Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works

Untrodden Grapes.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

I picked up the book Untrodden Grapes not out of an interest in wine or some guy's wine-themed travels, but because of the drawings inside.

They are fantastic. Fun. Really wonderful bits of caricature and scribbled, ink-splotted, delicately-washed-with-color images.

Frankly, the whole wine thing that got going in this country after the movie "Sideways" is of little interest to me, since I am a Philistine when it comes to that.

Wine, I mean, not movies.

But back to the book. Great art work. The artist and author, Ralph Steadman, traveled to the far reaches of the globe to various wineries and wine-related locations. He drew just about everything he saw, from dogs to fields to cities to workers. It's really a wonderful collection of images, which could stand on their own with or without all that pesky text.

And, I got the book for only $7 on the bargain rack at Barnes and Noble.

Labels: recommended reading

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Doug TenNapel.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

Two things happened.

I read an article from a recent edition of World Magazine that talked about how there weren't many Christians making graphic novels, even though the genre was exploding. One artist, Doug TenNapel, caught my attention because his style and his stories were pretty bizarre and risky, and weren't just re-tellings of traditional Bible stories or illustrated Bibles.

Plus, I had two Amazon.com gift certificates to use before they expired.

You can imagine where this is going.

I bought Monster Zoo, Flink, Black Cherry, Gear, and Iron West.

I wanted to see what his stories were like. I wanted to see his art. I wanted to get some ideas because I've been working on banging out "cartoons" with a vague idea of throwing them into a jumbled collection to sell. The idea of a complete novel, and not a series of one or two-page sets, has been churning in my mind.

I just wanted to see how bizarre "bizarre" sold as.

Pretty bizarre. It reminded me of watching Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness.

I love TenNapel's stuff. His stories are edgy and hilariously odd and wonderful, all tied up into a kind of undercurrent of truth that I recognize. No browbeating. Just wonderful mixes of elements, such as in Iron West, which combines Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, alien robots, and the Wild West.

Get some, if you're into graphic novels.

Labels: book reviews, recommended reading

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Jesus for President.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 3 comments link this post

The book, besides being beautifully designed and visual astounding, is direct and harsh.

Good.

I can't get it out of my mind, because even though some things I may not have swallowed whole, I realized very much that Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw were putting into words the things I have been struggling with increasingly over the years: The church and politics (and no, the book doesn't urge support or give a free pass to either party). What is the church. What about the poor.

Topics like that. Things I've not fully been able to honestly say have been dealt with in my own life.

Jesus For President: Politics for ordinary radicals has the potential to make angry those with minds locked into stone and tradition, and rip open the hearts of those who already sensed something is very amiss with how we "do church" now. This is a book for those who like Jesus but don't want to be a Christian because they think they have to become a member of the Republican party in order to follow Christ.

Claiborne talks about more than just politics and the church. He very directly calls the reader on what our consumerism and American lifestyle translates into for our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world. He covers everything from the culture of Jesus to our culture of waste, from global economy to eating locally produced food and items. He talks about resources, sustainability, the "enough" policy vs. rampant "gotta have more", and...sweatshops.

I have a friend in Nicaragua who I've started to help support. She works in a sweatshop. It's a terrible job. I'm so proud of her for working and earning money, but it's a terrible job that is destroying her health. When we go to Nicaragua, we often buy clothes on sale and take them down to distribute. Imagine my horror when, pawing through the clearance racks at Old Navy for skirts and shirts, I found a shirt with a label that said "Made in Nicaragua."

She might not have made that shirt. Chances are good that she didn't. But what was I doing? In search of the cheapest stuff, we are encouraging corporations to find slave-like labor to feed the American appetite for "cheaper, and more." How horrible it would be to bring down clothes to give to the people who, in agonizing conditions for low pay, made them. Claiborne provides so much material in this book, ranging from scripture to anecdotes to suggested alternatives.

