Intimacy With God: An Introduction to Centering Prayer by Thomas Keating

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Summary: An introduction to the theology, but not much on the practice of Centering Prayer

If you have been reading Bookwi.se for a while you have probably noticed a couple things. One, I intentionally try to read at least one book a month from an author that is Catholic, Orthodox or other Christian tradition that I am not a part of. (I do this intentionally both to learn and get a different perspective on christianity than my own low church historically Baptist/non-denominational one.)

And second, I have mentioned several times that I am going to a Spiritual Director. Catholics and to a lesser extent, Anglicans, have kept alive this tradition of meeting with another person for intentional focus on spiritual growth. My Spiritual Director, knowing that I like to read and discuss books, suggested we talk about this book, less for its focus on Centering Prayer as a practice than for its theology of connecting with God.

Keating is a Trappist priest that is known for bringing Centering Prayer to greater use in the 1980s and 1990s.  This is a practice of meditation that is related to earlier Christian meditation, but also draws on some of the eastern meditation practices.

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Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler (Patternist #2)

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Summary: The subject of Doro’s breeding program, after several thousand years, comes of age.

The first book in this series, Wild Seed, was more of a prequel than the first book in the series.

Doro is some type of mutant person that was born about 4000 years ago. He accidentally discovered that he could leave one body and take over another, giving him a type of immortality. Eventually he started a breeding program to create a people for himself. And he took on a type of God role for them. This breeding program both gives him some type of purpose (this book really discloses the purpose of the program) and a ready source of bodies to take over.

This book opens in the 1970s (roughly current time period because it was written in 1977), jumping more than 100 years from the end of Wild Seed (which moved about 300 years during the book.)  Doro finds Mary, a young abused girl, and gives her to Anyanwu (now called Emma) to care for and raise.

As Mary gets older and ‘transitions’ to her full powers, she is more like Doro than any other of his previous “˜children’. Mary creates “˜patterns’ (the source of the series name) and draws people under her power.

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Embracing Obscurity: Becoming Nothing in Light of God’s Everything

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Embracing Obscurity: Becoming Nothing in Light of God's Everything

Takeaway: Obscurity, humility, smallness.  All undervalued and difficult disciplines in a world of individualism, social media and mixed messages.

I ran across the very interesting book Embracing Obscurity on Tim Challies’ blog.  His review gave a bit of the back story and resulted in the book being put on sale for a couple weeks at Amazon.

An anonymous author decided to write a book about humility.  The author realized that writing a book about humility was in itself an un-humble activity so he (and I think it is pretty clearly a he) decided to write and publish a book secretly.  Even his family is unaware.

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The Maze Runner by James Dashner (Book and Movie Review)

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The Maze Runner By James Dashner is the first part in a three part series about a group of teenagers who find themselves in the middle of a maze. Every month a new boy wakes up in the strange new world, the Glade, to find his memory wiped. Each day the boys struggle to survive in this existence where they are given the mere essentials. Leaderships form and boys are assigned to work jobs where they excel the most. One job is to be a runner and go out each day in the maze to see if a way out can be found. The story revolves around Thomas who desires to become a runner as it appears that he may know more about the maze than most.

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Out of Town Again

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Roughly once a year, a group of my guy friends from college go on a trip together.  We have been doing this since 1995 and this is our 21st trip.  (We are going backpacking in Colorado this year.) It is hard to schedule six guys that now live in four different countries (including the US), … Read more

A House Like a Lotus by Madeleine L’Engle

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Takeaway: On today’s after school special, Polly has to deal with serious things.

I love Madeleine L’Engle’s writing. She takes young adults seriously, she writes about serious issues but she makes her characters real. So I pick up every one of L’Engle’s books when they come up for sale and I intentionally don’t read anything about them prior to reading the book.

This is the third book in the Polly O’Keefe series. Polly is the daughter of Meg  and Calvin from the Wrinkle in Time series. And Zachary Gray from the Austin series is also a significant character in this book.

