Blogger Review Books

I am reposting this 2011 review because the Kindle Edition is free through Oct 20, 2015.

Takeaway: In the end, all really is Grace.

Spiritual biography and autobiography has a tendency to push the lesson before the story.  That is not all bad.  Since Augustine’s Confessions, Christians have learned much from those that have gone before us.  There are problems when the biography/autobiography verge into hagiography, showing only the good and never the bad.  There is equally problems with the tell-all conversion stories that seem to revel too much in the pre-conversion life and too little in the post conversion reality.  All is Grace does a good job of balancing the real, the history and the lesson.

Manning has had a hard life. This will be his last book.  His ill health has meant that he has not been capable of speaking and writing over the past couple years and this book was only completed with the help of John Blase.  This is the third such last book I have read this year.  John Stott’s Radical Disciple, Eugene Peterson’s The Pastor: A Memoir (probably not his last book, but still in a similar vein of concluding his public ministry) and now Brennan Manning’s All is Grace.  All three are very different, but are quite reflective of the lives that each have lived and the types of ministry they were called to serve.  Stott’s book was more theological and pastoral, prodding us to continue on.  Peterson’s book was reflective, asking us to look and see if we are adopting too much of the attitudes of the world instead of acting like the servant.  Manning’s is another call to understand grace by looking at his own life that was marked by both great grace, and great need of grace.

I have read several books by Manning, but this memoir provides some historical structure that does much to give context to his other books.  Brennan was born to a difficult family, marked by a lack of love and caring and a prevalence of alcohol.  Manning was drinking heavily by age 16.  But he also was a talented writer and started college young.  He dropped out of college, joined the Marines right before the end of the Korean War.  He became a war correspondent, went back to school to become a journalist, dropped out of college again, became a Franciscan, left the Franciscans to become a Little Brother, came back to the Franciscans and served as a college chaplain, participated in a experimental community like the Little Brothers in the US, again became a college chaplain.  Each time it was about 2 years before he moved on to the next thing.  By the last he was a clear alcoholic and was forced to seek treatment.  After some treatment and some success with the treatment he started a new career as a Evangelist speaking about grace and forgiveness as a recovering alcoholic priest.  But the alcohol never really was far away.  Some alcoholics are able to live full lives, clean for the rest of their lives.  Manning was not.

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I am reposting this 2009 review because the Kindle Editionn is on sale for $1.99
I grew up as a low church baptist.  We didn’t pay attention to the liturgical year, we didn’t use the Lectionary.  I have absorbed some things about the church year through my time at Wheaton College and seminary.  Some friends have paid more attention to the liturgical year and my wife and I have paid attention to Lent on and off since we went to Israel for Easter in 2001.  But this book was a good formal introduction to not only what the liturgical year is, but why it is.  The author describes it this way:

“The church year is not the marking of one lucelent, passing moment in the midst of eleven long months of dark nothingness all the rest of the year. It is month after month, every year of our lives, being taken back to the empty cross and the empty tomb, one way or another, in order to shape our own life in the light of them.” (From the 1st chapter.)

The author is a catholic nun, and writes using the Roman Catholic system as her primary focus.  She also talks about some of the differences between Eastern and Western calendars and where the differences arose.  It is not technical, fairly conversational and quite understandable to an outsider.  It was a quick read, I read it is in two evenings.

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We live in a world touting the maxim “œbigger (or more) is better”; bigger homes, bigger bank accounts, more clothes, bigger status, bigger dreams, more aspirations, etc. Tremendous pressure exists to achieve and produce big things. This mindset is evident in many of our spiritual lives as well. Many blog posts, books and some sermons actively encourage believers to accomplish big things for the Kingdom and for God. Emily Freeman‘s latest release, “œSimply Tuesday“ suggests the opposite.

Freeman suggests real life happens within the small moments of the everyday. An ordinary day, like Tuesday can, and often does, contain the moments worth holding on to. We need to be reminded we weren’t called or made to do it all”¦just our part. “œThe soul and the schedule don’t follow the same rules”.

Freeman’s work runs counter to the current culture we’re experiencing of “œmore”. Consider a sampling of chapter titles from “œSimply Tuesday”: Stairwells & Stages: Learning to Receive the Gift of Obscurity, Community & Competition: Finding Safe Places to Feel Insecure, Children & Grown-Ups: An Invitation to Move Downward with Gladness. The author reminds her audience of the beauty in living small, ordinary lives and illustrates the life of Christ as an example. Ministry happens in the small moments too.

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Takeaway: Scripture needs to be retold, so we can hear it again for the first time and be changed.

There are lots of ways to study scripture.  But two ways have been bouncing around in my head as being particularly important for me.  One is the serious academic study of a text, long or short.  Investigation into what the language researchers say about it, what the cultural anthropologists know about the culture it was written in, what the comparative literature people know about other texts that might have been written in a similar time or culture, what the historians that can talk about how that passage has been read and interpreted over time, etc.  I think that type of reading and study of scripture is very important.  I do not do enough research into scripture like that.  (The Lost World of Genesis One is one of the recent books I have read that is along those lines.)

But the second type of scripture work is illustrated quite well by this book.  The author does a lot of the type of study that is part of the first type of study, but the focus is not the study, but the retelling. The author’s research is to understand the text deeply, so that she or he can tell others about the text in a way that is modern and appropriate for the culture and people that are hearing it.  And even more important, to use the “Theological Imagination” (as Eugene Peterson puts it) to help those of us that have heard the scripture before rediscover it in new ways.  Some Christians look down on this type of work, but it is the essential work of teaching.  Teaching takes an idea and learns to communicate it in a way that is understood, and hopefully can be acted upon.

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