I spent the last three weeks in Canada just relaxing and enjoying our home away from home. I did a little work too, but mostly I had lots of free time to read a lot of good books. Here are some of the highlights.
An Hour Before Daylight by Jimmy Carter was a memoir of his days growing up in Plains, Georgia during the Great Depression. He gave lots of details of his life on a farm, his relationship with the black sharecroppers who lived all around him, and his devotion to his daddy. President Carter is a gifted writer and I plan to read some of his other books in the future.
Another memoir was Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Although they grew up during the same time period, Angelou's experiences are in stark contrast to the life described by Jimmy Carter. She has some beautiful descriptions of the people who surrounded her and impacted her life.
Quotes:
“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.”
“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.”
On the religious side, I read Jesus Outside the Lines by Scott Sauls. The subtitle for the book is what sold me on it: A Way Forward For Those Who Are Tired of Taking Sides. It couldn't sum up better how I feel about a lot of the issues we face on our Facebook feed every day. He tackles many of these issues with grace and understanding, and I really appreciated his tone, even when I didn't necessarily agree with him on a particular subject.
Quotes:
"Our loyalty to Jesus and his kingdom must always exceed our loyalty to an earthly agenda, whether political or otherwise. We should feel 'at home' with people who share our faith but not our politics more than we do with people who share our politics but not our faith. If this is not our experience, then we very well may be rendering to Caesar what belongs to God."
"My friend Darrin Patrick...once said that it's naive to give yourself credit for hitting a triple if you were born on third base. He also said that it's equally naive to expect a person who was born in the parking lot to get to third base without your help."
Right before we left Will purchased Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I have heard Tyson speak on several talk shows, and I always find him interesting so I asked if I could take it along. Will agreed, and Phil and I both read this during our stay. He talked about the wonder and amazement he feels about his studies of the universe and his excitement about all that we are learning from our exploration of space. But he said that he was able to ponder these big ideas because his life is not consumed with having enough food to eat, finding clean water, and just trying to survive. He made the point that we need to care for each other better all around the world so that everyone can have the opportunity to think about bigger and deeper ideas.
Tyson's amazement at the universe was very striking to me. Here is a man, an atheist, who does a better job of marveling at the wonders all around us than most Christians do. Shouldn't we Christians be at the front of the line when it comes to being awed by the things we believe our great God has created? Having grown up in a culture that has always been very suspicious of science and its claims about the universe, I think I've been robbed to a certain extent of my ability to wonder at such things. What a shame! I want to find a better balance in my thinking between faith and science, so that I can marvel at the universe like Tyson does.
My friend Alex loves science fiction and fantasy, so he gave me Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. It was an excellent YA fiction book that kept my attention throughout. Alex loved the action part, but I loved Ender's mind and the thinking behind all his actions. Great ending too! If you have a middle school age child, this is a great book and the first in a series about Ender.
Right before I left for Canada I finished this book, The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I learned a lot from this book and am still thinking about how to apply what I learned from these too. Of course I'm not a Buddhist, but I thought both these men had many important and helpful things to say about learning to live with a great sense of joy in your life. It was a really delightful book, and I highly recommend it.
Quotes:
"Discovering more joy does not, I'm sorry to say, save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily, too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreak without being broken."
--Desmond Tutu
Finally, I listened to several podcasts. My favorite was this one from the TED Radio Hour on NPR. It was called "Beyond Tolerance." The title comes from the idea that tolerance is not the goal, that we need to move way beyond just tolerance. For example, if a couple has been married 40-50 years you don't want them to say that they've just tolerated each other all these years. Although I didn't agree with all the speakers, I felt very engaged by what they had to say. The most thought provoking idea came from Verna Myers on how we could have a better conversation about race and other important issues:
"If you were just the least bit more curious [about them]...
If you didn't trust your own story so much...
That's a start."
Maybe you'll find something here that will strike your fancy. Happy reading!
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