by emma | Mar 6, 2008 | Books
Just watched this excellent video of pastor and author Eugene Peterson in conversation with Dean Nelson at the Writers Symposium by the Sea. Peterson is one of my favourite writers, his books are extremely well-written, he goes into a lot of depth while still making it accessible. In this conversation Peterson discusses storytelling predominately, along with translation, imagination, and many other things.
“There are never enough storytellers… I think writing is one of the sacred callings. I wish the church would ordain writers the way they ordain pastors and professors. Give some dignity to this work of the imagination. William Blake always capitalised the word Imagination – for him it was the Holy Spirit…
The imagination is almost, not quite, the same thing as faith. It’s that which connects what we see and what we don’t see, and pulls us through what we see into what we don’t see. Now when that imagination involves trust and participation in the unseen, its faith, but imagination is the training ground for that.”
Watch the video on YouTube here.
HT: Scott
by emma | Feb 20, 2008 | Books
“I cried, I think, because I was coming to understand in a new way just how much was required of me, how much God was going to strip away all my everything, like silver polish taking the tarnish off old forks. I cried because I know more and more how Chekov was right, how we are all running around desperate to make connections with one another, but mostly we are all just estranged. Because I know more and more that this glass here is so very dark, that this really is a long loneliness, that it is both lonely and long.
Sometimes I feel God has taken a paring knife to me. I know the way an apple feels.”
[Short extract from Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner.]
by emma | Feb 12, 2008 | Books
Yesterday I finished off Making Globalisation Work by Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz was Chief Economist at the World Bank from 1997 – 2000, and was widely known as one of the more outspoken critics of globalisation. In 2002 he published Globalisation and its Discontents, which garnered a lot of publicity. Stiglitz was one of the first people from within the high echelons of the IMF/World Bank community who outspokenly disagreed with how the international institutions were managing globalisation. Making Globalisation Work is his follow up book, in which he outlines a framework of how we can restructure globalisation in such a way to be beneficial not only to those in developed nations but also those in the developing nations.
He seems to have a really grounded perspective on development, and talks about how we need “a vision of development that goes beyond GDP.” (Gross Domestic Product is the value of all goods and services produced within a nation in a given year.) He writes,
“Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies. Policies for education or employment need to be looked at through this double lens: how they promote growth and how they affect individuals directly.”
He made a really interesting comment on the impact globalisation has on communities, which I had never thought about before: “(I) emphasized the important role that communities play in successful development; by weakening communities, corporations may, in the long run, even weaken development.” It is almost as if the rise of multinational corporations, as much good as they do, may simultaneously be weakening the structures that bind us together in common humanity. Stiglitz goes on to say, “We may increasingly be part of a global economy, but almost all of us live in local communities, and continue to think, to an extraordinary degree, locally.” What impact would it have if we though on a more global scale? I wonder about this a lot. The point Stiglitz is making is that we care more about one job lost here in our neighborhood than two jobs created in a community in Peru. I often rant and rave about how we need to care more about each other, and then I read this and think about my dad, and how I’d feel if my dad went out of business. (He’s a small-scale farmer as well as holding down another job, and with the likelihood that the CAP will be phased out in 2013, anything could happen.)
“In fact, since lenders are supposed to be sophisticated in risk analysis and in making judgments about a reasonable debt burden. they should perhaps bear even more culpability.”
In a chapter discussing the indebtedness of poor nations, Stiglitz poses the question of who is more culpable: the poor nation trying to feed its citizens or the richer, wiser nation who decided to lend it more money than it could pay back? It’s an interesting question…
Making Globalisation Work is a great book setting out a viable alternative to the way globalisation is currently managed. The question is, are we willing to pay the price that it will take to create a more just world?
“But there is a gap between the rhetoric and the reality – and many of these leaders are ahead of the people in their democracies, who may be fully committed to these lofty goals, but only so long as it does not cost them anything.”
Another world is possible…
by emma | Feb 1, 2008 | Books
I’ve been reading a lot these last two months. One of the books I read over the Christmas break was… Letters To A Young Poet (One of my amazing friends bought me a copy… thanks!). This was one of my new year goals… so first one down. Good feeling.
The book is a collection of Rainer Maria Rilke’s letters to a poet called Franz Xaver Kappus, who had been writting to him. Kappus’ letter are not included, but you get the gist of what he has been saying from Rilke’s response. It’s a short collection, easily read in an hour or two. I think it will be one of the books I come back to time and again, having already read it twice and quoted it lots to other people!
Here’s some quotes… I love this book!
“I know no advice for you save this: to go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it.”
“Live a while in these books, learn from them what seems to you worth learning, but above all love them.”
“And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to break out of it. This very wish will help you, if you use it quietly, and deliberately and like a tool, to spread out your solitude over wide country. People have (with the help of conventions) orientated all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it.”
“Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question whence all this may be coming and whither it is bound? Since you know that you are in the midst of transitions and wished for nothing so may as to change.”
by emma | Jan 22, 2008 | Books
“I always wanted to believe and live the Sermon on the Mount, but usually got told that it did not mean all that I thought it meant, and that I needed to be practical. I would read the Scriptures longingly, trying to imagine how wonderful it would be not to worry about anything, safe and secure in the presence of Jesus all the time. Miracles would be normal. Love would be natural. We could always give and never lose. We could be lied to, cheated and stolen from, and yet always come out ahead. We would never have to take advantage of anyone, or have any motive but to bless other people. Rather than always making contingency plans in case Jesus didn’t do anything, we could count on Him continually. We, our lives, and all that we preach and provide would not be for sale, but would be given freely, just as we have received freely. Our hearts would be carefree in the love of our Father in heaven, who always knows what we need, and we could get on with the glorious business of seeking first His Kingdom and His righteousness. There would always be enough!”
by emma | Jan 9, 2008 | Books
Hope In The Dark is one of the new books I got given for Christmas. It’s quite possibly the most wonderful book I have ever held in my hands! It’s a book of photography of Africa with reflections by Jena Lee, founder of blood:water mission. The book is kind-of the embodiment of what I’d like to do with my life… take pictures that make a difference. Someday…
I stood within the filthy, shack-filled slum of Kibera while also looking up at the stunning clouds that danced across the vast stretch of African sky. There is such tragedy and yet such beauty at the same time. Overwhelmed by the insanity of this broken world, I find it difficult to understand how the pieces of it all fit together. The same earth can hold the fragrence of a field of flowers while also occupying the stench of urine on hot concrete. Who is this God that we call Father, Creator, and Lord? Kenya is here. And so is God.
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