Obviously, some of the things Claiborne suggests in the realm of what we buy aren't going to work as well in the middle of nowhere North Dakota as they do in the heart of Philadelphia. Handmade sandals, from recycled rubber, mean that about six months out of the year my toes are going to turn black and fall off. However, that is not the point. And there are things we do -- deliberate choices in what we do and do not buy or support -- that can answer as an alternative to some of the ways Claiborne is personally putting his convictions in action. In general, we need to be deliberate and not thoughtless. Americans are thoughtless, and are trained to keep an eye on the bottom line which is, essentially, a focus on "cheaper to buy so I can buy more."

I'm not giving this book a fair review. It hit me like a wall, and I need to read it again. All I can say is that you should read it, and that you ought to be prepared for the message. Unlike most Christian books which tell you how to find power, control and blessings in life, this book isn't going to make you feel warm and fuzzy and give you six easy steps to do it. It is, instead, a call to pulling back the curtain and seeing the wizard for the first time.

This is a book that needs to be read. If you want to be like a lot of Christians and get all hung up on "right theology" and play that old "discern and debate" game, fine. But for those of you who have felt like something is not right and you know American consumer culture is not Christian and you are uneasy about something you've not been able to put your finger on, read this book.

Other Links:

Video: Claiborne talking about the book.
Out of Ur: Book review of Jesus for President (part 1)
Out of Ur: Book review of Jesus for President (part 2)
Chuckp3.com: Jesus for President
Zack Exley: Jesus for President, a book review for atheists (part 1) (part 2)
The official Jesus for President web site
Jesus Creed: Jesus for President (brief mention among other interesting books)
Claiborne and the Cedarville controversy

Labels: book reviews, christian books, recommended reading

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Where have all the good men gone?

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I can't say I care much for the title of the book. It implies something fairly negative about both sexes: either there are fewer good men or that women are asking such a self-serving puffed-up question on a literal level.

But I had the book on my shelf and I'm making a concerted effort to read all of my books for crying out loud, and there you have it. I read A.J. Kiesling's book Where have all the good men gone?: Why so many Christian women are remaining single.

Kiesling bases her book on a survey she took, with 70 percent of the respondents being female, and 30 percent being male. She used true anecdotes and survey/letter responses to build each chapter around the topic, often including the strange outcome of singles ministries in today's Christian churches (which I agree with and, essentially, echo in this post).

Some of the book was good.

Like I said, she had some good things to say about the explosion of the singles ministry concept of the past few decades, in particular, and I wished she'd actually delved more deeply into that rather than the last half of the book which dealt with the survey responses of men and women. She discussed the concept of marriage and the bizarre state of extensive singleness in the modern world, attempting to put it in historical and Biblical context. In that, she also did a decent job though again, I'd wished she'd beefed up that section a bit more instead of the focus on the survey responses. She talked about the danger of the "buddies/friends" trap in which people stay in friendship of buddy groups for years and never make any committments. She offered good advice on "pulling a Ruth"¹ and sometimes taking the step to end a friendship that should be more but never would be if someone didn't just say something. She also touched briefly on the concept of men who wait to marry and then, when they do hit their upper 30's or 40's, they choose to marry much younger².

Because she provided the full excerpts of some of the responses, there were often a few in there that conflicted with each other. This is to be expected. Not all women feel the same about an issue, and the same can be said for men. Some of the responses were written by idiots, of either gender. Of that, I'm positive.

What bothered me was a seeming conflict in responses by those taking the survey. For example, the male respondents first made a case that Christian women were not really different from non-Christian women in how they dress and act and that that was a problem for them. A bit later, however, the response was that Christian women are too often overweight and unattractive and that men are surrounded by sexy, revealingly dressed women all day and how are Christian women supposed to expect men to be happy with them when they seem to buy their clothes at Walmart and not take pride in their appearance?

After reading some of the male responses to what they expected of women, I was mainly interested in meeting these guys and giving them a front snap kick to the groin.

It disturbs me that I found something more building and encouraging as far is working on the internal beauty and becoming a better person in a non-Christian feminist book that told me I don't have to fall into the traps of beauty, instead of in a "Christian" book. Kiesling's book made me feel, at the end, that I was desperate and needy and that I needed to start starving myself and doing all these things to be good enough for these fellows who, out of the same mouth, claimed Christian women expected too much from them spiritually and in maturity.

