Oskar Schell is an extremely bright 9 year old boy with an incredible appetite for seeking out knowledge. He is also completely broken since his father was killed in the Twin Towers. He wanders through the novel in the ‘heavy boots’ of grief, unsure of what happiness even means any more.
Oskar and his father Thomas had a very special relationship. Often Thomas would set Oskar special puzzles.
For the last one we ever did, which never finished, he gave me a map of Central Park. I said, “And?” And he said, “And what?” I said “What are the clues?” He said, “Who said there had to be any clues?” “There are always clues.” “That doesn’t, in itself, suggest anything.” “Not a single clue?” He said, “Unless no clues is a clue.” “Is no clues a clue?” He shrugged his shoulders, like he had no idea what I was talking about. I loved that.
I spent all day walking around the park, looking for something that might tell me something, but the problem was that I didn’t know what I was looking for.
A year after his father’s death, Oskar finds a mysterious object hidden by his father and takes it to be a clue, so sets off on a quest across the city, meeting a series of strange people along the way.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is an amazing novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, quite possibly one of the best I’ve ever read.
I don’t want to say that it perfectly encompasses the confusion of post-modern living - but it does. Many of us feel like we are set in a park with few clues, struggling to make sense of the little bits of twisted metal we find along the way. Many of us feel like we’ve lost something incredibly important and that without it, life makes no sense. Reading this book in the cafe of a large food store this morning, watching and listening whilst people filled their trolleys with brightly coloured boxes, I really got the feeling of isolation and aloneness. That the world makes no sense and that we’re too busy rushing around filling trolleys to notice.
I know that people often say that the journey is more important than the destination, that conversation is more important than conclusion. But I’m tired of journeying and I want to go home.
Posted in Book Reviews, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »The Ballad of Lee Cotton is a book by Christopher Wilson and was nominated for the Whitbread Novel Award in 1993.
Lee Cotton is an unusual character. A kid with a serious identity problem, Lee has a skin color which causes him some pretty big problem: he is white in a black family. In addition, he has a spooky ability to read other people’s thoughts.
Covering a period of 25 years, this book deals with themes of identity, racism, humanity, love and betrayal through Lee’s life. Couched in terms which are a bit tricky for a churchy person like me to read (which is perhaps a deliberate device of Christopher Wilson) the writing is raw, unflinching and uncomfortable. The words he uses are things you are more likely to hear condemned in church than praised. As an Amazon reviewer put it,
We were all pleased with our choice, but found the novel quite strange. We couldn’t agree on what actually had happened in the book. It’s a great choice for a book club discussion.
But more than this, I think it touches the divine. Take this excerpt:
“I try not to pick on folks when they’re down in the gutter.”
“Down?” I say. “These people bomb our churches; they shoot our leaders.”
“There is that…,” he concedes “the murder, arson and mayhem. Even so, it isn’t a fair fight, is it kid?”
“No,” I say “they got the police. They got guns. They got the politicians. They got the jobs.”
“And what’ve we got, son?
“We got right, sir. We got truth. We got justice. We got the future. Maybe we got the administration, too, if they make their minds up.”
“Exactly.” He nods. “It’s not a fair fight. You’ve got to put yourself in the white folk’s shoes. You’ve got to see their point of view and consider their disadvantages.”
I think that is a message that is transforming and important.
Y’see, I don’t believe this crock that says that implies there are certain spiritual movies which every Christian should attend faithfully and be inspired (especially when a honest reviewer says that the moral message isn’t so great).
I don’t believe there is a separation between sacred and secular. God speaks wherever we let him - and sometimes it appears to be a bit easier in places where he isn’t expected. Just because church and/or Christians say something has a ‘transcendent message’ doesn’t actually mean it is anything more than a turkey of a movie.
Posted in Book Reviews | 2 Comments »What are the biggest problems in the world?What do the life and teachings of Jesus have to say about the most critical problems in our world today?
Brian McLaren seeks to address these central questions in his new book Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope. He systematically examines humankind’s great challenges, using the image of a giant “suicide machine” to describe our global addiction to violence, domination, and unrestricted consumption. He concludes that our planet is on a self-destructive trajectory and that the Christian religion has often failed to provide an alternative to “the dominant framing story that currently drives human society.”
