memoir

Review: The Backyard Bird Chronicles

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Cover image of "The Backyard Bird Chronicles" written and illustrated by Amy Tan

The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Amy Tan (text and illustrations). Alfred A. Knopf (ISBN: 9780593536131) 2024.

Summary: Four years of journals on the birds visiting Amy Tan’s backyard, with sketches and detailed drawings.

At age 64, Amy Tan took art lessons from Jack Muir Laws, a nature illustrator. This led to walks viewing birds, sketchbook and drawing pencils in hand. She learned to make quick, rough sketches capturing essential features of the birds that she saw. Then she realized that her own backyard was a haven for birds, and her house, with extensive windows looking out on that yard, the ideal ‘blind” {except for the birds trying to fly through the windows, remedied with various decals).

She filled journal after journal with her observations, accompanied by sketches with captions, and sometimes the imagined thoughts or conversations of the birds. Her observations range from elation and love when a hummingbird feeds from a feeder in her hand and she can feel the brush of its wings, to profound sadness when she sees a bird that looks puffed up and realizes it is ill and probably dying. That leads to the practical action of emptying and cleaning her feeders so that she doesn’t spread the infection to other birds.

The book offers a selection of her entries, each accompanied with her sketches. She identifies species, telling us distinguishing marks. She makes detailed observations of their behavior, often accompanied by questions. For example, on May 22,2020, she watches baby titmice feeding. She identifies the leader, notes how the birds eat, sometimes attempting to eat things too big for them, sometimes taking and rejecting items like sun chips. All this is captured in a drawing on the facing page.

Along the way, Tan unashamedly displays her obsession with backyard bird, describing at length various types of feeders, efforts to discourage squirrels, and the variety and prodigious amounts of bird food she buys, including the mealworms she stores in their refrigerator. Needless to say, she has a supportive husband!

In addition to the journal sketches, Tan includes detailed drawings of various birds in fine detail. These approach the quality of an Audubon work. Tan’s skills of observation and description are evident in these drawings and throughout the text.

Tan’s enthusiasm about birds makes one think differently about the birds in one’s own backyard and surroundings. While not heavy-handed, we sense her awareness of these precious lives to be preserved. She sees the effects of nearby wildfires. She rescues injured birds, and grieves when they don’t make it. And if she has inspired you, she offers a list of the books, apps, and other resources she found helpful. All in all, this book is a delight to the eyes and food for the spirit.

Don’t be surprised if this book makes at least a backyard birder out of you!

Review: Why I Am Roman Catholic

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Cover image of "Why I Am Roman Catholic" by Matthew Levering

Why I Am Catholic, Matthew Levering. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514003145) 2024.

Summary: A Catholic theologian explains why he is Christian and Catholic and what it means to embrace this tradition.

At a time when many people are fleeing any organized religious tradition, theologian Matthew Levering unabashedly asserts “I love being Catholic”. In this book Levering explains how he came to faith and why he entered the Catholic Church. He describes the book as “an unfinished meditation on my Catholic life.” Throughout he weaves in his reading of Catholic saints and theologians with his own experience.

He begins by explaining how he came to Christian faith. For him, it was his sense of his own frailty and the reality of death that prompted his search. He was drawn by the cross of Christ, aware that he desperately needed it. Third, he was drawn by the awesomeness of the Triune God, a theme running through the book. Fourthly, the coherence and harmony of the two testaments was convincing.

He read himself into the Catholic Church, devouring works of John Paul II, von Balthasar, and Ratzinger. The unifying authority of the Petrine office drew him, Mary as Mother of the Lord Incarnate who intercedes, the beauty of the Eucharist, and Catholic teaching on marriage. The Church’s teaching on marriage is also one of the things he considers most beneficial as a context to nurture love and teach us the self-giving of Christ. In addition, he finds the Church’s teaching on humility and the providence of God beneficial.

However, being Catholic is not without its difficulties, which Levering admits with candor. He would be on the side of those troubled by accommodations to the secular world post-Vatican II. Yet he is even harder on himself, and the temptations to worldliness with which he struggles. Likewise, he finds the scandals of clerical sexual abuse disheartening. He forthrightly advocate support for victims, transparency, and believes turning to Christ’s saving power can bring real holiness out of the ruins.

