On Books

Review: Hope for God’s Creation

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Hope for God’s Creation: Stewardship in an Age of Futility, Andrew J. Spencer.Brentwood, TN: B & H Academic, 2023.

Summary: A theology of creation care that grounds an ethic of stewardship and hopeful practice, anticipating the new creation.

Many Christians in the evangelical community are either cautious or even skeptical of concern for the creation. They think of it as either a re-arranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic, or grounded in a pagan belief system. So it was interesting to read this account of creation care written by a Southern Baptist educated supervisor of training at a nuclear power plant. I found it an account tempered by caution against excess while actively advocating for our responsibility as God-appointed stewards to care for creation and proposing active steps one may take. Most of all, I found an account that grounded creation care ethics and praxis, not in the urgent cries of the moment, or the current findings of science, but in a theology for creation care.

Spencer begins with the idea that we care for creation for the glory of God. He addresses the idea of “creation subject to futility” by observing what follows, the hope of redemption for our bodies and all of creation. That hope means we live in hope, leading to actions that anticipate that renewal without the illusion that we will accomplish it, actions that in some cases bring substantial cleanup, as has been seen in many of the rivers, skies, and resurgence of some endangered species. This hope counters the despair in much of the environmental movement.

With that, Spencer contends both for the necessity of care for creation and against the danger of environmentalism becoming an all-encompassing ideology, supplanting the gospel of the kingdom for Christians, stifling evangelical proclamation and other worthy concerns. He weigh’s Lynn White’s classic article blaming Christianity for exploitation of the environment, arguing that while aspects are accurate, the story is far more nuanced, and much environmental depredation may be traced to a modernity that removed God from the picture. He traces environmentalism in the US, how evangelicals both engaged in environmental efforts and how environmentalism became entwined with the culture wars, resulting in increasing evangelical suspicion

The second part of the work focuses on theology. He proposes four doctrinal questions that serve as the basis for creation care ethics and practice:

  1. What are the sources of authority for environmental ethics?
  2. Why does creation have value?
  3. What is the human role in creation?
  4. What is the end goal or final state of the created order, and how does it come about?

The following four chapters discuss each of these in turn. As one might expect, scripture is the Christian’s final authority, and yet we may learn from science as a form of general revelation without being compelled to accommodate scripture to science or undermine its authority. We learn from science without succumbing to scientism. He turns to the value of creation, which he argues has both instrumental value for its use and inherent value as good because God made it so. Only God has intrinsic value and is worthy of worship. Spencer traces the effects of the fall and what has, is, and will be restored in redemption, the value of which is signaled to us in the incarnation. Given this framework, we are warned against both pantheism and dualism.

Humans are called to steward creation for God’s glory. Spencer challenges the anti-human bias in some strands of environmentalism. Despite our limitations and failures, we have a role as God’s redeemed to point toward the healed and restored contours of the new creation. As we look toward new creation, we pursue the substantial healing both in our own life and the creation while realizing that only Christ will purge all evil from the world and fully renew all things. Spencer argues on the basis of word studies that all will not be burned but rather disclosed–a judging and purifying prior to restoration.

So how then does this theology say we ought live? First he addresses the church and environment. He is careful not to allow the environment to usurp the mission of the church but argues, a la Francis Schaeffer, for the church as a “pilot plant” in which creation care is part of the holistic discipleship that encompasses all of life. The aim is not to allow green practices to take over church life but rather to ask how God may be glorified in all things including our facilities and grounds management.

He then turns to conspiracy thinking and political conflict, both of which undermine the gospel. Rather than contend about climate change, he uses a “Pascal’s Wager” argument that a life of restraint will be good for us and the creation even if climate models don’t prove out. Rather than becoming embroiled in political conflict at the national level, he calls for a localism that brings people together to solve ground level problems that often is much less divisive and corrosive.

Finally he addresses how we may live hopefully in our own practices: thinking about the costs, environmental and otherwise of missions, sharing resources (do we all need snowblowers?), considering our landscapes and the suburban ideal of emerald lawns, living with wonder, leading quiet lives, exercising restraint on consumption, care in purchasing and growing food, and sabbaths, which give us and our infrastructure a rest.

While some environmentally-minded readers will balk at his warnings about mission drift and the risk of a big ideology of environmentalism usurping the church, what Spencer does is lay a basis for churches that are suspicious or concerned about such things to take steps of creation care. He invites us to do so not because it is culturally relevant or that “science tells me so” but because the Bible tells us so and it glorifies God and is part of following Jesus.