Front snap kick. Groin. Definitely. It's not as if Christian guys are all cherry, either. It's just that the women, in their survey responses, never even mentioned looks (or money, despite the common accusation of women being gold-diggers) in the top of the list whereas men did.

I can't say I can identify with most of the book, since she tends to focus on singles living in an urban area (never outright said, but clearly suggested by the way it is worded) with a very different life than I have had. This is often the case for me when reading such books: I really can't identify with the examples of all the past relationships and bad experiences and extensive singles group activities since I've not had that.

Again, after reading it the book, I didn't feel good or hopeful or anything near peaceful. I felt bad about myself and the way I looked and the life I'd led and the current state of affairs. Which is not what I am ever looking for in such books. I felt better and more hopeful and stronger after reading the non-Christian book, as I mentioned.

The better book on this topic which uses surveys and candid interviews is Shaunti Feldhahn's books, For Men Only and For Women Only. What she found echoes a lot of what Kiesling says, but it is put in a better, more methodological way that makes sense and isn't so insulting. Perhaps, because her respondents were married men and women, they didn't have the high level of selfishness that single people attain and nurture as they continue to be single. In that way, their responses weren't so "me me." I highly recommend those books for an "inside" look at what's going through the minds and hearts of men and women. Feldhahn's books are aimed at married couples but everyone, really, can benefit. Essentially, she reveals the "secret" fears and needs of each gender that the other may not realize or understand.

I would recommend reading both of Feldhahn's books (no matter if the titles suggest they are for one gender or the other) rather than reading this book.

---------------------------

¹In response to guys who either left comments or emailed me after this post, I understood that the concept of "pulling a Ruth" i.e. not being passive and choosing to tell someone "I am interested" might be a good thing. In my case, when I did it, I can't say it was, or that anything arose from it other than exposing my heart and feeling embarassment. So there you go, for what it's worth. It might not always be a good idea.

² Some of the unsettling anecdotes involved a singles ministry in Florida where the leaders had divided the large group into an older and younger group. They had a problem with men from the older group "crashing" the younger group, essentially on the prowl for younger women instead of women who were their age. That I find creepy.

Labels: book reviews, recommended reading

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The Beauty Myth.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I recently finished reading Naomi Wolf's book The Beauty Myth: How Images Of Beauty Are Used Against Women. I recommend it to women, and also to men.

Though I can't say I buy her theory that everything she talks about is conspired for political reasons, and I can't say that I hold to her interpretation of Christianity in some regards...I can say this was an important book for me to read. Reading some of it was extremely angering because I can identify with the frustration and double standard detailed inside and I know that I can't do much about it but find a way to exist within it all. I was glad Wolf gave voice to the wordless frustration and self-hate that exists inside.

I don't really want to do a blow-by-blow critique of this now decade-old book. You can do a quick Google search and find plenty of people who are better able to extract and critique the facts, figures, an validity of Wolf's ideas. I wish there was a version of the book for younger girls who are especially brutalized by the media into what it takes for them to be considered beautiful, worth something, and necessary.

What I took away from the book, mainly, was a recognition of the extreme frustration and destructive way of thinking about who I was and am and should be. And -- most importantly -- that when I let outside forces (media, peers, etc.) tell me whether or not I am beautiful, I am perpetually at the mercy of changing whims and never able to function with confidence.

My entire life has been one of a small voice in the back of my head -- even in moments of other personal triumph or success -- telling me "you're fat, you're ugly, you're not worth anything, who are you kidding." What a horrible thing to think, despite all the education and skills and experience I have, to fixate on something so meaningless as extra pounds or pimples! It is absolutely ridiculous! I am fairly certain that many other women out there identify with this existence. Nothing distresses me more than when my female friends, who are smart and talented and capable and a real joy, start equating their physical appearance with what theya re worth. I want to holler "you are so much more than the size of your hips!" Yet I do the same to myself. The comparative pressure of perfection is an unbearable weight.