McLaren critiques the “incredible shrinking gospel” of popular Western Christianity which promises peace, forgiveness, and eternal bliss for the individual, but fails to also address our most pressing global and societal problems. He believes that Jesus offers a revolutionary message of hope…
…a vibrant form of Christian faith that is holistic, integral, and balanced - one that offers good news for both the living and the dying, that speaks of God’s grace at work both in this life and the life to come, that speaks both to individuals and to societies and to the planet as whole.
He challenges us to recover the radical belief that God’s will truly CAN be done here on earth as it is in heaven and urges us to join God in his mission of healing and reconciliation. McLaren’s book left me feeling inspired and hopeful and gave me a renewed vision for the work of the Kingdom.
Visit Conversation at the Edge for Helen Mildenhall’s review
Posted in Book Reviews | 1 Comment »I recently finished Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s recent book Failing America’s Faithful: How Today’s Churches are mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way I found it very readable, and I wanted to share a couple fascinating quotes which she shares. They touch on something my lovely Australian wife, Meg, has said to me countless times since we moved back to the U.S. in 2001. Meg has said innumerable times “People here just don’t understand the concept of the commons.”
In 1968, the British journalist David Frost interviewed my father [Robert Kennedy] and aksed him, “What do you think we are on earth for?” My father answered,
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Book Review–Why Good Things Happen to Good People
Thursday, September 6th, 2007Peter Walker recently wrote a review for what sounds like a really fascinating book, and has kindly given us permission to repost here. Thankyou Peter!
“Why Good Things Happen to Good People”
To be honest, when I initially picked up Dr. Stephen Post’s Why Good Things Happen to Good People, I was expecting another thinly-veiled prosperity read in the grand tradition of Osteen and Amway.
I’ve been down that road before: back in the ‘90s my brother jumped on the pyramid-bandwagon, distributing soap samples and copies of God Wants You To Be Rich to everyone he knew. When his finances flopped, so did his faith.Call me a cynic, but that’s why I tend to be cautious about literature touting enlightened paths to success or affluence: Jesus said to die to myself and take up my cross. The Gospel is peace, transcendence, and total self-effacement; no mention of that six-car garage.
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Losing Moses on the Freeway
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007I was so impressed, and disturbed, by the article “The Other War” by Chris Hedges that I ordered his Losing Moses on the Freeway, which I rather suspect I am going to immensely enjoy and rather be moved by. Thought I share an excerpt from the opening chapter with you. H/T Martin. The chapter is entitled:
Decalogue I “Mystery”
I stand across from the Mission Main and Mission Extension Housing Project in Roxbury on a muggy July night. Scattered streetlights cast out dim yellow arcs on Parker Street. The remaining slate-gray metal poles, with their lamps shattered by rocks, leave the strip of asphalt gap-toothed, with lonely outposts of pale spotlights and long stretches of darkness. The unlit stretches are uncharted oceans of fear. They are filled with dangers imagined and real. At night, in the ghetto, I cling to light.
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Book Review: Not For Sale
Tuesday, May 15th, 2007“The book of Ecclesiastes is one of the extraordinary pieces of ancient wisdom literature. The author beautifully expressed the desperation of the powerless: ‘I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed - with no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power’ (Eccles. 4:1).“In our world today, 27 million individuals live as slaves. Frankly, power is on the side of the oppressors at the moment, but a wave of abolitionists is on the rise. They will wipe away the tears of the oppressed and deliver justice to the oppressors.”
To learn more about modern day slavery, I recently read David Batstone’s excellent new book Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade - and How We Can Fight It. David Batstone is a professor of ethics and an award-winning journalist who traveled all over the world preparing to write this book. I found this well-researched and passionately written book to be both heartbreaking and inspiring.
In it Batstone gives both statistical and policy information, as well as first hand accounts. He outlines the massive scope of this global crisis; there are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world today, more than in the four centuries of the transatlantic slave trade combined. He explains the main types of modern slavery - sex trafficking/forced prostitution, bonded labor, and captive child soldiers. And he details actions that are being undertaken and need to be undertaken by governments and institutions to fight against this scourge.
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