Today is the first day in my life in which Queen Elizabeth II is no longer the Queen of the United Kingdom and the nations of the British Commonwealth. I am 68 and she was Queen before I was born. I’ve seen so many world leaders come and go. Churchill, de Gaulle, Khrushchev (and Gorbachev), Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan. And always there was Queen Elizabeth II.
Her Platinum Jubilee earlier this summer reminded me that this day would come. Yet I was among those who said, “God save the Queen” because I didn’t want it to come yet. But her absence from many of the festivities suggested the increasingly fragile nature of her health at age 96. I suspected it would not be much longer before she followed her husband Philip.
I remember a youthful Queen. I collected stamps as a kid, and upon her coronation, every country in the Commonwealth at that time printed stamps with her youthful, crowned profile. I remember a young mother with children around my age or older. In pictures of her over the years, I saw a maturing, and then aging monarch, always self-possessed, but bearing like all of us, the marks of advancing years. That mental montage of images including the frail Queen with youthful incoming Prime Minister Truss on Tuesday remind me of the arc of life we all follow.
What strikes me, as it has so many, is how she persisted in fulfilling her royal duties from her youth, even while Princess during the war years until this very week. She once said, “Work is the rent you pay for the room you occupy on earth.” She traveled more than any monarch in history, visiting Canada twenty times alone. And this from one who, while Edward VIII was king, did not expect to reign. In the end, she reigned longer than any British monarch.
I think part of her longevity had to do with her resilience. Think of what the past seventy years have brought: the end of Great Britain as one of the greatest powers, the end of empire, advances in technology, changes in moral standards, the shift from industrial to technology driven economies, and so much more. Media shifted from print to radio to television to the 24/7 news cycle, and the internet. Historians and biographers have and will point out mistakes made by her and her family negotiating the traditions of monarchy in such rapidly changing times. What stands out is that she learned and she lasted. Can any of us do more?
I’m reminded of her courage. She and her family could have fled to Canada during the war. Along with Churchill, they stayed and gave support to those who faced untold trials. She faced the dangers of public life, including at least two attempts on her life.
I think of her faith. Formally the Queen was ‘Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England’. I sensed there was more. She was not just a Christian monarch but a monarch who was an openly professing Christian. This was evident in her annual Christmas messages, that I made a point to listen to once they were on video. In 2000 she said:
“To many of us, our beliefs are of fundamental importance. For me the teachings of Christ and my own personal accountability before God provide a framework in which I try to lead my life. I, like so many of you, have drawn great comfort in difficult times from Christ’s words and example.”
Yet she was never parochial or intolerant, practicing warm inter-faith relationships.
She combined representing the Kingdom and the Commonwealth with dignity with setting people at ease. When World War Two ended, she mingled unknown among the celebrating crowds. She could do that no longer once Queen but many pictures showing her setting people at ease, whether children, soldiers, ordinary people, or foreign dignitaries. And who of us will forget how she did this with Paddington Bear during her Platinum Jubilee.
Ma’amalade sandwich Your Majesty?
As an American citizen, she was not my Queen. And yet, in both her Jubilee and her passing, I believe in some sense she became the Queen of all of us and today I feel the loss that she is no longer with us, the first day this is so in my life. Her passing reminds me that all of us, even monarchs, are mere mortals. All of us run a race with a finish. The Queen ran hers to the end. Now, may she discover all that she in faith believed and defended. And may she Rest in Peace and Rise in Glory.
Four View on Heaven(Counterpoints), John S. Feinberg (Contributor), J. Richard Middleton (Contributor), Michael Allen (Contributor), Peter Kreeft (Contributor), Michael E. Wittmer (General Editor). Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2022.
Summary: Representatives of four different views on heaven respond to ten questions and each other’s responses.
For many, if asked their view of heaven, they would be hard-pressed to say much more than that they hope to go “there” when they die. Among theologians and biblical scholars, as you may suspect, there is a much more extensive discussion, and some disagreement. This work presents four views representative of those shared by many thoughtful believers. It might be noted that the four contributors to this work all agree on three important truths: the Return of Christ, the bodily Resurrection of believers, and the Restoration of creation, a new heaven and new earth.
