins we learn that King Caspian's son, Prince Rilian is missing. Aslan sends Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole on a rescue mission. They are joined in their quest by the delightfully melancholy Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle.
Their journey leads them to the “Underland” where the Green Lady has been keeping Prince Rilian as her enchanted prisoner. The Green Lady (the witch) catches the group mid-rescue and tries to work a magic spell to make them forget who they are and why they are there. (And here I think of the admonishment to remember who you are and whose you are as a child of God...)
“Narnia?” she said. “Narnia? I have often heard your Lordship utter that name in your ravings. Dear Prince, you are very sick. There is no land called Narnia.”
“Yes there is, though, Ma'am,” said Puddleglum. “You see, I happen to have lived there all my life.”
“Indeed,” said the Witch. “Tell me, I pray you, where that country is?”
“Up there,” said Puddleglum, stoutly, pointing overhead. “I - I don't know exactly where.”
“How?” said the Queen, with a kind, soft, musical laugh. “Is there a country up among the stones and mortar of the roof?”
“No,” said Puddleglum, struggling a little to get his breath. “It's in Overworld.”
“And what, or where, pray is this... how do you call it... Overworld?”
“Oh, don't be so silly,” said Scrubb, who was fighting hard against the enchantment of the sweet smell and the thrumming. “As if you didn't know! It's up above, up where you can see the sky and the sun and the stars. Why, you've been there yourself. We met you there.” [...]
This goes on for a bit, with the witch trying to convince them that their memories of Narnia are nothing but dreams and Narnia doesn't exist. She tells them the only reality that is real is the one they can see right in front of them. But the wise Puddleglum finally uses his bare foot to stamp out the fire she was using to work her magic and then he says something I find myself coming back to over and over again:
“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a playworld which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. [...]we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland.” - C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair, Chapter 12
****
The Chronicles of Narnia ranked from my favorite to my least favorite:
1. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (kind of tied with the ending of The Last Battle, but also that one scene from The Silver Chair... oh dear, I really can't choose! It's whichever of these I'm reading at the moment (to steal Douglas Gresham's answer!)
1. The Last Battle (for the ending)
1. The Silver Chair
2. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (kind of tied with The Magician's Nephew...)
2. The Magician's Nephew
6. Prince Caspian
7. The Horse and His Boy
I think it is safe to say I will not revisit this series. I was disappointed that so many questions and mysteries remained unanswered and unresolved.
So good. Probably about time for me to read this again. I listened to the audio book for the first time in 2017 but I had read the physical book at least two times previously.
I can't say that I've been enjoying this series very much. But I've been determined to finish it. It has gotten slightly better as it went along.
My friend Billie wrote an indepth review here if you need it: https://open.substack.com/pub/billieiswriting/p/fac?r=4m25&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Bad theology kills.
I started this series because I had read that if you like the Chronicles of Narnia, you would like this fantasy series by Andrew Peterson, but I have to say that I've been disappointed. I will continue reading the series because I don't want to leave it unfinished, but I hope the third and fourth books are better than the first two.