This world is brutal to women because of the value placed on external beauty which is, inevitably, fleeting. Wolf points out that women are valued for their beauty while men for their experience and skill. If our worth comes from our external beauty, we become worthless as we age while experience and skill (which often show up as lines on the face) increase with age. I look at women like Helen Mirren and find her gorgeous and hope she never messes with her face and hair, but I know, just from listening in on men's conversations over the years, that she would receive a derogatory comment as they flipped through a magazine in search of a 20-something model who was "hot."

Upon finishing the book, I knew some of the extreme ideas I couldn't agree to, such as extreme self-love and the entire concepts of "reward yourself and spend time on you" and all those other selfish thoughts that I do battle to remove from my head. However, I also realized I don't have to, in order to combat selfishness, hate myself.

There have been moments where I've foolishly commented aloud to a friend that I thought a particular person was good to look at, even though they might have been not traditionally "good looking." I often speak in terms of drawing, thinking back to my days in college when I drew from nude models and got to see the human body in all its variations. My favorite model was not the tight-bodied young woman named Alex, but an older women named Delores with sags and wrinkles everywhere. She was the model who all the stupid younger college guys joked about after class. But I found her wonderful to draw, which was the point of the class. After a while, I found her beautiful by using this different "definition." She helped me create beauty, and I found her beautiful.

But that's hard to describe to people who get a strange look on their face when you even try to tell them how it is to draw from a nude model and why it is important. Even more so in a bizarre world where a woman commenting on the beauty of another women makes people think of lesbianism rather than a mere appreciation of beauty. And even more so when the a definition of beauty slips in that isn't the one being pushed on us today. And so, when I find myself drawn to an unusual face, I've learned to not make a comment about it since the response is usually something like "you've got to be kidding me!"

I know, then, that beauty is definied differently in each person, yet I still, like Wolf points out in her book as she talks about "beauty" magazines and models and celebrities and the way women are silenced ever-so-subtly by making a comment about their looks -- I still fall into the trap.

I compare myself, and I come up short. I have a never-ending list of things I need to "fix" or improve, as if my own healthy, functioning body weren't beautiful on its own, as if it were broken and needed fixing.

I want to be beautiful. We all do. I'm starting to see, however, that there is no one definition of beauty, despite what women have been trained to think by what they see in the images and expectations around them. There is no one definition of beauty. This is important.

There are so many things I'd like to say about beauty and about this book and what it is causing me to rethink, but mainly, I've caught myself (since finishing the book) repeating a phrase in my mind in the moments I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror or see a bad photograph and hear the disembodied voices of all the magazines and movies and TV shows with the thin women with perfect skin and the comments men make that seem harmless but cut: You don't get to decide if I'm beautiful.

I don't have the "perfect" body as defined by today. I don't have the skin, the facial feature arrangement, the lack of lines, the flawless hair... I'm just a normal, healthy woman. And, I've spent a lot of time on the inside, not just the spackle on the outside.

I think that's beautiful.

I am created in the image of God. I am beautiful because of that.

I just need to remember this when the feeling of ugliness sweeps over me like a wave the next time I'm standing in a checkout line and see a magazine with the Perfect Woman on the cover.

Labels: recommended reading

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Revelations of an unexpected life.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

Connally Gilliam's Revelations of a Single Woman: Loving The Life I Didn't Expect is a book that should be read by all single adult women. I referenced it earlier, on a different blog.

Gilliam doesn't write a book on how to wait patiently, what to do to change your single status, or any other trite and typical messages found in too many Christian books for single women. She doesn't merely see singleness as a problem, a calling, a waiting -- it is the framework for the book, but her larger message is something different. Instead, she directly and with unfettered words tells the reader to look for joy and purpose in God, to focus on giving to others instead of looking for what can be gotten for self.

I appreciate what she has to say. She's funny and true and in no way over-wrought. She doesn't shy away from any topic (sex and celibacy, lesbianism and confused friendships in an intimacy-starved age, the hurt when all your friends marry off and how a relationship change such as that is a loss, obsessive or wrongly-placed attention on ultimately unhealthy friendships, ways we substitute friends and relationships to fill a God-void...). In the end, after reading this book, I felt a lot of conviction about how I had been -- or more accurately, not been -- a friend. I saw areas I needed to improve that weren't so much about ways to end the "problem" of singleness, but ways to be a better human focused on God while caring more about others. I found a challenge to not let repeated hurts harden my heart while, at the same time, learning to wall off and protect the inner-most part of myself and not let everyone in and take from what I should protect.