Following an introductory historical survey of the doctrine of heaven, worth the price of admission, Michael E. Wittmer lists ten questions he had asked each of the contributors to address. Some referenced the questions specifically while others formulated responses reflective of those questions:
Where is the final destiny of the saved?
What will we be there?
What will we do there?
How, what, and who will we see of God?
How does your view of our end relate to the intermediate state?
How does your view of our end relate to our present life?
Will we possess special powers?
Will we remember traumatic events in this life or loved ones who are not with us?
How will we relate to our spouses and other family members?
Will we be able to sin in our final condition?
The four contributors and a summary of their views are:
John S. Feinberg represents a traditional evangelical reading along the general lines of dispensational premillenialism. He would affirm an intermediate state of believers’ spirits going to be with the Lord, a “rapture” of the saints before Christ comes to defeat evil and inaugurate his millemnial reign, followed by the great white throne judgment, and the new heavens and earth.
J. Richard Middleton emphasizes that our ultimate destiny is not to go to heaven but that in Christ, heaven will come to earth in his return and we will reign with him on the renewed earth, engaging in the normal activities of life, participating in that renewal. Middleton traces the temple theme throughout scripture, seeing in Revelation 21-22, the renewal and final form of God’s temple.
Michael Allenrepresents a Reformed corrective to Middleton’s position, focusing on a beatific vision of God in a new creation, a radically renewed heaven on earth.
Peter Kreeft, in what I thought the most engaging of the essays, represents a Roman Catholic understanding including the affirmation of Purgatory as the “washroom” for believers before they enter the joys of fellowship with a holy God. Kreeft is the only one who explicitly answered all ten questions, including what we remember and how we will relate to our spouses and others in our family.
Each essay is followed by courteous but substantive responses from the others that point up the differences of their approaches, followed by a short rejoinder. Feinberg’s are the most scripturally focused (although I don’t think he fully reckons with his own theological premises). Middleton reflects the temple theology and neo-Calvinist focus on the renewal of the earth. Allen offers a reformed corrective to others from a theocentric perspective while Kreeft reflects explicitly the combination of scripture and tradition of the Catholic Church.
Several things stand out as quite wonderful in this discussion: no matter the specifics of our final destiny of believers, it is wonderful. It is filled with the presence of God in Christ that will occupy us forever. We will have resurrection bodies with enhanced but not omnipotent capacities. While there is disagreement, there will be work fitted to our faithfulness and gifted capacities. Sin in our lives and the creation is vanquished and death is no more.
This work both fosters our awareness of our glorious destiny as well as the details over which disagreements remain, which may help in clarifying our own understanding. It is also marked by the generous courtesy of each toward all the others, a quality of interaction that serves as a model for theological discussion, and indeed all discussions between Christians.
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
Maigret’s Pickpocket(Inspector Maigret), Georges Simenon (translated by Siân Reynolds). New York: Penguin, 2019 (originally published 1967).
Summary: Maigret becomes much more acquainted with a pickpocket than he bargained for when the man contacts him and leads him to his wife’s body, a victim of murder.
Maigret is enjoying a beautiful day riding the rear platform of a bus, jostled occasionally by a shopper, then jostled again. He then realizes that his wallet has been stolen by a pickpocket–with his badge that costs a month’s pay to replace. Except he doesn’t have to replace it. In the next day’s post he finds the wallet with his badge and contents returned–nothing stolen. A little later he receives a phone call. It is his pickpocket, Francois Ricain, who meets him in a restaurant and confides that when he realized he had Maigret’s wallet, he decided he would take the risk in confiding with him. He takes Maigret to his apartment, opening the door of his bedroom where his wife Sophie is lying dead of a gunshot wound to her face.
