Books read February 2014

February was a good month for taking care of sick children and trying to put together a class syllabus. It was not a good month for meeting reading goals.

My goal is to read at least 52 books in 2014 (at least one book per week); I've finished 7 books so far this year: I finished the following books in February (~427 pages).:

Los orígenes de nuestra cultura autoritaria by José Ignacio Garcia Hamilton
The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited by Scot McKnight

García's tome on how the colonial history of Latin America (and specifically, Argentina) continues to plague its progress was very interesting, and I put up a long review/summary (in Spanish) at Good Reads.

McKnight's little thesis was good and reached a lot of conclusions I've already reached from reading John Driver.

Books read January 2014

My goal is to read at least 52 books in 2014 (at least one book per week). I read the following books in January (~1086 pages).

The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey Into Christian Faith by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield
The Naked Anabaptist: The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith by Stuart Murray
On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson
Piense: la vida intelectual y el amor de Dios by John Piper [Think]
Guía para preparar monografías y otros texto expositivos by Ezequiel Ander-Egg and Pablo Valle

1. Piper's Think was probably my favorite.
2. The most riveting reading were the chapters surrounding Miller's Bridge in On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. As my two-year-old would say: "Oh my!". Oh my! indeed.
3. Most pleasently surprising/personally challenging was Rosaria Champagne Butterfield's which I offhandly picked up on New Years and couldn't put it down.
4. I liked The Naked Anabaptist, as would be expected, but it seemed like a more exact title would be  An Emergent, Postchristendom Church, in Anabaptist Clothing

Music find: Hiram Ring

Under the Radar led me to Hiram Ring:

His bandcamp site describes him as follows: "Hiram was born and raised in Ghana, West Africa. A globe-trotting musician, his music has been compared to a mixture of JackJohnson and Bob Dylan. He moved to Singapore in 2010 and is currently working on a PhD in Linguistics, documenting an unwritten language in India."

Christian mix of Jack Johnson and Bob Dylan? Yes, please.

Upon first listen, I really like the track "Live" for its Jack Johnson feel. Check it out:

Running (like a) log

While my last running log was rather optimistic, the above graph hints at the difficult I've faced in running over the past four weeks. The blue line shows what I should have run each week, and the red line how much I actually logged. Inclement weather, unscheduled events, and a familial medical crisis have made getting out to run very difficult.

Yesterday however I did get 5 miles in, which was what was scheduled for Saturday, so I could modify the graph to look like this:

On Fröhlich-inspired Nazarene separatism

The library where I work recently discarded some 800+ old books (mostly in English and German, some dating before 1900). I only snagged one, a book published in 1931 by E. H. Broadbent, and published by Pickering & Inglis (London) titled The pilgrim church: being some account of the continuance through succeeding centuries of churches practising the principles taught and exemplifed in the New Testament. I was leafing through it yesterday and found that it contains some material on the Nazarenes, or the Apostolic Christian Chruch as it's known in the United States. This is from page 345:

Owing to his own experiences, Fröhlich wrote with unmeasured condemnation of the formal religion prevailing in the great Churches, Catholic and Protestant, and the Nazarenes generally are unsparing in their denunciation of what they believe to be contrary to the teaching of the New Testament. Among them a Lutheran church may be described as a "den of thieves", while many of them seem hardly to believe in the possibility of salvation outside their own circles. This exaggeration shows itself in Fröhlich's teaching.

The entirety of the text is available at Project Gutenburg Australia. The part on the Nazarenes is on pages 342-346 (in the chapter titled Russia). Fröhlich is also mentioned on page 373.

A chill morning

Today's a day off, and with the arrival of minor storm, the temperature dropped 20 degrees yesterday afternoon to a chilly 65°F this morning. So I was chilling out in the front room this morning, doing some reading and drinking mate, and this came crawling across the floor:

This is only the third or fourth scorpion I've seen in Paraguay, and the first I've seen at this house. She was probably brought out by the flooded state of her normal hiding places. Still, it's a little unnerving to see this little monster crawling across the floor where your baby romps all day, with her tail curled and ready to strike. A quick Google search reveals little helpful information about scorpions in Paraguay, mostly articles about the rock band's cancelled concert last year.

