Saturday, April 14, 2012
THE SENTIENT LIFE: After Midnight Thoughts: A Confessionary Blog
THE SENTIENT LIFE: After Midnight Thoughts: A Confessionary Blog: "For so much of my life I had been defending Christianity because I thought to admit we had done any wrong was to discredit the religious sy...
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Review of The Skin Map
This book by Stephen R. Lawhead opens with: Had he but known that before the day was over he would discover the hidden dimensions of the universe, Kit might have been better prepared. At least, he would have brought an umbrella.
Those words grabbed me. I prepared for a rollicking adventure, and that's what I had in this novel as I followed Kit and his girlfriend. Some people have complained that the plot is confusing. I did not think so as Lawhead carefully depicted each time and place and person. I love reading stories told in spiral or parallel or with an unreliable narrator. This story is told like beads scattered on a floor, and it was fun figuring out where each bead went on a necklace.
The story gradually became more serious, and at the end, betrayed and bereaved Kit is lost in time; and I find it hard to wait for the next book in the trilogy. What is he going to do????
Those words grabbed me. I prepared for a rollicking adventure, and that's what I had in this novel as I followed Kit and his girlfriend. Some people have complained that the plot is confusing. I did not think so as Lawhead carefully depicted each time and place and person. I love reading stories told in spiral or parallel or with an unreliable narrator. This story is told like beads scattered on a floor, and it was fun figuring out where each bead went on a necklace.
The story gradually became more serious, and at the end, betrayed and bereaved Kit is lost in time; and I find it hard to wait for the next book in the trilogy. What is he going to do????
Friday, March 9, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
One Thousand Gifts by Anne Voskamp
The other day I read a portion of One Thousand Gifts in the morning while we were doing our Bible reading and prayer. We had just read about Jacob, and so I read to best beloved what Anne had to say about Jacob wrestling with the angel.
Anne is dealing with a son after a fracas in the kitchen and after the shouting has stopped, she tells her son a story:
"There was once a wrestler like us. His name was Jacob. And on a night when he was all alone, staring up at the stars in the dark, unable to sleep because he was scared to go meet his brother the next day, this brother that he had run away from because the brother had wanted to actually take his bare hands and kill him. Talk about taut family ties."...
"... Jacob was terrified to meet his brother Esau. And all night long, he wrestles hard with a man, flailing and thrashing and struggling and he grips his fingers deep into the leg, the torso of the man, and he utterly refuses to let go, right till the sun embers kindle up the horizon. It's hard. He's exhausted. He's confused.....
"And when the man can't overpower or throw off Jacob, he touches the socket of Jacob's hip on the sinew of the thigh. The man breaks Jacob. Then day breaks. And he commands Jacob to let him go.....
"But Jacob, he refuses to let the man go. He doesn't even really know who the man is, can't clearly see his face, but he begs, "I will not let you go until you bless me." And the man turns to Jacob and gives him a new name. Names him Israel, the God wrestler. Says to him, "You've wrestled with God and you've come through." All that while Jacob hadn't known who he was wrestling. Just a man in the dark, a man he couldn't see. And in the black, all that night, it was the face of God over him that he was struggling against. God is behind the faces, son. Can we see?"...
"And you know what Jacob named the place? Peniel-- means God's face. He said, "I saw God face-to-face and have lived to tell the story!"
I smile. "But there's more to the story. There's always more to every story." His lips twitch a sad smile and I see it. I half grin. "A long time ago, a preacher named James H. McConkey asked a friend of his, a doctor, "What is the exact significance of God's touching Jacob upon the sinew of his thigh?"
"And the doctor told him, "The sinew of the thigh is the strongest in the human body. A horse couldn't even tear it apart."
"These are the words I have never forgotten, what preacher McConkey said: "Ah. I see. The Lord has to break us down at the strongest part of our self-life before He can have His own way of blessing with us."
Like this morning, breaking us down at the tough parts...Then we see. See the blessing.
...
"And when Jacob went out the next morning to meet that brother he dreaded? After the dark of the wrestle, and being torn right apart in his strongest part, by a man he didn't even know was God-- do you know what he said? He looked into the face of his brother, that brother who had wanted to kill him, and he said, "To see your face is like seeing the face of God." (Genesis 33:10 NIV)....
"Wrestle with God, beg to see the blessing, and all faces become the face of God. See, son?"
...
Like Jacob, we ask, breathless and heaving, where He is, who He is, for His name here, the only real blessing. "Please tell me your name." We have named the graces and there found His name, Glory, and in the face of man we have seen the face of God. Then Him, the blessing, God, joy-water in the desert.
But wells don't come without first begging to see the wells; wells don't come without first splitting open hard earth, cracking back the lids. There's no seeing God Face-to face without first the ripping.
Tear the thigh to open the eye.
Wrench the socket of the hip, the tough grizzle of the heart, and heal the socket of the eye. It takes practice, wrenching practice to break open the lids. But the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.
