Author: rtrube54

Review: God Leads Personally

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God Leads Personally: Why It’s True and How It Works, Robert DiSilvestro. Seville, OH: Bezalel Media, 2023.

Summary: A biblical exploration of how God leads people, concluding that God leads people personally and not just by general principle, and how we may be led by God and avoid deception.

One thing that marks followers of Jesus is that they want to know and do the will of God. The Bible addresses many aspects of the will of God in terms of commands, prohibitions, as well as numerous principles. But is the only way that God speaks to us is through what he has spoken that is recorded in scripture? That is the question being asked in this book by Robert DiSilvestro, an emeritus faculty member best known for his speaking on apologetics with groups of students and in other settings.

He specifically engages the contention of another author, Jim Osman, who argues in God Doesn’t Whisper that since the completion of the writing of the Bible God speaks only through the general instruction of scripture. DiSilvestro embarked on an extensive study of the Bible itself, observing the ways in which God leads and concludes that God’s speaking is not limited to the Bible and that God does lead personally.

First DiSilvestro offers arguments from scripture that show that God does still lead personally and then in the latter part of the books, shows so far as scripture instructs, how that works, and how we may avoid deception. DiSilvestro grounds his case in the truth that God desires personal relationship with his people through Christ in the present and shows how we may enjoy that relationship. Then he shows how God gives guidance, particularly that he directly gives wisdom (cf. James 1:5-8). He addresses the contention that God stopped personal communication after the Bible was completed, citing the lack of any evidence from the Bible that this would be and a preponderance of evidence that God does want to lead his people personally. He also examines the texts Osman cites and shows how Osman’s argument cannot be made from these texts. And he addresses the contention that the Lord’s prayer says nothing about listening by the observations that the prayer is addressed to a Father, an intimate relation that involves speaking and listening and prays for the Father’s will to be done.

DiSilvestro then turns to how we experience this leading. He encourages both expectancy that God will speak and effort in seeking, including obeying the will of God we already know from scripture (in this, he would be in agreement with Osman). He also makes a surprising admission that I found refreshing: “The Bible says a lot more about how to hear from God than I realized, but a lot less than I wanted” [bold in the text] (p. 53). He believes that this is because God leads not by blueprint or formula but in relationship and that we see both ways in scripture God does so without detailed explanation of how this happened. That rang true for me as I reflected on times where I knew clearly God’s leading in a personal situation (and it proved to be so) but I could not entirely say how I knew–a matter of trust in God rather than certainty.

He goes on to show a variety of ways God leads in scripture: God himself resolves situations, letting others given for our good to make a decision, through a spiritually trained mind. He discusses the instances and circumstances where God speaks audibly, leads through visions and dreams, and through quieter, more subjective leadings of the Spirit. He also offers safeguards, including that leadings never contradict clear teaching of scripture or dishonor Christ, that they are often confirmed by other guidance processes, that they reflect the Spirit’s fruit and humility, and so forth. He observes how such leading may lead to a compelling conviction. He addresses how God’s Spirit works in partnership with our minds in speaking and prayer. He addresses the gifts of the Spirit in our ministry within the body, other impartations of the Spirit including a sense of or lack of peace, how to reckon with circumstantial guidance, means like lots.

An important chapter addresses the role of others in Christian community in helping each other hear from God. Others in the community are implicit in many of the discussions throughout, but perhaps because of the focus on God leading personally, the treatment of God leading through community or even of God leading whole communities might be further developed.

Perhaps the most impressive part of this work is the author’s commitment to set forth only what scripture says but also all that scripture says about how God leads in our lives. He’s honest to admit where he’s made mistakes and what he has learned–he frees us from the pressure to get it perfect–that God restores when we err and keeps teaching and leading. And he frames all of this in a relationship with God through trust in Christ and the indwelling work of God’s Spirit, which he wants for all his readers. He helps us see that God offers far more than abstract and general guidance, he offers us Himself as Guide.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author for review.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Admiral Giles Bates Harber

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He grew up on the West side of Youngstown, received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy from then-congressman James A. Garfield, mounted a heroic 2667 mile expedition to rescue a stranded polar expedition, was the Executive Officer on the USS Texas during the Spanish-American War, and rose to the command as Rear Admiral of the Pacific Fleet at a time when the U.S. was becoming a global naval power.

Despite all these accomplishments, I suspect few of us know of this distinguished naval officer who both was born and died in Youngstown. He was born September 24, 1849 to Joseph and Ann Eliza (Darrow) Harber. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1869, starting out as an Ensign on a sailing frigate, the USS Sabine., moving to a screw frigate, the USS Franklin, in the European squadron from 1870 to 1871. By 1881, he was in command of the torpedo boat, the USS Alarm.