One 2002 newspaper article says only one person has died from a scorpion bite in 1980, but warns that some bites could be fatal for children under 9 and the elderly. Apparently the only poisonous species of scorpion in Paraguay is the Tityus trivittatus (which interestingly doesn't have a Wikipedia page in English; it's not that often that I find a page on the Spanish Wikipedia that doesn't have a corresponding (and usually more informative) page in English). From the pictures, it seems that the one I killed could be this species.

I was finishing up reading 1 Corinthians as she appeared, right in the part of chapter 15 where it talks about different kinds of bodies and death being swallowed up. Her appearance definitely brought a different vibe to the text.

After that, I had a great breakfast: homemade chipa, and a chai latte (which only tastes better in the beautiful work of art from J. Fetzer Pottery).

+

Marilynne Robinson on God's "jealousy"

"For the Lord your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God." - Deuteronomy 4:24

Upon reading this yesterday, I was reminded about what Marilynne Robinson says about the word "jealousy" as ascribed to God. I was reading in Spanish, and the word "celoso" is a much broader term than jealous in English--in accordance with Robinson's comments (see below). "Celo" can mean both jealousy and zeal, but it can also refer to an animal that's in heat. So her suggestion of "impassioned" sounds like a better choice, especially considering that seven verses later God is described as "a merciful God, he will neither abandon you nor destroy you; he will not forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them." (4:31).

Here is Robinson's commentary, from p. 109 and 110 of When I Was a Child I Read Books.
"'Impassioned' is usually used by the Jewish Publication Society to translate the word other English translations render as 'jealous.' The Hebrew stem apparently means 'to grow red.' 'Jealous' comes from the same Greek root as 'zealous,' and the Greek words that derive from it are usually translated in the New Testament as 'zeal' or 'zealous.' In its earliest English uses, for example in John Wycliffe's fourteenth-century translation of the Old Testament, 'jealous' often has that meaning, suggesting ardor and devotion. In modern translations the Hebrew word is usually translated as 'zeal' when the subject is a human being (as in 1 Kings 19:10), which must indicate an awareness of the wider meaning of the word. But 'jealousy' is virtually always imputed to God. Jealousy has evolved into a very simple and unattractive emotion, in our understanding of it, and God is much abused for the fact of his association with it. Since translations are forever being laundered to remove complexity and loveliness,and since tradition is not a legitimate plea in these matters, one cannot help wondering how this particular archaism manages to survive untouched."

(P.S. In preparing this post I came across the Marilynne Robinson Appreciation Society. Excited to follow their blog!)

When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson

I lifted this book from my bibliophilic benefactress's house on Christmas Day. I planned on giving it back before leaving the United States, but then I fell deep enchantment by Robinson's writing, so it went with me on the plane. This has been known to happen; I was utterly taken up in the symphonic strains of her Gilead years ago.

But this is the not the stirring fiction of Gilead; this is biting, eclectic, plodding, genius essay-writing. Robinson manages to treat polemic subjects in innocuous, ironic, indirect yet wonderfuly pointed ways. This is such an important book for the USA right now.

This is essentially a book about the United States. Her essays are born out of her commitment to and study of American culture and history, and perhaps too her anguish at the current state of affairs. What makes this book so different from the sound bites and cynicism is that her tone is marked by critical commitment and hopeful realism (a phrase from Marva Dawn).

I should like to post more on this book's material in the weeks to come, but let it be known that this book is wonderful and important.

Awkward Non-Cognate

Today I was saying (in Spanish) how the fruitcake packaged by the large international companies would probably last longer than the supermarket ones, because they have more preservatives. Except I couldn't think of the right word, so I fished for a cognate and ended up saying they'd be good longer because they had more condoms.

