“The Stories That Shape Our Lives”

A Review of
A Million Miles In A Thousand Years:
What I Learned While Editing My Life.
by Donald Miller.

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

A Million Miles In A Thousand Years:
What I Learned While Editing My Life.
Donald Miller.
Hardback: Thomas Nelson, 2009.
Buy now: [ ChristianBook.com ]

Several years after the success of his New York Times bestselling memoir Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller was given the opportunity to assist in turning that book into a movie.  The process of editing his life into the screenplay for a movie has now become the impetus for his newest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (available today in bookstores).

Miller’s purpose here is twofold:  on one hand to help us see that the stories we find ourselves (particularly ones related to consumerism) are not very good stories; on the other hand, he encourages us to live lives that are indeed good and meaningful stories.  His writing is the same sharp, witty, self-effacing style that many came to love in Blue Like Jazz.  A Million Miles is particularly useful in helping us to see that our lives are stories and that the stories of our lives give us meaning.

Although it is a relatively small portion of the book, Miller is at his best in critiquing the cultural stories in which we find meaning for our lives.  He writes:

Most Americans aren’t living very good stories.  It’s not our fault, I don’t think.  We are suckered into it.  We are brainwashed, I think. …We watch a commercial advertising a new Volvo, and suddenly we feel our life isn’t as content as it once was.  Our life doesn’t have the new Volvo in it.  And the commercial convinces us we will only be content if we have a car with forty-seven airbags.  And so we begin our story of buying a Volvo, only to repeat the story with a new weed eater and then a new home stereo.  And this can go on for a lifetime.  When the credits roll, we wonder what we did with our lives, and what was the meaning (122-123).

(more…)

NPR on Karen Armstrong’s THE CASE FOR GOD.

“The Deeper Church:
Freeing Our Ecclesial Imaginations”

A Review of
Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional.
by Jim Belcher.

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

Deep Church: A Third Way
Beyond Emerging and Traditional.
Jim Belcher.
Paperback: IVP Books, 2009.
Buy now: [ ChristianBook.com ]

“Jesus did not envision the people of God which he sought to gather as a purely spiritual, purely religious community”
— Gerhard Lohfink, Jesus and Community.

I found Jim Belcher’s Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional to be one of the most challenging books that I have read in a long time – challenging not in the sense of being difficult to read, but challenging in the sense of spurring critical engagement.  Belcher offers here a carefully argued case for a way of being church that is neither emerging nor traditional.  As a part of a church community that would seem to fall into Belcher’s targeted third way – being a 114 year-old congregation, which in the last fifteen years has been increasingly guided by the sort of missiology and ecclesiology that Belcher identifies as characteristic of emerging churches – I was eager to understand how he defines the new category that he calls “deep church.”  Given Belcher’s academic background in political philosophy (PhD, Georgetown), it came as no surprise that the new category of church proposed here was defined with the utmost rigor in its distinction from both traditional and emerging churches.  Despite the careful precision of his logic and the many points on which he and I would agree, there was ultimately something unsettling about his arguments.  This feeling of unease prompted me to read the book through a second time and then to go back through certain crucial passages for a third time.  This struggle to articulate precisely my concerns about Belcher’s work epitomizes my assessment of Deep Church as a “challenging” book.

Before launching into a discussions of the content of Belcher’s work, let me affirm that one of the finest qualities of Deep Church was the way in which Belcher presented his arguments.  As a good philosopher, he always is careful to present a sympathetic reading of those whose work he is engaging.  Admitting that he finds the caustic rhetoric volleyed between advocates of traditional and emerging models of church to be offensive to our unity in Christ, he is careful to speak kindly and respectfully, even toward those with whom he has substantial disagreements.  It occurred to me that in its form as well as its content, Deep Church is a significant work of theological peacemaking.  I pray that as I briefly seek to assess this important work (and especially as I seek to communicate my lingering unease) that my words would be as irenic as Belcher’s writing was here.

(more…)

“Endless ways to make old things new“

A Review of
Handmade Home:
Simple Ways to Repurpose Old Materials
into New Family Treasures .
by Amanda Blake Soule.

Reviewed by Jeni Newswanger Smith.

Handmade Home:
Simple Ways to Repurpose Old Materials
into New Family Treasures.
Amanda Blake Soule.
Paperback: Shambhala, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

As an avid reader of Amanda Blake Soule’s blog, I was quite impatient to get my hands on her newest book about creativity and family life, Handmade Home: Simple Ways to Repurpose Old Materials into New Family Treasures.  My first impression was simply, “Wow! This is beautiful!”  The second: “Hey! I’ve made some of these things already!”  Did I find that second thought disappointing?  Not particularly, because this book contains ideas, plans, and inspiration based on 30 projects that will hopefully turn into your own unique projects.  And, honestly, it simply is beautiful to look through.  The photographs are lovely; even the feel of the book is perfect.

As the author of arguably the most popular parenting/crafting blog, Soule created much excitement when she announced the publication of this second book about creativity and family life.  Handmade Home is kind of a flip side of her first book, The Creative Family (Click here for our review). In that book, Soule shared her thoughts on approaching daily life in a deliberately creative way as an entire family.  While that book contained much inspiration and a few detailed projects, the bulk of the book contained her reflections.  Handmade Home, on the other hand, is a collection of 30 upcycled projects with commentary on family and community life interspersed.

(more…)

A Brief Review of

Scared: A novel.
Tom Davis.
Paperback: David C. Cook, 2009.
Buy now:  [ ChristianBook.com ]

Reviewed by Kevin Book-Satterlee.