In 1882, Lt. Harber was on a journey through Russia when called on to mount a rescue or recovery operation when the USS Jeanette, commanded by Lt. Commander George Washington DeLong, attempting to explore and lay claim to Arctic regions, became icebound. Leaving from Irkutsk in Siberia by steamer, Harber and his search party covered 2667 miles by boat, reindeer, and dogsled team. There were no survivors, but Harber and his party recovered the remains of ten men who perished, including the body of Lt.. Commander DeLong. When he returned in 1884, he received a hero’s welcome at a reception in the old Opera House on Central Square in Youngstown.

He married Jeanette Thruston Manning of Baltimore in 1889, the wedding reported in the New York Times. After a staff assignment at the Naval Academy and command of a US coastal steamer, Hassler, off the Alaska coast, he was promoted to Lt. Commander in 1896 and served as the Executive officer of the battleship USS Texas in Guantanamo Bay during the Spanish-American War, doing blockade duty. He was promoted to Commander and served as naval attaché in both Paris and St. Petersburg from 1900 to 1903. This was followed by command of the USS New Orleans, from 1903-1905, as part of the Asiatic Squadron, being promoted to Captain in 1905. After graduation in 1905 from the Naval War College, he commanded the USS Independence and the Mare Island Navy Yard from 1905 to 1907.

His crowning achievement was promotion to the rank of Rear Admiral, heading the 3rd Squadron, and then the whole Pacific Fleet from 1907 to 1910. This was the time when American sea power was growing under President Theodore Roosevelt, symbolized by the Great White Fleet of sixteen battleships that circumnavigated the world. In his final year, before mandatory retirement at age 62 in 1911, he served as president of the Naval Examining and Retiring Boards in Washington, DC.

Harber and his wife lived in Washington until she passed away in September of 1925. He moved back to Youngstown, but soon followed her in death on December 29, 1925. He died at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital of a bladder infection. Both he and his wife are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Harber distinguished himself throughout life, holding posts and commands in Europe, East Asia, and Central America as well as over the whole Pacific Fleet. The recovery expedition could easily have shared the fate of the Jeanette. Instead, he brought his fellow seamen’s bodies home on an amazing journey. And Youngstown remembered and celebrated him. He also remembered Youngstown. He was the second depositor of the First National Bank in 1863 (at fourteen). On his death, it was found that he had remained a depositor all those years. And it was to Youngstown he returned and spent his final days. We can truly say he was a hometown hero.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Review: Dead Man’s Ransom

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Dead Man’s Ransom, Ellis Peters. New York: Open Road Media, 2014 (Originally published in 1984.)

Summary: Following the Battle of Lincoln, Hugh and Cadfael arrange a prisoner exchange between a young Welsh nephew of Owain of Gwynedd for Sheriff Prestcote, which becomes a murder investigation when Prescote is smothered before the Welsh can depart.

Rebel lords in the north of England betray their loyalty to King Stephen, joining forces with some renegade Welshmen. Stephen leads a force, joined by Sheriff Gilbert Prestcote and Hugh Beringar. The Battle of Lincoln is a disaster. King Stephen is captured along with Prestcote, who is badly wounded. Hugh barely escapes to bring news to Shrewsbury. Meanwhile, a band of Welsh who had joined the battle, raid the convent at Godric’s Ford but are turned back by stout foresters. A young Welshman, nearly drowned, is captured and sent to Shrewsbury. He is a landed nephew of Owain of Gwynedd, who was not involved in the raid and has remained neutral. Elis ap Cynan becomes Hugh’s hope for a prisoner exchange for Prestcote. Brother Cadfael helps arrange the exchange.

Only a problem develops. Elis, while held prisoner, meets and falls in love with Melicent, the daughter of Prestcote, even though he is betrothed back in Wales to Cristina, a spirited young woman toward whom he has never felt more then friendly affection. While in Wales, Cadfael meets Eliud ap Griffith, to whom Elis is a foster brother, though they are brothers in affection and Cadfael notes the “chemistry” between Eliud and Cristina, though Eliud would never betray his foster brother.

Things get more complicated when Prestcote recovers enough for the exchange to go forward. Still very weak, he is escorted by Einon ab Ithel, Owain’s captain, and an entourage that includes Eliud, tending the horses. Prestcote can barely make it to bed, tended by Cadfael. Eliud and Elis unite with Elis telling his plans to see Prestcote, who they expect to oppose a match with Melicent, to plead for her hand. Despite counsel that this is unwise with the man’s weakened condition, Elis goes.

