No Friend but the Mountains

This book by Behrouz Boochani is the true story of his attempted journey to Australia as a refugee. An Iranian-Kurdish* scholar, journalist & poet, Boochani fled political persecution in his homeland - and we follow him on a harrowing small overcrowded boat voyage from Indonesia, to his being intercepted by Australian immigration police, to his several years' detainment at Manus Island Regional Processing Centre (a prison camp in all but name) from which he wrote this book, one text message at a time, on a smuggled phone.

   The brutal dehumanising forces he and his co-refugees were to experience make this a truly difficult read at times, complimented with a cast of colourful characters** & real philosophical depth in his analysis of the kyriarchy that constituted the system & logic of the prison community, and juxtaposed with the haunting beauty of the many moments throughout the text in which he slips into verse to muse on his circumstances & the hope of their ending. Overall this book is a damning indictment of Australia's asylum policies at the time of writing; I was heartened to learn that Manus Island's camps were declared illegal by the Papua New Guinean government & shut down in late 2017, and nowadays, as far as I can make out from Wikipedia at least, Boochani is living in New Zealand safely & fruitfully. The book is appended by a couple of short reflections by translator Omid Tofighian on the style & impact of the book as well as the choices made in its translation process.

   This is not light reading; this is a raw, poetically told landscape of suffering & injustice. But I would strongly recommend it for anyone as it is truly eye-opening as to the inhuman ways border policy can serve truly evil means & ends.

* You may be familiar with the writings of Turkish-Kurdish political dissident Apo, many of whose books I have covered on this blog; I'd like to promise someday I'll read something by a Kurd that wasn't written in prison.

** With the exceptions of Reza & Hamid, both of whom died on Manus and are thus named in honour of memory, all the characters portrayed in the book are anonymous amalgams of types of personality & behaviour Boochani witnessed in the prison camp, to preserve the safety of those who may otherwise have been identified.

the Crucified God

This book is Jürgen Moltmann's 1974 classic work of cross-central liberation theology. I had been reading through it with my dad, at his suggestion, our last book being John Stott's The Cross of Christ & this obviously continuing a similar theme from a different set of angles (as both very much tread orthodox biblical doctrine around the crucifixion event & its implications, Stott's focus is more familiarly pastoral while Moltmann is more philosophically exploratory); however my dad was finding it hard going* so, despite being about two-thirds of the way through, we abandoned it today, so I finished reading it alone in a couple of big sittings this afternoon. And wow.

   I have previously read Moltmann's later works on historical Christology & overall eschatology, but here the two strands are brought together in a very fruitful analysis of the central motif of Christianity - the death of the incarnate God on a cross. Were I to attempt to summarise the core theme of this book in a single sentence it would be something like: the incarnation, death & resurrection of Christ himself as the Son of God forms the essential nexus between history & eschatology, the bridge between humanity & hope. The book's contents are loosely as follows:

1. on the identity & relevance of faith: the twin crises of identity & relevance, and how we are to understand revelation in contradiction & dialectic knowledge
2. the resistance of the cross against its interpretations: how it has ossified into an unreligious symbol in much of the church, the implications of truly following it, and how it manifests in the contexts of cult, mysticism & theology
3. questions about Jesus: is He truly God? was He truly man? If we answer "yes" to both of these - does that make Him the messiah, and how do we react to that reality if so?
4. the historical trial of Jesus: after a thorough examination of the core questions around the origins of Christology, we look at the historical ways that led Him to the cross - condemned as a "blasphemer" by the religious law-keeping authorities, a "rebel" by the political authorities, and "godforsaken" by the God He claimed Sonship of
5. the eschatological trial of Jesus: a brief rumination of the relationship between eschatology & history, then considerations of His resurrection from the dead, the significance given this that the risen Lord had been crucified, and what these tangles signify about God's future
6. "the crucified God": in this longest titular chapter we first consider whether the notion of God's death constitutes the origin of Christian theology, then dig into the implications of these intellectual currents for both theism & atheism** & possible dialectical transcendence of the argument between the two, the question of how Christ's suffering relates to his double-nature as the God-man, how the cross & its implied eschatology can be best understood in trinitarian terms, and finally the experience of human life in the light of God's suffering pathos
7. ways toward the psychological liberation of humankind: how we are to understand psychological hermeneutics in relation to liberation & how this has previously been worked through in dialogue between psychoanalysis & theology, then the specific issues of repression, parricide & illusion (admittedly I was left wanting more from this chapter, as he only really deals with Freud when there is so much other psychological theory out there, but I guess it's not really Moltmann's field of expertise)
8. ways toward the political liberation of humankind: how we are to understand political hermeneutics in relation to liberation, the contrast between "political religion" as a civic unifying phenomenon quite distinct from true knowledge of God & a political theology rooted in the cross, then a remarkably astute analysis of social/political/economic vicious circles of death & the means of liberation from them*** & how God is transformatively active in these means

   So yes, this book covers an awful lot of ground, and makes its arguments in a way that is complex & often hard to read (the translation from the German is excellent but that leaves it a difficult text nonetheless), but immensely rewarding once you get to the conclusions. It's one of the most influential theological works of the 20th century****, so people interested in the development of modern thought around these themes simply cannot rightly ignore it. I would warn casual readers of theology that this a fairly academic text, but if you stick with it I'm sure any Christian reader would find much meat upon which to ponder the mysteries of our salvation, and even non-Christian readers may find it a refreshingly left-field portrayal of the event doctrinally central to the faith. Who knows? It might even change your mind about that man hanging in shame on a Roman cross...

* Which I thought was a bit strange, as we've previously read Moltmann's The Trinity and the Kingdom of God together and he managed to handle that, though in my opinion it's a much more academically-difficult text than this one.

** Interestingly, Moltmann cites Camus's notion of metaphysical rebellion as being "the only serious atheism".

*** This section alone is worth the cover price of the whole book: Moltmann pulls no punches, and I find myself desperate to get stuck into the wider written corpus of liberation theology that originated in Latin America. Without wanting to spoil it too much, Moltmann's proposed holistic means of comprehensive liberation in the spheres dealt with essentially constitute an intersectional (obviously this book pre-dates the coining of this term by a couple of decades, but had it been in parlance I am sure he would have employed it here) democratic eco-socialism***** rooted in authentic faith.

**** My version is the 40th anniversary re-release featuring a new preface by Moltmann in which he reflects with gratitude & humility on its global impact.

***** I think he largely would have supported the proposals put forth in the holistic manifesto Feminism for the 99%. And I've said this in a previous post about Moltmann but I'll say it again - it's affirming as anything to have a serious Christian thinker using the term "ecological crisis" all of 52 years ago. How much has really changed, eh?

the Guest Cat

This book is a novel by Takashi Hiraide (possibly autobiographical, I'd like to think so). It's extremely simple: a couple in their thirties, both work-from-home freelance writers, develop a blossoming relationship with the cat belonging to one of their neighbours. That's it, that's the book. But it's written in such poignant, intimate prose that it becomes a delicious meandering through everyday life's joys & sorrows. Absolutely worth a read.

