by emma | Oct 20, 2007 | Books
I just finished this beautiful wee book this morning. Anne Lamott is one of those writers I had heard about time and again, but had never got round to reading any of her work. Well, it was worth the wait! Bird By Bird (or, Some Instructions on Writting and Life) is full of charm, wit, and seasoned advice. Lamott writes with an honesty I have found in so few Christian writers, and she does it with style. There’s no faffing about, she’s down the line. The book is peppered with personal accounts of pain, struggle and joy – when her dad died, stories of her son Sam, the students she’s taught at courses, writting groups, and so on.
It has honestly been one of the most refreshing things I’ve read this year. I thoroughly recommend you go get it. I want to read one of her other books now, Traveling Mercies… anyone have a copy I could borrow?
“And I don’t think you have that kind of time either. I don’t think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won’t be good enough at it, and I don’t think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect. You don’t want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath.”
(p. 170)
by emma | Jun 10, 2007 | Books
Yesterday I read Rob Bells latest book, Sex God. Rob is speaking in Belfast on Tuesday night, as part of the Calling All Peacemakers tour, so I thought I’d take the chance to read this before then. I found it a really useful book in exploring sexuality and how it relates into everything we do.
Bell has always come in for critiscm, but until now, I’ve never really had any problem with him. However, as much as I appreciated this book… there was one thing he said that just doesn’t sit well with me. He is speaking about the Jewish context of marriage and sex, that in the Hebrew understanding you weren’t married until you’d had sex. He talks around this about ‘unmarried’ couples and suggets that maybe in God’s eyes they are already married… I dunno about this! I think you should read it and judge for yourself. I’m not going to throw out everything because of this, but it did kinda take me aback for a moment.
On a brighter note, here are some points I loved…
“Our sexuality is all the ways we strive to reconnect with our world, with each other,
and with God.”
“Sexy is when it feels good to be in your own skin. Your own body feels right, it feels comfortable. Sexy is when you love being you.”
“Sex becomes a search. A search for something they’re missing. A quest for the unconditional embrace. And so they go from relationship to relationship, looking for what they already have.”
“Is sex in its greatest, purest, most joyful and honest expression a glimpse of forever?
Are these brief moments of abandon and oneness and ecstasy just a couple of seconds or minutes of how things will be forever?
Is sex a picture of heaven?”
RELATED:
Sex God :: Endless Connections
by emma | May 15, 2007 | Books
Over the weekend I read Matt Hyams book, I Still Have More Questions Than Answers. I was initally drawn to it because of the titles… its one of my key phrases I think! Then having a flick through it I saw one of the chapters was titled “Messing up the Church” which grabbed my attention even more! It’s a quick read, I read it on the 6 hour car journey back up from England at the weekend.
Its a very personal account of the journey of Southampton Vineyard and of Matt himself. He writes candidly about his struggles and questions. I was encouraged and challenged and provoked as I read this book… at one point Matt shares how they scrapped their very slick, polished, professional Sunday services where the “professionals” lead the worship, in favour of giving each housegroup responsibility over leading the Sunday services, providing everyone with a chance to bring their gifts to the table . It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately… what we display on Sunday at our meetings is naturally what we put our efforts into. Does it reflect the priorities we want to have, maybe even the ones we say we have?
Matt also shares a bit about his heart for the poor and the broken, things that encouraged me because I often feel them, and still things that challenged me, because I still have so far to go…
“Certainly, we can support work in these countries financially from here but I just cannot believe that this is all Jesus wants for us. It just seems too distant and cold. It seems to cost us so little and, ultimately, it does not really affect our hearts that much…”
“It will cost us to be Christ to them because the very thing that makes them poor in spirit will make them hard to be with.”
by emma | May 3, 2007 | Books
This is a story about a family and, as there is a ghost involved, you might call it a ghost story. Not every family is a ghost story. The dead sit at our tables long after they have gone…
Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.
What if you got it back?
Recently read “For One More Day” by Mitch Albom. Wow what an incredible book! I’ve had him recommeneded and keep meaning to read his other stuff, but wow this book blew me away. It even made me cry at a few points… go read it, its a powerful story of a mothers love.
“Maybe it’s like my old man said: You can be a mama’s boy or a daddy’s boy, but you can’t be both. So you cling to the one you think you might lose…“
by emma | Mar 21, 2007 | Books
One of the books I read while in Paris was Organic Church by Neil Cole. The basic premise of the book is that the way we do church today is quite often contrary to what Jesus taught, and that we should be “growing faith where life happens”. It was a quick read (read it in a day), here’s some thoughts…
“We want to lower the bar of how church is done and raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple.”
[One of the goals of CMA]
“Someone once said that we shape our buildings and then they shape us.”
Cole makes this statement in one of the chapters, which reminded me of conversations we had at the Soliton sessions (here and here) last month, where I first heard this idea. It’s something I’m thinking about at the minute, I don’t think I’ve got very far with it but I’m mulling it over. I read somewhere about how one of the reasons churches need to spend so much money on buildings etc is because we have increased our need for private spaces. We no longer live with the hospitality that allows our homes and our buildings and our personal property to be used for public/corporate worship etc. What would happen if we opened ourselves up again and regained such a deep sense of community that we allowed anything of our to be used in/for church meetings? There will probably be more thoughts on this later!
“Men are looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.”
[E.M. Bounds]
A reminder to live fully for Christ… nothing else matters. We pray for his will in how to build the church, for how to do so many things for him (which isn’t a bad thing), but how much time do we spend praying that God would mould us into the leaders he needs us to be? What if, for example, our churches aren’t growing because we aren’t leaders that are growing enough to shepherd them?
“Many take Christ’s words and apply them backwards. They teach that if you have position in the Kingdom of God it is important to lead as a servant. But Jesus meant us to see that those who first serve are indeed the leaders that others will follow.”
“Instead of drawing people out of community and robbing what community already existed, Jesus’ plan is to inject the Gospel into an existing community.”
This sentance is a good indication of the contents of the rest of the book – instead of creating highly engineered church environments where people can come to do life, we take church to the places the people already are.
“Many of us settle for lesser lives, for stories not worth telling.“
by emma | Mar 2, 2007 | Books
I read Jesus & Non-Violence this afternoon, a relatively short but highly informative book! Found this much easier to get into than Brimlow’s What About Hitler?, but then again, this is a substantially shorter book!
Wink starts off by looking at the social/cultural context of Matthew 5:38-41, and then goes on to expand on this.
Some stuff I liked:
“Reduction of conflict by means of a phony “peace” is not a Christian goal. Justice is the goal, and that may require an acceleration of conflict as a necessary stage.”
This is helping me greatly… I went through a stage were I was very much anti-war, at all costs… I think I am slowly coming back around to realising that in a perfect world, violence at all costs is wrong, but we unfortunately live in a fallen world and though we strive for perfection, we do not attain it.
“Gandhi continually reiterated that if a person could not act nonviolently in a situation, violence was preferable to submission.”
“Nonviolent revolution is not a program for seizing power. It is, says Gandhi, a program for transforming relationships.”
“We have no right to hope to harvest what we have not sown.”
(Miguel D’Escoto)
This reminded me of Micah 4:3 actually, about how “nation will no longer fight against nation, nor train for war.” Why do we expect to have a peaceful and stable world if we continue to use force in an attempt to bring peace into existence?
“…to die with clean hands and a dirty heart.“
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