Hours later, Prestcote is found dead, but not, as they first thought, from his wounds and the journey. He had been smothered. Cadfael observes two key pieces of evidence. A pin is missing from atop a cloak lent by Einon and folded nearby. And there are distinctively colored fibers in the victim’s nostrils and beard. Find the cloth they came from and the pin and these may point to the murderer. Since Elis was the only known suspect, he is taken into custody. But neither the pin nor the cloth can be found on him, or indeed anywhere in the precincts of the Abbey. Eliud remains behind as well as hostage. Melicent, believing Elis to be the murderer, disavows her love for Elis and decides to enter the convent at Godric’s Ford. Another suspect, Anion ap Griffri had been staying in the infirmary in the Abbey, feet away from Prestcote’s room. He was recovering from a broken leg that had mended and nursed a grievance against Prestcote and has gone missing.

As you can see, this is a convoluted story with many characters–you have to work to keep them all straight. Hugh has to divide his attentions between the investigation and securing his borders from further attacks and raids, allying with Owain. Cadfael joins him to investigate the murder, pursuing Anion. Beringar leaves inexperienced Alan Herberd to defend Shrewsbury and surrounding areas, including Godric’s Ford, from further raids. They come, with Melicent at the convent.

All this leads to an exciting climax, the discovery of the murderer, and the murderer’s escape from Hugh’s custody through a subterfuge in which Cadfael plays a “wink-wink, nod-nod” role, not actively involved but helping make it possible. It is an interesting plot turn and I wonder how other readers felt about it. As an interesting sidenote, he is assisted by the former Avice of Thornbury, now the resourceful Sister Magdalen. It will be interesting to see if Peters develops this relationship in future stories.

All told, an engrossing story that leaves us wondering how Hugh will fare with Maud in the ascendent and what this will mean for the stability of Shrewsbury and life at the Abbey.

The Month in Reviews: January 2024

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With the cold weather we had for a couple weeks in January, I ended up reading twenty books this month. Admittedly one was an illustrated children’s book by Ned Bustard on St. Valentine and another was a chapbook of poetry by Vermont writer Amy Allen. That balanced Abraham Verghese’s eloquent but lengthy The Covenant of Water and some longish theology books on the Wesleyan doctrine of holiness and a book on reading the prophets in the light of Christ’s work. I enjoyed Richard Middleton’s Abraham’s Silence on the sacrifice of Isaac, although I differed at points with the author. He saw my review and was kind enough to send written responses that addressed my differences. I love that. And the book made me think more than many.

I would highlight three other books. One was Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days, a collection of essays–the title essay of which is a powerful true story. The other was a biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar, an early Black poet and Ohioan. At the encouragement of another reviewer I follow, I really must get over to his house in Dayton, a historical landmark. The third is a history of Christian missions originating in the West from the late Andrew Walls. There are several other books here on Christian theology and spirituality, my latest reviews from two mystery series I’m reading, an early Graham Greene and a George Simenon and a few other delightful books I’ll let you discover.

Holiness: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Theology, Matt Ayars, Christopher T. Bounds, and Caleb T. Friedeman. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023. A biblical, historical, and theological argument within the Wesleyan tradition for holiness understood as “entire sanctification” or Christian perfection, able not to sin and to wholeheartedly love God and neighbor. Review

The Devil’s Novice (Chronicles of Brother Cadfael #8), Ellis Peters. New York: Mysterious Press/Open Road Media, 2014 (Originally published in 1983). Meriet Aspley is called the “Devil’s Novice” for his nightmares, his awkwardness among the brothers, and an attack leaving him consigned to Brother Mark, where he finds the body of a man he later confesses to have murdered. Review

The Prophets and the Apostolic Witness, Edited by Andrew T. Abernethy, William R. Osborne, and Paul D. Wegner. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023. An exploration of how Christians should read Old Testament prophets in light of the work of Christ and of how the apostolic witnesses read them. Review

Abraham’s Silence, J. Richard Middleton. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021. Challenges the traditional reading of the binding of Isaac that valorizes Abraham’s silence as unquestioning obedience and faith, contending that God wanted more than silent obedience. Review

The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese. New York: The Grove Press, 2023. The story of three generations of the family of Big Ammachi of Parambil, the ever present reality of “the Condition” resulting in a drowning in every generation, a story both of love and the hope in advances in medicine. Review

These Precious Days, Ann Patchett. New York: Harper Collins, 2022. Essays on family, friendships, the life of writing and bookselling, and mortality. Review

The Yellow Dog (Inspector Maigret #6), Georges Simenon. New York: Penguin Books, 2014 (Originally published in 1931). Maigret is called in when a distinguished wine merchant is shot, followed by a murder, a disappearance and another shooting in which a common element in several instances is a yellow dog. Review

A Non-Anxious Life, Alan Fadling. Downers Grove: IVP Formatio, 2024. Proposes, as an alternative to an anxiety-driven life of hurry, restlessness, worry, and performance, a life under the non-anxious presence of Jesus of stillness, rest, peace, and fruitful love. Review