Blessed

This book by Nancy Guthrie is a practical walkthrough of the final & perhaps most mystifying & intimidating book of the Bible - Revelation.

   While the vast majority of books about this closing entry to the New Testament either try to construct a systematic theology of eschatological matters (if this is what you want you'd be better served by Moltmann's The Coming of God, although fair warning that is quite academic) or speculate wildly about the exact timelines/events prophesied herein (as far as I see most of these kinds of book are written by conspiratorially-minded crackpots & far more interested in wrangling historical allegory out of Revelation's multidimensional metaphors than they are helping us know God's ways - none are worth reading, with arguably one Very Much Fictional exception); Guthrie thankfully does neither, and instead offers us a straightforward exegesis. She defines Revelation's central message as promise, rather than doom, thereby to believing readers "a call to patient endurance of tribulation as we await the coming of Christ's kingdom in its fulness".

   After a very helpful grounding introduction, she spends twelve chapters working through the twenty-two chapters of Revelation to explore how we are blessed: by hearing the revelation of Jesus, by seeing the glorified Jesus, by being known by Jesus, by worshiping the worthiness of Jesus, by being protected by Jesus, by being on mission for Jesus, by living & dying in Jesus, by being ready for the return of Jesus, by being prepared as a bride for Jesus, by sharing in the resurrection of Jesus, by living in the New Creation with Jesus, and by keeping the words of Jesus. Each of her chapters ends with a short restatement of how we are to "hear and keep" the truths learnt prior, which make this a pastorally helpful book.

   Guthrie writes clearly & readably, and as should be obvious from this brief post this book is very much Christ-centred & full of thorough spiritual applicability. If you're a Christian reader looking to make liveable sense of John's apocalypse - look no further.

the Old Man and the Sea

This book by Ernest Hemingway I've read on this blog before, so see previous post.

Theological-Political Treatise

This book by Baruch [a.k.a. Benedict de] Spinoza is a fascinatingly ahead-of-its-time text, also being a landmark work in the history of biblical criticism. It was widely banned by Catholic & Protestant churches alike during his lifetime, but still went on to have massive widespread impact nonetheless - both in terms of modern approaches to scripture, and the political philosophy it expounds in direct relation to this. While nowhere near as systematic & holistic as Spinoza's more famous work Ethics, the Tractatus Theologio-Politicus [as it was originally titled in Latin] remains a compelling (and surprisingly readable) work of thorough & coherent thought.

   That's the book introduced - what does it actually go through?

• The first three chapters deal with prophecy - its nature as speaking on behalf of God, the individual vocation of the prophet as one with a strong sense of morality & clarity of imagination, and finally a consideration of whether this spiritual phenomenon can be said to be unique to the Hebrews.
• Chapters three & four explore the nature of divine law, as well as the function that religious ceremonies play in rooting communities to the historical narratives that underpin their religious self-understanding.
• Chapter six questions the reality and (more interestingly) necessity [or not] of miracles - Spinoza met C.S. Lewis in my brain & they had a very interesting conversation as I read this one.
• Chapter seven digs into the complicated subjective-trying-to-be-objective process by which scripture is interpreted.
• The next three chapters argue that most of the historical narrative books of the Old Testament almost certainly weren't written by the people they are traditionally attributed to, and makes tentative suggestions as to when & by whom they were most likely to have actually been written.
• Chapter eleven turns to the New Testament to ask whether the epistles of the apostles were written from prophetic insight or mere contextually-appropriate teaching.
• Chapters twelve through fifteen explore the ontological & epistemological questions raised by the concept of Holy Scripture, how it can be known as such; the purpose of scripture as moral law in its transcendent simplicity; the distinction between faith & philosophy, and finally that theology & reason should never be subordinated to one another but work best employed hand-in-hand as we approach Holy Scripture.
• The final five chapters are where we get the meat of the political conclusions of Spinoza's arguments - we start with defining the state in relation to power & individuals, then explore how these concepts manifested [for good or ill] in the biblical history of the Hebrew nation-state, before making the case for a secular liberal democracy* in which everyone is free to think what they think & say it without repercussion from the state.

   So yeh - this book covers a lot of ground, and makes its arguments as carefully as it does convincingly. Anyone interested in political philosophy as it relates to religion in particular would find this an essential read: I certainly feel as though my approach to engaging with scripture has been sharpened & deepened even as it has become in some aspects looser & hazier - Spinoza here isn't trying to win converts to any given body of doctrine, merely encourage critical thinking, in both the religious & political spheres, and if he is making any polemic at all it is toward rulers of states to enact & uphold civil liberties in matters of individual faith.

* Take that, John Stuart Mill - old Baruch beat you to your core thesis almost two centuries earlier!

the Abolition of Man

This book is a trio of lectures by C.S. Lewis on the proper relationship between Nature & Truth, and as such the threats of subjectivism & scientism. I've read it for this blog before (see previous post) and I don't think I have all too much to add - I still think Lewis is far stronger as a rational apologist than as a full-weight philosopher of any ilk, but I do think on my previous reading I was a bit harsh on him.* This is far from the best text out there dealing with its themes, but as a series of essays introducing the topic to a lay audience, I think it paints a coherent and valuable picture. The uneasy contrast posited between tradition & progressivism especially upon this reading struck me as rather salient, even bespeaking some possible influence from Owen Barfield's Lucifer-Ahriman dynamic, which seemed to be lurking behind some of Lewis's points. I think Lewis in his polemic here is a little dramatic, seeing in modernism particularly (one shudders to think what he would have actually made of postmodernism had he lived to see it bear its fruits) the basic erasure of everything that roots us to our humanity, but nonetheless taken with a pinch of salt this is a very thought-provoking & interesting sketch.

* I think having read That Hideous Strength last year softened me substantially, as there Lewis develops the ideas of these essays to a fictional conclusion that I found to be very convincingly satisfactory indeed.

When the Trees Say Nothing

This book, edited & introduced by Kathleen Deignan,* is a curation of extracts from 20th-century mystic monk Thomas Merton's voluminous writings - specifically those that ruminate on the spiritual life we have in & with the natural world. These extracts are split into eight chapters: firstly, general reflections on what it means to know living things; then the seasons [autumn, winter, spring, summer]; the elements [earth, air, fire, water]; the firmament [sky & clouds, sun & moon, planets & stars]; creatures [butterflies & birds, rams & lambs, rodents & rabbits, horses & cattle, snakes & frogs, deer & dogs, bees & bugs]; festivals [rain, flowers, trees]; then finally the presence of mountains & the sanctuary of forests. I really enjoyed this book - it's a doxology of experience rather than any kind of systematized argument or collection of points. If you're a Christian who doesn't take creation with the seriousness, reverence & joy it deserves, this book will nudge you in a healthier direction - and vice versa if you're a non-Christian nature-lover who doesn't take the God who is present in all creation with the seriousness, reverence & joy He deserves! Overall a very pleasant & spiritually-edifying read, and it's made me hungry to seek out some of Merton's other works.