While some would consider this insufficiently “progressive,” it would be a great leap forward for many churches to so theologically form their members and instruct them in whole life discipleship. I think he wisely de-centers our hyperfocus on national politics to think about the old axiom that “all politics are ultimately local.” Noting the push for example toward electric vehicles, he raises the question of local charging sites in our communities–where will we put them? Spencer moves us away from the memes and soundbite debates to the kind of thoughtful and nuanced thinking and praxis that Christians must become better at both to honor God, win others, and serve the common good.

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

Review: Persuasive Apologetics

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Persuasive Apologetics, Jeffrey M. Robinson. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2023.

Summary: Discusses how we use various apologetic approaches adapted to the various people we meet, thoughtfully and gently seeking to undercut their objections, giving reasons for our hope in Christ.

Jeffrey Robinson is convinced as a pastor that there is still a need for apologetics, indeed for persuasion in seeking to call people to belief in the gospel. He believes persuading people of the truth is simply part of the call all of us have to faithful witness, that it glorifies God, and flows from the commands to love God and others with all our being, including our minds. But our demeanor is crucial, calling for integrity and gentleness.

Understanding a person’s worldview suppositions is crucial to persuasion. For one thing, often only Christians are assumed to have them, when in fact we all do. Robinson offers examples of uncovering these in conversation, exposing inconsistencies, and showing how Christian belief better addresses these, or even how other systems live off inherited Christian belief.

Robinson then discusses different apologetic approaches: fideism, classical apologetics, evidentialism, and presuppositionalism, and reformed epistemology. Rather than advocating a single approach, he would propose that an eclectic apologetic is what we need–different approaches to persuade different people. In the same chapter, as he discusses the noetic effects of sin, he cites James Spiegel’s The Making of an Atheist to talk about “father wounds”–absent, abusive, and aloof, fathers–and the many famous atheists for whom this is true (no counter-examples are listed). I found this intriguing but have also found there were “church wounds”–whether the dismissal of questions or personal observation of hypocrisy or abuse

He turns to the role of undercutting defeaters (UCDs), which rather than rebutting conclusions, undercut and reveal the flaws in a reasoning process. He shows how Jesus does this in the hypothetical of the woman with seven husbands who died, his response to being accused of casting out demons with Satan’s power (the house divided argument), and the question about paying taxes to Caesar. He then explores examples that arise including the hypocrisy in the church objection. He follows this with a discussion comparing Jesus to other religious leaders. He then concludes with reasons for hope in the incarnation and the resurrection and how the work of Christ addresses evil and death.

This work does not replace classic works on apologetics but refers the reader to these. Rather, Robinson argues for the part of persuasion, off both offering reasons to believe and gently but with conviction encouraging others to examine their own beliefs. He offers help in how we respond to and undercut objections to the faith, and how we speak to the crucial issue of hope. A willingness to contend for truth can be an act of loving well.

I found much of value here, including the reaffirmation of the importance of persuasion. At the same time, I would love to see a discussion of persuasion that includes the witness of beauty, the power of loving Christian community, and even the persuasive power of being in the presence of praying Christians. I have seen people come to faith through all of these and wonder how the author would incorporate this into his “eclectic” and “versatile” apologetic. Personally, I like the idea of using everything at our disposal to make known the wonder of God’s saving work through Christ!

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

Review: The Bookseller at the End of the World

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The Bookseller at the End of the World, Ruth Shaw. Auckland, NZ: Allen & Unwin, 2022.

Summary: The story of two small bookshops and their customers in the southernmost part of New Zealand, and the long journey of the bookseller running from trauma, broken dreams, and adventures until re-united with her first love and her work as a bookseller.

Ruth Shaw and her husband Lance run “two wee bookshops” in the southernmost part of New Zealand, a rural town named Manapouri, a scenic destination of vacationers and eco-tourists. This is both about her experiences of bookselling, and the long journey from a working class upbringing across much of the south Pacific until she married her “first and last love,” and after sharing duties of sailing a charter boat, settled down and started the bookshops, at first one, and then a second nearby for children.