I knew it was wrong even before I said it.

Here's an interesting list of more false cognates: http://spanish.about.com/cs/vocabulary/a/obviouswrong.htm

Running log

By: Madeleine Guenette 

My goal is to run a marathon before I turn thirty, so I'm preparing for a marathon on August 4th. I logged 19.5 miles over the last two weeks, and in the process I think I knocked off the 10 lbs I gained over Christmas. Today's was the longest run yet: 4 miles, which I did in 36 minutes (or so, it was about the time it took to get through Rich Mullins' Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth CD). It was a comfortable run, so I'm pretty happy with my progress.

(I'm on week 4 of Hal Higdon's Supreme Novice program.)

Music find: Progeny

I came across Vincent Anastasi & Progeny from a post at the Rabbit Room.

I like their music, but how not to be in love with a guy who plays in a band with his adolescent sons (or the idea, not the guy).

Check out this radio show where they're featured. Wonderful!

Hot in Paraguay

Yesterday, I went to bed right before midnight, and the simple indoor thermometer in our kitchen registered 96°F.  This is what weather.com has listed as yesterday's (Feb 1, 2013) temperatures from 5:00 on:

Nights like these always bring to my lips the song "Satin Summer Nights" from Paul Simon's musical The Capeman.

"In the light" by Charlie Peacock

After an enthusiastic post at the Rabbit Room, I downloaded a sampler of Charlie Peacock's music at Noisetrade.

"In the light" used to be one of my favorite songs, and this live version has a lot of vibe:

Smorgasblog from November

Here are some of the more interesting things I first posted on Facebook in November:

November 12

"Dancing to jazz (Coal Train Railroad) with a toddler on lunch break!"

November 13

Silver & Gold, by Sufjan Stevens

"

Great news today! New Christmas album fromSufjan Stevens!

He writes:
"Who can save us from the infidels of Christmas commodity? Look no further, tired shopper, for your hero arrives as the diligent songwriter Sufjan Stevens: army of one, banjo in one hand, drum machine in the other, holed up in his room, surrounded by hymnals, oratorios, music charts, sacred harp books, photo-copied Readers Dige

st Christmas catalogs—all the weaponry of Yuletide incantations—singing his barbaric yawp above the snow-capped rooftops.

His song is love; his song is hope; his song is peace. His song conjures the fruitcake world of his own imagination with steadfast pursuit of the inexplicable bliss of Christmas Promises—“Gloria in excelsis deo”—summoning the company of angels, the helper elves, the shepherds keeping flock, the innkeepers, the coupon-clippers, the marathon runners, the cross-country skiers, the bottom feeders, the grocery store baggers, the bridge and tunnel drivers, the construction workers, the ice cream makers, the toll booth workers, the street sweepers, the single mothers, the custodians, the rich and the poor, the walking dead, the community of saints, the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit, the Prince of Persia, and all the invisible hosts of heaven to participate in this absurd cosmic adventure, pursuing holly-jolly songs of hope and redemption with a sacred heart for the love of the holidays, for the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen."

"

November 21

Christian? Pro-Life? Resist or Subvert Thanksgiving.

www.jesusradicals.com

"Some food for thought for Thanksgiving, which this author suggests is "idolatrous and pagan in that [it gives] heavy, even ultimate, theological significance to the nation-state of the United States of America.""