* And illustrated by John Giuliani - though I have to say, while the pictures are nice, there isn't many of them, and the prose is already so beautifully descriptive & thus immersive that they don't really serve to add much.

A Bit Lost

This book by Chris Haughton is a lift-the-flap illustrated adventure. I read it to my friend Dave's 2-1/4 year old son, who, when I visited Dave earlier today for a long overdue catchup, no sooner than I had been presented with a cup of tea & settled myself upon the sofa, demanded (very nicely, mind you) that I read it to him. And I have to say, for a book to read with/to children under the age of four or so, it's not bad at all!

   In it, our protagonist Little Owl falls out of his* tree. He panics, but soon meets a squirrel, who determines to help him re-find his mother. Due to the limitations of linguistic description, Squirrel leads Little Owl, one-by-one, into contact with a Bear, a Rabbit, and a Frog - obviously none of whom are Mummy Owl. Then finally, with Frog's input, Squirrel guesses correctly, and Little & Mummy Owls are reunited. The story closes with Squirrel & Frog being invited back to the Owls' nest for biscuits (it is unclear why Bear & Rabbit aren't invited, but I guess they weren't as immediately helpful as Frog was). Simple story, well-phrased for children learning their way around books, and the illustration style (which is by the author, I gather) is delightful. A great book for very young children.

* Little Owl is simply referred to throughout as Little Owl, with no pronouns being used, so I assume it's fair to say he could just as easily be she, but I was reading it to a young boy so that's where the character placement found itself in my head.

the Other Calling

This book by Andrew Shanks is, in my own reading journey at least, a continued meditation on the themes and content of Fichte's The Vocation of the Scholar, but goes into much more depth. Shanks is here concerned with the twin pursuits of philosophy and theology as efforts in Honesty (yes, with a capital H - by which he means the wholehearted pursuit of truth as meaningful to life); in part one, on philosophy, he draws on many thinkers ancient (as in Socrates & Epicurus) to modern (as in Rousseau & Hegel) to ones new to me (as in Strauss & Kojéve) to sketch a platform from which this kind of thinking bases itself. In part two, on theology, he draws on further thinkers (including Coleridge, Jaspers, Hegel again, and Girard) to develop the notion of this Honesty into the pursuit of communicating Truth to a non-intellectual public. The overall argument of this book is that all intellectuals, of any religion or none, should essentially consider themselves within the vocation of the primordial priest,* and seek oneness; that intellectualism in itself should be a unifying and perfecting process for humankind. I found this book pretty hard going, hence it being the only thing I have to show for on this blog for the latter half of this month (with the first half having been so prolific); with few practical insights - however, if you are a Christian intellectual with a bent for philosophy and an amenability for theology, I think you would find this a fruitful read.

* In the order of Melchizedek, as he puts it.

the Dangerous Life and Ideas of Diogenes the Cynic

This book, by Jean-Manuel Roubineau, translated by Malcolm DeBevoise, is, as its title suggests, a biographical & philosophical portrait of Diogenes - the punkest punk who ever punked before punk was even a twinkle in history's eye. I've been waiting a long time for a book like this about exactly this thinker - it fills in perfectly the missing link between my understandings of the organic human animal & the dedicated Socratic lifestyle.

   Diogenes was a contemporary of Plato* (who nicknamed him "the mad Socrates", or, less generously, "the Dog", which is where from the Greek the Cynic school gets its name) but on the completely opposite end of the socio-philosophical spectrum. He (that is, Diogenes) saw civilisation as a vanity that curtailed human freedom; the truest, free-est form of human life, as he saw it, was to accept & embody its animal nature. Which he did. He lived in a large pottery jar in the middle of Athens, begged for his food from passers-by, insulted anyone when he felt like it,** and made a consistent habit of masturbating in public. While the spurious anecdotes & witty apothegms of Diogenes are well-covered in other books however, Jean-Manuel in this one makes a concerted effort to uncover the reality of the man behind the myth - we follow him from his youth in a middle-class family in Sinope, to his father's legal trouble for currency fraud, to his period as a famous homeless thinker, his enslavement, and once freed the closing chapter in his life as tutor to some aristocratic kids. We get a portrait of a man of great integrity and utter optimism - wherever his fortune led him, that is what and where he operated from. He was often critical of the prevailing method of political governance in Athens, which he characterised not as true democracy but rather ochlocracy [i.e. government by an inconstant & unreasoning populace]; and just as much a pain in the arse to the dominant philosophical schools with his characteristic method of uncovering common-sense gaping holes in their systems. None of his writings (of which there were, apparently, many - including one called The Republic, in opposition to Plato's, which I only wish we had the chance to read today) survive, but he was far from a base contrarian - he had a holistic and systematic philosophy of his own, which as far as I can gather from this biography would be considered radically anti-capitalist and pro-free love (as he famously endorsed the flouting of all sexual taboos, including incest etc, so long as there was mutual adult consent); rooted in the idea that embracing the reality that humankind is still animalkind liberates us most fully. I think that were Diogenes alive today he would be a voluntarily street-sleeping street-wanking publicly-perceived maniac who nonetheless gets flown out worldwide for the occasional TED-Talk conversation with Slavoj Žižek or whoever. I would pay good money to watch a conversation of that ilk. Maybe I'll be able to in the New Jerusalem, who knows (this post is not the place for a robust discussion of trans-religio-philosophical universalism).

   Anyway. If your interest in Diogenes is largely superficial and you just want to know about the funny/profound things he said and did, I would rather recommend you buy one of the several books catering to that - but if you want a more nuanced picture of the man as a man in his historical context, this is without comparison.

* He was a particularly diligent thorn in the side of Plato; e.g. when Plato defined mankind as "a featherless biped", Diogenes charged into the Symposium brandishing a plucked chicken & declaring "behold, a man!"

** One of my favourite anecdotes about Diogenes is that once a rich man invited him back to his house to view all his bourgeois collected items. Having seen everything in the house, Diogenes spat in the man's face, excusing himself with the explanation "I was surrounded by so much beauty I didn't know where else to spit." Another great anecdote is when Alexander the Great, on a visit to Athens, sought out a meeting with this most countercultural of philosophers; and, as he stood over Diogenes (as he lay in his jar) asked if he could do anything for him, the Dog replied "yes. Get out of my sunlight." Based as fuck.

the Myth of Sisyphus

This book by Albert Camus is one I have read before, but back in the days before I was running this blog - so after having recently read The Rebel, I decided to revisit it. It's a collection of one long (the titular) & five shorter essays - as follows:

• The Myth of Sisyphus: the main focus of this long essay is the problem of suicide, which Camus sees as being the primary, immediate, philosophical question - is life worth living? The title comes from the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to an immortal existence in which he had to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down as soon as this task was completed, and he had to do it all over again - a futile, endless experience, but as Camus concludes, "one must imagine Sisyphus happy". The essay's inner workings are split into four main chunks:
• Absurd reasoning: after explaining the general landscape of existing as a meaning-seeking being in a world apparently lacking definite meaning (a situation Camus calls "the absurd"), this section deals with the limits of rationality in apprehending a meaning to life, the "walls" we encounter in that pursuit, the idea of "philosophical suicide" (that being the circumstance in which thinkers in pursuit of meaning abandon their quests & accept absurdism), and the strange kind of freedom embracing the absurd can bestow upon one.
• The absurd man: three different ways of living in light of the absurd - the absolute pursuit of selfish pleasure, the aesthetic construction of a satisfying drama, and the power-plays of the conqueror.
• Absurd creation: first examining the relationship between philosophy and fiction, then undertaking a deep-dive into Dostoyevsky's character of Kirilov as an example of this done well, before finally looking at the profundity of one's creative effort in light of the absurd.
• Appendix - examines the themes of this essay & how they relate to the tangibility (or lack thereof) of hope in the works of Franz Kafka.
• Summer in Algiers: a reflection on the carefree, childlike aesthetic of life in that city, rooted in an ethic of living bodily & wholeheartedly in the present.
• The Minotaur: a reflection on the city of Oran & how its culture deals with the omnipresent problems of boredom.
• Helen's Exile: a commentary on how western modernism seems to have sacrificed its experience of beauty in favour of constructing a rational future.
• Return to Tipasa: a reflection on how places change when you visit them as an older person to how you enjoyed them as a youth; with a closing exhortation on the importance of holding onto joy.
• The Artist and his Time: ruminations on the vocation of the artist speaking into & acting in history.

   Overall this is a very thought-provoking & life-affirming book. If you're struggling with suicidal thoughts, this might give enough of a reasonable leg-up into confronting the struggle of being with a bit more bravery & stability (though it's far from being the first thing I would recommend to someone in that circumstance); and if you're simply existentially wrestling with the apparent meaninglessness of it all, this perspective from the absurd will almost certainly embolden you to live well despite that. Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in whether life has meaningfulness integrated into it - especially if the notion that it doesn't leaves you feeling lost: here, Camus provides you with a very humane, readable & compelling map.

A Monster Calls

This book is a novel by Patrick Ness (although based on an idea by Siobhan Dowd, who came up with the basic story but died of cancer before she could write it - which makes the book all the more poignant in my opinion) & illustrated beautifully by Jim Kay.*

   In it, thirteen-year-old Conor O'Malley has been having a recurring nightmare in which his mother - who is being treated for cancer** - is taken by a monster and there's nothing he can do to save her. Then one night, he is visited by a new monster, something ancient & wild - purportedly the yew tree from the churchyard his house's rear windows look out upon. The monster tells Conor three stories, and then demands in return that he tells the fourth: specifically, the truth. I won't spoil the plot but that's the broad outline. I really enjoyed this book - it's a kid-friendly (well, between ages eight to fourteen, maybe) exploration of pain & fear & grief told in powerful prose.

* The illustrations are marvellous; scratchy & shadowy, eerie & suggestive, full of interesting textures. They really add a great deal to the atmosphere of the story.

** "The C word" isn't mentioned anywhere in the book, but it's obvious.

Unancestral Voice

This book by Owen Barfield I'm really struggling to categorize... it's ostensibly a novel, with a protagonist, dialogue, and a forwards plot (of sorts), but the entirety of all three of these elements are devoted to philosophical-spiritual explorations in the evolution of consciousness. I'm not going to label it as a novel even though it sort of is, but I think it belongs perhaps more in the realm of a Platonic dialogue.

   We start part one with the main character, a man aptly named Burgeon, debating with a couple of associates about the moral & anthropological implications of D.H. Lawrence's controversial (obscene, some would say) work; while pondering this subconsciously, Burgeon stumbles across a book by an old rabbi named Joseph Karo who spoke of the shekinah and the logos - and soon, though far from a mystic, Burgeon finds himself entertaining an innate-but-somehow-alien voice which he calls Meggid and that starts prompting him to have deep spiritual-philosophical dialogues in his own head.* By part two, these conversations have obviously started rubbing off on Burgeon, and we watch as he engages deeply in a debate with a pair of strangers on a train journey about the spiritual and/or biological nature of life & consciousness, and how evolution & reincarnation fit into a holistic understanding of the very possibility of this. During these chapters Meggid imparts to Burgeon the insight that the transcendent spiritual powers at war for the fate of creation are Gabriel [incarnation of spirit into flesh] & Michael [rebirth through death] on the one hand and Lucifer [obsessive conservation of the past] & Ahriman [destruction to make way for an invented future] on the other. Part three opens, somewhat bafflingly, with an extended lecture (followed by a lively Q&A session) on quantum mechanics - though the next chapter explosively joins the dots between this discussion & metaphysics, neatly tying together with all the loose threads of theological implication strewn throughout the previous chapters. The final chapter is a reflective summation of all that has been learnt by Burgeon and - indeed! - the reader, with spiritual invitations given to lean in with eager faith to the possibilities of transformation of self-consciousness as divulged herein.

   If that sounds like it's trying to do a lot - you'd be absolutely right, and let me assure you here & now that it succeeds marvellously in making its points shockingly accessibly,** as the dialectical format allows you to follow the train-of-thought like a ping-pong rally all the way to its radical conclusion. Which, if I were to try to summarise where this book's argument ends up... so, when William Blake declares that "there is no natural religion", Baruch de Spinoza points irritably at his own system to say "of course there is, look!" only for Jürgen Moltmann to step in with the missing eco-theological key to the Hegelian synthesis (after Nicholas of Cusa politely knocked on the door, of course). To say I found this book illuminating would be a gross understatement - it's made me feel like I've stumbled into an almost gnostic form of orthodoxy that makes perfect sense & yet none simultaneously. My mind has a new ceiling.

   Wherever you are on your own spiritual-intellectual journey, if you're comfortable with complex diagonal ideas & verbose rambling tangents, I'm sure you will find much deep & fruitful meat-for-thought in this amazing little book.

* Later in the book Meggid gives the description of itself as "the voice of each one's mind speaking from the depths within themself", a kind of personal (and yet vaguely universal also) divine/organic imagination-cognition-intuition pump, if you will.

** In a nice change from his other book that I've read, all the non-obvious-from-context quotes in Latin or whatever are actually given translations in the endnotes!

Lines on the Surface

This book is a collection of poems written by my good friend* Nicolas Spicer between 1999 and 2009. I've actually owned this book for about five years, and had been putting off reading it because when I read published poetry by people I know personally I do often get quite envious, not simply of their being published, but of their sheer brilliance of style that I would find it impossible to imitate (oh hello Kinsman & Otis) and obviously that isn't emotionally healthy & poets are generally neurotic enough as it is. But we all have our own voice, which is to be celebrated; although additional to mere style, Nick is known to me as something of an oracular genius when it comes to the history & diversity & techniques of poetry, having studied it at length & depth for much of his life in a way I never have, so I am reluctant to say anything critical of this book on here at all for thought that I would be scramblingly failing to articulate the very clever things he is doing with language that I am able to thoroughly enjoy aesthetically without being remotely capable of describing with any expertisemént.** What I will say is that I read this is one two-hour sitting & didn't have a lull of gripped interest throughout: the themes & feelings of these poems are wonderfully varied but the stylistic voice is so strong & consistent throughout that I almost heard his delivery ring in my ears as I read. An expert in the craft - highly recommended collection for poetry lovers.

