30 Books - 1 Year

I’ve set a goal of reading 30 books in 2008. As I finish one I’ll put it here.

11. Beautiful Boy, by David Sheff 3.23.8

What a fight addiction must be. It is amazing anyone ever wins. David Sheff wrote about his son’s (Nic) roller-coaster ride of addiction. By the time he is twenty one Nic has been in and out of rehab facilities and tried every drug imaginable. But he keeps coming back to meth.

At one point his dad has a brain hemorrhage. When the dad comes to in the hospital he can’t remember his name, what year it is or who is the president. The one thing he can remember and obsesses about is that he has to call his son. He needs to know if he is ok. He knows his son is in trouble and he has to get in touch with him. He struggles to remember his number but can’t make it past the area code. This experience leaves him with the prevailing thought that Nic and his other children will live on with or without him.

A problem Nic has with the rehab program is “all the God talk.” Neither Nic, nor his dad believe in God. Nic finds himself getting lost in some of the language. The idea of needing to believe in a higher power doesn’t resonate with him. His dad, on the other hand, finds himself praying for his son to be healed. He prays/repeats over and over.

I’m starting Nic’s book about it next. Tweak.

10. Abraham, by Bruce Feiler 3.15.8

I really appreciate Feiler’s writing. My first encounter with his work was Walking the Bible, which also covered Abraham. I wasn’t sure if there would be that much new in this book but there certainly was. I’ve always thought of Abraham as a Jew or at least claimed by the Jews, but not so much as the ‘father’ of Christianity and Islam. It is a great telling how three faiths point all the way back to Abraham.

He has no mother. He has no past. He has no personality.

Abraham was born and lived 75 years before anything happens to him. God tells him to take a journey and Abraham does. Abraham doesn’t say anything. He just goes. God doesn’t even introduce herself. No fireworks. No burning bushes. No arguments.

9. What the Gospels Meant, by Garry Wills 3.7.8

The gospels, Matt, Mark, Luke and John often get lumped together and form a grand narrative, a sort of super gospel. This book reminds me that was not meant to be the case. Very different authors with different points of view and different audiences should be kept in mind when reading the accounts. The gospels weren’t meant to be dots connected together.

8. The Principles of Uncertainty, by Maria Kalman 2.29.8

I love this offering. The visual and written images travel right into my heart and invite me on the journey she is on to discover what she knows and what she doesn’t know. I love the dust jacket, but I left it off for several days just to see the cover and wonder at it for a bit. There are several observations that I enjoy, but none more than on page 275 that I’m currently adapting to life…It is a dream, so there is no answer. (Add Neil Young’s, It’s a Dream, for soundtrack.)

7. The Essential Rumi, Translation by Coleman Banks with John Moyne 2.29.8

I took my time reading through this collection. Poetry isn’t something that should be rushed through anyway. Several times there are references to things and places from a culture far way, but much of it seems very current and relevant. This could be from the interpretative translation, but then again, I suppose love is timeless and Rumi felt it 800 years ago and echoes today.

When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you’re not here, I can’t go to sleep. Praise God for the two insomnias! And the difference between them.

and

The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.

6. The End Of Faith, by Sam Harris 2.15.8

Once upon a time I helped to facilitate a bible glass. Facilitate is not quite the word I want….I was the curator of this incredible space of people. I would simply point out a few things and journey along with the conversation that followed. It was really something. I miss those days because the core group that came were not afraid of anything I might offer up. We asked questions rarely heard in a church building. If that were still going on now, I think I would have us look at The End of Faith. It is an honest, in your face, no pulling punches look at God and faith.

Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.

5. The Year of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacob 2.9.8

I’ve already quoted from this book and have written a few thoughts in a previous post, but I wanted to add one more as the book was drawing to a close.

I’m still agnostic. But in the words of Elton Richards, I’m now a reverent agnostic. Which isn’t an oxymoron, I swear. I now believe that whether or not there’s a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred. The Sabbath can be a sacred day. Prayer can be a sacred ritual. There is something transcendent, beyond the everyday. It’s possible that humans created this sacredness ourselves, but that doesn’t take away from it power or importance.

It is such a great story of looking for answers and finding questions.

4. Letters To A Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke 1.24.8

Rilke’s poetry is wonderful, but it is also nice to see him through his letters. Letters of encouragement and openness to someone that mailed him ‘out of the blue’ for advice on writing. In his first letter he wrote,

Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all-ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?

3. Walking the Bible, by Bruce Feiler 1.21.8

I caught the very end of Bruce Feiler’s, Walking the Bible video on PBSHD several weeks ago. He has such a natural storytelling ability. I appreciated his honest questions as he retraced his way through the lands connected to the five books of Moses. As usual, the book is even as fantastic as the show. It left me with a personal connection to what up until now has seemed very far away tales and lands.

If the Bible comes from people, and not from God, as I believe it does, then it’s the essence of being human. It’s the story of the creation of a people….If you are a woman who can’t have a baby, you can relate to it. If you’re a brother who fights with your brother, you can relate to it. If you’re a person who works your whole life toward a dream and are denied it, you can relate to it. Also, the Bible, like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or the Mona Lisa, is infinitely complex and infinitely simple.

2. Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali  1.15.8

Wow. It is hard to know where to begin with this. This story is amazing. It is unbelievable. It is inspiring. I can easily say you shouldn’t read another book until you read this one. Move this to the top of the list. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an amazing person. Seriously. I really don’t have words. I would just wind up quoting the entire book. You will shake your head in disbelief as you journey along and experience what she and so many others have endured.

1. Speaking of Faith, by Krista Tippett  1.9.8

Krista Tippett is the host of Public Radio’s Speaking of Faith. Her radio programs are fantastic and her conversations are with folks from many faiths. She offers up details from her journey and those of others. I marked the book up quite a bit and could quote on and on, but I’ll just leave a few….

You can’t outhate fundamentalist. They will win.

Virtue is not the exlusive domain of religious people.

You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.

Mystery is the crux of religion that is almost always missing in our public expressions of religion.

He could not imagine the kingdom of God to be a place without suffering, he says. For how, then, would we learn to be compassionate?

The notion of scripture as being a cadaver that one performs an autopsy on-as opposed to a living body with which one danced-was stunning to me.