While Levering warmly embraces Catholicism, he also speaks warmly of his ecumenical relationships. He acknowledges the polemics of the past. Likewise, he remains firm in his conviction that the Catholic Church is the one church founded by Christ. Thus, he opposes any ecumenism seeking to restore a lost unity. Rather, he sees ecumenism as an exchange of gifts, a means to foster warm relationships, and as a way to anticipate the unity of the church in the eschaton.

Finally, he concludes the book by offering an example of Catholic theological exegesis. He focuses on Genesis 1:1-3, weaving in all of scripture and drawing on theologians from Athanasius to his contemporaries. He concludes personally, speaking about how it is this God who has shown his light into Levering’s heart.

I spent one of the most remarkable hours of my life several years ago in an interview with Matthew Levering. I have rarely met someone who combined such theological learning with such passionate love for the Triune God. As he spoke of his faith, I was in awe and wonder, not of Levering, but of the Triune God of whom he spoke. And this is what I encountered afresh in this book. He did not persuade me to become Roman Catholic. But he clearly bore witness to how the Catholic Church is the place where he has encountered the living God, enriching all of his life.

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

Review: A Quilted Life

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Cover image of "A Quilted Life" by Catherine Meeks

A Quilted Life, Catherine Meeks (foreword by Michelle Miller). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802882899) 2024.

Summary: The story of a sharecropper’s daughter who overcame racism and health issues to teach and to lead racial healing efforts.

Catherine Meeks has led an amazing life by all accounts. Born the daughter of a hardworking sharecropper, raised in substandard educational conditions, raising two sons on her own, facing racism, and struggling with rheumatoid arthritis, life wasn’t easy. Yet eventually she completed a doctorate, held a number of academic positions, traveled in West Africa, preached in the National Cathedral, and led a ministry of racial healing.

She likens her life to the rag quilts her mother made from seemingly useless scraps of fabric. But nothing in her life, even her poverty, marginalization, and denigration, proved useless. Love and faith were the threads that wove the pieces together, beginning with the love in her home, the determination of her mother, and the faith she discovered as a teenager through a Church of Christ. She was able to attend Pepperdine, where she was mentored in racial healing by Ruby Holland.

Returning to the South, she briefly worked in a difficult mental health position before taking a job as assistant dean of women at Mercer College in Macon. Eventually, she pursued an MSW while directing Mercer’s African-American studies program, in addition to her student life work. Realizing her lack of a doctorate meant other faculty looked down on her, despite her efforts. As a result, she pursued a doctorate. This came with an opportunity to take a group of students to West Africa, where she met her future husband. Children followed, then rheumatoid arthritis, an affliction she continues to deal with. Then her husband divorced her, leaving her to raise her two boys on her own.

Despite all this, she continued to pursue her academic work. She crafted an innovative program, Standing on Their Shoulders. It recognized outstanding Black women in the Macon community, eventually numbering one hundred. Then the mayor, a Mercer law professor, recruited her to work out of his office to address gang violence. One of her first acts was to raise her voice to be assigned a real office, not a broom closet. But this was followed by community murals, gun buybacks, marches, a quilt of remembrance, working with religious leaders and meeting Colin Powell.

Instead of returning to Mercer, she accepted appointment to a chair at Wesleyan College. Subsequently, she launched the Lane Center for Community Service, for which she raised millions of dollars. During all this time, she learned to use her voice to advocate not only for herself but for the marginalized. In one of the book’s chapters she describes three practices that sustained her and helped her know when to use her voice: silence, journaling, and dream work. In retirement, she became involved in anti-racism work with her Episcopal Diocese. This led to creation of the Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing. This last brought her to the attention of David Brooks, who interviewed her, a speaking invitation at the National Cathedral, and to receiving the Joseph R. Biden Lifetime Achievement Award for Service, all in 2022.

Along the way, we witness the transformation of a woman who once lived under the fear of God. She describes the deep work of the Creator in her to affirm her as beloved. This plainspoken, honest memoir offers a stirring account of a life well-lived. Quilt pieces of suffering and denigration intermix with gritty achievements. This quilted life portrays a “long obedience” in the pursuit of racial healing sustained by a tenacious faith in a good and beautiful Creator.

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

Review: The Year of Magical Thinking

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Cover image of "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion. Vintage (ISBN: 9781400078431) 2007.

