Seven for Summer
Julie Lane Gay is a writer and editor who lives in Vancouver with her husband Greg and their four children. She attends St John’s, Vancouver.
Virgil Wander
Leif Enger
Grove Atlantic, 2018
If you hope to enjoy a novel in the sunshine this summer, Virgil Wander would be my first suggestion. This is a tale of quiet transformation, a book you can’t put down because you’re caught up with the characters, rooting for their luck to change.
Will the mysterious, kite-flying stranger find his long-lost son? Will the town’s sole tycoon step up and save the dying community? Will Virgil and the elegant Nadine foster more than a friendship? Can this motley crew rally to help Virgil salvage the town’s old movie theatre?
Leif Enger’s first novel in twelve years (you might remember Peace Like a River and So Young, Brave and Handsome – and if you don’t, you might race to the bookstore), Virgil Wander is Virgil’s reflection of life in his dwindling small town after he loses control of his old Dodge in a snowstorm and plunges into Lake Superior. The near-death repercussions are funny and interesting, but it’s the subtle changes in relationships and the town’s renewed fight to stay alive that beguile. Virgil reflects:
If I were to pinpoint when the world began reorganizing itself – that is, when my seeing of it began to shift – it would be the day a stranger named Rune blew into our bad luck town of Greenstone, Minnesota, like a spark from a boreal gloom.
Soon others blow in too.
Not long after Virgil Wander was published, a pastor asked Enger about his new novel, as it seemed “less Christian” than his earlier ones. Enger replied, “The book doesn’t concern itself with either orthodoxy or politics but with decency, which is faith’s unsung hero.”
How the Body of Christ Talks:
Recovering the Practice of
Conversation in the Church
C. Christopher Smith
Brazos Press, 2019
For the last five years there has been more frequent talk of “community” in our churches as we’ve become increasingly aware that it has evangelistic potential, as well as offering needed support for us all.
More recently another c-word, “conversation,” has come to the fore, and I’m not sure whether this springs from watching world leaders unable to converse, or our own loneliness. How do we ensure we talk together, even when we disagree? If we are the body of Christ, how are our various parts working together?
Chris Smith’s How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church looks at these needs, and he offers both a theological framework for conversation, as well as suggestions and guidance on how to get started and navigate obstacles. He writes:
Despite the conversational nature of our bodies and our calling to live conversationally with our brothers and sisters in Christ, a long and complicated history of modern socioeconomic and technological forces has crippled our capacity for talking with each other – especially those whose backgrounds and convictions differ from our own.
When was the last time your church gathered to talk over the upsides and downsides of technology and its use in our worship and lives? Or the rampant rise in anxiety? When was the last time you felt heard?
The Storm-Tossed Family:
How the Cross Re-shapes the Home
Russell Moore
B&H Books, 2018
I avoid books about family. They just make me feel bad. I love my family deeply, even enthusiastically, but we’ve had a bumpy time in marriage and parenting. Family books pick at my scabs.
Not surprisingly, when Russell Moore’s The Storm-Tossed Family was recommended to me, I left it on the table. I let it get buried under the mail and newspapers. But soon another person recommended it, and then another. Eventually, I gathered my courage.
Moore’s central framework is that we should view family, “with clear eyes, through the lens of the cross.” He expands, “The cross shows us how we can find beauty and brokenness, justice and mercy, peace and wrath, all in the same place. The pattern of the Christian life is crucified glory – this is as true for our lives in our families as in everything else.”
Looking at marriage, singleness, parenting, traumas, aging and sexuality, Moore is practical but avoids formulas. He’s hopeful, but sticks close to Scripture. He pushes back at ideologies and false notions in countless places.
…the church is a household economy, where all of us use our gifts for the sake of the mission…. We are family. That means no Christian lives alone, and no Christian dies alone. There is no such thing as a “single” Christian.
He resists the notion of families as the ideal state, and families as responsible for all harm. Instead he insists, “We must see the family clearly, but we must see beyond it. The only safe harbour for the storm-tossed family is a nail-scarred home.”
Bill Reimer is the manager, and has been for many years, of Regent College Bookstore, one of North America’s largest surviving theological bookstores. He attends St John’s, Vancouver.
