This week we are giving away a FREE copy of : The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns (which is reviewed above ).

How to enter to win this book:

1. Announce the contest on Twitter, Facebook or your blog: I just entered to win a Richard Stearns’ book THE HOLE IN OUR GOSPEL from The Englewood Review.  You can enter too: http://ow.ly/1awAY
2. Post a comment to this announcement with your name and a link to your post for #1.
3. You may enter one time per day for the duration of the contest.
4. We will pick a winner at random from the eligible contestants and notify them this weekend.

The contest will end at 4PM ET on this Friday February 26.

Here is a recent video of Wendell Berry reading and commenting on his short story “Making it Home” (found in That Distant Land), in a talk given at the Wisconsin Book Festival.

If you enjoy this video, you will want to check out our recent reviews of a new Wendell Berry book and audiobook from last Friday’s issue:

• Our Review of Imagination in Place: Essays
  (Counterpoint Press, 2010)
• Our Review of THAT DISTANT LAND audiobook
  (ChristianAudio, 2010)

This is a long video, and if it keeps stopping and buffering, you might want to hit the pause button for a few minutes and let most of it load.

An excerpt on the value and price of food from the new book

TERRA MADRE:
Forging A New Global Network of
Sustainable Food Communities.
Carlo Petrini.
Paperback: Chelsea Green, 2010.
Buy the book: [ Amazon ]

“Humility, Reverence, Propriety of Scale,
and Good Workmanship“

A Review of
Imagination in Place:
by Wendell Berry.

Reviewed by Brent Aldrich.

Imagination in Place.
Wendell Berry.
Hardback: Counterpoint, 2010.
Buy now:  [ Amazon ]

In the last chapter of The Essential Agrarian Reader, Wendell Berry contrasts two types of minds, first the rational mind, “hell-bent on quantification,” failing to include “things that cannot be quantified – the health of watersheds, the integrity of ecosystems, the wholeness of human hearts.” As a corrective is the “affective or sympathetic mind,” which works in a particular context with a sort of creative sympathy towards places and communities. Furthermore, working in a context makes impossible the reductionism and abstraction of the rational mind, instead acknowledging that our “pictures of realities…are constantly subject to correction – by new facts, of course, but also by experience, by intuition, and by faith. We may say, then, that our sciences and arts owe a certain courtesy to Reality, and that this courtesy can be enacted only by humility, reverence, propriety of scale, and good workmanship.”

Berry’s newest book of essays, Imagination in Place, could be characterized as expanding the description of the ‘sympathetic mind’ as Berry has experienced it as a farmer and a writer, and even more as he has come to recognize and depend on that mind in the work and friendship of other writers. One mark of all these writers, Berry included, is that they are ‘placed,’ and not in the easy sentimentalization of ‘Place’ that seems to be floating around recently; rather, “to submit to the unending effort to change one’s mind and ways to fit one’s farm. This is a hard education, which lasts all one’s life, never to be completed” (10). This ongoing work, in which “nature [is] the inevitable mirror and measure of art” (11) is the work of imagination, as Berry will continue to make clear.

(more…)

“Essential Queries About Our Humanness”

A Review of
You Are Not a Gadget.
by Jaron Lanier.

Reviewed by Mark Eckel.

You Are Not a Gadget.
Jaron Lanier.
Hardback: Borzoi Books, 2010.
Buy now:  [ Amazon ]

“He has too many chocolate chips in his cookie dough.”  This was my son Tyler’s response to my query of what he thought of You Are Not a Gadget. I could not agree more.  Jaron Lanier is a brilliant thinker.  Handling a number of ideas, this co-father of the internet weaves in and out of various disciplines. He expects his reader to believe he is an expert in evolutionary biology, economics, theology, and philosophy; he fancies himself an ethicist, historian, businessman, Marxist (the ‘pure’ kind), and what he is: a techno-engineer.  But herein lays the problem.  Lanier’s dough cannot hold all those chips.

Let me say again Lanier is brilliant.  There is much to commend the essence of We Are Not Gadgets: people are special.  Science should be much more like poetry and storytelling (160, 168).  Lanier’s questions are incisive.  He penetrates past technological usage to ask essential queries about our humanness.  Lanier rightly identifies the most important philosophical signposts.  Defining humanness as “a quest, a mystery, a leap of faith” (5) punctuates his concern for people becoming what they use.  He expertly explains how technology shapes us.  Freedom is a chimera when computers control our lives.  Pondering mystery and taking responsibility for consequences is a human need (75).  “The file is a set of philosophical ideas made into eternal flesh” (13) inhibiting personal expression.  People are replaced by processes (16) promoting an anti-human way of thought (22).  The author asks the right questions.