As any single person knows, the single life, the longer one is in it, tends to lead towards an painful kind of expertise in saying goodbye to friends, or, at least, saying good by to the way a friendship once was as friends marry and lives change.

Actually, nothing has taught me dependence upon God like letting go of people. I don't think it's simply because I'm a chronically codependent, enmeshed, dysfunctional relational junkie. Perhaps there's some truth in that. But honestly, letting go can just be hard on the heart, and sometimes I need help. (p. 153)

Gilliam also makes some astute observations about men and women, particularly in how the two sexes are different in dealing with being single. In her chapter talking about work ("Work Part 2: Hello Wisdom") where she discusses dissatisfaction and uneasiness in jobs or careers that are not fulfilling or that merely serve to pay bills or bide time, she notes something interesting:

With some of the single men I've known, this wilting manifests itself more obviously than with their female counterparts. For many guys, with neither wives nor kids to care for and with jobs that offer money but don't invite attachment to a bigger purpose, there lives degenerate into gadget getting -- wider screens for their TVs or cooler cars for their garage. Meanwhile, their energies to engage with life meaningfully seem to seep away; their souls get stuck in cul-de-sacs. (p. 181)

Just an excellent book, one I highly recommend for Christian single women of all ages. And you know what? Men, and married people should read it, too.

Visit Gilliam's web site for more excerpts and links.

Labels: book reviews, recommended reading

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The trouble with poetry.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

And so the priceless moments of the day
were squandered one by one --
or more likely a thousand at a time
with quandary and pointless interrogation.
-- Billy Collins, stanza from "In the Moment"

The trouble with poetry is that it seems underrated. If there is a lack of people even reading fiction, now, I can only imagine how thin the poets are. Please don't miss reading Billy Collins' book The Trouble With Poetry: And Other Poems. It's more than a pleasurable read. Collins' language is direct and real, humorous and momentarily sad, evidence of an eye that does not miss and a mind that is not unnecessarily cruel in giving that sight words.

This slim volume of poetry is a real treat. I'm reading it the second time through, right now.

Labels: recommended reading

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I am legend. (And other stories.)

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

I picked up a copy of Richard Matheson's 1954 book I Am Legend.

I shamefully admit that I bought the book because I want to see the upcoming movie based ("loosely", it appears, by looking at the previews after having read the book) on the book starring Will Smith. (This is not the first adaptation into film, mind you.) I generally try to not buy the books with the movie tie-in cover, since I am a book snob. Nevertheless, I bought the book yesterday and finished it by the time I went to bed.

It's one of those great "the world ends as we know it" stories that I seem particularly drawn to. What is amazing to me is that Matheson was able to essentially carry on an entire story with about 80 percent of all the "conversation" taking place in the mind of the main character since there was no one else to talk to.

The copy I purchased also had other stories by Matheson, which confused me at first since the book appeared to be only I Am Legend. Once I figured that out, I enjoyed the other stories, though at first, I was annoyed because I thought I still had half a book to go and that the story of Robert Neville had a chance to go past the ending.

The ending, which I won't give away (though I suspect many of you have already read the book), threw me. You should read all the way through to get to it on your own. If you simply don't want to do that, you can find out more about the story here. It's a shame, though. An engrossing and fast-paced read with the twist at the end like Matheson's story is something worth the time. You can purchase more of Matheson's books here.

Labels: book reviews, recommended reading

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I want. Now. List.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 4 comments link this post

I want your book recommendations, your reading lists, your favorite essays, authors -- I want it all. Fiction, non-fiction, religious, political -- anything. Tell me why. When. Where. Who.

Use the comments section. Permanently open.

Labels: book list, recommended reading

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Children's books: Squids will be squids.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I very much enjoy looking at children's books. You ought to have a look through the picture book section of your bookstore -- you'll find some amazing art and quite often, clever stories.