After Dispensationalism, Brian P. Irwin with Tim Perry. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2023. A study of the history, key beliefs, and teachers of dispensationalism with an assessment of the movement’s strengths and weaknesses along with a treatment discussing reading prophetic and apocalyptic books within their context. Review

Pray This Way To Connect With God, Hal Green. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2023. A book on learning to pray, focusing on God’s initiative toward us to teach us to pray and prayer as focused on deepening our relationship with God. Review

Sweet Danger (Albert Campion #5), Margery Allingham. New York: Open Road Media, 2023 (Originally published 1931). Campion and friends seek to prove a rural family to be the rightful heirs of Averna, an oil-rich seaside village on the Adriatic while pursued by an unscrupulous financier. Review

Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird, Gene Andrew Jarrett. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022. Perhaps the definitive biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of the first African writers to achieve fame for his poetry and other writings. Review

Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping Is an Essential Christian Practice, Steven Bouma-Prediger. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023. A discussion of why and how earthkeeping is integral to following Christ, drawing upon scripture, Christian theology and Christian thinkers throughout the breadth of the church. Review

The Missionary Movement from the West (Studies in the History of Christian Missions), Andrew F. Walls, edited by Brian Stanley, foreword by Gillian Mary Bediako. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2023. A history of the last five hundred years of Christian mission efforts from the Europe and North America. Review

A Gun for Sale, Graham Greene. New York: Open Road Media, 2018 (originally published in 1936). A paid assassin murders a foreign minister of war, creating an international crisis that could lead to war but is betrayed by the middleman who paid him, who he pursues even as the police pursue him. Review

Renaissance, Susan Fish. Brewster, MA: Raven | Paraclete Press, 2023. Approaching fifty, Elizabeth Fane suddenly leaves work she loves as an executive director of a non-profit and a family that has been her life, to work in the gardens of a convent in Florence, Italy. Review

The Spiritual Art of Business, Barry L. Rowan. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2023. An exploration of how God can work both in us and in our world through our work. Review

Saint Valentine the Kindhearted, Ned Bustard (text and illustrations). Downers Grove: IVP Kids, 2024. A retelling in verse and woodcut illustrations of the story of Saint Valentine, centered on not only his kindheartedness, but that there is more to love than romance. Review

Mountain Offerings, Amy Allen. Montpelier, VT: Rootstock Publishing, 2024. A chapbook of narrative verse capturing memories of childhood, summer vacations in the mountains, growing love, parenting, and loss. Review

The Spacious Path, Tamara Hill Murphy. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2023. In our fragmented world, discusses how the idea of a rule of life, not as an ill-fitting structure but an intimate walk of listening and love with Jesus, may bring wholeness into our lives. Review

Book of the Month. Hands down, my choice has to be The Covenant of Water. The story features extraordinary characters like Big Ammachi and her namesake granddaughter Mariamma, who makes a crucial medical discovery of the cause of a medical malady that has afflicted the family. The narrative spans three generations, set in the Mar Thoma Christian community of South India in a time of national upheaval and transformation. It’s a big book but the skilled writing and flowing prose of Verghese, a medical doctor, drew me along.

Quote of the Month. I’ll leave you with a page of verse from Ned Bustard’s Saint Valentine the Kindhearted, published just in time for Valentine’s Day:

Roses are red, violets are blue,
sugar is sweet, and so are you.
This is the poem many share
to show how much they love and care.
Flowers and candy sent our way
ev’ry year on Valentine’s Day.
But why the cards that say, “Be mine”?
That’s all from dear Saint Valentine!

      –Ned Bustard

What I’m Reading. I’ve recently finished several books that you’ll see reviews of in the next days. One is the ninth in the Brother Cadfael series. Another both makes the case for God’s personal leadership in our lives and how we experience. The third is a memoir by a bookseller with a compound of small bookshops in the southernmost reaches of New Zealand, appropriately titled The Bookseller at the End of the World.

I’m a bit over 200 pages into Bob Spitz’s massive biography, The Beatles. All of what I’ve read so far is the arduous process undergone by this group, under several names and different personnel, before they became the Fab Four. Matt Mikalatos and Kathy Khang team up on Loving Disagreement, a far more spacious conception than mere civility for how Christians may differ, shaped by the fruit of the Spirit. Hope for God’s Creation is an effort by a Baptist theologian to articulate the theological framework that ought ground our care for creation. Persuasive Apologetics makes the case for persuasion and the use of an “eclectic” apologetic in Christian witness. Finally, I’ve just begun Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize-winning Prophet Song. Set in Ireland, it envisions a turn to an authoritarian state that suspends rights like habeas corpus and “disappears” opposition, claiming emergency powers and using Orwellian tactics turning language inside out. Chilling to any of us who think “it can’t happen here.”

I hope these twenty books suggest a few reading possibilities for you. And, as always, do return the favor and tell me what you are reading!