(more…)

A Brief Review of

That Distant Land.
Wendell Berry.
Read by Michael Kramer.
AudioBook: ChristianAudio, 2010.
Buy now: [ ChristianAudio ]

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

Wendell Berry’s stories have always had the feel of being told by a storyteller in the ancient oral tradition of storytelling.  Berry has crafted, in Port William, Kentucky, a believable world in which characters share life and death together.  And now, in ChristianAudio’s new audiobook release of Berry’s That Distant Land, narrator Michael Kramer tells Berry’s stories with a fabulous Kentucky drawl that makes one feel as if he is a visitor hearing the local storyteller recounting events in his own town.  That Distant Land is a complex work, a compilation of three of Berry’s earlier volumes of Port William short stories (The Wild Birds, Fidelity and Watch With Me), the stories of which are rearranged into the chronological order of Port William and interspersed with four additional stories that had not previously appeared in Berry’s short story collections.  The tales here, although written as discrete short stories, when taken together in the order of That Distant Land, have the effect of a novel that sweepingly covers over a century of Port William’s history.  For readers who want to enter into the world of Berry’s Port William, That Distant Land is a wonderful place to begin as it provides a context in which the other Port William novels can be understood, and for those who are not in a hurry and want immerse themselves in the rich experience of oral storytelling, ChristianAudio’s recording of That Distant Land is ideal.  Although the characters are imaginations of Berry’s sympathetic mind (see the above review of Imagination in Place), this is a compelling portrait of his agrarian Kentucky, a real place that has given form and meaning to Berry’s own life.  One can hear a hint of autobiography, as Andy Catlett recalls in the story that lends its title to the book:

I had lived away, working in the city, for several years, and had returned home only that spring.  I was thirty years old, I had a wife and children, and my return had given a sudden sharp clarity to my understanding of my home country.  Every fold of the land, every blade of grass and leaf of it gave me joy, for I saw how my own place in it had been prepared, along with its failures and its losses.  Though I knew that I had returned to difficulties… I was joyful.

This joy of finding fulfillment in a place is an important message for churches as we seek to be faithful to the redemptive mission of God in an age marked by transience.  There is much that we can learn from Berry’s imagination, deeply rooted in place, and its outworking in the world of Port William, Kentucky.  That Distant Land, and particularly Michael Kramer’s audio rendering of it, serves as a wonderful introduction to this poignant imagination.

The Season of Lent is a time on the Church’s Calendar when we through prayer and fasting reflect upon our desires and submit ourselves to the transforming power of God.

Here are six recent books — one for each week of Lent — that reflect the Lenten spirit or that challenge us to take a deeper look at the seasons of the Christian year.

Fasting
(Ancient Practices Series)

by Scot McKnight.
Thomas Nelson, 2009.
[ Our Review ] [ Buy the Book ]
——

Seasons of Celebration:
Meditations on the Cycle of Liturgical Feasts.
By Thomas Merton.
Ave Maria Press, 2009.
[ Our Review ] [ Buy the Book ]

Being Consumed:
Economics and Christian Desire
by Bill Cavanuagh.
Eerdmans, 2008.
[ Our Review ] [ Buy the Book ]

—–

The Liturgical Year
(Ancient Practices Series)
By Joan Chittister
Thomas Nelson, 2009.
[ Our Review ] [ Buy the Book ]

Enough: Contentment in An Age of Excess.
By Will Samson.
David C. Cook, 2009.

[ Our Review ] [ Buy the Book ]
—–
Living the Christian Year:
Time to Inhabit the Story of God.
By Bobby Gross.
IVP Books, 2007.
[ Our Review ] [ Buy the Book ]

In our continuing effort to fund the publication and free distribution of The Englewood Review, we are going to be collaborating more intentionally with Christian Book Distributors. Primarily, we will be offering you the opportunity to buy bargain books from CBD that we think of are interest. Buying books this way is a win / win / win proposition. You get great books for a great price, CBD gets the sale and we get an excellent referral fee from CBD.