* He's one of our most reliable (in terms of both consistency of attendance & quality of performance) regulars at Guerrilla, the spoken word night I host. So if you want to experience Nick's excellent poetry live, for free, in a very nice pub, you know where to start seeking the opportunity to do so.

** Not a word, I know. Shut up.

the Sublime Object of Ideology

This book by Slavoj Žižek* was oof! A tricky one, to put it mildly. I went into it knowing that Žižek is a deep & broad thinker & this was his first book so I assumed it would be relatively introductory - I was not prepared for the density of his arguments, his arguable overreliance on Hegelian metaphysics & Lacanian psychoanalysis, his lengthy dissections of what esoteric film references mean in terms of the symbolic phallus, etc. I could not for love nor money explain this book to you, beyond the extremely vague tentative offering that it's an exploration of the subject-object relationship & how this manifests in socio-cultural constructs. If you like a real meaty gristly challenge in your philosophical reading then you might dare to give this a go & see if you can make more sense of it than me - but honestly? This might be the densest, hardest book I've read for this blog ever - harder than Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, harder than Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety, goddamn, harder than Wittgenstein's Tractatus. And so on *sniff* and so on. Woof.

* If you're not familiar - he is probably best described as "the philosopher you would be least surprised to see eat a dropped hotdog off the ground." (after Diogenes, of course.) His book may have left me baffled but I still find him highly entertaining to watch interviews of - he tends to make much easier informative sense in them too.

the Lord of the Rings: book six

This book is the sixth and final instalment of J.R.R. Tolkien's genre-defining fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, which I've read before on this blog hence that link going back to my original post about it - I've been re-enjoying the series over the past sixty weeks with YouTuber Tolkien Trash reading a chapter a week on livestream, which was (it's over! but she's doing The Hobbit next & then The Silmarillion) a very pleasant experience. It was like an audiobook with a chat feature so you can jest & surmise &etc with other listeners as you go.

the Irresistible Revolution

This book by Shane Claiborne (I read the updated 10th-anniversary edition which has a whole extra chapter full of FAQs) is an autobiographical manifesto of sorts for radically living out the implications of truly following in Jesus Christ's footsteps. As a response to having recently read Camus's The Rebel, and thinking "well, isn't Christianity kind of inherently revolutionary?" I decided to blast through this over the Easter weekend. (Hope you've had a happy one, by the way.) Claiborne takes a refreshingly open-minded big-hearted approach to interpreting the life, ministry & teachings of Jesus - and it leads him to some crazy places. From the slums of Calcutta where he meets Mother Theresa, to Iraq during the war where he was challenged & encouraged by the hospitality of the locals, to his home city of Philadelphia where his intentional communities have done a huge amount to build support networks for the poor & vulnerable - he really has achieved a lot by stepping out in sincere faith, and I think every Christian has a lot to learn from him. Highly recommended book for believers who sense that maybe they could be doing more for the Kingdom - the Church could really use a great deal more prophetic & provocative activity from "holy fools" (his term) like Shane.

The Rebel

This book by Albert Camus I had heard of for years, but always assumed it was a novel, much like The Outsider - which I enjoyed, but it didn't blow me away, so I'd reserved a general apathy towards his other novels. However, since YouTuber unsolicited advice informed me that it was in fact a work of nonfiction - indeed, being a kind of follow-up to The Myth of Sisyphus (which I read before I started this blog but intend to reread soon) - it immediately got shunted to the top of my to-read list.

   While The Myth of Sisyphus famously contends with the philosophical problem of suicide, The Rebel goes on to do so for the existential phenomenon of murder. Camus takes a generous definition of murder - the killing of someone by the state is just as much murder as the killing of someone by someone else, in both cases for whatever given reason. The first chapter is a simple, considerate portrait of 'the rebel' - why does a human rebel, and against what? The second chapter goes on to deal with 'metaphysical rebellion' - that of an individual or group of people rejected the natural order of conditions purportedly ordained by God; his arguments here are some of the most profound insights into the human condition that I have ever read. We live in a world and are told that the God who created it is good, but we perceive things in the world that we feel are unjust - and so we must kill God in our hearts before turning outward to impose, however successfully or arguably reasonably, our own sense of justice onto this broken created order.* Our passion & reason become sublimated to each other. Chilling stuff. Chapter three (being the meat of the book - about 60% of its total length) is about 'historical rebellion'; how, once one has become a metaphysical rebel, their ideas about righteousness & justice coalesce into ideology, which manifests in the direct organization & empowerment of similarly-minded (or convinced, coerced, it matters little in the big picture) rebellious folks into something more - a revolution. Through thorough analysis of the roots, methods, and fallouts of the French 1789 and Russian 1917 revolutions, Camus demonstrates that revolutions can have a nasty tendency to value their own idea of justice above basic respect for the sanctity of God-given life, and will often result in periods of terror - mass murder by the revolutionary state, or whatever power has supplanted that which was revolted against. Chapter four explores how artistic expression can be a means of & model for rebellion; he gives particular attention to the form of the novel as a way by which a creative mind can construct its own distinct, 'good', world. A final chapter then loosely ties up a handful of tangents touched upon in the previous four with a few extra reflections.

   Overall I found this to be a tremendously politically & religiously humbling book. It gave me a series of mounting epiphanies which forced me to re-evaluate much of my own ideological positions & how dangerous they might be in power. Though as a Christian obviously the concept of metaphysical rebellion is far from alien to me** - but having an existentialist philosopher of immense intellectual sharpness talk about it is a heck of a smack different to having an orthodox theologian talk about it in digestible biblical terms. Anyone interested in the human condition, how freedom & violence interrelate, the ecology of political ideas & the ethics of murder - will get a great deal to chew on from this book. Highly recommended.

* This concept as developed here existentially by Camus actually maps really quite neatly onto the 'royal consciousness' concept Walter Brueggemann developed theologically.

** Paradise Lost aside, the best imaginative depictions of metaphysical rebellions I can name off the top of my head are from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials [being pro-rebellion] and C.S. Lewis's Space trilogy [being pro-obedience].

"Safe Metamorphosis!!"

This book is Otis Mensah's debut collection, which I've just re-read (that link goes back to my original post from first reading) to see if it still slaps, and it does. One notable change in the intervening years is that my copy is of his self-published first edition, which is no longer available anywhere, but the book has since been properly formally published (available here) in a new expanded version, which presumably means if you buy a copy of the newer edition it'll potentially have new stuff in it & so will almost certainly slap even harder.

&

This book is Jonathan Kinsman's debut poetry pamphlet - this was a re-read (check out the link at the start of this for my original post about it*) to see if it still rocks, and it roundedly soundedly does.

* The only thing I would necessarily add to that original post is that Kinsman is no longer the host of the Guerrilla spoken word night, I am, having been handed the baton at the start of 2019, but regular readers of this blog (who am I kidding) will already know that.