Summary: A memoir of grief and remembrance for Joan Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne.

They had just arrived home after visiting their daughter Quintana, in intensive care fighting pneumonia and septic shock. Joan Didion and her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, were talking while he was enjoying a drink and she was preparing dinner. And then he wasn’t talking. She turned to find him slumped over the table, victim to a massive coronary called “the widow maker.” It was December 30, 2003.

In this memoir, begun in October of 2004, Didion recounts her grief journey over that first year beginning with the efforts of the paramedics, the trip to the hospital, the pronouncement of death, and receiving his effects, and returning to an empty apartment. Didion turns her gifts to describing one of the most difficult of human experiences:

“Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”

She titles the memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, reflecting a belief that somehow he could come back. She refrains from giving away his shoes because he will need them when he comes back. Obituaries disturb her because she fears she buried him alive. She replays the events of the night as if something different might have saved his life, yet he was likely gone from the moment he slumped over, as she eventually learns.

Drawing upon grief research, she chronicles her own descent into the kind of temporary insanity of grief. She struggles to finish a piece of writing because the two of them had always discussed each other’s writing and she’s waiting for that conversation that will not come. Later, when her daughter suffers a stroke in Los Angeles, she describes returning to the city in which she and John had once lived. and avoiding all the places that would awaken memories (“the vortex effect”) of him. She describes the look of “extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness” in the eyes of the bereaved and the memories that visit unannounced and her response:

“I wanted more than a night of memories and sighs.

I wanted to scream.

I wanted him back.”

Quintana’s serious condition offers a kind of diversion as she immerses herself in clinical materials and becomes her daughter’s advocate. Was this just a desperate effort to stave off further grief? To keep at bay the grief at the door? A mother’s love? Probably all three.

Yet she cannot help remembering. The birthday gift twenty-five days before he died. The trip to Paris John thought he must take or never go. Did he have a presentiment of his death? That is another theme, unresolved in the memoir.

Then there is the unending character of grief. It is not for a few days or weeks. Yet as the year ebbs to an end, she comes to some resolution to her “magical thinking.”

“I know why we try to keep the dead alive; we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us.

“I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.”

Most of all, Didion explores the special kind of grief of that comes of two people sharing many years together. Is this the price exacted for many years of shared love, shared memories, of lives intertwined? I’ve known the widower beside himself with grief, losing the partner of over sixty years. It’s most likely that one of us will bear this grief in my own marriage. Reading Didion’s unvarnished and quietly eloquent account alerts us to that. But it doesn’t prepare us. What can?

But for those who grieve, and who go through all the changes Didion experiences, she helps us understand that this is just what it is like. Sometimes it helps to know we are not alone when we find ourselves alone.

Review: Looking Up

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Cover image of "Looking Up" by Courtney Ellis

Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief, Courtney Ellis (Foreword by Kay Warren). InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514007167) 2024.

Summary: A birder’s guide to hope through grief consists of reflections on various birds as the author grieves a grandfather’s death.

Birders speak of “spark birds” that first turned them on to birding. For Courtney Ellis, it was a phoebe, perched on her backyard string lights. A friend identified it. She writes:

“What I did know, in those very first moments, was that this little bird had unexpectedly captivated me. For a moment the volume turned down on my shouting to-do list and clamoring young children and creaky house projects and pinging work emails, and it was just me and this bird. A moment in time. A breath. Delight.

“In that moment, I looked up.”

She joined birding groups, bought binoculars and guides and downloaded apps. She learned the patience required of birding…and the wonder. These were lessons in attentiveness that spilled over into the rest of life as a pastor and parent. As acquainted with the griefs of others as she was as a pastor, she did not realize how important the lessons of looking up at the birds would become when the news came that her grandfather was dying.

In this book, Ellis takes us through her process of grief as she rushes home to spend time with her grandfather, only to find him sinking much faster than expected. While gathering with family, she remembers her grandfather, including many incidents of her childhood. An outdoorsman, he shaped her love of the natural world. As many of us do, she reckons with both his admirable and less than admirable qualities. She parts hours before his death to partake in Easter services. Then she grieves. Coming out of COVID, the church grants her and her husband sabbatical. During this time she had lost her voice. And, drawing on an idea from John Stott, another avid birder, the birds become her teachers.

