Moonless Darkness
Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Moonless darkness stands between.
Past, the Past, no more be seen!
But the Bethlehem-star may lead me
To the sight of Him Who freed me
From the self that I have been.
Make me pure, Lord: Thou art holy;
Make me meek, Lord: Thou wert lowly;
Now beginning, and alway:
Now begin, on Christmas day.

Powells Books Reviews
THE POETRY OF RILKE
Translated and Edited by Edward Snow

Read this review:
http://bit.ly/6E2Fdk

THE POETRY OF RILKE.
Translated and Edited by Edward Snow.
Hardback: North Point Press, 2009.
Buy Now: [ Amazon ]

Charles Siegel Contrasts
Al Gore’s AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH with
Jane Jacobs’ THE DEATH AND LIFE OF
GREAT AMERICAN CITIES.

http://preservenet.blogspot.com/2009/12/jane-jacobs-and-al-gore.html

As much as I admire the work that Al Gore is doing on global warming, I cannot help but shudder when I compare his Inconvenient Truth with Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities, and I see how much American culture has changed in the last half century.

…

Read the full piece:
http://preservenet.blogspot.com/2009/12/jane-jacobs-and-al-gore.html

DEATH AND LIFE OF
GREAT AMERICAN CITIES
Jane Jacobs.
Hardback: Modern Library, 1993 edition.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH.
Al Gore.
Paperback:   Rodale, 2006.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

A collaborative day for missional/organic/emerging churches to exchange ideas, support, and encouragement about how to incarnate the gospel in their respective contexts.

This year’s theme will be:

Deeper Church: Churches as Whole Communities

As always, the conference is free, and should be a great opportunity to connect, grow, and learn.

You can learn more by checking out our website: http://www.missionalcommons.org

Click here for the Facebook Invite

“A Dearly Loved Melody”

A Review of
The Jesus Prayer:
The Ancient Desert Prayer
That Tunes the Heart to God.
By Frederica Mathewes-Green.

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

The Jesus Prayer:
The Ancient Desert Prayer
That Tunes the Heart to God.
Frederica Mathewes-Green.
Paperback: Paraclete Press, 2009.
Buy now: [ ChristianBook.com ]

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me”  — The Jesus Prayer.

I have long been captivated by the writings of Frederica Matthewes-Green, one of today’s most widely-read writers of the Eastern Orthodox Tradition.  Her works, infused with a rich flavor of Church history, always serve as poignant reminders that we as God’s people are a part of a long tradition of faithfulness.  Thus, my interest was piqued when I heard of her newest book The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer That Tunes the Heart to God.  Having just seen the title, I was a little wary – as I often am of books with titles like this one – of this book just offering another religious technique (in the specific Jacques Ellul sense of that word, i.e., as a mechanical means that ensures an end). But in the opening pages of the book, Mathewes-Green allays my concerns, describing the praying of the Jesus prayer as a practice that helps you “hone your ability to discern God’s presence” (x).  Recognizing the challenge of “praying without ceasing,” Mathewes-Green proposes the praying of the Jesus prayer as a means to draw us more fully into a life of prayer.

(more…)

“Love’s Justice:
The Witness of Franz Jaggerstatter”

A Review of
Franz Jagerstatter:
Letters and Writings from Prison.

Reviewed by Anna Brown.

[ This review originally appeared in The Catholic Worker,
and is reprinted here with the reviewer's permission ]

Franz Jagerstatter:
Letters and Writings from Prison .
Erna Putz, ed.
Paperback: Orbis Books, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

[Franz Jagerstatter, a Catholic, Austrian farmer and married father of three daughters, was beheaded on August 9, 1943 by the Third Reich at the Berlin-Brandenberg Prison. Imprisoned in March of 1943, Jagerstatter was convicted of "undermining military morale" by "inciting the refusal to perform the required service in the German army,"  and condemned to death in July of 1943 by the Reich's Military Tribunal. Jagerstatter was 36 years old when he died. In October of 2007, Blessed Franz Jagerstatter was beatified by the Catholic Church.]

In his introduction to Franz Jagerstatter: Letters and Writings from Prison, Jim Forest writes that Jagerstatter “would certainly do what he could to preserve his life for the sake of his family … [he firmly believed] self-preservation did not make it permissible to go and murder other people’s families.” Forest asks how it is that someone “so unimportant,” a relatively uneducated farmer, could see so clearly while those holding positions of leadership in the Catholic Church or in the Austrian government of the Nazi era were utterly blind. Perhaps it is not simply a matter of seeing clearly; the message of the nonviolent Jesus in the Gospels, after all, is strikingly clear. What sets Jagerstatter apart was not only his ability to see clearly but also to act upon this insight and to actually pay the ultimate price for his refusal to join the Nazis.

(more…)

“My Fame is Still Being Kept From Me”

A Review of
Anonymous Celebrity: A Novel.
By Ignácio de Loyola Brandão.

Reviewed by Joshua Neds-Fox.

