Cooling Twilight

Category: Books

Book Reviews

Review: Help Me Be: Praying in Poems

Help Me Be: Praying in Poems by Dale Fredrickson is a thoughtful collection of modern psalms. Fredrickson takes inspiration from Walter Brueggemann’s Praying the Psalms, dividing this collection into three parts: Orientation (Or, Life is Good), Disorientation (Or, Life is Not Good) and New Orientation (or Life is Good Again). The poems function as prayers and laments to God, praising and glorifying him, crying out to him in despair and contemplating the mysteries and beauty of our relationship with him … exactly what the Biblical Psalms do. (more…)

June 27, 2013
Review: The Great Gatsby

The old adage when it comes to art is “show, don’t tell.” The idea is that, by demonstrating rather than dictating, the audience is drawn in as participants instead of being kept at a distance by heavy-handed explication. But this advice can be taken too far: you can tell and show too much, forcing rather than leading, yelling rather than whispering. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a master of showing just enough, but not too much. His prose doesn’t have the austerity of Hemingway’s — by comparison he can be downright florid — but nevertheless, the economy of his lines often reveal more in what they don’t say than in what they do. The Great Gatsby is a short book — most editions run to a mere 160 or so pages — but it’s in between Fitzgerald’s lines that we find the elements of a transcendent tale of love and ambition and tragedy and hope. This why Gatsby is transcendent — not because of the story we have set down before us on the page, but because of the story that we create in our minds. The Great Gatsby moves beyond a simple tale of a lovelorn bootlegger and becomes our story, the American story.
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May 12, 2013
Review: God’s Gay Agenda by Sandra Turnbull

God’s Gay Agenda by Sandra Turnbull is well-written, thoughtful and hopeful examination of, in the words of the subtitle, “Gays and Lesbians in the Bible, Church and Marriage.” Turnbull’s passion for not only full inclusion of LGBT individuals in the church, but also her view of the crucial role they have to play within the Body of Christ is admirable. Her enthusiasm for the mission of the Church shines through on every page and her deep love of God, her awareness of the Holy Spirit’s work in her life and her respect for the Bible are something the church could use much more of. Turnbull’s optimism for further advancements in God’s kingdom is contagious.
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May 10, 2013
Review: Cross Examined by Bob Seidensticker

Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey by Bob Seidensticker is an easy book to sum up: it’s a novel about apologetics. Such an undertaking has intriguing possibilities, but unfortunately Seidensticker can’t quite pull off this combination. Apologetics is mostly about telling; good fiction is about showing — and in this novel the two make for uneasy bedfellows.
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April 24, 2013
Whither Have I Been?
I’ve been away from this little corner of the internet for a few weeks, and while it’s tempting to say something pious like “I gave up blogging for Lent,” the truth of the matter is that I’ve just been busy with other projects and what-not. So my apologies to you, dear faithful reader. But you ask what else I’ve been up? Among other things:
- Listened to the audiobook of Angela’s Ashes. Highly recommended — Frank McCourt’s reading of his memoir is simply wonderful.
- Listened to the audiobook of Beautiful Ruins. Also good.
- Read Divergent. Highly recommended … that you avoid this book at all costs.
- Watched Beast of the Southern Wild. Highly recommended. Easily the best movie I’ve seen this year.
- Getting back into the poetry of William Stafford, Philip Levine and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
- Read a great review of the Piero della Francesca show at the Frick by Peter Schjeldahl.
- Working on several freelance design projects: a website, a book cover and a real estate magazine.
- Pulled up the carpeting and now refinishing the wood on my stairs.
- Becoming reacquainted with H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture. Much food for thought here that bears continued consideration.
- Listing to Jeremy Irons’ reading of Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Sublime. Transcendent.
- Trying like mad to lose 15 pounds. 10 down, 5 or so to go!
Hopefully I’ll soon get back onto some sort of semi-regular blogging schedule. I have a slew of working drafts, but it’s simply a matter of finding the time to make them suitable for mass consumption. Till then, I bid you patience!
March 26, 2013
Review: Journeys of Faith edited by Robert Plummer

Journeys of Faith is both an exciting and a frustrating book. Exciting, because it furthers robust ecumenical dialogue; frustrating, because it still only explored limited perspectives.

The book is a series of personal essays that recount each author’s move from one particular stream of Christianity to another: Wilbur Ellsworth tells of his migration from Baptist preacher to Eastern Orthodox priest, Francis Beckwith describes his return to Roman Catholicism from Evangelicalism, Chris Castaldo shares his journey from Catholicism to Evangelicalism and Lyle Dorsett tells of his trip from Evangelicalism to Anglicanism. Each essay is followed by a rejoinder from another author that critiques that particular faith tradition and then the original author is given room for a brief final response.
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January 21, 2013
Review: Evolution’s Purpose by Steve McIntosh

Evolution’s Purpose: An Integral Interpretation of the Scientific Story of Our Origins by Steve McIntosh is a heady brew of science and philosophy. This isn’t a quick-and-easy guide for practical spiritual growth. Rather, it’s a dense and thorough explication of an integrative understanding of evolution. For McIntosh, evolution is not a strictly scientific, materialistic subject; it touches on every aspect of reality: “there is no getting around the metaphysical connotations of evolution as a ubiquitous cosmic process.” And it is this new “philosophy of evolution” that will play a decisive role in both our individual spiritual development as well as the continued development of humanity.
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January 15, 2013
Review: The Enoch Factor by Steve McSwain

Steve McSwain’s book, The Enoch Factor, is about knowing and walking with God, not in the sense of gaining theological knowledge about God, but rather about knowing him in terms of true “intimacy and inspiration.” This isn’t the “personal relationship” of evangelicalism, it’s the spiritual experience of progressive Christian spirituality. It’s about discovering a connection with the Divine that, though couched in Christian terms and understandings, is not confined by orthodoxy. McSwain says of Christianity: “The Christ-way is an enlightened spiritual pathway to God…The path has guided me to an extraordinary place of self-discovery and God-realization.”
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January 13, 2013
Review: Rants to Revelations by Ogun R. Holder

Rants to Revelations: Unabashedly Honest Reflections on Life, Spirituality and the Meaning of God by Ogun Holder is true to its title. Holden’s book adds to the already crowded blog-to-book genre by collecting and expanding upon his online writing — exploring spiritual insights, struggles of faith, the trials of parenting and the challenges of relationships.

Holden’s writing is competent, if not breathtaking — he has clear voice that carries his ideas well. His musing sometimes lean towards vague, feel-good spirituality, but he never strays too far from actual experience, so the brief essays generally remain grounded in the events of his life and never drift too far into esoteric musings.
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January 12, 2013
Follow-Up: Can you be a Christian and still believe … ?

My post Can you be a Christian and still believe … ? caused quite a bit of furor on the interwebs, so I’d like to take a moment to offer a few explanatory notes as well as provide some resources for further exploration of these topics.

First, the point of the post wasn’t to provide a litmus test for Christian faith (liberal or otherwise). The moment we use any of these issues to judge someone else’s relationship with God, we’ve stepped into dangerous territory — territory that belongs not to us, but to God alone. What you believe about these things doesn’t include you in or exclude you from the Kingdom of God. (more…)

December 29, 2012