The Month in Reviews is my monthly review summary going back to 2014! It’s a great way to browse what I’ve reviewed. The search box on this blog also works well if you are looking for a review of a particular book.

Review: The Spacious Path

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The Spacious Path, Tamara Hill Murphy. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2023.

Summary: In our fragmented world, discusses how the idea of a rule of life, not as an ill-fitting structure but an intimate walk of listening and love with Jesus, may bring wholeness into our lives.

Imagine exiting a frenetic Texas freeway for the quiet of a retreat center. In the middle of it is a prayer labyrinth, a circular maze in which one follows a path with turns until one reaches a center, having prayerfully relinquished prayers and concerns along the way, trusting that the path is not a dead end, quieting oneself to listen to Jesus pace by pace, perhaps meditating on promises from God. At the center are benches where one may sit in quiet. Then one exits, reversing one’s path, praying to hold onto whatever the Lord has given as you walked and rested.

Tamara Hill Murphy offers this as an image of a life of practicing the restful way of Jesus through a rule of life. While we want to escape fragmented and frenetic lives, the idea of rule often seems confining, rigid, restricting. Drawing on the teachings of Benedict and the invitation of Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30, Hill proposes the idea of a rule of life as a spacious path, one in which we come to Jesus, learning from him the unforced rhythms of grace, the unforced life of obedience as we take his yoke, walking and working with him. It is a way of listening and safeguarding love for God and neighbor against both license and legalism. It is a way that is both contemplative and communal

Having established this spacious path of listening and love with Jesus and his people, she writes of how we center ourselves and our rule on that spacious path. She explores how we hold both spacious stability and change together within such a rule. We learn that what unites us as a spacious community is that we are the baptized beloved, drawn in all our diversity into relationship with the Triune God through our shared baptism and shared eucharistic table. As we center in Jesus, we learn to relinquish our religious false self–all the pretenses we keep up with each other. At the same time, she writes about discerning safe spiritual leaders, offering valuable principles.

Only then does she focus on settling into a rule. She explores ideas of spacious work with room for prayer and rhythms of work, rest, and sabbath including seven rhythms of sabbath time: sabbath as a day, daily rhythms of work, prayer, rest, scripture, and self care, and similar weekly. monthly, seasonal, annual, and sabbatical rhythms. She then explores how we may walk the path of the church year, and in Tish Harrison Warren’s words, the liturgy of our ordinary days with their routines. All these may be woven into the rhythm of a rule of life.

The final part recognizes that life can upend our routines, our rules of life when unexpected guests call out the practice of hospitality, when we are confronted with injustice in which we are all implicated, and when tragedies like a global pandemic strike. She explores how lament, repentance, and examen help us know the blessing of God in such times. In an epilogue, she proposes five best practices for beginning and beginning again on the spacious path. I love her first: begin and begin again with a rule for rest and prayer.

I found this a book that was “spacious” toward the reader. Murphy shows rather than tells, describing what for her and others life on the path is like, and how we might take our first steps to begin (and begin again) with Jesus. While offering both principles and practices, the sense in this book was of describing what life on the spacious path is like. This seemed to me a winsome and right way to invite people into the practice of a rule of life.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Mountain Offerings

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Mountain Offerings, Amy Allen. Montpelier, VT: Rootstock Publishing, 2024.

Summary: A chapbook of narrative verse capturing memories of childhood, summer vacations in the mountains, growing love, parenting, and loss.

It is a wonderful thing when a writer’s work draws us into a different world than our own and yet evokes analogue memories in our own lives. That’s what I found happening repeatedly in this chapbook of poems by Amy Allen, a freelance editor and writer from Vermont.

We are invited into the world of Vermont, a state I’ve only driven through. One of her early poems even celebrates folk singer Noah Kahan’s unofficial anthem (I had to Google it!) for Vermont and the weird love we can have for our home state–maybe not so weird. She celebrates both its obvious and subtler beauties in “Pilgrimage.” There are the memories of arriving at a summer cabin in June, with all the summer ahead, and early winter sunsets over Lake Champlain after which “The stars shine brightest/on the coldest of days.”

We have a young couple sharing a “Tiny House” in mud season or climbing a mountain together to the summit and a knowledge of each other forged “without ever touching.” In “Gathering,” the couple watches their daughter gather pine cones while studying one together. Later she finds he has left one on the bedstand as she slides under the covers next to him. A couple of poems remember what seems to have been their daughter in a serious medical emergency–a greenhouse that gave respite and the implied understandings in family lounges. “Daughter of Mine” captures the moment one realizes the transition of the daughter toward adulthood, toward being her own unique person, a marvel and a mystery.

