Book review: Amy Inspired

Amy Gallagher is living the writer's life. No, not the one you see in the movies, where a dreamy-eyed woman wearing a crisp white blouse is tucked into a garret on a quiet fall day, a steaming cup of tea at her side, peacefully typing the orderly words that spill from her wise, thoughtful soul. (For one thing, real writers don't use that many adjectives in one sentence.)

Amy is living a real writer's life - toiling in anonymity as an adjunct faculty member at a small Ohio college by day, accumulating rejection slips during her off hours. A compulsive list-maker, Amy is trying to make sense of her vocational and relational dead ends in Bethany Pierce's second novel, Amy Inspired (Bethany House, 2010). The cast of characters in Amy's very believable world (a fundie mom, a socially-awkward office mate, a free-spirit roommate and best friend, a guy who lands on their couch due to a bedbug infestation in his old apartment) each gently tug her out of her rut and toward the kind of risk she's carefully avoided all of her life.

As Amy's layers of self-protection are peeled away, she is able to make an honest assessment of herself:

Childhood was the kernel around which my adult self had been collaged. To age was not to mature but to accumulate. Achievements, expectations, experiences, disappointments - badges applied thin and too early lacquered in place, a mishmash of cheap decoupage. But under the miscellany - the adult I had made of myself - the original self would not be suppressed; she was as close and immutable and necessary as the muscle beating resolutely within my chest. And she wanted the same thing, always...

I liked Pierce's writing, and the world she created for Amy to inhabit. And if you enjoy contemporary fiction that is as much journey to self-discovery as it is love story, you'll enjoy Amy Inspired.

*Bethany House provided me with a review copy of this book.

My morning's tutorial in aging gracefully

Though my rotator cuff woes have sidelined me from my part-time caregiving gig, the agency I work for assured me that this week's placement was companionship only. No heavy lifting, no vacuuming, no wheelchair pushing. I was to simply hang out with a woman diagnosed with Alzheimer's who is living in a nursing home.

"Millie" (not her real name) was very subdued the first day I was with her. She replied in brief murmurs to the conversation I kept going through my visit with her. When I returned this morning, the visit seemed to be going in the same basic direction as it had on Wednesday...until I said something about the work world. She launched into a 45-minute monologue about the ineptitude of her old boss, the unfairness of her work conditions, the lousy raises she'd received over the years, and her attempts to get some justice by complaining to various higher-ups.

Millie's frustration with her long-ago job was as fresh for her as today's headlines. Actually, fresher, because today is in soft focus around her. 

It was a portrait of the power of the way that our low-level irritations lodge in our souls. I'll admit that I often think of the necessity to forgive (and forgive again) in terms of Big Hurt. My visit with Millie provided me a reminder that the need to forgive extends to the bumps and bruises that come to each one of us as a part of everyday life. All those unforgiven daily annoyances have a cancerous cumulative effect.

Do I want to carry a bad boss...or the irritation of a scraped fender...the sting of being overlooked for a social gathering...or the smart of a snarky comment...with me into tomorrow? Even if I forget my name and yours, do I want to give a thoughtless "friend" or an inept boss that much airtime in my crowded brain? Millie, who once had a very busy and creative life, taught me that when the nice people I've known fade into the mist, unforgiveness keeps those adrenaline-jolting irritants center stage.

So tonight I pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" and hope that they'll quietly exit stage right as I do.

Forgiveness is God's invention for coming to terms with a world in which people are unfair to each other and hurt each other deeply. He began by forgiving us. And He invites us all to forgive each other. - Lewis B. Smedes

Tabernacles

The Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot) begins at sundown tonight. The information below about the holiday, which came via e-mail from two faithful prayer warriors living in Jerusalem, blessed me today and gave me a way to pray. Perhaps it will spark some prayer in you as well:

In ancient times, sukkot were used as sheds for cattle (Genesis 33:17), as guard shacks for watchmen over vineyards (Isaiah 1:8), as thrown-up overnight shelters for warriors in the field (II Samuel 11:11). Sukkah is Hebrew for the "shelter" Jonah built for himself outside Nineveh (Jonah 4:5) from which to observe what God might do to that city. In Psalm 27:5 David trusts that God will hide him in His sukkah in the "evil day". As part of this fall "ingathering" festival (Exodus 23:16), Israel, after she had entered the land and was living in built houses, was called to rejoice (see Scripture passage above) and feast before the Lord for seven days, resting on the first and eighth day-but for that occasion she was also called to build and spend time in sukkot-decorating them with leafy, fruitful boughs of foliage, recalling that when out in the desert moving from place to place in temporary dwellings, God had nevertheless provided her with life. 

Today, we still build these tiny shelters during this festival. As we rejoice in thanksgiving before the Lord for His provision and sustenance, we remind ourselves that we are nevertheless still abiding in temporary dwellings-that, as goes the old spiritual, "this world is not my home, I'm just a-passin' thru"-that "if our earthly house, this tent-this sukkah-is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavenlies!" (II Corinthians 5:1). Yet while we are here, this same LORD who accompanied Israel through the desert will be with us all the way. 