Ruth had a pretty normal upbringing, living in Naseby, until it was shattered by a rape at a school dance that left her pregnant. As was the case then, she went away to stay with relatives in Wellington until she had the child, which she gave up for adoption. She tried the Navy but couldn’t handle the discipline. She returned to Stewart Island to assist her parents in running a hotel. It was there that she met Lance Shaw, fell in love, only to have their engagement broken off because Lance couldn’t agree to raise their children Catholic. From helping to run a hotel, she took off to Wellington, running for the next twenty years of her life from trauma and heartbreak

She had various jobs including cook and housekeeper for a house of priests, then went sailing around the Pacific with another man she met and married. But tragedy stalked with her husband dying in a car accident, leaving her with child, who died from an Rh incompatibility, a consequence of her first pregnancy. Later, she returns to the cemetery where he is buried and snatches the cross to remember him by.

She spends twenty years in a wild assortment of jobs, surviving a tsunami, encountering pirates, having run-ins with the law in several countries, returning home long enough to care for her dying mother, attempting suicide and spending time in a mental facility. There were more marriages, from which she ran. For a time she works with a social agency, drawing on her own life to help others. Then a phone call comes from a familiar voice from twenty years ago, asking if she was still Catholic, a reunion with the son she’d given up for adoption, and the move to Manapouri after selling the charter business and the decision to open the bookshops. Always a reader, she began with her own library as the core of her stock.

Interspersed with her memoir are delightful little vignettes called “Tales From the Bookshops.” She tells of giving as many books as she sells, including one to Hamish the hiker. We learn of a couple with a bizarre practice of reading books, of finding the right book for the man who loved tractors, and of how she handles the sale of family books–heirlooms. We are entertained by the story of Lex, the six year-old, who became her “bookshop assistant,” Cove, the bookshop dog, and many more vignettes from her bookselling life.

Ruth Shaw offers us a memoir combining resilience amid trauma and tragedy, a wonderful love story with a happy ending, and plenty of stories any bibliophile will love and identify with. Shaw exemplifies the wonderful quality of all the great booksellers–the ability to connect the hungry reader with just the right book, even from her small shops. You don’t have to go to the Strand, Shakespeare’s or Powell’s. There are dedicated booksellers, even at the end of the world in southern New Zealand who find ways to bring just the right book together with the hungry reader.

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.

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.

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!

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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

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.

Review: Renaissance

/ rtrube54 / 3 Comments

Renaissance, Susan Fish. Brewster, MA: Raven | Paraclete Press, 2023.

Summary: 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.

Elizabeth Fane came across these words in a book of Dante, found in a church rummage sale:

“Midway on life’s journey I found myself alone in a dark wood where the right way was lost.”

Little did Liz realize that within a few months, she would be living these words. She was approaching fifty with a husband she loved and three grown up sons leaving home. She served as executive director of a non-profit, a job she loved and was good at. Then came the day an associate mentions something about her family that rocks her world because it was something she didn’t know.

She steps away from her work and makes plans to go to Italy, leaving family behind. She goes, not as a tourist but a garden volunteer at a convent in Florence, Italy. Florence, the heart of the Renaissance. Dante’s house. The Accademia and the Uffizi. The works of Caravaggio, da Vinci, and Michelangelo. Ancient churches, bustling markets, a glorious countryside.

Yet her life seems a dark wood. But she slowly opens up to the good food, the prayers in a grotto, conversations with Honey and Cecy and a painting of Mary, alone, that Cecy nicknames Our Lady of Perpetual Constipation. She works with the convent gardener who teaches her the work of pruning olive trees. He begins each day drinking a cup of olive oil, giving thanks both to God and the olive grove. Mornings are spent pruning, afternoons by gathering pruned branches. But what is being pruned in Liz?

Through most of the story, she keeps her secret to herself, only sharing it late in the story with Honey, who sees things differently than she. A subsequent betrayal by an old high school friend she encountered on a tour forces her to example how the secret kept from her by her husband and son affected her–not only how they saw her, but also the identity that she had constructed.

There is that painting of Mary, that hangs in her room. Not Mary with child. Not the Pieta, Mary holding her dead son. Mary alone. Mary who has said “let it be unto me…” and Mary whose own heart has been pierced with a sword. Was Mary still saying “let it be unto me”? Could Liz? What would that mean for how she saw her husband? Her son? Herself?

Susan Fish tells the story of a woman seeking her own renaissance, trying to find her way through a dark would where all the familiar trail blazes are missing. Liz’s search is juxtaposed with the beauties of Florence and it’s countryside. Yet her healing comes not from the beauties of the place but as she comes to a place of vulnerable, raw honesty, facing her anger that kept her from going to the English church, and the false self she projected to family and even herself. A profound story of a mid-life renaissance.

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