“This Wild Fabulous World“

A Review of
Eve: A Novel of the First Woman.
by Elissa Elliott

By Chris Smith.

Eve: A Novel of the First Woman.
Elissa Elliott.
Hardcover: Delacorte, 2009.

Buy now from:
[ Doulos Christou Books $15] [ Amazon ]

[ This book was sent to us as part of The Ooze's Select Blogger Program...] 

Eve, the debut novel from Elissa Elliott, is a finely crafted tale of not only humankind’s first woman, but also her family and especially her daughters.  Elliott frames this novel around the biblical account of Adam and Eve in Genesis 1-4, but using her imagination and some thorough research on this era of human history, she fleshes out this story into an engaging storyline, including a few twists that might take some readers by surprise.  Take Eve’s daughters, for instance; although not mentioned in the scriptural account, Elliott imagines Eve to have had three daughters:  Naava, Aya, and Dara, all of whom were younger than Cain and Abel, the most prominent of Adam and Eve’s children in the Genesis story.  Each chapter paints a scene that is centered around one of the four women in the first family.  The chapters on Eve, as well as those on Aya and Dara, are told in the first person.  The chapters on Naava, however, are told in the third person because Elliott “needed to put information in her chapters she couldn’t possibly know.”  This shift in perspective, however, is done subtly and doesn’t interfere with the larger story.

            Elliott tells this tale in crisp, vivid prose, with a keen sense of the psychological, relational and spiritual dramas that unfolded at the dawn of human history.  In these regards, her style is particularly reminiscent of the fiction of Frederick Buechner, perhaps most like Son of Laughter, given the common biblical framework and backdrop of ancient human history.  Like Buechner, Elliott breathes life into characters that experience a full range of human emotions:  love and rage, faith and doubt, etc.  The fruits of these passions – sex, murder, betrayal, loyalty – are depicted in clear, but honest terms that poignantly reflect the struggles and intentions of the characters. Eve concludes her story: “We were a tragic pair, Adam and I, but let me tell you this:  We loved each other with a deep ferocity.  More than either of us could ever express.  We knew labor and pain and sorrow and dissonance, and this had only served to enrich and strengthen our marriage.”  (406)  

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FIRST SIGHT OF SPRING.
John Clare.
1793-1864.

[ Don't know about where you are, but the warmer and sunnier weather here in Indianapolis this week reminded me of this poem -- editor  ]

The hazel-blooms, in threads of crimson hue,
Peep through the swelling buds, foretelling Spring,
Ere yet a white-thorn leaf appears in view,
Or March finds throstles pleased enough to sing.
To the old touchwood tree woodpeckers cling
A moment, and their harsh-toned notes renew ;
In happier mood, the stockdove claps his wing;
The squirrel sputters up the powdered oak,
With tail cocked o’er his head, and ears erect,
Startled to hear the woodman’s understroke;
And with the courage which his fears collect,
He hisses fierce half malice, and half glee —
Leaping from branch to branch about the tree,
In winter’s foliage, moss and lichens, drest.

Scot McKnight Starts a Conversation on
Jean Twenge’s GENERATION ME.

http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2009/02/igens-1.html

When it comes to grasping the big picture of what is doing on in culture, the single-most important book I have read in the last thirty years is Robert Bellah’s famous Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. (Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Communitycame next.)

But I have to put next to Bellah’s book the devastatingly insightful Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled–and More Miserable Than Ever Before by Jean Twenge. I spend my time reading this in two poses: totally engulfed in what she says and staring into space pondering the implications of her conclusions.

I believe every parent, every youth pastor, every college professor, and every pastor ought to buy this book, read it, and then hold a series of conversations with others about (1) what it says and (2) what we can do to change the course of culture. This book is that important.

It is fashionable for 40 somethings and 50 somethings and 60 somethings and up to 90 somethings to decry the condition of our youth. So, it would be a complete mistake to read this book looking for ammunition to judge the 20somethings and 30somethings. By the way, iGens are 18-35 yr olds. One of Twenge’s observations is that the Boomers, formerly called the Me Generation, produced iGens or Generation Me. What we did is what iGens will do — only they’ll probably ramp it up some and that’s not good.