Jesus the Son of Man

This book by Kahlil Gibran was an absolute treat. Having re-read his most famous work last night, I became curious about his other stuff and found this for 73p on Kindle, so immediately bumped it to the top of my to-read list - and I have not been disappointed.

   It's difficult to decide whether to classify this as poetry or short stories given the style & nature of the content. Basically what the book is constituted of is several dozen vignettes of various people's reactions to, recollections of, and reflections on Jesus of Nazareth; these range from his disciples (eg. James & John, Matthew, Peter, Thomas, Mary Magdalene gets three separate chapters alone) to his erstwhile foes (most notably the high priests Annas & Caiaphas, and Pontius Pilate) to random strangers (eg. a Persian philosopher, a Babylonian astronomer, a Greek poet, and my personal favourite "Ahaz the portly").* The attitudes presented range from worshipful awe to confusion to hostility - there is even one interestingly neutral perspective. Gibran seeks to tread the known and possible ground of the biblically-orthodox Jesus faithfully, making no theological points but as a work of socio-historical imagination driving home the pressing question - "how would you have related to him?"**

   A very readable, vibrant & faithful book. Highly recommended for those curious about what we can say or imagine about Jesus without resorting to outright fancy, be they Christian like Kahlil Gibran was or not.

* A couple of lacunae I would have liked to have seen filled would be Pharisees and the beneficiaries of his miracles, lepers & cripples & demoniacs etc, but I suppose you can't have everything, and admittedly Gibran is already doing a great deal here.

** Indeed, the final chapter, "a man from Lebanon [nineteen centuries later]" is Gibran's own reflections on meeting Jesus himself through the life of faith.

the Prophet

This book is the most famous work by Kahlil Gibran - I've read it for this blog before, hence the shortness of this post: that link goes back to my original post about it as I don't really have anything to add to what I said there* so go read that if you want to know about this brilliantly-wise & beautifully-written poetic work.

* Except one thing - the edition I read last time was a stolen Everyman hardback which since, in somewhat neat circularity, has been stolen from me (well, I lent it to someone, I forget who, but they kept it) so this time was reading my replacement, a fairly unattractively-formatted paperback with Gibran's own artwork interspersed with the sections, though I'll admit this didn't add much to the reading experience. I'd be interested to see his artwork in person, mind, as I'm sure it's a lot more impressive when it's not an A5 black&white copy.

What is Enlightenment?

This essay by Immanuel Kant, written in 1784 at the height of the Enlightenment, is the most famous answer provided to Zöllner's open question of what was going on. It's very short (seven pages, six if you don't care about footnotes) and can be summed up with its opening quote - "Enlightenment is mankind’s exit from its self-incurred immaturity," said immaturity being the inability to use one's own reason to move meaningfully through the world without the guidance of others.* Such an exit occurs when people are granted intellectual & spiritual freedom, though Kant also brings this into dialogue with obedience to the law, making the somewhat perplexing point that "a lesser degree of civil freedom... creates the room for spiritual freedom to spread to its full capacity." Historically this is a very influential essay, and certainly roundedly answers its title question, but if you're genuinely interested in seeing the answer unpacked I would instead recommend you read Fichte's The Vocation of the Scholar, which treads very similar ground but with much more useful & insightful depth.

* Concerningly I think there is a good case to be made that as of the 2020s we are entering a period of disenlightenment, in which independent "mature" thinking persons are increasingly outsourcing their own critical reasoning skills to the likes of ChatGPT... but that's a whole 'nother thing I won't pick apart thoroughly here.

the Monsters and the Critics

This essay (available for free online from that link) by J.R.R. Tolkien* is arguably the landmark work in scholarship on Beowulf, the most famous surviving example of Old English poetic diction and potentially fragment of insight into pre-Christian English mythology. As such, it has been poked & picked at by academics for centuries, digging for clues into this large blank space in our historical memory - but, argues the Professor, in doing so, we have neglected, to our loss, to consider how to & why should we approach & appreciate Beowulf as what it is - a poem, to be enjoyed. I won't provide a summary of his arguments here or give much reflection on it as everything I would be likely to say has been articulated excellently by Gavin the medievalist on YouTube, so check that out - but if you're interested in seeing how Tolkien's mind worked on an academic** rather than creative level, this essay is essential reading; if you're interested in Old English culture and literature & somehow haven't read this essay where the heck have you been - and in any case it will certainly give you much food for thought in how we are to understand (and enjoy!) texts from distant times. For an academic essay it's incredibly readable*** and rather short (I finished the whole thing in a ninety-minute sitting) so go have a look.

* People remember him for his hobby, which was writing his own mythology, but often fail to remember him for his job, which was teaching about the history of language and literature - his essay on fairy-stories is another great example of his powerful scholarship, and is just as readable as this one.

** The appendix is much more linguistics-focused and digs into technical specifics rather than more readably making a broader argument, but I loved them for the depth of rigour Tolkien showed in his passion for the scholarship.

*** Not surprising for a writer of Tolkien's calibre: I particularly loved his early allegory (and yes, while he cordially disliked the form didn't mean he couldn't write a damn good one when called to) of the man who built a tower out of old stones.

the Birth of Nothing

This book is a dystopian novel by Pavel Marek, and was far more intensively full of thought-provoking ideas & discourse than I was prepared for it to be. We follow Casimir, a young man whose dissatisfaction with the approaching-perfect world around him manifests in something of a rebellious streak. But is there any need for his dissent? I don't want to give away much about the plot - but the book elusively & definitively resists answering that question: Casimir's feelings about the world & the new revolutionary structures of the world itself play in a brilliant complex dialogue that raises some incredibly interesting & unique questions about truth, freedom, equality, tolerance, well-being, and more. Anyone interested in political perfectionism & what this can look or feel like will get a lot out of this novel, I guarantee.

Project Öcalan

This (available on my Google Drive from that link) is my Masters dissertation on Kurdistan; I decided to give it a re-read given recent events in Iran. Some day, when there's more to say & I regain access to academic libraries & journals, I'd like to be able to update & expand it, but for now I still think it holds up as a portrait of a highly-complex geopolitical issue.

Let Them Eat Chaos

This book by Kae Tempest is a masterful work of commentary poetry, and I would highly recommend reading it aloud to yourself if you can as it was written to be performed as live spoken word. The above link goes back to my post about this from the first time I read it as I don't really have anything to add.

Howl, Kaddish & other poems

This book by Allen Ginsberg is one I've read before on this blog, hence the link going back to the first post about it as I really don't have anything to add. I read it with a bottle of wine & treated myself to doing the especially good bits aloud, a diversion I can highly recommend.