While the decontamination and investigation team are on the way, Maigret buys him lunch (he’s neither eaten or slept) and gets his story. He’d gone out the night before to borrow money for his rent–he was about to be evicted. He’s a poor writer hoping to write some screen plays and was seeking help from a film producer he’d done some work for, Carus at a restaurant that a circle of those who all worked at various times for Carus would gather. Carus was out, and by the time he had tried his other friends, it was nearly morning. He found his wife shot dead with a pistol he’d kept in a drawer, know to his friends with whom he’d acted out a scene using that pistol. It wasn’t suicide. Ricain had thrown the pistol in the river, easily recovered but without prints.
Sophie was modestly attractive, and had a bit part in one of Carus’s films, and was intimate with him at a special apartment he kept. There was an aborted child that Carus said wasn’t his. He wasn’t her only lover. Maki, a sculptor had also been with her, and others. Some considered her a slut. Carus’s partner (his wife was in England), Norah knew about her.
Of course the husband is the prime suspect. Yet Maigret doesn’t arrest him. He feeds him, gives him lodging in a hotel for a night, then keeps him in a holding area at the Quai des Orfèvres. He questions the others and learns of all the men Sophie had slept with. But did any, or perhaps Norah have a reason to kill her? Simenon waits, talks to them all, enjoying several marvelous meals at their gathering spot, the Vieux Pressoir.
What is he waiting for? Why does he treat the prime suspect with an almost fatherly concern? In this case, the murder is exposed by the murderer’s own words and actions with Maigret on the scene to save the murderer’s life from a suicide attempt. Simenon’s Maigret is one more example of the investigator careful to observe and patient amid pressure, waiting, along with us, for the truth to emerge.
My Ántonia, Willa Cather (Foreword Kathleen Norris). Boston: Mariner, 1995 (Originally published in 1918, no publisher web link available).
Summary: Jim Burden’s narrative of his relationship growing up on the prairie with Ántonia Shimerda, one he would live with throughout his life.
[Review includes spoilers.]
Jim Burden was an orphaned boy who came to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. Ántonia Shimerda was a young girl, four years older, of Bohemian immigrants living nearby. This story, described in the opening narrative as a manuscript describing his friendship with Ántonia, given to a friend from the same town in Nebraska months after a train ride in which they had spoken of her.
Jim is quickly enlisted to teach Ántonia English so she can help with the family’s transactions in the community. And thus begins a deep friendship between the two lasting a lifetime. Tragedy quickly shadows Ántonia’s life when her sickly and unhappy father, several weeks after a beautiful Christmas Day visit, takes his life. Ántonia and her brother Ambrosch are left to eke out a living, and they do, by Ambrosch brute force and Ántonia’s hard work, through which she becomes somehow even more vibrant. Their friendship continues in the moments she is free, including an incident in which Jim, who happens to be carrying a shovel, kills a deadly and huge rattler, becoming a hero to her and all.
Later, Jim’s grandparents move to town and Ántonia also takes up a job, working as a housekeeper with Mrs. Harling, teaching her domestic arts she has not learned on the farm. The two keep up, Jim shunning younger girls for Ántonia and her friend Lena, to whom he is attracted. Lena has different ideas, and becomes an independent dressmaker, beholden to no man and eventually living in San Francisco. Jim went off to college and eventually law school. Meanwhile, Ántonia goes off with a young man to get married. He abandons her, pregnant. She returns home and joyfully, as she does so much, raises her daughter, leaving shame to others. She and her brother work together on the farm. Jim returns once to visit, holding her hands as he prepares to return to school, saying he will return.
It is twenty years until he does. They do continue to write. In the meanwhile, Ántonia marries Anton Cuzak, with whom she has ten children and builds a prosperous farm. Jim becomes a railroad lawyer. The book concludes with his visit to the farm, where he meets the children and Anton.