Allen traces the seasons of life, including the cleaning out of a parent’s house in “My Mother’s Flowers.” She describes “Heavy-lidded casserole dishes/cookbooks with margin notes/penciled in her cursive/framed photos of ourselves/leather handbags we’d given her on birthdays/three unopened jars of her face cream/I wondered when I’d forget that smell.” Many of us, if we reached a certain age, carry memories like this.

Sure, these poems evoke memories from childhood summers to flirtations and deepening loves, to the joys and heartbreaking moments of parenthood. She calls to mind those special places of our lives. More than this, she reminds me, in the words of Mary Oliver of our “one wild and precious life.” In most of the poems we remember analogues from our own lives, but in “Hope is a Voice” she reminded us of our shared experience of the dark days of January 2021 and the moment a young woman in a yellow coat invited us to step toward the light as she reminded us of “the hill we must climb.” In Mountain Offerings, Amy Allen reminds us in times of innocence, wonder, sadness, intimacy, and hope of all that is precious in our passing lives.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program.

Review: Saint Valentine the Kindhearted

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Saint Valentine the Kindhearted, Ned Bustard (text and illustrations). Downers Grove: IVP Kids, 2024.

Summary: A retelling in verse and woodcut illustrations of the story of Saint Valentine, centered on not only his kindheartedness, but that there is more to love than romance.

Roses are red, violets are blue,
sugar is sweet, and so are you.
This is the poem many share
to show how much they love and care.
Flowers and candy sent our way
ev'ry year on Valentine's Day.
But why the cards that say, "Be mine"?
That's all from dear Saint Valentine!

      --Ned Bustard

Ned Bustard opens this latest book in his series of children’s books with IVP Kids with this rhyme, familiar to all of us who went through Valentine’s Day card exchanges in primary grades and the giving of flowers and candy (and perhaps a romantic dinner!) with that special someone. With that day coming up in a couple weeks (also Ash Wednesday in 2024, an interesting juxtaposition!), this book for children and grownups explores the life of this saint. Bustard follows the format of the other two books in this series, Saint Nicholas, the Giftgiver and Saint Patrick, the Forgiver, alternating his hand-carved woodcuts on the lefthand page with verse on the righthand page.

Bustard reminds us in an afterword that relatively little is known of Saint Valentine apart from his ministry of preaching, healing, and caring for the poor when Christians resisted the pressure to worship the gods of the Roman empire. The story centers around one the legends about Valentine. Haled before a judge for marrying Roman soldiers, supposedly weakening their resolve to fight, he is challenged to show the judge that Christ is true by healing the judge’s blind daughter. Valentine prays for her and she is healed. In response, the judge destroys his household statues of his gods, and is baptized along with forty others of his household.

Image from publisher’s webpage for Saint Valentine the Kindhearted.

We also learn the story of “valentines.” Valentine was later summoned before the emperor where he boldly testified to Christ. Thrown into prison, he wrote short notes of encouragement and affection to all his friends, tying each with twine, signing them “from your Valentine.” Apparently one of these was written on the day of his martyrdom, February 14, to the girl whose sight he restored (his execution and martyrdom is only alluded to here as when “his time came to an end” with the girl receiving notes from him).

Each of the books focuses on one quality, in this case the kindheartedness of Valentine. The book also expands our notion of the love we celebrate beyond romantic love. Bustard depicts the natural love of family, parents for children, the love of friends, and pure, unconditional love. If you note closely on the cover and in the text, there are four different colors of hearts, representing these four loves.

There is so much within 32 pages, not only about kindness and love but the unflinching courage of this saint in testifying to the saving work of the risen Lord Jesus, refusing to bow the knee to the Roman gods, for which he died.

For those who regard Valentine’s Day as sappy or simply a celebration of romantic (and in our culture, highly sexualized) love, this story invites us to recapture the deeper story of the saint after whom it is named, the depth and breadth of love expressed in his story, and his courageous martyrdom, his death for the One he loved. In this year when February 14 is both Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday, reading this book enriches and makes sense of how we can give ourselves in love while always being ready to die for what we love. Read and share this book with those you love!

____________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Reviews of previous books in this series

Saint Nicholas the Giftgiver

Saint Patrick the Forgiver

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Ohltown

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Did you ever hear of Ohltown? I first saw the name when I was learning to drive. My dad would take me out on the back roads around Meander Reservoir. One of these was Ohltown Road, which runs northwest toward Warren from Route 46 just north of Mahoning Avenue. It ends by the Ohltown United Methodist Church and the Ohltown Cemetery, next to the church. Austintown-Warren Road, crossing Meander Reservoir from the west dead ends at Ohltown Road. Depot Street veers to the northeast from there.

But where was Ohltown? Basically it was around those crossroads with the western part of the village now underneath Lake Meander. The church and the cemetery are now all that is left of the town.