Poetic Diction

This book by Owen Barfield* is one I've read before but I didn't do a very nice job at the post last time round so I promise to be a bit more helpful on this go. It's a theory of meaning, blending philology, linguistics, cultural history, the evolution of poetic form, psychology, philosophy &etc to sketch a broad & deep body of theory into how poetic diction, thereby poetry, thereby meaning, thereby knowledge - function. Its contents are, in brief, as follows:

• the original preface from the 1927 first edition & a second, much meatier, one from the 1951 second edition
• chapters proper:
1. defining "poetic diction" with a few examples
2. the aesthetic effects of poetry
3. metaphor
4. meaning & myth
5. language & poetry
6. the poet as individual
7. the making of meaning
8. verse & prose
9. archaism
10. strangeness
11. concluding remarks
• four appendices: on the aesthetics of nature; on the philosophical difficulties of establishing & using concrete definitions; on "accidental" metaphors; & on the unhelpfulness of the objective/subjective distinction
• an afterword from 1972 which is basically just acknowledging intellectual debts to various other thinkers

   I found this book even more insightful & revelatory than I did on first reading.** It does for poetics what Wittgenstein's Tractatus did for logic; and since logic is by nature devoid of actual meaning, only being able to establish logical relations between propositions, it is a much more fruitful book in every way. Barfield was a thinker of immense depth, breadth, scope & sensitivity, & in my opinion he deserves to be far more widely known & read. If you're interested in the philosophy of meaning in a grounded & pragmatic way, this will be an exhilarating synthesis of ideas; if you're more interested in a theory of poetry that will help you in your own artistic understanding & endeavour, you will not be disappointed either - probably not directly inspired, but certainly better-equipped. Highly recommended little book. The chief prompt for me re-reading it was that I'm running a poetry writing workshop for my church on Sunday, and while this is largely too academic & big-picture to be of much practical help for that, I certainly found it thoroughly fecund & fertile as a guiding text.

* One of the Inklings - the casual but serious gang of Oxford literary professors who would go for pints (in a pub called The Eagle & Child; it's still there, I've been, it's nice. Quiet & cozy. The dudes have a demure but noticeable little plaque in their memory) & chat about ideas & their work. The gang notably also included J.R.R. Tolkien & C.S. Lewis, both of whom were in not-small part inspired by Barfield's profound thinking around language.

** To be fair I was in the run-up to a psychotic break at the time, which I didn't know, obviously, but it was significantly colouring my apprehension of everything that I was experiencing, including reading. One quibble from my previous post from that time that I will repeat is that it's rather irritating that the myriad quotes in Latin, Greek & French are, with one exception, left untranslated, even in the footnotes, which makes sense for an academic philological text's intended audience but feels a tad obscurantist as a general reader.

the Cross of Christ

This book is John Stott's magnum opus, diving deep into the titular heart of the Christian faith. It is rigorous but accessible, profound but familiar, consistently biblically-grounded & full of pastoral application. Highly recommended reading for any Christian who wants to more expansively understand the wonderful divine mystery of Christ's substitutionary death for us and what it means. I've been reading through it ten or so pages at a time with my dad, which has led to some incredibly helpfully-edifying & spiritually-provocative conversations, so I would  highly recommend doing something similar to get the most out of this chonky tome - indeed, the edition I've linked here includes a study guide at the back, which we didn't use, but I imagine would be greatly fruitful.

the Vocation of the Scholar

This book [available from that link online for free] by Enlightenment-era German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte* is a rigorous examination of its title theme, as presented in a series of five lectures. They proceed as follows:

1. the vocation of man - in a general sense, being the harmonisation of the Ego so that it can intellectually & sensibly apprehend things in the world & also promote their harmonisation.
2. the vocation of man in society - expanding on the first lecture in application to the reality that all Ego finds itself in world where other free & rational beings exist: this being society, which through coordination of diversity & resultant cooperation leads us to mutual perfection.
3. the distinction of classes in society - a relatively convoluted attempt to discern the cause of social inequalities between free rational beings, followed by a moral exhortation that overcoming such is the chief end of society.**
4. the vocation of the scholar - a specific examination of the unique vocation of scholarship in promoting the cultural unity & moral perfection of humankind through progressive development & communication of knowledge in pursuit of truth.
5. a repudiation of Rousseau's doctrine that mankind's greatest good would be found in the state of nature rather than a developed culture.

   I found Fichte remarkably easy to read, many thanks to the translator - and overall this is a very stimulating & edifying book urging anyone engaged in the human vocation of scholarship to take seriously the responsibilities of their intellectual activity. Worth checking out if that sounds interesting to you, it's pretty short.

* He wins the prize for Most German Name of Enlightenment philosophers I have yet read.

** Karl Marx read Fichte, & it shows.

Imagination Manifesto

This book is a collaboration between theologian Ted Turnau & artist Ruth Naomi Floyd; it is a call for Christian creatives to plant "oases of imagination", spaces where those both creative & not can meet & share inspiration. It is a very practical book in many ways, with excellent chapters on how Christian artists must eschew & transcend the temptations to engage in culture wars or retreat into subcultural bubbles; supplemented by more theoretical chapters, such as on the nature of the imagination, or the role of the artist in bearing witness to the brokenness of the world. I found it a very inspiring read & I would like to quietly slip it onto the shelf of every Christian in a pastoral leadership position to help them see the vital value in better supporting the creatives under their care.

Seeing Beauty & Saying Beautifully

This book by John Piper is an exploration of how poetic effort can be utilized in devotion to God; as evangelism, as exhortation, as edification, etc. Drawing on the lives & work of three great Christian communicators (each of whom is afforded a relevant-facts-only potted biography to place their works into their proper contexts, alongside a rough examination of the linguistic arts each employed in their vocation), Piper develops a cogent & compelling discourse on how "putting things into your own words" is a mighty fine tool in the finite individual's spiritual formation & missional impact.

   The contents proceed as follows:

1. a brief introduction theologically justifying the poetic use of language by Christians in the communication of their faith, hope, & love - despite the common assertions in the New Testament that "lofty speech" is NOT the way to best present the gospel
2. George Herbert - the 16th-century rural pastor who posthumously became known as one of the greatest devotional writers this world has seen. Herbert's pastoral career responsibilities & magisterial poetic gifting are both given due examination, with his spiritual humility & technical grandeur given similar weight in discussion
3. George Whitefield - the 18th-century trans-Atlantic preacher (with, if we're being honest, a borderline unbelievable virtually superhuman* capacity for bringing to gospel to people far & wide**) whose modes of dramatic eloquent enunciation brought many thousands to Christ & laid the foundations for the Great Awakenings that followed in the years after his tour of America
4. C.S. Lewis - the 20th-century atheist-turned-Anglican who, alongside his career as a scholar of ancient literature, became the foremost apologist for the Christian faith (despite several decidedly heterodox positions that he held compared to most evangelicals of his & our era) via combination of romantic & rationalistic apprehension of Christianity's truth claims; as expressed in both imaginative & logical means
5. a final concluding chapter which briefly restates everything learned from these three great disciples of Christ & challenges us to follow them in their following of & expression of such - we may not all be poets but we all have the capacity for poetic effort, and handedly manifesting such is a tried & true means of deepening our own grasp of the divine just as much as it does communicate such encountered truth to our audiences

   After the concluding section on how each of these very different dudes drew upon the fountain of inspiration that is God*** to make more of their faith, and how each has lessons to teach us about ongoing contemporary ministry in ways fruitful both to writer & reader (or speaker & hearer, as in Whitefield's case) - well, that's the book. I found this a hugely edifying & instructive read as a poet myself, so would highly recommend it to Christians curious about the more daring aspects of expression as a fantastic source of real-life Example in How-To-Do... I dare say even non-Christians who already have a creative bent will find much in here to make them think deeply & feel seenly about Truth.