As in O Pioneers, the story unfolds amid Cather’s descriptions of the glories of the Nebraska prairie. And like that story, Cather portrays a woman of strength and joy in her life. One senses she could have spent her life with Jim, who never pursues her beyond their shared friendship. And yet she not merely accepts, but joyfully embraces a life with Anton, who honors her initiative and industry. We sense that Jim comes to realize this as well. What strikes me is that each honors the commitments of the other. A modern novel would probably have written in an affair that would destroy them both, and Ántonia’s family in the bargain. They choose a different road, generous friendship that honors boundaries, and finds joy in what they have, “the precious, incommunicable past.”
Ideas Have Consequences, Richard M. Weaver. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984 (first published in 1948, link is to expanded 2013 edition).
Summary: An argument tracing the dissolution of Western society to the abandonment of philosophical realism for nominalism and what may be done to reverse that decline.
Many authors have traced the decline of the West (if there is such a thing) to the ideas that shape our culture. Few have argued that more trenchantly or been cited more often that Richard M. Weaver, an intellectual historian and professor of English at the University of Chicago during the mid-twentieth century. I’ve been aware of this book for over twenty years but just now have gotten around to it.
Weaver’s argument begins with the abandonment of philosophical realism, the existence of transcendent or metaphysical truth for nominalism, the denial of absolute universals but only the particulars of our existence. He then traces some of the ways this manifests itself. First he discusses the obliteration of the distinctions and hierarchies which constitute society for an egalitarian ideal. He then notes the fragmentation of modern societies. No longer capable of philosophy, we are reduced to facts without coherent structure. Without the transcendent, the self is the measure of value. Egotism is a word that runs through his discussion. When work is only about self-realization rather than being divinely ordained, work becomes a matter of getting the better of others rather than pursuing the common good. Art, as it becomes solipsistic, degenerates. Weaver saves his harshest criticism for the distinctly American music of jazz.
In the rejection of a transcendent metaphysic, moderns come up with a modern synthesis which Weaver calls “the great stereopticon” consisting of the trinity of the press, the motion picture, and the radio (television was just coming on the scene in 1948). These foster the fragmented, disharmonious experience of our lives, often distracting us from their banal character, a critique that seems to have anticipated Neil Postman’s, Amusing Ourselves to Death. All of this fosters in us a “spoiled child” psychology amid technological advances that believes in a material heaven easily achieved.
Weaver’s final three chapters address his proposed remedy–what must be done. First is to reassert and protect the right of private property, the only metaphysical right he believes has not yet been jettisoned in the four hundred year decline he traces. The extension of this from homes to businesses to agriculture preserves and restores volition and undercuts authoritarian tyrannies–whether capitalist or communist. He also argues for the power of the word, both poetic and logical, advocating for instruction in logic and rhetoric. Finally, he contends for restoration of “spirit of piety” with regard for nature, for one’s neighbors, and the past.
For me, what I would most criticize is his concern about distinctions and orders, that seem for him established on the basis of heredity and immutable characteristics, like gender. It felt like women, and perhaps the races must be kept in their places, an idea more in a Platonic rather than Christian metaphysic. It also makes me wonder whether Weaver would want to extend private property to all in society, or is arguing for the protection of the “haves.” I also don’t think much of his application of egotism to the arts, and especially to jazz, rooted in the laments of the blues, and the transcendent hope of the spirituals. I thought this deeply dismissive and a critique imposed from a superficial extension of his basic idea of egotism that little considers the actual work of the artists.
That said, his basic discussion of the consequences of the shift from realism to nominalism, from absolutes to relativism, particularly in the rise of fragmentation, exacerbated by the stereopticon of our media is worth our attention, prescient as it was in 1948. I find myself wondering whether his remedies of private property, the power of words, and the recovery of piety toward the earth, our neighbors, and history get us all the way back to life grounded in transcendent realities, from which he traces our decline. These seem more a holding action at best.
I also found this a challenging read in which the thread of argument gets buried in prose, sparkling at times, and obscuring at others. It felt like reading John Henry Newman–there is a great argument in here, somewhere! It’s an important work, especially for classic conservatives, that anticipates the thought of others. Just be ready for some work as you read it!