Anne is dealing with a son after a fracas in the kitchen and after the shouting has stopped, she tells her son a story:
"There was once a wrestler like us. His name was Jacob. And on a night when he was all alone, staring up at the stars in the dark, unable to sleep because he was scared to go meet his brother the next day, this brother that he had run away from because the brother had wanted to actually take his bare hands and kill him. Talk about taut family ties."...
"... Jacob was terrified to meet his brother Esau. And all night long, he wrestles hard with a man, flailing and thrashing and struggling and he grips his fingers deep into the leg, the torso of the man, and he utterly refuses to let go, right till the sun embers kindle up the horizon. It's hard. He's exhausted. He's confused.....
"And when the man can't overpower or throw off Jacob, he touches the socket of Jacob's hip on the sinew of the thigh. The man breaks Jacob. Then day breaks. And he commands Jacob to let him go.....
"But Jacob, he refuses to let the man go. He doesn't even really know who the man is, can't clearly see his face, but he begs, "I will not let you go until you bless me." And the man turns to Jacob and gives him a new name. Names him Israel, the God wrestler. Says to him, "You've wrestled with God and you've come through." All that while Jacob hadn't known who he was wrestling. Just a man in the dark, a man he couldn't see. And in the black, all that night, it was the face of God over him that he was struggling against. God is behind the faces, son. Can we see?"...
"And you know what Jacob named the place? Peniel-- means God's face. He said, "I saw God face-to-face and have lived to tell the story!"
I smile. "But there's more to the story. There's always more to every story." His lips twitch a sad smile and I see it. I half grin. "A long time ago, a preacher named James H. McConkey asked a friend of his, a doctor, "What is the exact significance of God's touching Jacob upon the sinew of his thigh?"
"And the doctor told him, "The sinew of the thigh is the strongest in the human body. A horse couldn't even tear it apart."
"These are the words I have never forgotten, what preacher McConkey said: "Ah. I see. The Lord has to break us down at the strongest part of our self-life before He can have His own way of blessing with us."
Like this morning, breaking us down at the tough parts...Then we see. See the blessing.
...
"And when Jacob went out the next morning to meet that brother he dreaded? After the dark of the wrestle, and being torn right apart in his strongest part, by a man he didn't even know was God-- do you know what he said? He looked into the face of his brother, that brother who had wanted to kill him, and he said, "To see your face is like seeing the face of God." (Genesis 33:10 NIV)....
"Wrestle with God, beg to see the blessing, and all faces become the face of God. See, son?"
...
Like Jacob, we ask, breathless and heaving, where He is, who He is, for His name here, the only real blessing. "Please tell me your name." We have named the graces and there found His name, Glory, and in the face of man we have seen the face of God. Then Him, the blessing, God, joy-water in the desert.
But wells don't come without first begging to see the wells; wells don't come without first splitting open hard earth, cracking back the lids. There's no seeing God Face-to face without first the ripping.
Tear the thigh to open the eye.
Wrench the socket of the hip, the tough grizzle of the heart, and heal the socket of the eye. It takes practice, wrenching practice to break open the lids. But the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
This is such a cool story!
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-five-elements-of-the-heart-mind/#comment-4343
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Review of The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill
This book is only the second book set in Laos that I have ever read. The setting is fascinating. The suspense is high. The coroner is sweet, except when he is sarcastic, but his victims deserve it, and being sarcastic endangers his life, so you admire his bravery.
He is a communist and had fought for Laos to become communist. At age 72, the communists finally won and he assumed he could retire from being a physician. The party screws him over and makes him the country's only coroner. He learns how to be one as he turns the pages of a French pathology textbook. His assistants are a nurse who reads gossip magazines at work and a man with Down's Syndrome.
When three bodies are found in a lake with marks of torture on them, the incident threatens to cause a war between Laos and Vietnam. He works to find the truth of the deaths, hoping the truth will avert the war. He is also working on the cause of the death of an official's wife, and then the death of the woman who allegedly confessed to the crime.
And then somebody starts shooting at him. He wonders how to keep himself and his assistants alive while he keeps on ferreting out the truth.
Hmong spirituality is treated seriously. I never know what the tribal beliefs of the Hmong were, so that is also fascinating.
I am going to buy a lot more books by Colin Cotterill.
He is a communist and had fought for Laos to become communist. At age 72, the communists finally won and he assumed he could retire from being a physician. The party screws him over and makes him the country's only coroner. He learns how to be one as he turns the pages of a French pathology textbook. His assistants are a nurse who reads gossip magazines at work and a man with Down's Syndrome.
When three bodies are found in a lake with marks of torture on them, the incident threatens to cause a war between Laos and Vietnam. He works to find the truth of the deaths, hoping the truth will avert the war. He is also working on the cause of the death of an official's wife, and then the death of the woman who allegedly confessed to the crime.
And then somebody starts shooting at him. He wonders how to keep himself and his assistants alive while he keeps on ferreting out the truth.
Hmong spirituality is treated seriously. I never know what the tribal beliefs of the Hmong were, so that is also fascinating.
I am going to buy a lot more books by Colin Cotterill.
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