Pray that each of those celebrating will discover that in order truly to "rejoice before the LORD for seven days", they must come first into relationship with the One who came that their "joy might be full".

Book review: Nudge

Leonard Sweet's newest release, Nudge: Awakening Each Other To The God Who's Already There (David C. Cook, 2010) will make you fall in love with evangelism again.  Or more likely, for the first time.


Many of us who follow Jesus have been exposed to evangelism as hard-sell, complete with tips and techniques. Or it's a scary guilt trip, as in "I should do this", or its corollary, "You're going to hell". Or we lean into the hopeful, beige-tinted "I hope they ask why I'm different".

Leonard Sweet wants us to know that evangelism is so much more than a single-dimensional program, a guilt trip or a wish. The title Nudge sounds like it might shrink evangelism to little more than a tiny shove in the right direction, but Sweet's book is a celebration of evangelism in ways that most of us have never explored. He believes we're to become students of the world around us - the world God in which God placed us - and learn to "read" the signs and symbols around us in order to speak to those around us. He translates the work of Umberto Eco (and others) in the study of semiotics into the language of the kingdom of God in an accessible, winsome way:

"Nudge evangelism is the planting of seeds. With a motivation of love, nudges meet people in their context and nourish their souls in some way. As in Jesus' parable of the seeds, planting frees us to be extravagant in love, yet leaves the results for God to germinate and grow. Nudging is an open-ended enterprise God may undertake directly. God may use others, and time and circumstance to grow. Or God may even employ a continuing involvement from us. The main thing is that nudgers are free to love without consequences. Nudgers are free to invest in the lives of others through the generosity of life as a conduit of love from God...Nudge is a a call to evangelize life and to face death so others may live." 

The first section of the book explores what it means to pay attention in order to both witness and to bear witness. The remainder of the book invites us to realize how God moves and speaks through each one of our senses. Sweet's playful, encylopedic presentation is meant to both spark our imaginations and provoke each one of us to action in our own context through word and silence, touch and taste, scent and sound.

Nudge is great news about the Good News. This is a rich, lovely, inspiring read - and one that connected me more fully to my own humanity, to the One who made me, and to the world he loves. Highly recommended.

*A review copy of this book was provided me by The Ooze Viral Bloggers.

I'd rather burn out than fade away

Last week, my husband and I visited a congregation we'd first attended nearly thirty years ago. We didn't see many familiar faces - not that we even would have recognized any of them. Thirty years is a long time, and people change. It is quite possible that a few of those folks from the days from when Flock Of Seagulls songs were in heavy rotation on the radio might have been there during last week's visit. The large majority of the people there were our age (middle-age) and older. The congregation had flowered during the Jesus movement that swept through the boomer generation 30-40 years ago.

This wasn't the church we visited, but the pic sure tells the story.

It was sobering to see so much gray hair, and so few little kids. (I mentioned another small congregation with a similar demographic in a blog post here.) These congregations have a "use by" date stamped on their doors, it seems. They've not been able to transmit their DNA to a new generation.

A lot of the children of these boomer++ parents have exited the church. Many still profess love for Jesus, but have a bitter taste towards the institution that claims to represent him. We can list the many painful reasons why: politics, marketing, crappy leaders, hypocrisy, abuse (verbal and sexual), irrelevance, nowhere to share the gifts they've been given...and on it goes. My sympathies are definitely with them, though I am not convinced that foregoing any sort of corporate gathering is the only alternative for de-churched young people. (Or de-churched boomers, for that matter.) It's not easy out there, but finding a few others to prod you onward is at the heart of what spiritual community is meant to be.

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching." - Hebrews 10:23-25

This Scripture passage is usually used to chide (or shame) non-attenders into re-upping. But after visiting the graying, non-reproducing congregation last week, I realize that it is entirely possible to give up meeting together even when you show up for a church service week after week. Somehow, the spurring toward love and good deeds fades to a gentle poke, then a just a memory. The memory of loving and doing is so real to a sundowning congregation that it feels like action, when it is simply history.  The congregation goes gray and its story fades to black.

I would rather burn out than fade away.

Have you ever been a part of a sundowning congregation? What was it like? What attempts were made to turn things around? Did these attempts work?

A modest proposal

If all the words in the blogosphere and broadcast media about this weekend's 9/11 Qur'an bonfire in Florida and the furor over the planned "Ground Zero Mosque" were committed to ink and paper, I have a feeling the entire Pacific Northwest would be 90% deforested by now. There are a lot of people exercising (and in some public cases, abusing) their right to free speech over these issues right now.

And in all the furor leading up to this weekend's painful anniversary, I have heard nary a word about the families of the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives on that September morning nine years ago.

1,609 people lost a spouse or partner on 9/11. More than 3,051 children lost parents.

I'd like to suggest that one simple and counter-cultural act you can do in the coming days is pray for the families of those who perished that 2001 morning in New York, Washington DC and Shanksville, PA. There is no "healing" after the sort of trauma these families experienced that September morning - the word "healing" implies restoration and wholeness. These families have experienced amputation and unspeakable sorrow.

Remember with these families, and pray God's peace that goes beyond our understanding will flow into their broken hearts in the coming days.