Twenge could have done some scolding of Boomers and could have done some figuring out what to do about the problems we’ve got, but her approach is to describe and decry. And she does this very, very well … and that’s all we need in order to create a conversation.

Here’s why this book is so signfiicant: Twenge and her associates have done longitudinal studies on tests taken for the last forty or fifty years and she has been able to observe major trends and shifts in such things as self-perceptions. And the results are showing increases in self-importance, leading not only to self-esteem but also narcissism. Here is her major conclusion:

iGens “speak the language of the self as their native tongue. The individual has always come first, and feeling good about yourself has always been a primary virtue” (2). But it is also a time of “soaring expectations and crushing realities.”
Read the full review:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2009/02/igens-1.html

Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans
Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled
–and More Miserable Than Ever Before.
Jean Twenge.
Paperback: Free Press, 2007.
Buy now: [ Doulos Christou Books $12 ] [ Amazon ]

WHAT DRIVES individuals and corporations to erect mega-malls and luxury resorts in place of open meadows and sleepy communities? It is quite literally the million-dollar question. Money, however, is usually only part of the answer. As Stephen Trimble writes in Bargaining for Eden, “Caught between dreams, we are all greedy, and we are all generous. How then do we create a structure for our communities that expresses our altruism more than our self-interest?”

Eden focuses on Earl Holding, one of the nation’s largest landowners and a reclusive Salt Lake City mogul in charge of Sinclair Oil, Sun Valley ski resort, and the Little America hotel chain. A secretary once inquired if Holding was pleased about the acquisition of a parcel next to one of his ranches, to which he reportedly replied, “I won’t be satisfied until I own all the land next to mine.”
…

Read the review:
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/review/4266/

BARGAINING FOR EDEN: THE FIGHT FOR
THE LAST OPEN SPACES IN AMERICA.
Stephen Trimble.
Hardcover: U. of California Press, 2008.
Buy now: [ Doulos Christou Books $24 ] [ Amazon ]

http://blog.beliefnet.com/tonyjones/2009/02/a-secular-age-introduction.html

…

Taylor begins A Secular Age by acknowledging that secularity is difficult to define, hard to pin down.  It seem, he writes, that there are two leading candidates for describing secularism:

Secularity 1: Our relation to a transcendent God has been displaced at the center of social life and replaced by secularized public spaces and institutions.

Secularity 2: Faith in God has declined, as have the beliefs and practicies inherent thereto, in large part as a result of theories that originated with the Enlightenment.

Both of these, as I wrote above, Taylor sees as mistaken, for they tend to track a “decline” of religion.  But religion is not in decline.  Instead, Taylor argues, it is morphing.  What has ended is the age of “naive” faith in a transcendent God.  For the first time in human history, exclusive humanism is now a viable option, at least in the West.  And humanism sprang from Providential Deism, which itself grew out of orthodox Christianity.

It is the advent of exclusive humanism, however, that was the real watershed.  All belief systems are concerned with human flourishing, and most depend on a transcendent God to determine what it is to “flourish” (Buddhism being a notable exception).  “A secular age,” Taylor writes, “is one in which the eclipse of all goals beyond human flourishing becomes conceivable; or better, it falls within the range of an imaginable life for masses of people. This is the critical link between secularity and a self-sufficing humanism.” (19-20)

Thus, Secularity 3: New conditions of belief, consisting of a new shape to the experience which prompts and is defined by belief, in a new context in which all search and questioning about the moral and spiritual must now proceed. “The main feature of this new context is that it puts and end to the naive acknowledgement of the transcendent, or of goals or claims which go beyond human flourishing…Naivete is now unavailable to anyone, believer or unbeliever alike.” (21)

…

Read the full piece:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/tonyjones/2009/02/a-secular-age-introduction.html

A SECULAR AGE.
Charles Taylor.
Hardcover: Belknap Press, 2007.
Buy now:  [ Amazon ]

An Introduction to Waldorf Education
Thursday February 19
7-8PM

If you are interested in learning more about the educational alternatives available for the children of Indianapolis, please join us!