Cartoonist: Clifford Berryman. “Uncle Sam and a schoolboy celebrating Labor Day by bowing and paying homage to the common working man.” Washington Post, September 4, 1899, The U.S. National Archives, Public Domain
Labor Day Memories
A day honoring the hard work of Youngstown's workers
Tributes to work ethic while workers rest
Sleeping in (unless you delivered the paper)
The last fling of summer
The closing day of the Canfield Fair
The final harness races and competitions
Lots of winners ribbons
One more elephant ear
One more afternoon to hang out with friends
The last family picnics
The final time for those burgers and dogs on the grill
Tossing washers or horse shoes
Crystal blue skies heralding the crisp nights of fall
Sunsets before 8 o'clock
School clothes laid out for tomorrow
The first day of school*
So early to bed
It's all of us to work tomorrow!
*When I was growing up, our first day of school was always the day after Labor Day.
To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.”Enjoy!
Summary: Roger Angell essays covering the seasons of 1972 to 1976 that arguably transformed baseball into the sport it is today.
I’ve been discovering the marvelous baseball writing of the recently deceased Roger Angell, one of the great baseball writers. This book includes essays from the seasons of 1972 to 1976, my college years. One of the marvels of this collection was simply to relive in the reading the historic seven-game series between the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox in 1975. It was the era of the Big Red Machine, Yaz, Carlton Fisk, Fred Lynn, and Luis Tiant with the Red Sox (the latter yet another great player traded away by the Indians!).
Along the way, he reminded me of the Oakland A’s championship teams united by their love of winning and their shared resentments of Charlie Finley, the brilliant and flawed club owner. By contrast, Angell recounts an afternoon watching the Giants in the twilight years of Horace Stoneham’s ownership, a gracious host.
We read of the final games of Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, as well as the years of Nolan Ryan’s greatness. He also writes of Steve Blass, who threw an amazing World Series game with the Pirates, and in subsequent years lost his control. He could pitch well in practice, his arm was sound, but he could not get his head sorted out. And finally he hung it up.
He takes us behind the scenes, at spring training games, the rebuilding of both Yankee Stadium and the Yankee team and Walter Alston’s brief playing career and the end of his managerial leadership of the Dodgers. We learn about the reserve clause that bound players to their teams, the fight to gain free agency, the owners lockout, and subsequent agreement that changed baseball as players won larger salaries and became more mobile. Angell tells the other side, about how many players want to remain in a community and hated trades.
One of the “behind-the-scenes” accounts in the book was Angell’s trip with Ray Scarborough, an Angel’s scout as he evaluated players. We learn what scouts looked for in pitchers (body, mechanics, and a good fastball with control) and hitters (good contact, whether they got hits or not) and the fraternity among them even though they scouted for rival clubs. It all came down to the draft and who chose who.
It was a time of change with the corporatization of the game, artificial turf, a changing of the guard of stars, and the power struggle between the Players Association and owners. But so much of this book just revels in the game, the ups and downs of each season, rain delays, and the quirks of each ball park, the contenders, the playoffs and the World Series. Angell reminded me of games I’d seen and players I remembered: Willie Stargell and Roberto Clemente, Vida Blue and Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson and Johnny Bench and Pete Rose (alias Charley Hustle).
For the young fan, the book tells us something of how we got to the present. For older fans, it is a time to remember. For all of us, Angell’s descriptions invite us to a special kind of fantasy baseball, reliving in our minds real games and personalities of the past.