One thing I appreciate about picture books, besides the often beautiful artwork disguised as "mere illustration", is that the authors are trim and tight with their writing. The stories are short in total length, and so the writers¹ have to write tightly. They have to use active voice, and strong but clear wording.

My most recent find is Squids will be squids: fresh morals, beastly fables, by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. Not only are Smith's illustrations bizarrely fascinating and wonderful, but the one-page modern fables dreamed up by Scieszka are hilarious. Really funny. Grasshoppers who put off homework that consists of writing Broadway musicals until just before bed. Things like that.

I would encourage you to get your hands on a copy, but since many people balk at paying $15 for a very slender volume (unless you go the paperback route), at the very least, look for it the next time you're in a book store. Obviously, you can read it right there, in just a short while.

It's clever. And odd.

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¹ And not all authors are. There are a lot of really, really crappy overly moralistic shove-the-lesson-down-your-throat writers. Or the opposite end of the spectrum, where the writer thinks that just because it's a children's book, they don't have to think much on the story, throwing some sappy platitudes about puppies and butterflies out there. Yuck. Kids know a good story. If the story is boring or preachy or badly written, they aren't going to like it. In fact, kids are the best at knowing what a good story is. They haven't been fooled by all the smoke and mirrors yet.

Labels: book reviews, childrens books, recommended reading

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Rob Bell interview.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

An earlier post recommended Rob Bell's most recent book, Sex God.

I now recommend an interview in The Wittenburg Door (a magazine I used to get for a few years) in which Rob Bell says many things about art and Christianity and nouns and adjectives, an interview that left me thinking "here, here!"

Go now, and read.

Hat Tip: CRN.info

Labels: interviews, magazines, recommended reading

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Rocking chair reading.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I am never much for compiling a season-specific reading list, but I have to admit I found this column on summer "rocking chair" reading rather delightful.

Scot McKnight has a few recent recommendations for readers. McKnight's book Jesus Creed isn't hitting my stride right now and I'm going to put it one down on my list, after Os Guinness' book The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life. I liked McKnight's book, and I always enjoy reading his blog, but for some reason, I can't keep my focus while reading it. It's too good a book to be abused like that, so I'll put it off until later when I will likely be in a different mindset. McKnight is a good and meaty writer (check out this essay of his, entitled "Never Alone", one of my favorites available on his web site).

Speaking of Os Guinness, his book Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance is one I've read a few times and referred back to. I would highly recommend reading it. Guinness is easy to read but always a joy to have read when you finish. Some authors write good books over-all, but it's some kind of torture to get to the end. I always enjoy Guinness.

But back to rocking chair reading. I have a rocking chair, from Nicaragua, though I don't read in it. Perhaps I should. I like that concept better than reading lists for seasons, which I never seem to be able to complete before the season rushes on. Somehow, each season supposedly has a weight of reading that's appropriate (summer is light, winter is heavy, spring and fall are somewhere in between?). I'm going to start thinking of not when I do the reading, but where.

Rocking chair reading.

As opposed to sitting-in-bed reading.

As opposed to sitting-on-the-front-step reading.

Or maybe no opposition at all. Just...reading.

Labels: christian books, recommended reading

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John Stott: Through the Bible Through the Year.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I've had John Stott's Through the Bible Through the Year: Daily reflections from Genesis to Revelation for a few months now, but hadn't started it. It's not a typical "devotional a day" book, but one based on the church calendar that, by the time you finish the book, will mean you've finished the entire Bible.

Here's the Amazon.com book summary:

While many Christians are aware of and even adhere to the church calendar, few understand how it can enrich the way they read the Bible. Realizing this widespread need, respected preacher and scholar John Stott has assembled a new book that will guide readers through the Bible according to the church calendar. Seeking to renew a Trinitarian approach to Scripture, Stott divides these daily reflections into three sections. From September to December, Stott focuses on how God the Father revealed himself in the Old Testament. From January through Pentecost, he focuses on the life of Christ in and through the Gospels. And between May and August, Stott looks at the Holy Spirit in Acts, the epistles, and Revelation.