Ohltown gets its name from Michael Ohl. Ohl’s parents, Henry and Abolona Ohl moved to Canfield from Allentown, Pennsylvania, settling north of the village. Michael, their oldest, was born in 1785 and married Eva Meyers (Meiers) in 1806. The young couple settled in southern Austintown Township for twelve years, having the first five of thirteen children. Around 1815 and 1816, Michael acquired 230 acres in southwestern Weathersfield Township along Meander Creek about a mile and a half west of Mineral Ridge. After damming the creek to create a millrace, he built a sawmill, and later a gristmill, which remained in operation for a hundred years. The sawmill provided the lumber for the family’s permanent residence.

Ohl was enterprising. He opened a general store doe the growing village as well as becoming the first postmaster, the post office in his house. A plank road ran through the property, connecting Canfield, Warren, and Cleveland. The house became a stagecoach stop and inn. Then in 1835, Ohl began mining coal on the south side of his property one of the seams of coal that were plentiful in the vicinity of Mineral Ridge.

Ohltown United Methodist Church, undated photo.

The Ohltown United Methodist Church traces its beginnings to 1838. They acquired a building from a Lutheran congregation in 1847. By that time, the town included a grocery store, post office, shoemaker, cabinet maker, and a blacksmith, along with the general store and mills owned by Ohl. There was also a school. In 1849, Ohl died.

This may have marked the peak years for the village. As canals and railroads were built, they bypassed Ohltown. By the 1880s, only thirty homes and a couple stores remained. By the 1900s, only a few homes, the church and cemetery remained. People went elsewhere for work.

Meanwhile, the industrial development along the Mahoning River, polluting the water of Niles and Youngstown, along with periodic flooding, led to the formation of the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District in 1927. A dam on Meander Creek was part of the plan to provide a clean source of drinking water and was part of a larger flood control plan. It would require flooding the town area west of Ohltown Road. Some people sold their homes, other homes were moved.

Today, as already noted, only the church, which has weekly services, and the cemetery remain as remnants of the town Michael Ohl built. But I can imagine that there was a time when this was a pleasant and comfortably prosperous place, located along scenic Meander Creek.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

 

Review: The Spiritual Art of Business

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The Spiritual Art of Business, Barry L. Rowan. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2023.

Summary: An exploration of how God can work both in us and in our world through our work.

There is a popular perception that business is a soulless or soul-sucking enterprise. We hear of high-pressure business leaders demanding workers live at their place of work. We read stories of driven leaders who promise advancement in exchange for utter devotion, using people up and tossing them aside, without regard to the personal consequences. Must business be this way?

Barry L. Rowan has spent a life in business. He’s both succeeded and failing in turnaround efforts with companies, often within the C-suite, working in the communications and technology industry. His journey of connecting his daily work with the divine began with a personal turnaround story. At the age of 29 on a Colorado mountain, he faced a crisis of meaning. Why was he working so hard? His questioning led him from seeking meaning in his work to larger questions of his purpose in life, the existence of God, and if this was so, was he willing to utterly surrender his life to God? After six months of searching, of evaluating evidence he says, “I chose to believe that God exists, as the lawyers would say, on the preponderance of the evidence and would give up everything I have to follow Jesus” (p.2).

This book is a story not only of how Christ transformed his life but transformed his view of work. Instead of seeking meaning in work, he understood his calling as bringing meaning to work. He goes on to describe a four part cycle to what he calls “the spiritual art of business” and this book of 40 short chapters is organized around those four parts:

  1. Surrender. We begin by surrendering our all to Jesus.
  2. Transformation. Our lives are transformed as we go from living for ourselves to living according to God’s dynamic design.
  3. New Creation. We are realigned with God’s purposes and we then live, work, and relate differently as new creations.
  4. Into the World. God then sends us into the world and transforms the world through us.

The forty chapters that follow in these four part are short, pithy reflections beginning with a scripture text, a key idea, and a couple pages of elaboration with some explanation laced with examples and personal stories, concluded with a few reflection questions. I can see these chapters being read and pondered over morning coffee before heading out the door to work.

There is a lot more to this than an inspiring thought. Rowan makes us think, perhaps going through a process similar to his. One early chapter for example is titled “Our Essence Is Our Emptiness.” For scripture, he quotes Philippians 2:5-7 on how Christ made himself nothing as a servant and Galatians 2:20: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” His key idea is “God empties us of ourselves and fills us with himself.” He explores the idea that only when we are emptied of the idea of filling our lives that we can experience union with God and find our fullness in God. He then describes a sustainable energy business that failed when oil prices tanked and described himself as D-E-A-D to Dreams, Expectations, Ambitions, and Desires. It brought him to a realization that even very good things could not fill him. Gritty stuff. The loss of money to investors and lost jobs Not “trust God and he will make all your dreams come true.”