Summer’s final full month offered the chance to enjoy books new and old. Among the older books were one on liberal learning in the classic sense, Anne Lamott’s classic on writing, filled with all her wit, a Ngaio Marsh mystery, a great survey of American history between the Civil War and the First World War, John Steinbeck’s delightful Travels with Charley, and what is the definitive work on pioneering mathematician and computer scientist, Alan Turing. Then there were the new books: on jazz and faith, on anxiety, on grief, Zionism, Christian nationalism, the power of our social groupings to shape identity, a new work on Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures, a study on Jonathan Edward’s approach to deification, and a book on how context shapes calling. Another new book you might check out is Vaclav Smil’s How the World Really Works, a very clear eyed view of the environmental and technological challenges our global civilization faces. Here’s the list of my reviews:
A Student’s Guide to Liberal Learning (ISI Guides to the Major Disciplines), James V. Schall, S.J. Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2019. (Link is to free e-book download from publisher). A pithy little guide on pursuing the liberty that comes in the pursuit of truth and how one might devote oneself to liberal learning. Review
The Anxiety Field Guide, Jason Cusick. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2022. A practical guide with daily exercises to help face anxieties and reduce feelings of anxiety integrating clinical practices and biblical insights. Review
God Dwells Among Us(Essential Studies in Biblical Theology), G. K. Beale and Mitchell Kim. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021 (Originally published in 2014). A study of the theme of the temple from God’s garden temple in Eden to the New Jerusalem of Revelation, and the role of the people of God, his living temple, in extending the reach of God’s kingdom. Review
A Short History of Christian Zionism, Donald M. Lewis. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. An account of the understanding of the Jewish people’s claim to their ancient homeland throughout history, and particularly since the Reformation, focusing on Great Britain and the United States. Review
A Supreme Love: The Music of Jazz and the Hope of the Gospel, William Edgar. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022. A study of the roots and contributing streams of jazz music, proposing that the reason jazz moves from miserable lament to inextinguishable joy is the Christian hope found in the gospel. Review
How the World Really Works, Vaclav Smil. New York: Viking, 2022. A scientific, data-based assessment of how our advanced technological global civilization has developed, the challenges we face, and what it realistically will take to address these challenges. Review
The Psychology of Christian Nationalism, Pamela Cooper-White. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022. A discussion of the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States, why people are drawn to it, and how to talk across the divide when one differs from those who embrace some form of Christian nationalism. Review
Bird By Bird,Anne Lamott. New York: Anchor Books, 1994. Anne Lamott’s advice to her writing students, basically, “almost every single thing I know about writing.” Review
Travels with Charley: In Search of America, John Steinbeck. New York: Penguin Classics, 2012 (originally published in 1962). John Steinbeck’s memoir of his 1960 roadtrip in his truck/camper Rocinante with his French poodle Charley. Review
Calvinism for a Secular Age, Jessica R. Joustra and Robert J. Joustra, eds. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022. A collection of contributions considering Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures of 1898 at Princeton and both their flaws and relevance for our contemporary context. Review
American Heritage History of the Confident Years, Francis Russell. New York: New Word City, 2016 (originally published in 1969). A survey of American history during the period between the Civil War and World War 1, 1866-1914. Review
Reading Black Books, Claude Atcho. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2022. Theological reflections on ten key pieces of Black literature. Review
Death at the Bar(Roderick Alleyn #9), Ngaio Marsh. New York: Felony & Mayhem Press, 2013 (first published in 1940). A holiday at a secluded seaside inn, and a challenge at darts ends up in murder from prussic acid (cyanide). Review
The Power of Us, Jay J. Van Bavel, PhD, and Dominic J. Packer, PhD. New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2021. How the groups of which we are a part help shape our identity, how this can lead to personal change, and understanding both how these identities may divide and unite us. Review
The Qur’an and the Christian, Matthew Aaron Bennett. Grand Rapids, Kregel Academic, 2022. A scholarly discussion of the origins and place of the Qur’an in Islam with the aim of encouraging Christians to read, and understand how to read and discuss the Qur’an with their Muslim neighbors. Review
Jonathan Edwards and Deification(New Explorations in Theology), James R. Salladin. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022. In response to the growing interest in the idea of theosisor deification in Eastern Orthodoxy, this work examines the idea of “special grace” and participation in divine fullness in the thought of Jonathan Edwards as a Reformed counterpart that preserves the Creator-creature distinction while recognizing the saving relational communion between God and humans. Review
Alan Turing: The Enigma, Andrew Hodges. London: Vintage Books, 1983, 2012 (publisher’s link is for an updated edition by Princeton University Press, 2015). Perhaps the definitive account of the brilliant mathematician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist, Alan Turing, who was prosecuted for his homosexuality, not long before the end of his life due to cyanide poisoning. Review
Grief: A Philosophical Guide, Michael Cholbi. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022. A philosophical discussion of the nature of grief, why we grieve, and its importance in our lives. Review
Calling in Context, Susan L. Maros. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022. A work on vocational discernment that recognizes that this process is shaped by our context, our social location. Review
Book of the Month: I don’t usually choose more technical works of theology, but James R. Salladin’s Jonathan Edwards and Deification is a carefully and clearly argued case for Edwards’s unique approach to “deification,” in his language, “divine fullness,” that both emphasizes relational communion while preserving the Creator/creature distinction. Reading this was a wonderful experience of thinking great thoughts about the Triune God.