In each chapter, Ellis interleaves her journey with reflections upon a particular kind of bird. Vultures symbolize death and they are the janitors of the natural world. Yet there is marvel in a physiology that allows them to ingest rotting carrion without being sickened. Then sparrows, so commonplace and ubiquitous, remind her of how much of life is lived in ordinary time, that it is often in the commonplace that we meet God. She reflects: “Blue Jays may not be good to other birds, but they are very good at being themselves. And this is its own kind of beauty.” As she thinks of her grandfather, she sees that he had his own kind of beauty as well.

In addition to these birds, we are introduced to mockingbirds, owls, house finches, hummingbirds, warblers, albatrosses, wrens, doves, pelicans, and quail. In her grief journey she learns that “looking up” doesn’t remove the hurt of grief but points us to the one who cares for the birds, and notes the falling of even one sparrow.

There is an understated beauty beneath the attentive observation of the birds and the unvarnished account of her grief. While pointing us toward healing and hope, there are no sappy assurances or sweet nostrums. But there is the wonder of the birds in all their variety, (And there is even an appendix for those who for whom this book is a kind of “spark bird” to take up birding.) Most of all, we have the chance to listen to one who has not only looked outward at the human condition and inward at the darkness of her her own grief. We also accompany her as she looks upward, not only at the birds but at the God who made them.

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

Review: An Asian American Ancient Historian and Biblical Scholar

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Cover image of "An Asian American Ancient Historian and Biblical Scholar" by Edwin M. Yamauchi

An Asian American Ancient Historian and Biblical Scholar, Edwin M. Yamauchi (Foreword by Stephen B. Kellough). Resource Publications (ISBN: 9798385211609), 2024.

Summary: An Asian American Ancient Historian and Biblical Scholar is the memoir of Edwin M. Yamauchi, professor of history at Miami University, chronicling his family, faith, scholarly work, travels, and church leadership.

In the spring of 1974, I was a college sophomore on break, visiting a friend at Miami University. On Sunday, we went to his church, Oxford Bible Fellowship, attending the college Sunday School class. The teacher was a university professor, a somewhat owlish history professor known to students as “Dr. Y.” I forget the lesson but remember the questions people asked and the command of ancient Near East scholarship this man had. And I remember his kindness. Though obviously brilliant in his field, there wasn’t the least hint of condescension. He genuinely cared to encourage students in their Christian belief and their confidence in the Bible. Little did I know, this was an introduction to an acquaintance of fifty years.

So it was with great delight that I received a copy of his memoir which only deepened my respect for him as it filled in many gaps in his life story. I learned that he was the child of immigrants from Okinawa living in Honolulu. I did not know that his father took his own life when Edwin was just three years old nor of all the moves he made as a child as his mother moved from job to job to support the family. nor had I heard the story of his conversion through his friendship with Dick Lum and the ministry of Robert W. Hambrook.

From fifteen he aspired to mission work, receiving early training at the Christian Youth Center before studies at Columbia Bible College, followed by completing his undergraduate work at Shelton College. From there he went on to study with Cyrus H. Gordon, a distinguished ancient Near East Scholar at Brandeis University. After further post-doctoral work and a period at Rutgers, which denied him tenure, he came to the history department at Miami in 1969.

From here, the memoir progresses decade by decade, and later, year by year. Generally, for each period he summarizes his scholarly work and publications, his Christian service, and developments with his family. With regard to his scholarship, what stands out are the numerous conference presentations and research trips, and extensive lists of articles, chapters, and books. But perhaps even more important, Yamauchi was a dedicated witness. He lectured on scholarly and apologetic topics at many universities, served on the editorial board of Christianity Today, actively advised InterVarsity chapters at Rutgers and Miami. And he was one of the founding leaders of Oxford Bible Fellowship, to which one of the appendices is devoted.

In true scholarly tradition, we also read of the many former students and other scholars with which Dr. Yamauchi associated. He takes as great a pride in their accomplishments as his own. One appendix is a who’s who of present and former Oxford Bible Fellowship members and what they’ve accomplished. But pride of place belongs to his family. Nearly every chapter describes the accomplishments of Kimi, and his two children. We also see a man who delights not only in ancient artifacts but in sporting events, concerts, and the arts.