Rowan’s book was released this fall. Not around Lent. But I think this would make a great set of readings for the forty days of Lent. Rowan re-traces our path to the cross as we surrender all, the transformation of resurrection, the new creations we are becoming as we are aligned with Jesus, and our sending into the world as God uses our work to change both us and the world. I could see this being used by workplace groups, perhaps over a brownbag lunch. The short readings lend themselves to being read onsite with a few questions, material that could be covered in 30-45 minutes.

Toward the end of the book, Rowan writes about the why of business, speaking of value creation, that business is the one place in society that creates economic value that others distribute; that businesses can create environments where employees grow into full expressions of themselves, in the place where the most of their waking hours are invested; that businesses serve customers, contributing to their flourishing; and being valued corporate citizens, enriching their communities. It strikes me that all of this is a manifestation of the goodness and providence of God in the world. Rowan shows the way we become God’s instruments for the good work he would do in the world.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Wintering

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A wintry night around Christmas of 2022 shot from my front step. © Robert C. Trube

Wintering. I came across this word for the first time today in a book I’m reading, The Spacious Path. The author quoted another work that I think I want to read, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. In an interview with Krista Tippett, she described the book like this:

I wanted to make it really clear that, although a lot of Wintering is about my love of winter and my affection for the cold and even the dark, that wintering is a metaphor for those phases in our life when we feel frozen out or unable to make the next step, and that that can come at any time, in any season, in any weather, that it has nothing to do with the physical cold. So it was very useful from a narrative point of view to be able to start with what indeed happened, which was, on an unseasonably sunny day in September, just before my 40th birthday, when my husband fell very suddenly ill.

May describes the significance of wintering both in terms of the rhythm of the meteorological seasons and also the seasons of life. Many creatures hibernate, storing up food. Readers often store up books and find the early sunsets and long evening hours conducive to working through their To Be Read stacks. In cold climates, winter kills off some of the insect population. The processes of dormancy are crucial for both animals and plants–think of all those flowering bulbs!

There is evidence that people need some dormancy as well. Some experts suggest that rather than fight the urge to get extra sleep, we follow it–strengthening our immune systems and catching up from sleep deficits. In a variety of ways, winter can be about rest and slowing down. After cleaning out gardens, fall feedings, composting, and mulching, gardeners use the winter to sharpen and clean tools, to read their garden journals–what did well and what did not and why, and then plan for next year. There is the fun of going through seed catalogues, starting seeds under light, growing in cold frames and getting ready for the right planting time.

Winter is a reminder of our need for healthy rhythms of work and rest. In this, and so many ways, we try to circumvent those rhythms. I know many snowbirds who go south for winter. I won’t criticize that choice but I love the slower rhythms, the respite from outdoor chores (other than shoveling snow!) and watching the world around me both go into dormancy with the beautiful fall colors, and the emergence of renewed life in the riotous burst of spring.

May writes of wintering as a metaphor as well, of the dark seasons we face in life. In the quote above, she mentions the sudden illness that hit her husband, a burst appendix, that was followed by intestinal problems of her own, diagnosed as Crohn’s disease, and then severe emotional problems with her son. May describes winter in this way, as she reads from her book during the Tippett interview:

“It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order. Doing these deeply unfashionable things — slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting — is a radical act now, but it’s essential. ”

The book describes how her family allowed itself to winter in these ways to heal, regroup, and get their son the help he needed. They homeschooled. She describes winter as “not the death of the lifecycle, but its crucible.”

It makes me think about “winter experiences” in our lives. There was no way to get out of them, much as we wished. No way to hop on a plane to warmer climes. Growth seemed to come as we accepted that there was no other way than to go through, to allow the season to do its work on us.

May’s book came out in February of 2020, on the eve of the “long winter” of the pandemic, and for many readers she helped them make sense of what was happening and how they might respond. I think of some of the things we learned:

  • Better self care, rest, food, exercise.
  • We learned to treasure close relationships
  • We leaned more deeply into our faith.
  • I discovered the joy of losing myself in Louise Penny’s Gamache books!
  • We gave more thought to “the nest” and deferred remodeling projects

I can’t think of any of these things I would want to stop–the winter was precious, even as it was hard. While I’m glad we have moved into a different season, I do not want to forget. Nor do I want to make light of the traumas, both physical and emotional, that the pandemic created for others. While we are eager to move on. It is important to remember those for whom it is still winter and allow them the rest and retreat they need.

I’ve grown up with winters all my life and I recognize the rhythms they bring, and the unique joys as well–the animal tracks in the snow, the bright sun after wintry greys, the crisp cold of some days that make one feel uniquely alive with the tingle of the cold on our cheeks. But perhaps it has become ho-hum and the word “wintering” makes me think afresh both of this season in the year but the “wintering” times of our lives.

And like the reader I am, I think I may get that book…