Where:
Earth House.     237 N. East St     Indianapolis.

Indy Food Cooperative
proudly presents
the Indianapolis Screening of the award-winning documentary:

HEART AND SOIL
( www.heartandsoilfilm.com )

Friday February 27
6-8 PM
Harrison Center for the Arts.
1505 N. Delaware St.    Indianapolis

FREE for Indy Food Coop members
Adults 18+over  $10 ea.

Family-friendly event.  Light Snacks.

John Howard Yoder
And the Stone-Campbell Churches

A conversation on the engagement of Yoder’s theology by the churches of the Stone-Campbell tradition (Disciples of Christ, Independent Christian Churches, Churches of Christ)

We will have three plenary sessions with the following Yoder scholars:

Craig Carter ( http://www.tyndale.ca/~ccarter/ )

Gayle G. Koontz ( http://www.ambs.edu/about/staff-and-faculty/gayle-gerber-koontz )

Mark T. Nation ( http://www.emu.edu/personnel/people/show/mtn951 )

When: Friday March 13 and Saturday March 14, 2009

Where: Englewood Christian Church / Indianapolis

Cost: (includes food and housing — if needed)
$ 25 (Standard rate)
$ 75 (Late Registration, After Feb. 13)

More info:   http://www.englewoodcc.com/yoder/

“Embodying Our Grief”

A Review of
Fasting.
by
Scot McKnight.

By Chris Smith.

Fasting (Ancient Practices Series).
Scot McKnight.
Hardcover: Thomas Nelson, 2009.

Buy now from:
[ Doulos Christou Books $15] [ Amazon ]

Just in time for the season of Lent, which starts on Ash Wednesday (this year February 25), Thomas Nelson has just released the newest book in its “Ancient Practices” series: Fasting by Scot McKnight.  This volume offers both a deeply rooted theological case for fasting and a firm caution against the dangers that fasting poses to one’s health, if done excessively or without an understanding of how the human body works.

            Here at Englewood Christian Church, the only practice we have of fasting is to fast during the day on Good Friday, a fast which we promptly defame with our gigantic potluck dinner that follows our evening prayer service.  I’ve tried fasting on my own a few times, particularly on retreats, but to paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, fasting is a practice that I’ve found difficult and therefore one that I’ve pretty much left untried.  I recognize the biblical and historical significance of fasting, but have never really been part of a church community that valued fasting as a significant practice.

            It seems to me that at least part of our hesitancy toward fasting here at Englewood is the ways that we’ve seen fasting being done in theologically appalling ways.  At the book’s outset, McKnight names one such erroneous and detrimental way that fasting is practiced, to which he will frequently return over the course of the book: viz., fasting in order to produce results.  Such a practice of fasting, which McKnight calls an instrumental view of fasting, is not a healthy spiritual discipline, but rather a “manipulative device.”  McKnight argues instead that fasting is a responsive practice, saying that fasting is a body’s natural response to grief.   He does not deny that sometimes results do come from fasting, but he is adamant that for the people of God, the why of fasting should be a response to grief and not a means to an end – however good that end might seem.  McKnight is also careful to point out that avoiding chocolate, coffee, television or some other enjoyable habit for Lent can be helpful as a sort of abstinence, but should not be called fasting.

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You can listen to Part 2 of “The Wasteland” here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21602/mp3/21602-04.mp3

This MP3 is public domain; do listen and share!

THE WASTE LAND

by T.S. Eliot

IV. DEATH BY WATER

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses

If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon – O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih    shantih    shantih

A Brief Review of  TRANSFORMATIONAL ARCHITECTURE by Ron Martoia

[ This book was sent to us as part of The Ooze's Select Blogger Program...] 

Ron Martoia’s new book Transformational Architecture: Reshaping Our Lives As Narrative came as somewhat of a pleasant surprise.  After reading the publisher’s blurb on the back cover, I almost didn’t read the book at all:

                “How can I more effectively reach people of my

generation with the Message of the Gospel?”