We don't really follow a church calendar like other churches or denominations, so when the book arrived in the mail, I sort of thumbed through it a little perplexed. I'm used to such books have a date assigned to each page, but since the church calendar isn't exact date specific, Stott doesn't do this. There are specifications for day of the week, but since the book is to work with the church calendar, it's up to the reader to start in the right spot.

So, I've been waiting for the first Sunday of September. Tomorrow.

I admit to having read a bit of it here and there and I have to say, I like this book. I like Stott's writing style, I like what he's doing with this book, and I like how it's not so much about topic-specific or "apply this to your life situation" devotional book, but more about showing the reader the "big picture" of God through the entire Bible.

You can read another summation of the book here.

Labels: christian books, recommended reading

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Into the Wild.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I want you to read this book. If you want to read about Chris McCandless without doing much work, you can read about him online, easily. But I want you to read the book Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer.

I don't want to do a summation of the book when spoilers and such summaries and critiques of both the book and McCandless are readily available on the Internet. I don't want to weigh the validity of what McCandless did or did not do. What I want is for you to read the book.

I've already written about this book in the past, in a different way.

We are caged, I said.

"...people haven't forgotten how 'forcefully they were once buffeted by the passions and longings of youth,' as Krakuaer said. For some people, the uneasiness that is just below the surface is evidence of just that. These are the people that don't last 4 years at a job, that seem shiftless, unfocused, unable to "buckle down" and be a normal, reliable person in society. They always have one eye on the cage door, always wanting to escape, though few do."

We are prisoners, I said.

"We are prisoners of things. Our minds, our lives, are filled with shallow material things, whether it be the maintenance of them, or how to acquire more. It has almost become our sole purpose in this culture. McCandless is seen as strange because he chucked it all and wanted to see what he was made of. He didn't follow the normal route in life after he graduated from college."

We keep trying, I said.

"I wish I could leave it all and head off into the sunset, but I can't. I'm not there yet, I don't have it in me. I'm not strong enough, and I am too fearful. I still take comfort in my comfort, I'm ashamed to admit. But he did it, and when I read his story, I feel a little better about the small efforts I've made if only for the simple fact that I know someone out there tried, and I will try, too."

I am thankful, McCandless said.

"I have had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless all!" McCandless wrote as he was alone and starving, the last thing he said to the world before he died.

Read the book.

Labels: recommended reading

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Rob Bell's Sex God.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

Rob Bell's second book, Sex God, has the same strange font and colors on the pages as his first book, Velvet Elvis, but once I got past that (and the one-paragraph sentences), I settled into the book quickly. It's a fast and easy read, short and not complicated by any means.

It would be a great book for someone thinking of marriage, or to explain sex in a way that wasn't just a "True Love Waits" ring or as a mere bodily function. Bell's goal is to show the spiritual symbolism and importance. This is not a Christian sex manual by any means. In fact, you'd probably be surprised, after seeing that title on the cover, what it's really about.

A couple of things about Bell's writing:

Footnotes: His footnotes at the end supply a nice list of other books you might want to read and serve less as footnotes and more as parenthetical statements that would have slowed the main writing down had they been interjected into the text. I like his footnotes; some don't. I would suspect if you were more of a scholarly person, you might not find them so clever.
Production: The format, colors, layout, spacing, font -- it's different and hard to get used to at first.
Phrasing: Bell uses lots of one-sentence paragraphs and what I'd call "incomplete" sentences that are like interjections or after-thoughts. It takes some getting used to at first.

The title, Sex God: Exploring the endless connections between sexuality and spirituality, might put some people off right away.

That's too bad. You should read the book.

Book Review Links: (read them!)

Fishing the Abyss
Scot McKnight, Part 1 (what's good about the book), Part 2 (critique of the book)
Ben Witherington

Labels: book reviews, recommended reading

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Blue Like Jazz.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 3 comments link this post

Blue Like Jazz is a "me, too!" book.

It's that moment when you've reached the end of your limit wondering what's wrong with you and if you're normal or not and if anyone else in the world could possibly understand you and if you're alone and then some person says something that completely nails exactly what you're about and you want to holler "me, too!"

Me, too.