This memoir chronicles why, for so many of us, “Dr. Y” is the model of the scholar-Christian. Over his career he combined a forthright but gracious witness to Christ with scholarly excellence and devotion to his students. His scholarship consisted both of technical works advancing knowledge in his field and works of more popular scholarship advancing knowledge of the Bible and its backgrounds. In this memoir, Dr. Yamauchi renders that account in his own words.

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

Review: Pivot Points

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Cover image of "Pivot Points" by Marvin Olasky

Pivot Points, Marvin Olasky. P & R Publishing (ISBN: 9781629959535), 2024.

Summary: Pivot points of a compassionate conservative, a memoir tracing the journalistic and writing career of Marvin Olasky, former editor in chief of World magazine.

Encountering Olasky

My only other encounter with Marvin Olasky was reading his book Abortion Rites (review here). I was stunned to find this pro-life Christian write about the prevalence of abortion in in the U.S. pre-Roe v. Wade when abortion was outlawed. It gave the lie to the illusion that banning abortion would eliminate it. He estimated that there were as many as 160,000 abortions a year in the non-slave population of pre-Civil War America. He went on in that book to propose a more sophisticated strategy than laws that included moral suasion and compassion.

I discovered someone who combined conviction with uncompromising honesty and journalistic integrity, and a healthy dose of compassion. In fact, this last quality would follow him as he was characterized as the “Father of Compassionate Conservatism.” All these qualities, as well as a self-deprecating humility characterize this memoir of a journalist who went from an atheist-communist to a committed Christian editor of a Christian news magazine, World. Olasky traces that life journey as a series of pivot points.

Olasky’s Pivot Points

Atheist Communist to Theist.

The first “Act” in the book describes Olasky’s journey from a Jewish upbringing to atheism, and in the context of the Vietnam war to Communism. for Olasky, Communism was a kind of addiction. Coupled with his turn to journalism from philosophy, Olasky became a rising star in Communist circles. Meanwhile, biking across America with his new wife, he began a career art a small Oregon paper. Neither the job nor the marriage lasts long. Subsequently, he is accepted into a Ph.D program at the University of Michigan. Here, he makes his first major pivot. At 3 pm on a November day, he sat down to read a work of Lenin and by 11 pm that night, walked out of the library, not yet a Christian, but a theist.

From Marriage to Tenure in Texas.

While at Michigan, Olasky meets Susan Northway, who he marries. Both want to know more about God and come to faith in a Baptist church in San Diego while he was fulfilling a one year appointment. He recounts his growth in an Indiana church while working on a Christian anti-Communist Crusade, followed by a brief stint at Dupont that ended when he could not lie in publicity for a chemical linked to bladder cancer. Then, he accepts a tenure-track position at University of Texas, teaching journalism. He is forthright about his Christian stance in his writing, but productive enough that he wins tenure. And it seemed time to settle down

From Research and Writing to Political Insider

Then life changed again with an offer of a research fellowship in Washington, resulting in the publication of The Tragedy of American Compassion. In the book, Olasky critiques government funded social welfare programs as a failure because of the impersonal, bureaucratic nature of them. He advocates “compassionate conservatism” and faith-based personal interventions. A niche publisher picked up the book. Then Newt Gingrich discovered and touted it. Suddenly, Olasky was in great demand, and his language of “compassionate conservatism” was picked up by George W. Bush in his presidential campaign. His account of the rise and fall of faith-based efforts warns of what has often happened when religious conservatives engage in politics. My one concern is that he does not address the role of the state in addressing inequities “baked into” the system. Private charity and personal initiative leave these untouched.

Magazine Editor and Professor

During his brief brush with politics, Olasky agreed to become editor of a Christian news magazine, World. As a result, he could practice what he taught. These chapters were some of my favorites in the book. He describes the journalistic independence of World. Although working in the evangelical world, they enjoyed board support for controversial articles about evangelical figures. They set standards for rigorous, non-partisan journalism. And they trained young interns, who lived with the Olaskys and were subject to his red pen, becoming better writers in the process.

From Turbulence to Contentment

Then comes the Trump years. World offended subscribers supporting the former president in its reporting. Then the board shifts, introducing a World Opinions section not subject to editorial oversight. Olasky describes the painful process of resigning and his struggle to grieve and forgive. He had planned to retire and hand off his work. Instead, World shifted under his feet. But he ends in a space of contentment and praise, although I sense this story is still unfinished.