A simple look at Lincoln's speech shows how much good there is in Thanksgiving:
"I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union."
http://www.washingtoninst.org/2893/on-lincoln-and-his-thanksgiving-proclamation/

November 25

N.T. Wright, It's About the Bible, not Fake ideas of Progress - in the Fulcrum:

www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk

"‎"The resurrection of Jesus is the only Christian guide to the question of where history is going. Unlike the ambiguous 'progress' of the Enlightenment, it is full of promise""

November 30

A Sophisticated Philosophy of Functions

phiwumbda.org

"This is really classy"

"Exhaustingly joyous": Lee C. Camp on vocation

Lee C. Camp has an invigorating post on vocation. The following excerpt begins with a quote from Evelyn Underhill:

“Our place is not the auditorium but the stage—or, as the case may be, the field, workshop, study, laboratory—because we ourselves form part of the creative apparatus of God, or at least are meant to form part of the creative apparatus of God. He made us in order to use us, and use us in the most profitable way; for his purpose, not ours. To live a spiritual life means subordinating all other interests to that single fact.”

We are not called, she goes on to say, to be amateurs, messy and hap-hazard in our work, but to keep a steady hand on the plow, employing constancy, subordinating our own agendas to a larger agenda one may sometimes not understand.

This liberty—this rigorous, demanding vocation—to form part of the creative apparatus of God, is exhaustingly joyous... It is the sort of freedom and joy that the famed runner Eric Liddel, was trying to get at when his character in Chariots of Fire says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” Or the well-spoken commentary of Frederick Beuchner upon vocation: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Petra Bosma on dialogue

Petra Bosma has a great piece at Christianity Today, emphasizing the importance of face-to-face dialogue in our technocratic world. She writes:

"Real conversation uses different skills than online communication. It requires the participants to have patience with each other, and to reveal more of themselves than they would online. We dumb ourselves down in online conversation. We depend on sound bites. We expect responses faster and are more likely to relay only the polished version of what we are truly experiencing. Though social media consistently requests status updates, rarely does it require us to post anything of depth... ideas, especially important, difficult, maybe treasonous ones, need time, care, and interaction: around dinner tables, holding cups of coffee, or holed up in burntout bunkers."

Have I won monopoly to forfeit my soul?*

Tim Chester's summary of CB Samuel’s presentation on Integral Mission, Humility and Lifestyle (Sept 2001):

Photo by: Antonio Correia

"The problem with lifestyle is not its theory, but its practice. The story is told of an Indian guru who taught his disciples to live on just the basic necessities of life. One day he sent his best disciple out to make his own way in the world. This disciple owned only two loin cloths – one to wear while the other was washed. And so this disciple lived, each day wearing one cloth while he washed the other. One day a rat ate his spare cloth as it hung out to dry. His neighbors gave him another, but he realized he also needed a cat to keep the rat away. And because the cat needed milk he got a cow. To feed the cow he obtained a small piece of land for fodder. Soon he was hiring people to cultivate the land so he did not have to interrupt his meditations. In time he acquired a large estate and a fine house. One day his guru came by. Seeing the large house, he asked his disciple how this had happened. The disciple said: 'I need all this to protect my loin cloth’.

"When many of us were young Christians we committed ourselves to radical lifestyles. But now we have many justifications for the possessions that over time we have acquired. We need to recover a biblical perspective on wealth and money. Jesus sees money as a spiritual force. He says we need consciously to short-circuit its power in our lives. Jacques Ellul said Jesus was the only one who was prepared to describe money as mammon. We need to define limits for consumption. We evangelicals have a theology for the creation and distribution of wealth, but we need to have a theology of consumption. We need to define what is enough? We need to learn that we do not need own everything. We need to explore the possibilities of sharing with others and owning things communally."

*I have had Switchfoot's "Company Car" stuck in my head for the last couple of days.

DWebb on information overload

A gem on Noisetrade today: Free acoustic download of Derek Webb's new album (limited time offer).

Derek Webb is special to me. In college he guided me into a spirituality of humility with She Must and Shall Go Free (as well as leading me into the folk/acoustic realm). As a college drop-out, his House Show live CD led me into a rich theology of Gospel and Church, while his I See Things Upside Down led me through the necessary lament of having left the Christian community at Kenyon. For awhile I thought it was John Piper who had most influenced me in my understanding of "Reformed" Christianity, but I recently realized that Derek Webb was very much more. His five solas tattoo led to a framed copy on my desk.