Embracing Contemplation:
Reclaiming a Christian Spiritual Practice
Ed. by John H. Coe and Kyle C. Strobel
InterVarsity Press, 2019
According to the editors, there has been a gap between expectations of the spiritual life and engagement with the spiritual theology of our evangelical forebears. This gap is especially present in the Christian practice of “contemplation” and here the million-and-a-quarter word Christian Directory by Richard Baxter is referenced. Baxter was well-versed in Roman Catholic sources and showed how contemplation was a part of the broader Christian spiritual tradition. Following in this tradition, these evangelical Protestant contributors to Embracing Contemplation seek to portray from different angles the truth that “contemplation and contemplative prayer are the simplest experiences in the Christian life.” (Contemplation is a loving or grateful adoration of God while meditation often involves texts, including Scripture.) Divided into two parts, Part One is a series of eight “Historical Inquiries” while Part Two puts forth seven “Constructive Proposals.” Christian contemplation must be grounded in the Incarnation as defined in the Nicene Creed. But there is room for a variety of approaches including “wordless” prayer, Medieval exercises of self-examination and, following Calvin, the practice of a kind of “Sabbath mysticism.” I found particularly helpful the historical chapter by Tom Schwanda. Other contributors include Hans Boersma and Simon Chan.
Notes on a Shipwreck:
A Story of Refugees, Borders, and Hope
by Davide Enia
Other Press, 2019
“History is sending people ahead, in flesh and blood, people of every age.” “History” in this narrative is set on the island of Lampedusa, the site of landing for tens of thousands of refugees but also the environs where countless others met their end, having failed to reach shore. The focus here is the October 3, 2013 tragedy that saw a 66-foot boat sink with the drowning of more than 360 migrants. Written by an Italian playwright, the book is a flowing set of eyewitness accounts, without chapter divisions, that tell the stories of both rescue and horrific failure. When one group of survivors are asked where they are from, they respond, “Niger,” “Cameroon,” “Syria,” “Eritrea,” “Sudan,” “Somalia,” “Morroco,” “Tunisia,” and then, “Nepal!” Faith is at most an intuition within Enia’s perspective, but still there are images of survivors arriving on shore with arms held up in prayer while others fall to their knees in thanksgiving. Water-soaked Bibles and Korans are left in boats, often no doubt by individuals who did not survive the voyage. This is a bleak book, but one that reminds the Christian of the commandment to always have an open heart to the refugee.
The Library Book
By Susan Orlean
Simon & Schuster, 2018
Susan Orlean, a staff writer for the New Yorker, tells the story of the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Public Library that consumed more than 400,000 books and damaged hundreds of thousands more. This is a mystery story from beginning to end even though the question of whodunit is never finally resolved. Along the way the cultural history of the LA Library is told in a compelling fashion. Back in 1880, eighty percent of librarians in the US were male although the LA Library saw several strong-willed women hold leadership roles at various times in the early years. The library continues to evolve and with the advent of the Internet, the Central Library now trucks 35,000 books each weekday to it seventy-two branches. The city library has become a centre where the homeless generally find a place and new immigrants are provided with important settlement services. In the US there are more libraries than there are McDonalds! At the end of this stimulating ride, I was left pondering the place of the book in Christian culture. Apart from the story of a fundamentalist burning of some thousand comic books several decades ago, predictably the place of the Christian book in American culture is absent from Orlean’s book – this despite the fact that mass literacy was the product of Christian civilization.
The Second Mountain:
The Quest for a Moral Life
By David Brooks
Random House, 2019
This is a courageous book. David Brooks, a prestigious op-ed writer for the New York Times, had years ago climbed his mountain of accomplishment but then found himself in a deep valley of defeat and despair. The readers of his columns picked up on some of this. But in the last couple of years Brooks has been beating a new drum. Augustine, he has said, is now his hero. He unabashedly advocates finding new strength by setting out on a quest to climb a second mountain that involves shedding one’s ego and starting a life of interdependence. Before the Introduction is finished, Brooks has quoted C.S. Lewis three times including from the Weight of Glory; “[the] burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back.” The reader may wonder where this is going. Towards the end of the book, Brooks reveals that he has in fact undergone a Christian conversion, albeit not an “individualistic” one. We are called to a life of commitment and solidarity with our neighbours. Joy is a theme throughout the book, and this is a joyful read. TAP