The book also includes two appendices from this period. One is a reflection on the World shakeup. Olasky offers insightful comments about living by journalistic integrity. The other describes how he saved World millions by honest reporting on election fraud claims. While other news outlets got sued for false claims about voting machines, they told the truth no one wanted to hear.

Final Comments

Marvin Olasky offers hope that journalistic integrity is neither an oxymoron nor a joke. Sadly, his is a conservative voice largely absent from our current discourse. He looks at complex issues, ferrets out the evidence, and follows the truth where it takes him. He showed compassion not merely in his writing but in his personal care for interns. He strikes me as one, in our highly polarized moment, who occupies the courageous middle. He also mentored several generations of journalists. I hope they will lead a return to integrity in their profession. Above all, Olasky models living by faith and offers an example of Eugene Peterson’s “long obedience in the same direction.” All these things make this succinct, fast-moving memoir worth the read.

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

Review: Wintering

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Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020.

Summary: A memoir exploring the importance of winters in our lives and the importance of the inward turn and care for ourselves in such seasons.

In the autumn of a recent year, in rapid succession, Katherine May’s husband faced a long recovery from a burst appendix. As he recovered, Katherine got sicker with worrisome intestinal symptoms of her own. Meanwhile, her son’s struggles with school became so severe that he refused to attend. With all this, Katherine gave her notice at her teaching job. She realized this was a time of wintering, not only as autumn turned to winter, but a winter of difficulties settled into their lives. Out of this experience, as well as a formative earlier “wintering” experience of depression at seventeen, she wrote this book, arguing it is not only our physical world that needs winter but that wintering can be formative in our lives:

“Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season in which the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishments, for putting your house in order” (p. 14).

May’s book was published February of 2020, when many of us were facing the long winter of the COVID pandemic. Her book gave words to the inchoate experience of many trying to understand what had been happening and could happen in their lives during these experiences. The book traverses seven months from September through late March. The struggles leading to this onset of “winter”, the forced rest of her condition, the re-centering of life around home, including cooking to occupy the hands as well as to eat. She realizes the tension she has lived under that may be coming out in her body. She has time for books waiting to have been read. She rediscovers sleep and even the first and second sleeps with an hour or so of wakefulness between, the longer hours of sleep in winter, mimicking the hibernation of other creatures

She also discovers the life of winter. She takes saunas as part of a cruise to Iceland. She delves into the pagan festival of Samhain, at Halloween, this liminal moment between light and darkness, living and dying. With the turn to November, Samhain gives way to Cailleach, the hag deity who freezes the ground until Brighde takes over in spring. In all this she becomes newly aware of life’s cyclical character–the dropping of leaves and the buds already present for the new year. She celebrates Saint Lucy and the lighting of candles in a Swedish church. She rises early to watch the winter solstice sun rise at Stonehenge and considers the earthward religion Christianity replaced and develops both practices religious and secular to mark a pagan counterpart to Christmastide. January takes them to Norway and the northern lights. She considers the significance of wolves in nature and literature, including Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles. She describes the powerful effect of swimming in cold water with friends, even for three minutes. And as spring emerges she draws lessons from observing the merger of two colonies of bees in a hive when the queen of one is dying. She describes the re-emergence of her lost voice and her ability to sing once more under the care of a voice teacher. She speaks of how wrong it is to tie singing to talent:

“The right to sing is an absolute, regardless o how it sounds to the outside world. We sing because we must. We sing because it fills our lungs with nourishing air, and lets our hearts sour with the notes we let out” (p. 228).

May faced the onslaught of winter. Her encouragement is not to evade winter but learn from it. Take time to query our unhappiness. Slow down to take care of oneself with sleep and food and fresh air. Learn from winter in the world about us. Discover the richness in winter.

There is much of beauty in this book. I also found it a striking reflection of a turn from Christian faith while retaining its language of retreat and rest. The author recognizes what Christian spiritual directors have long known of how the liminal space of spiritual winters refine and renew, a knowledge I find many Christians trying to evade. I cannot commend the turn to pagan gods and rituals but the recognition of seasons and the importance of the practices that remind us of the story in which we live is worth reflection. For those who come across this book post-pandemic, it may offer language to reflect upon that winter in our lives. Winter comes to all of us, for many of us multiple times. Will we be spiritual “snowbirds” who flee it or will we lean into its lessons, bundle up, and grow resilient?