Chapter 14, entitled "Alone: Fifty-three Years in Space" is where I started to really yell at Donald Miller, the author of the book.

"How did he know this!?!" I scribbled in the margin. "Who told him?!"

When you live on your own for a long time, however, your personality changes because you go so much into yourself you lose the ability to be social... There is an entire world inside yourself, and if you let yourself, you can get so deep inside it you will forget the way to the surface.

[...]

When I lived alone it was very hard for me to be around people. I would leave parties early. I would leave church before worship was over so I didn't have to stand around and talk. The presence of people would agitate me. I was so used to being able to daydream and keep myself company that other people were an intrusion. It was terribly unhealthy.

I re-read that chapter. And again. How Miller knew all these things is that I am not abnormal and neither is he and people everywhere experience what he described. I know that irritation of just being in the presence of people; I experienced it this year in Nicaragua. Twenty-two people. All talking to me. I thought I might die.

Me, too.

Miller talks about church, about faith, about money, about confession, about romance -- and he talks right to you so honestly that whether you've lived his life (which is impossible) you'll still see your own supposedly private thoughts and questions right there on the page.

Me, too.

After his chapter on what being alone does to a person, which I can attest to, he stumbles into love a few pages later. Not just romantic love, but how to love people, and how to love yourself. In describing a time when he lived with "hippies", he tells of how he came to feel loved.

I liked them very much because they were interested in me.

[...]

But more than they talked, they listened.

[...]

I did not feel fat or stupid or sloppily dressed. I did not feel like I did not know the Bible well enough, and I was never conscious what my hands were doing or whether or not I sounded immature when I talked.

[...]

My Christian communities had always had little unwritten social ethics like don't cuss and don't support Democrats... There was love in the Christian community, but it was conditional love... If people were bad, we treated them as though they were evil or charity...

[...]

I was tired of Christian leaders using biblical principles to protect their power, to draw a line in the sand separating the good army from the bad one.

[...]

The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money.

[...]

When we barter with it, we all lose. When the church does not love its enemies, it fuels their rage. It makes them hate us more.

Miller really expounds on this way of thinking of love, and how in the past he had used love to reward or to punish, to discipline those who irritated him or were not "worthy" by withholding true love. His big moment, the big revelation that finally came to him is going to sound so simple, but I found myself nearly wearing a hole in the page with my highlighter pencil: "I was free to love."

This was something that astounded me. I have always felt we are to love, but with conditions, out of fear that by loving someone who was sinning, I would condone their sin. Never mind that I, myself, am a sinner currently struggling with sin, and am still loved.

After talking about loving others, Miller talks about loving ourselves. This was a chapter I normally would wrinkle my nose at because it seems as if there is nothing but a push for self. However, all the selfishness and me-ness of this culture does little to help people love themselves. The important point here being that until we are able to "receive love", as Miller puts it, we cannot truly show love for others.

My eye would find things on television and in the media and somehow I would compare myself to them without really knowing I was doing it, and this really screwed me up because I never for a second felt I was worthy of anybody's compliments.

(emphasis mine)

I would find myself getting depressed about conversations that never even took place.

I know this. The time spent inside my head becomes real and I find my mood changing based on things that have never happened.

Miller made the point that our value has to come from God, not any other person or external pressure; it must be from God. Then he relates how he reads the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself for the first time.

I would never talk to my neighbor the way I talked to myself.

Me, too. Me, too.

And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it.

Please read this book. Christian leaders all over have been nit-picking its theology since it was published four years ago, missing the point that it isn't about doctrine and instead, that everyone, at some point, needs to know that there are others out the

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Untrodden Grapes.

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Doug TenNapel.

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Jesus for President.

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Where have all the good men gone?

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The Beauty Myth.

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Revelations of an unexpected life.

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The trouble with poetry.

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I am legend. (And other stories.)

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I want. Now. List.

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Children's books: Squids will be squids.

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Rob Bell interview.

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Recommended Reading: Fishing the Abyss List.

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Rocking chair reading.

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John Stott: Through the Bible Through the Year.

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Into the Wild.

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Rob Bell's Sex God.

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Blue Like Jazz.