Anonymous Celebrity: A Novel.
Ignácio de Loyola Brandão.
Paperback: Dalkey Archive Press, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

A popular and political writer, relatively well-known in Brazil, Ignácio de Loyola Brandão has been only sparsely translated into English. Dalkey Archive Press — named after the comic-apocalyptic Flann O’Brien novel — is reissuing some of his work, like Brasilia Prizewinner Zero (initially banned in Brazil), and commissioning new  translations of others, including this difficult little novel.

Set in an unnamed television studio in São Paulo, Anonymous Celebrity tells the story of, well, an anonymous celebrity: a stand-in for an absurdly famous Lead Actor (referred to as “LA”) in a Brazilian soap opera, used by the studio to make appearances in his place when LA is too sick or  substance-riddled to do so himself. Cloistered in Dressing Room 101 (“surrounded by the books and notebooks containing the details of my grand design” p.10), the narrator relates aspects of his life and his approach to life in short, titled vignettes.  His central concern is to achieve fame in
his own right, not as a doppelganger for the already-famous. “What breaks my heart, what leaves me sleepless, is that my fame is still being kept from me.” (p.10) To this end, he employs legions of consultants — an Image Consultant, a Networking with Other Famous People Consultant, a Bruising Declarations Consultant, a Consultant on Personal Well-Being — and updates a library of manuals and notebooks — The Manual of Celebrity Behavior, Manual of Media Necessities, The Notebook of Cruelties, Manual of the Anonymous. He’s portrayed alternately as either a sort of pitiable hoarder — surrounded by the detritus of his obsession, constantly taking notes, reviewing fashions, rehearsing Bruising Declarations, spewing venom at the
already-famous — or an untouchable Star, shocking the media with his profligate scandals. “Without the media… we’re nothing,” (p. 14) he asserts, and much of the novel concerns his efforts at building a meticulously constructed persona for the media. We’re left wondering how much is real and how much is entirely in his head.

(more…)

Give your friends a free subscription to The Englewood Review of Books this Christmas season, and both you and your friends will be entered to win free books!

We’re giving away 25 books, with the top prize valued at over $100!

Enter now:

http://englewoodreview.org/win-free-books-advent-2009/

Full details are available on the above link…
(Contest ends at Noon on Dec 31, 2009)

30 Page Excerpt from

Patched Together:
A Story of My Story.
Brennan Manning.
Paperback: David C. Cook.
Coming 1 February 2010.
Pre-order now: [ Amazon ]

A Brief Review of

THE CASE FOR GOD.
Karen Armstrong.
Hardback: Knopf, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Reviewed by R. Dean Hudgens.

It would be surprising if anyone who “reads religion” has not heard of the prolific and popular Karen Armstrong.  The Case for God is titled in parallel to her previous book The Battle for God (2001), however the title misleads.  This is not an apologetic defense of God’s existence, but an irenic proposal for understanding the nature of religious truth.  As in The Battle for God, Armstong continues her polemic against “fundamentalisms,” now broadening the attack to include contemporary secular fundamentalisms (i.e. atheism).  Fundamentalisms distort religion by focusing on belief rather than practice. Religion, for Armstrong, is essentially a practical discipline, or a set of disciplines, that create a capacity for understanding religious doctrine. Armstrong asserts the need for a balance between mythos and logos, but in this book is more concerned with the damaging effects of unbridled logos.  Her sweeping, but not superficial overview, of the course of Western theology is divided in two parts.  Part One (“The Unknown God: 30,000 BCE to 1500 CE”) looks to basic elements of ancient religion that are later misdirected or upended.  Part Two (“The Modern God: 1500 CE to the present”) traces the religious impact of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution.  Most of us know the outlines of this story well enough, so it is no small thing to note Armstrong’s ability to keep the reader entertained.  However, by the end of this 400 page tale I sat back a bit disappointed.  Armstrong has argued throughout that we must return to an emphasis upon liturgy, spiritual exercises and religious practices.  She seems to call for a moratorium on divisive God talk, and the practice of apophatic God talk and liturgical silence.  Despite her extensive survey of western theology she overlooks the classic medieval distinction between comprehension and knowledge: that is, that God can be known (because of revelation) although never comprehended (because of our own epistemological finitude).  Armstrong’s winsome presentation of her own case finally leaves us with a God we can neither know nor comprehend.  It is therefore an extensive and well-presented argument for an invisible and silent God.

“Hail to the King, Who Comes in Weakness Now”
John Brownlie

From Hymns of the Early Church

Hail to the King, who comes in weakness now,
No wreath of gold encircleth His brow,
Lowly His state–in lowly worship bow;
Hail to the King!

Born of His maiden mother, pure as snow,
Son of our God, begotten long ago,
Ere yet the stream of time began to flow;
Hail to the King!

Nowhere was found a shelter for His head,
Humble He lay, e’en where the oxen fed,
No couch nor crib, a manger was His bed;
Hail to the King!

Herdsmen were there who heard the angels sing;
Wise men from far who myrrh and incense bring,
No other hand bestowed an offering;
Hail to the King!

Hail to the King! O Christ, upon Thy throne,
Look on the souls which Thou didst make Thine own,
When by Thy birth and death Thou didst atone;
Hail to the King!