Review: Doppelganger

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Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, Naomi Klein. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

Summary: Naomi Klein, a liberal activist and writer finds herself being confused with another Naomi, once a feminist now become an anti-vax advocate and darling of the extreme right.

Last summer, an anonymous pretender created a fake version of a social media page I curate, stealing a picture of me and posts I had made to the page. An alert follower contacted me and reports from me and followers stopped further posts that day. But the page remained up for several months until it was removed, attracting only about ten followers, thanks to the vigilance of people following my page. Still, I was outraged and felt that a part of me was violated, that my “brand” (my page uses the same name as this blog) was being stolen and perverted. Having an online “doppelganger,” even if an inactive one, and how easily it could happen, was disturbing.

Naomi Klein faced this situation in a subtler and more disturbing fashion, one that could not be eliminated by a report. Naomi Klein is an activist, academic, and writer who has focused on big corporations and their invisible control of our lives as well as writing about climate change. Naomi Wolf, a one-time liberal feminist, pursued a parallel career around a different set of issues. Then in 2019, she published a book filled with factual inaccuracies that was pulped. She was widely excoriated in the liberal establishment, suffering a kind of death. Except that she rose from the ashes during COVID-19, spouting a number of the spurious claims and conspiracy thinking of the alt-Right, becoming a darling of Steve Bannon…and being confused with Naomi Klein. Klein was stuck with trying to figure out how to say “not me.” At one point, Klein became so obsessed with following Wolf’s online antics, and her transformation, that she withdrew into a world of screens until her husband rescued her.

The experience led to her trying to understand both her own reaction to this doppelganger (who even looked something like her). Klein had always been “anti-brand,” she thought, especially of “Self as Brand” until she realized that she had built a “brand” that she wasn’t defending very well. She asks the question, “What aren’t we building when we are building our brands?” and she realizes what a convenient retreat this can be when faced with daunting challenges like our warming climate.

Looking more deeply, she realizes that her doppelganger has confronted her with a mirror world. Where she would be concerned about the corporate stripping away of privacy accelerated by our smartphones, she watches Wolf and anti-vaxxers fixate on “vaccine passports” as opening the door to our private lives. She describes a process termed “diagonalization” that destroys old left-right distinctions by playing on shared fears and concerns–“what are they putting in our food?” to “what are they putting in those vaccines?” The mirror world trades in a shared fear of the Shadow Lands, an underground effort to abuse our children and co-opt our lives. Klein observes trenchantly that these Shadow Lands, such as fears about the vaccines, covers up huge profit margins and a basic neglect of vaccine equity. A Canadian, she chronicles how truckers both caravanned in protest to indigenous child deaths in boarding schools and trucker shutdowns in Toronto over COVID regulations–often the same truckers.

She raises uncomfortable questions. We rail against Nazis and yet if we are living in a former colonial power country, our country presided over similar atrocities. The Mirror World challenges our illusions. Writing pre-October 7, she wrestles with Israel’s settler colonialism and the Shadow World built to sustain it (I wonder what her thoughts are since?). In the end, she raises equally uncomfortable questions about herself, indeed, any self. Can we hold onto a sense of identity or self? Is this not changing for all of us?

In the end, she concludes, “A bigger part of being human, though, and certainly of living a good life, is not about how we make ourselves in these shifting sands of self. It’s about what we make together.” I’m troubled by this conclusion. I could see this being taken any number of ways. I’m sure Hitler’s Germany and the settler colonists were also not just thinking of themselves but what they were making together. Equally, this was the rhetoric of Marxists and Mao.

I find myself thinking that Klein describes the post-Christian society foreseen by William Butler Yeats, in his poem, “The Second Coming.”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

If there is no center that will hold, if all we have are “the shifting sands of self,” then I find myself praying “Lord, help us” and indeed, “Come Lord Jesus.” Klein is courageous enough to ask some very hard questions. I wonder if we all will be courageous enough to wrestle with the implications of what she asks.

Review: Land of My Sojourn

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments

Land of My Sojourn, Mike Cosper. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2024.