This week’s bargain books (Click to learn more/purchase):

	The Divine Voice By Stephen H. Webb / Baker $2.99 – Save 89%!!! What can the primordial nature of noise, speech, and hearing teach us about what it means to be speakers and hearers of God’s Word? In this thoughtful work, Webb explores philosophical concepts including “Theo-acoustics,” “The Protestant Reformation As an Event Within the History of Sound,” and “The Sound of God.” 244 pages, softcover from Brazos.
	Lying: An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity By Paul J. Griffiths / Baker $3.99 – Save 86%!!! Is lying ever justified? Exploring the Augustinian pronouncement that telling a lie is always wrong, Griffiths examines Augustine’s belief that dissembling disfigures the image of God; contrasts Augustine’s thought with the ideas of Plato, Jerome, Aquinas, Kant, Nietzsche, and others; and argues that Christians should heed Augustine’s ban on lying. 254 pages, softcover from Brazos.
	A Royal Priesthood? The Use of the Bible Ethically & Biblically–A Dialogue with Oliver O’Donovan By C. Bartholomew, J. Chaplin, R. Song & A. Wolters, eds. / Zondervan $3.99 – Save 89%!!! Exploring the contemporary need for both political wisdom and biblical theology, a team of respected scholars—including Andrew Lincoln, N.T. Wright, Gerrit de Kruijf, and James Skillen—”converse” with Oliver O’Donovan on the kingdom hermeneutic and exegesis of his The Desire of the Nations. Thoughtful reflections and careful responses. 446 pages, hardcover from Zondervan.

A Brief Review of

Clutching Dust and Stars: A Novel.
Laryn Kragt Bakker.
Paperback: CINO Press, 2009.
Buy now:  [ CINO ]

Reviewed by Jeni Newswanger Smith.

In the vein of the recent movie (500) Days of Summer, Laryn Kragt Bakker’s Clutching Dust and Stars deals with the baggage, connection to and memories of the proverbial “one that got away.”  Since their relationship misfired 2 years ago, Natalie and Rob have become a little stuck.  Poised on the precipice of “real” adulthood, Natalie sees people growing up and changing around her, but wishes for things to stay the same.  Rob is unsatisfied with his life, drawn toward anarchism and more than a little suspicious of Natalie’s renewed faith.

Perhaps subconsciously, the two are drawn together, needing to go back and resolve before they can go forward–either together or apart.  Despite (or perhaps because of) characters who are overly self-aware and rarely sympathetic, Bakker’s debut novel provides a realistic glimpse into the lives two very different idealists.

A Brief Review of

Ostriches, Dung Beetles, and Other Spiritual Masters:
A Book of Wisdom from the Wild.
Janice McLaughlin.
Paperback: Orbis Books, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Reviewed by Marilyn Matevia.

Maryknoll Sister Janice McLaughlin has written a delightful devotional, the modern equivalent of a medieval bestiary – but without the zoological flights of fancy.  Drawing on knowledge gained in years of missionary and humanitarian work in Africa, and friendships with park rangers and guides, Sister McLaughlin profiles 26 representatives of the continent’s indigenous animals and plants.   She highlights the unique adaptations, characteristics and virtues of each, and then – through rich, thoughtful, and personal vignettes – shows how these same virtues enhance human lives and communities.  Each chapter concludes with a few short readings from Scripture, and suggestions for further reflection and action.  Illustrations by Charles Chazike or Justin Gope accompany each profile.

The book is charming, and yet not at all “fluffy.”  Her vignettes are often poignant and sensitive.  While the connections to the animal profiles and virtues could be strained and simplistic, in Sister McLaughlin’s hands, they are perceptive and thoughtful.  Reminiscent of the poet’s tactic in Job 38-41, Sister McLaughlin celebrates some of God’s less alluring but no less remarkable creatures – the Dung Beetle illustrates perseverance, the Hammerkop (a 1-pound bird that constructs 100-pound nests!) exemplifies ambition, the Porcupine illustrates justice, and Warthog resourcefulness – along with the more charismatic representatives, such as the Cheetah (solitude), Elephant (communication and community), Hippopotamus (humility and self-acceptance), Lion (playfulness and leisure), and Rhinoceros (stability).  Her suggestions for reflection are, at times, probing, and the suggested actions can be challenging.  These make the book useful both for personal meditation and for small group (adult or young adult) discussion.