Read Again

Summary: A pastor’s thoughts on being a pastor (and I think an essential book for anyone that relates to pastors.)

This past week I have started walking to the top of Kennesaw Mountain, a nearby park. I am going backpacking with friends at the end of the month and need to start preparing.

After finishing After You Believe, I went back to Eugene Peterson’s The Pastor. This is my third reading of it since it came out four years ago. (First and second reviews.)

I am not a pastor, I have no intention of ever becoming a pastor. But Eugene Peterson exemplifies not only what it means to be a pastor to me, but also what NT Wright is talking about in what character and spiritual maturity are about.

Part of my need for these books are that I think I have absorbed the myth that spiritual growth is somehow different from growth in areas of life. Peterson is a man that has been shaped by scripture. Most of his books loosely revolve around a portion of scripture. One of the complaints about Peterson’s Message Bible is that it has done too much interpretation. First that complaint misunderstands the nature of translation, but more importantly, Peterson believes that the role of the pastor is to proclaim and illustrate through his or her life what scripture is saying to them.

The Pastor is really a record of Peterson finding his way as a pastor, but he is never far from the root of how scripture shapes him and directs him.

The art of pastoring that Peterson is recommending is a direct challenge to the leadership model that many understand pastor to be. For Peterson, the role of the pastor is first to call people to God, second to teach them to pray and third to call them together to love one another. Like most books by Peterson, he is rarely that explicit. Peterson tells stories. He tells stories about how he was convinced that the way he had done things was wrong and how worked to become a better pastor by changing.

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Summary: Spiritual leaders are human, full of sin as all of us, but willing to have their sin redeemed by God for greater glory.

Over the last couple months I have re-read all of the Starbridge (or Church of England) series by Susan Howatch and the first of the off-shoot trilogy. This second reading of each of the main series has confirmed to me that this is one of the greatest series of “˜Christian Fiction’ written in the 20th century.

I use scare quotes because no US Evangelical Christian publishing house would actually publish this. It is full of sin. But also full of grace and redemption and more theologically rich than any other fiction series that I am aware of.

Absolute Truths is the last, and I think best, of the series. It returns to Charles Ashworth, the main character of the first book of the series (Glittering Images.) Instead of a young priest and professor, Ashworth is now a Bishop. And in the course of the book his third life crisis comes to pass.

What was so transformative for me with this series is that all of the conflict and story is based on clergy in the Church of England. All are real and devout Christians. All take their faith seriously (although in different streams of the Anglican way).

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Summary: An Abbot feels he receives a call from God to leave his order and return to the world.

I am working my way back through Susan Howatch’s Church of England series. This six book series is about four different Church of England clergy told from five different main characters (one is told from the perspective of a mistress) over 30 year period.

Glamorous Powers was probably my least or second least favorite of the series on the first reading. But I discovered a lot more depth on a second reading. The first time I read this on kindle, this time I switched to audiobook.

As with all of Howatch’s writing, I think there is too much melodrama. But the melodrama makes a lot of sense to the story here. Jon Darrow is an Anglian monk. He is Abbot of one of the houses of the Fordite order (the order is fictional, but according to Wikipedia there are about 2400 Anglican Monks or Nuns around today.)

Darrow is the spiritual director from Glittering Images, the first book in the series. In the first book, Darrow was a near perfect figure, always knowing what to do, in near perfect communion with God and using his psychic abilities for spiritual direction. But several years after the first book he receives a vision that he interprets is a sign from God to leave the order and re-enter the world.

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Summary: The church is where we we can learn to grow up as Christ intends.

A bit over 4 years ago I first read Practice Resurrection. It affected me then and affects me now. I picked it up again and intentionally re-read it with Glittering Images.

The two books, at different times, are two of the books that have most impacted me since I started Bookwi.se.

Practice Resurrection, the final of a five book series on practical theology by Peterson, is a long exploration of Ephesians as an illustration of why the Christian life is at root a means of allowing us to practice being like Christ (and central to that practice, why that  must be done in context of church.)

Peterson uses the illustration of practicing to remind us that no one is suddenly saved and holy. Yes from conversion we are saved and viewed as righteous in God’s eyes. But the rest of our life is practice on how we can become more like Christ.

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Takeaway: One of the best examples of how fiction is important to give form to important ideas.

Almost exactly two years ago, while on vacation I first read Susan Howatch. That first reading started me down a path which helped shift me theologically, I am now much more Anglican (or at least sacramental). I have found a spiritual director and been meeting with him for nearly 18 months. And I have started thinking of the spiritual life much more as an ongoing work in progress than I did previously.

Glittering Images is the start of a six novel series set in the 1930s (first four) and the 1960s (second two) and then a spin off trilogy set in the 1980s (that I haven’t read yet).

Charles Ashworth is a young professor and Anglican priest who is sent by the Archbishop of Canterbury Lang (actual person) to spy on the Bishop Jardine of Starbridge (fictional town). Bishop Jardine, as many of Howatch’s characters are, is based on a real bishop. And as the original bishop did, Jardine has spoken out about the need to liberalize England’s divorce laws.

Charles Ashworth attempts to investigate Jardine’s personal life to see if there is anything to the rumors about Jardine’s womanizing. What follows is a mix of straight melodrama, serious theological discussion, and some of the best fictional portrayals of spiritual difficulty I have read.

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Summary: God is God of all of us, not just the extraordinary that get the world’s attention.

I think I am in a season where I want to re-read books that have impacted me.  As I am drafting posts today, three of the four books I am writing about are books that I am re-reading. (My original review of God of the Mundane.)

Re-reading a book a couple years later is something I try to do regularly because often good books have more content than can be absorbed in a single reading. And several years later, you are in a different place and different things are impactful.

This time I suggested that my small group read this book together for discussion. The length is perfect as a discussion book, there are 15 chapters in less than 100 pages. Even slow readers can read 2 or 3 chapters in 20 or 30 minutes.

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Takeaway: Love, in essence, is the greatest expression of Grace.

It is not often that I re-read a book so quickly after a first reading, but Lila was the best novel I read last year and I wanted to re-read fairly quickly to see if I was just swept up or if I would love it just as much the second time.

The first time I listened to the audiobook, this time I read it on kindle. I didn’t realize (because I was listening) that there are not chapters, but only pauses. That lack of formalized structure reflects Lila, who is uneducated, almost feral.

At the beginning of the book Doll takes Lila (as a young child)  from the home where she was being ignored and neglected (nearly to death) and raises her the best she can. But because of that kidnapping and some other background, Doll and Lila are on the run for all of Lila’s childhood and young adult life. There is no one, except Doll, that Lila can trust; no one that really loves her.

So when Lila stumbles into Gilead and meets the elderly pastor John Ames and is loved by him (and eventually married to him) that lack of trust in the world does not end over night.

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Summary: A series of six lectures on spiritual development.

Just over a year ago I first listened to The Art of Letting Go. And at the time I absorbed much, but also thought I needed a second listening. So I have slowly listened to this a second time over the past two weeks.

The strength and weakness of the book is its format as lecture/conversations.  It is formated as six lectures for those that would like to go on a spiritual retreat with Rohr but cannot. Rohr is clearly working off of notes but does tend to go off those notes occasionally and is not always as precise about his language as he could be. But at the same time this is very conversational and relaxed in tone.

One of the things I appreciate about reading Catholic priests and monks is that the Catholic church is much more comfortable with psychology and philosophy than the Evangelical world. But the flip side of that is that the language used by Catholics often has slightly different meanings (usually more precise academic meanings) than many Evangelicals are used to.

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