Quote of the Month: William Edgar’s A Supreme Love is a wonderful exploration of the roots of jazz and how these intertwine with Christian hope. This quote captures the gist of the book:
How could the music that grew out of the realities of the enslavement of Black people, forced migration, rape, husbands and wives being separated, and children being ripped from their families not reflect this suffering and pain? If, as I will argue, jazz is the story of deep misery that leads to inextinguishable joy, then we cannot ignore the sources of sorrow that are found at the root of this music, from spirituals to blues to jazz (Edgar, p. 27).
What I’m Reading. I am reveling in Willa Cather’s luminous My Antonia! There is a description of a Christmas celebration that was wondrous reading. I’ve just finished Roger Angell’s Five Seasons, articles on the baseball seasons of 1972 to 1976, including the singularly memorable World Series of 1975 between the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox. I also have just completed Richard Weaver’s classic Ideas Have Consequences on what he sees as a decline in thought and culture in the West and what a return to right reason entails. I’m just getting into Paul D. Miller’s The Religion of American Greatness, one of the new books addressing Christian nationalism. Unlike some other works I’ve seen, Miller’s critique of Christian nationalism is one of a classic conservative in the David French tradition (French wrote the Foreword) who worked in the George W. Bush White House, is a military veteran, intelligence analyst, and Georgetown professor. I’m looking forward to an online interview with him September 15! I’ve just begun a Georges Simenon Maigret, Maigret’s Pickpocket, which has already piqued my attention. I’m also reading Four Views of Heaven, which is just that. I think it is possible to be so earthly minded that we are no heavenly or earthly good. I’m enjoying read four scholars in conversation about what we do and don’t know about these things. Finally, I’m just starting Peter Wehner’s The Death of Politics. I’ve appreciated his thoughtful op-eds in the New York Times as well as an interview I heard with him and look forward to more extended reading of his work.
Already, the sun is setting earlier and in another month, we’ll get the first taste of the cooler weather of autumn. I’ll be trading the ice tea for coffee with pumpkin spice, hot cider, and other warmer drinks. The drinks at my side may change, but the pleasures of a good book do not. Happy reading, friends!
Summary: A work on vocational discernment that recognizes that this process is shaped by our context, our social location.
In her work as a professor of leadership in a Christian seminary, Susan Maros came to a realization as she worked with students on discerning their callings. The ways that she had learned to discern calling in her White evangelical context were not necessarily the ways calling was discerned in other racial, ethnic, and cultural settings. This led to a process of examining her preconceptions about calling.
In this book she shares her learning. To begin with, she discovered that calling took different forms in scripture. The call of Abraham, Moses, and Nehemiah were each unique. Furthermore, calling unfolds over a lifetime, even when punctuated by particular calling moments.
Social location is a critical factor in how people experience calling. Social location includes racial, ethnic, and cultural background, socioeconomic status, and gender. These shape what opprtunities are most accessible and the ones considered “off-limits.” It also affects how we “hear” a call-an inner sense, a prophetic word, the counsel of community.