Quite frankly, this question wasn’t one that interested me.  However, I do know that publishers often add blurbs like that, which they think will aid the marketability of the book, but in reality may not be a fair representation of the book’s content.  So, I decided to give the book a chance, and I’m glad that I did.  Transformational Architecture is an insightful guide to making the shift from talking about our faith in propositional language to talking about our faith in terms of narrative.  Over the course of the book, Martoia demonstrates that he has a solid understanding of this cultural and philosophical shift, citing thinkers from Derrida to Lyotard to Ken Wilber.  This book is valuable for encouraging us to think about the language with which we think and talk about our Christian faith in a post-Christian culture.  However, the theological content of what Martoia wants to communicate with new language seems pretty fixed in traditional individualistic evangelicalism.  Thus, it seems that although Martoia has made a smooth transition in thinking bout HOW we talk about our faith, it seems that he has not made the shift from a theology rooted in individualism to a theology rooted in the gathered people of God (cf., Rodney Clapp’s A Peculiar People.)  Fundamental to Martoia’s theology is the “personal life history,” the story of an individual’s life, which seems to be primarily a modern philosophical construct, rooted in the personal autonomy of the age of Enlightenment.  The importance of an individual’s story shines most clearly in Martoia’s chapter on the “Imago Dei.”  Here, he botches the interpretations of a number of New Testament passages in service to his individualism, often implying that plural uses of “you” in certain passages of the Greek text should be read as singular ones (e.g., Col. 1:27).  While Transformational Architecture might be useful for helping pastors and other leaders in evangelical churches understand the shifts in Western culture over the recent decades, its blindness to the theological shifts of our age will ultimately render it little more than putting fashionable new clothes and makeup on a corpse.

Transformational Architecture: Reshaping Our Lives as Narrative.
Ron Martoia.
Paperback: Zondervan, 2009.
Buy now:  [ Doulos Christou Books $12 ] [ Amazon ]

Miroslav Volf Reviews JUSTICE: RIGHTS AND WRONGS
by Nicholas Wolterstorff

http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2009/janfeb/16.26.html

Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Justice: Rights and Wrongs is a magisterial book. In it and in its smaller forthcoming companion volume Justice and Love, Wolterstorff has gotten justice right. This, in case the thrust of my terse comment wasn’t plain enough, is very high praise. I’ll register a few small gripes and suggest a shift in emphasis. But these mild criticisms, even if I am correct in making them, don’t take much away from the greatness of Wolterstorff’s extraordinary achievement or from the basic correctness of his position.

Together with two of my colleagues at Yale Divinity School, David Kelsey (emeritus) and John Hare, I have started a multiyear project entitled “God and Human Flourishing.” That project provides the angle from which I write. I will ask of Wolterstorff’s books two principal questions: What is the account of human flourishing that they contain? And what is the relation between God and human flourishing thus understood? A conception of justice and the relationship between love and justice will turn out to be central in answering both of these questions.

Part of the foundation of Wolterstorff’s proposal about justice—and about the relation between justice and love—is an account of human flourishing. He distinguishes his own account from two prevalent positions. A flourishing life is neither merely an “experientially satisfying life,” as many contemporary Westerners think, nor is it simply a life “well-lived,” as a majority of ancient Western philosophers have claimed. Instead, argues Wolterstorff, explicating the moral vision of the Christian Scriptures, human flourishing consists in “the life that is both lived well and goes well.” The “life lived well” component brings out the agent dimension of human flourishing and of the moral order that underpins it; a well-lived life is one that a person leads well. The “life goes well” component brings out the recipient dimension of human flourishing and of the moral order that underpins it; the life that goes well is one in which a person enjoys good things and right kinds of relationships. In a sense, Wolterstorff’s third account of human flourishing is a synthesis of the prevalent two.

Read the full review:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2009/janfeb/16.26.html

JUSTICE: RIGHTS AND WRONGS
Nicholas Wolterstorff.
Hardcover: Princeton UP, 2008.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

It’s hard to resist a book that tells you that most people have more than the average number of feet. Or that researchers have found that Republicans enjoy sex more than Democrats do. Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot delight in bringing such facts to our attention — and then in explaining them away.