Regardless of his weird latest albums (I have my beef with Stockholm Syndrome), he's a genius and prophet in his own right. The acoustic version of his new album captures what he does so well, combining great melodies with songwriting and critical acumen*, and it's good for an old folky fan like myself.

On the album he has a song called "I feel everything" which hints at the struggle for sanity in our age of stimulus and information. It is a quiet song of lament/confession, rather bleak in its outlook, but an honest introspection of the senselessness into which so much of our consumption leads us. In this age of information and entertainment obsession, it can feel hard to think and be. Consumism quickly reduces us into subjects incapable of doing anything but wanting (if even that). Webb captures the pain of that in his song.

Download the album on Noisetrade while it's still available. You can listen to the song here(I Feel Everything). But most importantly, step away from the barrage of information and simply be before God in solitude and silence.

"I feel everything" by Derek Webb

i am not sure i want this to take, what it's taking
but that just seems to be the choice, i am making
mother this is all i ever wanted
now how do i get back to where there isn't everything, only you

i cannot hear because i hear everything
i cannot see because i see everything
i cannot feel because i feel everything

it is not peace i find, it is not satisfaction
it's not the life i always dreamed or imagined
it is not wisdom, it is not strength, it is not control
it is a promise meant to quell my every fear, yet leave me cursed

i've nothing left, no life or death, no will that's free
i have no way now to explain, what's come over me
i'm just a body overwhelmed, and lying still
a casualty of knowing what i want and wanting what i know

* a word I learned yesterday playing the GRE Vocab test at www.memrise.com

Inductive study of the Message!?!

By: Augusto C.  at photo.net

"Beer is good and sex is better, but never should they go together". This was one of the refrains of our freshman orientation at the libertine liberal arts college I attended. Upperclassman (perhaps some with considerable hypocrisy) chanted the rhyme to remind us not to mix inebriation with lechery. I suppose there was some wisdom there [emphasize some, not wisdom].

Now fast forward ten years... This trimester I'm teaching a course on the book of Ephesians, as a means of looking at the teachings of the primitive Christian communities, and also as a sort of introduction to Christian ethics. I've taught similar courses twice, and have used the opportunity to present some basic tools of inductive Bible study (as popularized by Intervarsity: observation-interpretation-application).

All good and well, except that this year I chose to use the text of Eugene Peterson's the Message, instead of the ESV as I've previously done. I personally love the Message with all its quirks and Americanisms and poetic pastoral wisdom, and last trimester with these students, the Message was an effective means of bringing color to the narratives of Jesus' life and teaching. But this last week as we were digging into Ephesians 4:1-16 together, the Beer&Sex refrain was brought to mind: "The Message is good, and inductive Bible study is better, but never should they go together!"

What a mess. Where the ESV calls the Ephesians to be "eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace", Peterson calls for "pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences". Ignoring the fact that the Message omits the Spirit (although, can we really ignore that?), how do I explain to these EFL students what "mending fences" means? Do we have to bring the whole Robert Frost poem in, and exegete that, in order to properly exegete Ephesians 4? Also, doesn't the whole concept of "good fences make good neighbors" contradict what we were reading in Ephesians 2 the other week about the wall of enmity being torn down? Maybe not.

My students got snagged around verse 14, too, where Peterson translates "No prolonged infancies among us, please. We’ll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are an easy mark for impostors. God wants us to grow up". It sounded like intolerance to my students, rather than the culmination of the gift-giving of Christ as in the original structure.

I still love the Message and find it useful. I also just came across the wikipedia article on the Message where Peterson is quoted as saying "I would never recommend it be used as saying, 'Hear the Word of God from The Message.'" So it's likely that Peterson would join me in affirming: "The Message is good, and inductive Bible study is better, but never should they go together!"

Oak & Apple: A Lo-Fi Hymnal

Here's a fine CD worth downloading, from Wilder Adkins