In the time line this book is set just after A Ring of Endless Light which I read earlier this year and about a year or so before An Acceptable Time which I read a couple years ago.

(There are spoilers in this review, but this is a book that cannot be discussed without spoilers.)

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Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood by Michael Lewis

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1411414667_0.pngSummary: Author Michael Lewis (The Big Short, Money Ball, The Blind Side) gives his account of the new world of  fatherhood.

Michael Lewis is one of those authors I have been meaning to read, but I am tired of reading about economics and I have never liked sports. So as I was looking around for something to read, I stumbled across this in the KindleUnlimited collection.

Lewis is giving his account of the changing of the meaning of fatherhood. It is no longer “˜Father Knows Best’ but hopefully is it moving past “˜father as convenient idiot’ as well. There is a huge social shift over the past couple generations. The social science research has shown a huge shift in the number of hours that fathers have increased in house work and child care over the past 50 years.

But still there is a stereotype of the distant and/or idiot Dad. Lewis both feeds into and helps break this stereotype. He is an active Dad that cares for his kids. He also highlights some of the stupid (but real) things that Dads do.

On the positive side, he communicates well the inability of fathers to replace mothers. It just isn’t possible. Men can’t birth children or breast feed. So Dads do what they can, they care for the older children, change diapers, comfort Moms.

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The Soloist by Steve Lopez

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The Soloist is the retelling of Steve Lopez’ relationship with Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a homeless musical prodigy whom Lopez meets while out riding his bike in Los Angeles. Lopez is immediately amazed by Ayers abilities, especially seeing that he is playing well on a two-string violin. He begins to write about Ayers in his column at the L.A. Times. Through his columns, readers send him instruments for Ayers to play.

Lopez explains in his book that he strived hard to understand Ayers’ situation as he struggles with schizophrenia, a mental disorder that caused him to quit Julliard and live on the streets. Lopez’s column and Lopez’s own networking gave Ayers some of the help that he needed to get off the streets and get back his dignity through music. For Lopez, the most surprising aspect to his relationship with Ayers is that while he started out wanting to help Ayers he realized quickly that they had a lot to learn from each other.

Steve Lopez truly does tell a compelling story of an amazing man who would likely be on par with Yo-Yo Ma if it weren’t for a debilitating mental disorder. It seems that Lopez discovers through the process of helping Nathaniel that our desire to simply put a Band-Aid on certain sad situations or throw some money at the uglier side of life doesn’t always work and often makes things worse. From personal experience, Lopez has learned that misunderstanding is one of the main roadblocks for people getting the help that others are trying to give. By telling the story of Ayers, Lopez explains that giving someone a few dollars, buying them a hot meal, setting them up at a half-way house, putting them on medication, while not bad things, are not a solution, especially if they come without a relationship.

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Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey #3)

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Summary: Lord Peter Wimsey overhears a doctor talking about a case and is convinced it is the perfect crime.

When I think of Lord Peter Wimsey, I most often think of the modern TV show Castle. I am a big fan of Castle. And there are many similarities. Lord Peter Wimsey is rich, interested in crime, has a good intrinsic sense of how crimes can be committed, is interested in crime as intellectual activity and works with a police officer who he allows to do all the mundane work and there is a good bit of humor in both.

Of course there are differences, Wimsey is not a writer, just a rich Lord (brother to a Duke). He has the free time to think about and solve crimes (Wimsey collects and sells rare first edition book, but has no need for money). And this is the 1930s Britian, so the sexy female cop is out of the question.

But I can totally see Castle with this plot. Wimsey is eating dinner at a fancy resturant and overhears a doctor talking about the death of a patient.  He interupts and asks the doctor to tell him the whole story which leads Wimsey to believe that the patient was killed.

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Identity Crisis: 21 Days of Discovering Who God Says You Are by Michael D. Perkins

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For years many of us have struggled with trying to measure up to others standards for us and for our own. We walk around calling ourselves failures. We tell ourselves we are not smart enough, good enough, nice enough, and on and on. After spending years telling himself similar things, Michael Perkins discovered that none of those things were what God had to say about him.

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