Because of amputations, birth defects and the like, the average number of feet per person across the human population is slightly fewer than two. As for those randy Republicans, the information that matters is that men vote Republican more than women, and also say that they enjoy sex more than women say that they do.

“The Numbers Game” grew out of a popular BBC radio show called “More or Less”; Mr. Blastland is the show’s creator, and Mr. Dilnot its former host. Their book appeared in Britain two years ago under the title “The Tiger That Isn’t,” and though it has been “extensively revised” for its American edition and, more mysteriously, given a new title, it still retains a British orientation.

That’s O.K. Its examples travel well, as do the authors’ lucid, unruffled style and their wholesome commitment to public enlightenment. “The Numbers Game” is no “Fun With Math” divertissement; its aim is to render its readers a little smarter about statistics, to make better citizens of them. It’s a sugar-coated civics lesson.

Most of us, Mr. Blastland and Mr. Dilnot observe, expect numbers to do too much. We like their precision and want to believe that statistics can tell us all we need to know about the world. But precision comes at a price: before you can count something, you have to define what it is you’re counting, and often that’s not as simple as it sounds.

Read the full review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/books/03gewen.html

THE NUMBERS GAME: The Commonsense Guide to
Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and in Life
Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot
Hardcover: Gotham Books, 2009.
Buy now: [ Doulos Christou Books $18 ] [ Amazon ]

Kelvin Knight, who previously edited The MacIntyre Reader, has several goals in this new book. He identifies three explicitly: first, “to present an interpretive narrative of the formation of MacIntyre’s philosophy”; second, “to chart the main course through the history of ideas taken by MacIntyre’s Aristotelian tradition, from Aristotle to himself”; and third (the book’s “unifying intention”), “to argue that Aristotelianism has now been revitalized once again, by MacIntyre” (222-23). Weaving these together is an emphasis on the “revolutionary” character of MacIntyre’s views. Unlike either Aristotle or the Aristotelian tradition, which Knight characterizes as frequently legitimating elitist and exclusionary politics, MacIntyre offers a theory of the virtues that is inclusive, egalitarian, and deeply opposed to the global capitalist order of (post)modernity. Knight achieves his goals with varying degrees of success, and at times the attempt to juggle so many balls at once leaves his narrative somewhat disconnected, as the effort to trace out an Aristotelian tradition over centuries is punctuated by sideways glances at various interpretive disputes. This is most pronounced in the third chapter, where in a mere 35 pages Knight follows Aristotle’s path through the remarkably diverse cast of Luther, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, and Gadamer, not to mention several lesser figures and a handful of contemporary thinkers. Knight seems to recognize the problem, admitting, “This book is victim to the author’s overnumerous intentions” (222). He is, nevertheless, more successful than not. In particular, his account of MacIntyre’s development into a “revolutionary Aristotelian,” supplementing Thomist Christianity with a residual fidelity to Marx, is both helpful and persuasive.

Read the full review:
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15146

Aristotelian Philosophy:
Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre.
Kelvin Knight.
Paperback: Polity Press, 2007.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

John Howard Yoder
And the Stone-Campbell Churches

A conversation on the engagement of Yoder’s theology
by the churches of the Stone-Campbell tradition
(Disciples of Christ, Independent Christian Churches,
Churches of Christ)

We will have three plenary sessions with the following Yoder scholars:

Craig Carter ( http://www.tyndale.ca/~ccarter/ )

Gayle G. Koontz ( http://www.ambs.edu/about/staff-and-faculty/gayle-gerber-koontz )

Mark T. Nation ( http://www.emu.edu/personnel/people/show/mtn951 )

When: Friday March 13 and Saturday March 14, 2009

Where: Englewood Christian Church / Indianapolis

Cost: (includes food and housing — if needed)
$ 25 (Standard rate)
$ 75 (Late Registration, After Feb. 13)

More info:   http://www.englewoodcc.com/yoder/