Summary: The narrative of a former church leader who stepped away from a toxic leadership culture, the disillusionment that followed, and how reflections from a sojourn in Israel helped him process and find restoration.

Many who read this review will recognize the name of Mike Cosper as the host of the widely listened-to podcast series The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill, part of the podcasting work Cosper does for Christianity Today. In reading his new book, Landscape of My Sojourn, I couldn’t help wonder if what made Cosper so effective as host of the podcast series was that he had lived inside a church situation with some striking similarities to Mars Hill Church under the leadership of Mark Driscoll. In his new book, Cosper narrates his experience as one of the founding pastors of Sojourn, a “ragamuffin” church in Louisville, Kentucky, eventually connected to the Acts 29 movement Driscoll spearheaded.

He recounts heady early days as a leader of worship, and the development of a toxic leadership culture as the church developed into a multi-site congregation. He describes the feeling of always being “one good conversation away from getting things right and making things healthy.” Except it never happened. And then one day in 2015, in the midst of a “re-org,” he looked at the new proposed organization chart, only to find he was not on it.

That wasn’t quite rock bottom. After leaving the leadership of Sojourn, whose lead pastor eventually stepped down due to charges of leadership abuse, Cosper launched a media-focused non-profit to help Christians in the marketplace. After writing what he thought was a commonsense Christian reflection following the release of the Access Hollywood tapes of Donald Trump, he learned that first his lead investor, then others were pulling their money. Following closely on the departure from Sojourn’s leadership, he found himself in a place where none of the familiar touchstones of his faith made sense anymore.

Shortly after all this, Cosper had the opportunity for a “sojourn” in Israel. Visits to different places, and reflection on people like Peter and Elijah who had encounters with God, allowed Cosper to process both what had happened in his life and encounter God afresh for himself, beginning a process of restoration in his life. Each chapter of the book focuses on a particular place and encounter, interwoven with Cosper’s experience at Sojourn Church.

He begins with Mount Tabor, the Mount of Transfiguration and Peter’s desire to just stay there, remembering the halcyon days of Sojourn’s beginnings. He reflects on the heroic encounter of Elijah on Mount Carmel, and the desperate hopes of evangelicals, hoping our heroes are on the side of right and will bring a transformed culture, only to see one after another fail. He visits Mount Hermon, near where Peter confesses Jesus as Messiah and entertains illusions of the Messiah’s conquests and being in the vanguard. He considers Sojourn’s own pretensions to conquest, how they crumbled, and yet how God was quietly at work, as was Jesus, in changing lives.

The Mount of Olives reminds him of Palm Sunday, what seemed a triumphal procession, and how the crowds turned on Jesus. He reflects on the warfare metaphors Mark Driscoll used and how influential these were, and yet how wrong to the kind of king Jesus is. He describes the giant olive trees of Gethsemane, the twisted roots capturing the agony of Jesus, alone while the disciples slept. He considers the dysfunctions of sojourn’s leadership and the times, like the disciples, he was sleeping, and the agony to find himself alone. At Golgotha, he revisits the ways, like Peter that he had lived in denial, and the dissolution of his career and many of his friendships, and the departure of the senior pastor and the last time they spoke. At Sinai, he recalls the whisper of God to Elijah and that, like Elijah, he is not alone. Finally, by Galilee, at Capernaum, he recalls the post-resurrection encounter of Jesus with Peter, the questions that ask of Peter, are you still with me, even after the death of heroic dreams and denials? He’s wary, after all he’s gone through of glib suffering-to-glory narratives, even as he wants to believe.

The end of the book finds him back in Louisville, worshipping at what was once a satellite Sojourn campus, now its own church. He still believes, but with wounds. He describes himself still on the journey, sobered, not taking anything for granted, “still here, making this journey. Through the land of my sojourn.”

I found this book a powerful narrative, both as an inside look at a toxic leadership culture, and an account of coming through painful disillusionment. It’s honest about the losses and betrayals, the denials, and restoration that enables one to go on, not without wounds, but by faith. Because of the vulnerable character of the book, I think it can offer help to others who have faced disillusionment with the church and are tempted to throw in the towel. Cosper’s “I’m still here” makes no false promises but simply walks in the steps of Elijah and Peter, who decide to carry on in faith when dreams and illusions (including self-delusions) have died.

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