The last part of the book begins with understanding how we engage power, including understanding our own power and that of our community. Part of this is discerning how power works in social systems. The journey is a long one. Maros commends establishing sustainable rhythms of work and rest, community, companions, and lament. Underlying the discernment of calling is the recognition of and living out of purpose.
The principles and insights developed in this book are illustrated throughout by calling stories of a variety of ministry leaders representing various racial, ethnic, cultural, socioeconomic, gender, and age. Maros both illustrates from and draws insights from these stories, which form an integral part of the book. All of this comes together in a message of hope in the God who meets all of us in our social locations and bids us into lives of purpose under his grace.
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
Summary: A philosophical discussion of the nature of grief, why we grieve, and its importance in our lives.
The journey of the last several years has been a time of grief for many of us, losing loved ones to the pandemic or to other causes. A host of books have been written over the years, addressing psychological and spiritual dimensions of grief. What distinguishes this book is that, while referencing this literature, this work is a philosophical discussion that seeks to understand what grief is, who is the object of our grief, and how grief is important within the human experience.
Michael Cholbi observes that in much of the philosophical literature, grief is regarded as shameful, a sign of weakness. Cholbi argues otherwise, getting there through a sustained inquiry into the nature of grief. He admits that this may not help a person amid the tumult of grief, but may help prepare us to understand what is happening and how we may grow through it. He begins by considering for whom we grieve, why we grieve some and not others. He proposes that we grieve those in whom we have invested our practical identities, that is those who play important roles in our lives. He then considers what grief is, arguing that it is not a single emotion but a series of affective states, not necessarily those of Kubler-Ross’s five stages, or in that order. In addition, he suggests that grief is a form of attention, challenging us to interrogate the meaning of our emotions toward the one who has died, and what they reveal about our relation with the one who has died, a relation that has been transformed by death.
He then turns to some ethical questions. One concerns what he calls the paradox of grief. Grief is both painful and distressing, which seems detrimental to our flourishing and yet also capable of yielding insights and self-knowledge, shaping how we may live, moving forward. Can something so terribly painful be good? Cholbi moves on then and explores the rationality of grief. Instead of considering grief either arational or irrational, he argues that it is contingently rational, that is, it is “rational when we feel the right emotions in the right degree in light of the loss of the relationship with the deceased that we have suffered” (italics in the original). He then considers whether we have a duty to grieve. He argues that we do not have a duty to other grieving persons or to the deceased but to ourselves because of the good of the self-knowledge that may come when we attend to our relationship with the deceased and grow as rational agents. Most intriguing is that he wonders whether C. S. Lewis, at least on the evidence of A Grief Observed, grieved well in terms of growth in self-knowledge.
One of the most interesting questions Cholbi deals with is whether the peculiar “madness” of grief is a type of mental disorder. Cholbi would argue that grief is a human experience rather than a mental disorder, one from which most emerge, often with greater self understanding that shouldn’t be circumvented. Rather than treating grief as a pathology, he would want to treat the instances of pathology that emerge when grief goes awry.
In his conclusion, he distinguishes grief from other traumas, like divorce, contending that the loss of a person is more severe. I’m not so sure–sometimes the loss of a spouse or a parent to divorce is a living wound that never resolves. He also considers whether a considered philosophy of grief may change the experience of grief. While it may offer understanding of what we are undergoing, the emotional experience of grief and its course is unpredictable, nor can it determine what the specific content of our self-knowledge will be.
I suspect this is not the book to give someone amid grief, if one even can read books at some points during the grief process. I found the book helpful in reflecting upon what my experiences of grief have meant for me. I also suspect such a book, with its contention that we ought lean into the paradox of grief with attentiveness, is helpful. I believe attentiveness is the basis of various spiritually formative practices. It seems consistent that this would be so in the practice of grieving the loss of someone significant to us. Also, the careful discussion that distinguishes grief and mourning, that thinks about who we grieve and why, and that normalizes grief as part of the human experience are all important contributions of this work.
____________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