Africa is all the rage, it seems, in the media and public eye.  A dismal line from the movie, Hotel Rwanda, references an apathetic audience that misunderstands Africa.  Not so for the troubled but award-winning photo-journalist, Stuart Daniels, the main character in Tom Davis’s novel, Scared.  Though fictional, Stuart Daniels joins Bono and other celebrity Africa activists echoing the cries for a continent in plight.

A compelling read, Davis is a punchy writer, willing to let his biases fly in a sometimes preachy way.  His compassion for Africa is much more than artistic exploitation by a Westerner.  The deep concern he shows for Africa is matched equally with his deep sensory knowledge, describing the terrain in ways that only a person who has spilled sweat, tears and possibly blood on the soil could do.  Reading of how Africa arrests the heart of Stuart Daniels must be like reading the diaries of Davis himself and the African romance that captured him.

One of the more powerful aspects of this novel is that Davis is unashamed in his confused petitions of God’s purpose.  He asks why it seems that God turns a blind eye to the continent.  But Davis’s God is a God who suffers with the suffering.  While at times a little hokey, Davis’s God is not silent, nor at rest.   God loves Africa and Davis is obviously resolute in this hope.

This book is the book to read to understand missionaries and aid-workers serving in Africa today.  And though Davis won’t likely win the prestige that his character Stuart Daniels wins, a few hours with Scared is far more informative and impacting than an award-winning photo with a spot on front-page of the New York Times.

Last Chance!  Ends September 30!!!

Win a Free Conference Registration!!!

Through the Consuming Fire:
Economic Faithfulness
in An Age of Consumerism

November 13-14, 2009 – Indianapolis

http://englewoodcc.com/consumingfire/

Through the month of September, we will be running a contest to see who can refer the most people to register for the Through the Consuming Fire conference. The grand prize will be a free conference registration! We will also give away three book prizes!

So, tell your friends and urge them to register listing you as their reference! Feel free to use your blog, twitter, the Facebook e-vite, the conference flyer, or whatever other means (legal, of course…) you want to spread the word. You are welcome to use any of the images/logos on our site to assist in spreading the word.

Here are the full details:

1. The contest will run from September 1 through 11:59PM ET on September 30, 2009.
2. Listing yourself as your referrer will not count toward your total.
3. All winners must have referred at least TWO people. (NOTE: A spouse is a valid referal…)
4. The grand prize winner will be the person who has referred the most registrants. If there is a tie, the winner will be drawn at random.
5. A registration is not complete, and will not count toward your total, until payment is received. Although the contest ends on September 30, we will continue to accept payments for people who registered for the contest through Wednesday Oct 7. Any registration for which we have not received payment by Oct 7 will be eliminated from the contest totals.
6. If the grand prize winner has already registered and paid, we will refund his/her money.
7. The book prizes for the runners-up will be awarded to the three people who have the second, third and fourth most referrals. Any ties will be resolved by picking a winner at random.

QUESTIONS?
Email us:
englewood [d o t] conferences [ a t ] g m a i l [ d o t ] c o m

THE BIBLE AMONG THE MYTHS.
John Oswalt.
Paperback: Zondervan, 2009.
Buy now:  [ ChristianBook.com ]

25 Page excerpt…

Peace
Gerard Manley Hopkins

WHEN will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.

A Brief Review of

Asterios Polyp
David Mazzucchelli.
Hardcover: Pantheon Books, 2009.
Buy now:  [ Amazon ]

Reviewed by Joshua Neds-Fox.
[ This review originally appeared on Joshua's website,
and is reprinted here with his kind permission. ]

As with The Last Lonely Saturday, I read this graphic novel at the general urging of Ian Sampson via Readernaut. Apparently, Mazzucchelli is something of a touchstone for the indie cartoon movement of the 90s/00s, and hasn’t published anything for 15 years (the Terence Malick of cartooning?). This has been ten years in the making; New York calls it “a cartoonist’s cartoonist’s masterpiece,” and even a patzer like me can clearly see that they’re right. The story follows the missteps of the titular character, a prominent ‘paper architect’ (meaning he’s celebrated entirely for his theory; nothing he’s designed has ever been built) and self-involved prig who marries his opposite and ultimately loses her. We follow his journey to a healthier understanding of himself, his life, his regrets, and the things he might do to begin to make reparation.

Much of the communication is done with the art and the form — characters are stylized according to their character, as it were, speaking in different fonts and occasionally revealing their inner selves by their rendering. Mazzacchelli wants to say something about either/or thinking vs. a more life-affirming complexity, that we’re all both deeply convicted about certain things and deeply contradictory in our expression of those convictions. Mazzacchelli tempts you to sum up characters on first glance — assign them merely two dimensions — and then reveals that you were too quick to judge by adding a third, a fourth dimension a few pages later. And the story swirls through modes of art, myth and legend with dizzying virtuosity and a Pynchonesque flair for character names.

Mazzacchelli also has something to say about how brief this life is, and how comparatively important it is to get over yourself, quickly. He does so by making a connection to elements of his earlier ‘Rubber Blanket’ trilogy, and I won’t spoil the almost-doesn’t-work-but-then-yeah-it-does ending by revealing more. But I will say that, although he’s merciless with his characters, he ultimately shows them great compassion, and he does so without sacrificing the complexity of his narrative.

I imagine this will assume its place in whatever cartoonist’s canon there is, alongside Maus and Blankets and [I'm already out of my depth]. I liked it better than Blankets, I’ll say that. You might, too.