* Dude preached roughly a thousand sermons a year for thirty years. Which, even given his barely-existent social life outside of itinerant gospel proclamation, must have left him with minimal time for the actual preparation of said sermons - I choose thus to believe that even two centuries before Red Bull was available he must have been largely, especially, winging it.

** An interesting knot of historical biography is that Whitefield was a slave-owner who also dedicated huge amounts of effort in evangelising slaves, who he saw as >potentially< spiritually equal to whites. While there were no doubt abolitionists who pre-dated him, and he was it's fair to say never even one of these, it is also true that he was chiefly mourned by the Blacks in America following his death, given his commitment to & massive success in bringing them the gospel.

*** Having learned much more about George Herbert from this book that I didn't from reading him directly, I do have to confess that I still find William Blake a more compelling Christian voice in poetry's form; were I the staff manager of the Historical Church, yes I may well happily let Herbert write liturgy, and Lewis would have free rein on producing apologetic tracts for non-believers, and obviously Whitefield would be among those on the regular pulpit roster - but it would be Blake's outrageously inclusive imagination that I would most like to lead Sunday school.

the Vision of God

This book (available from the Internet Archive from that link for free) by Nicholas of Cusa* is an underrated classic of Christian mysticism. It eschews the argumentative polemic format & instead takes on a kind of prolonged doxology - which fully befits its core theme, the infinity of God. The first half circles around the implications of the ideas that God is omniscient & omnipresent, everywhere & everywhen & thus all-seeing, all-knowing; the theological groundwork discussed here is drawn out in subjective implication for the believer in how they relate to [i.e. can see, can know] God as, being as they are, finite. The second half is dedicated to unpacking the depths of the Christian idea of God as Trinity, and how this relates to philosophical notions of infinitude; followed with unpacking the nest of complexities in how Jesus relates to God as infinite - a hefty task which in my opinion Nicholas undertakes well. While perhaps not as original in content as some of his other works (see the * below) as this is merely expanding on well-trodden ground within Christian thinking, this book still explores some very cogent angles about essentials of orthodox faith & does so in beautiful language; definitely worth a read for any Christian wanting to pick at the scab of ignorance that has formed over the cut in their spiritual skin made by cognizance that we, as finite human sinners, somehow have to relate to an infinite incomprehensible perfect Lord.

* Yeh, what with this after this and that I've been reading a lot of him recently. What can I say? Interesting thinker!

the Lord of the Rings: book five

This book is the second half of The Return of the King, the final instalment of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which as with the rest of the series I've read before (see hence that link going to my prior post about this) but am re-enjoying thanks to dogged YouTuber Tolkien Trash's project to read the series in full, aloud, live, a chapter a week.

Isaac and I

This book is the autobiography of Chris Searle, who more or less dedicated his life to the promotion* of poetry - the eponymous Isaac being his greatest artistic influence, Isaac Rosenberg, an East London Jewish poet & painter who was killed at 27 in World War One, and according to Searle deserves to be much more widely known & read. Searle grew up with a hunger for the poetic, and carried this passion with him throughout quite a travelled life - he taught in Canada & the Caribbean for a stint before returning to the familiar East End, where he almost immediately got fired from his role as a secondary school English teacher because he published a collection of his students' work. It all worked out sooner or later thanks to a combination of union pressure & his outraged students going on strike, making headlines as they did so. Political consciousness & activist struggle are wrapped closely up with his understanding of the functional social power of spoken word, as we see throughout - as he brilliantly puts it, "the further dimension of true poetry is also the power to become others in the constant provocation and 'penetration' of revolutionary human empathy". Poetry is intrinsically democratic, egalitarian, progressive, and Searle's own ethics on socialism & anti-racism demonstrate that he fully comprehends this & follows the path of speakable truth; I was mildly alarmed on a few occasions at the sheer backwardness of the surrounding culture he found himself in, especially regarding race, but I suppose that goes to show how far we've come since the mid/late 20th century. Overall this is a very readable book & a solid testament to the liberatory power of creative expression, be that through individual influence & inspiration as with Chris & Isaac** or with grander collective acts of embodied imagination shown in the activist tendencies running throughout. A final thing I will say is that for an autobiography Chris is remarkably uninterested in talking about himself - it's always "this kid or colleague or acquaintance inspired me in such & such a way" and the text is littered with quotes or the entireties of poems by people who he's had in his life, which adds an erratic but edifying diversity to the reading experience. I doubt you've heard of Chris Searle*** so this is not a book to read out of celebrity curiosity - but if you're looking for a grounded, relatable, inspiring story about the active power of art, community, and hope, this is a good book.

* He is clearly very passionate about poetry, but from how he talks about it in the course of this book it seems he cares less for the aesthetic form of how it is written or performed & more with ways in which it can empower people to express & celebrate themselves together. Quite inspiring stuff to me given my ongoing role as host of a monthly spoken word evening (which yes is still going really well thanks for asking)

** Yes, I did buy this book because it has my name in the title. My copy's signed by Chris even - albeit to Paul... whoever you are Paul, I hope Chris doesn't find out you dumped his signed autobiography off to Oxfam.

*** Or case in point Isaac Rosenberg, sadly.

Humility and the Elevation of the Mind to God

This book by Thomas á Kempis was something of a disappointment (unlike the author's more famous work). Don't get me wrong, it's a classic of western Christian spiritual education, and fully deserves to be read as such - but it's essentially an elongated series of urgent commendations for the reader to discipline themselves in holy obedience, offering very little practical insight of substance or originality in its coverage of humility as a virtue to be cultivated (thankfully other accessible short books exist that do) nor consideration of the via contemplativa, which I assumed from the title this book would at least deal with in some detail (again). So yeah, I didn't get much from reading this, but that doesn't mean that nobody will - if you're yourself exploring Christian spirituality and want to go deeper then the advices and admonishments herein will likely be useful to you. And even if you find after all that they're not so much, it's a very short text (I read it in a single ninety-minute sitting) so you won't be investing wasted time.

On Peaceful Unity of Faith

This book [available as a free .pdf online from that link] by Nicholas of Cusa is, as with his other work I recently discovered, remarkably ahead of its time for what it is - what it is being a holistic statement of Christocentric religious universalism. In a series of dialogues between the Word of God and Saints Peter & Paul on the explaining side & various representatives of the nations on the questioning side, we start by exploring the conceptual foundations of what we philosophically and/or religiously consider "wisdom" to be. Cusa defines it as divine oneness, which is the foundation for his next argument for the perfect simple unity of the Trinity, despite it seeming such a bizarre doctrine to people who have grown up in other faiths. Next the conversation turns to Christology, building on conceptions of divinity and common understandings of human nature to sketch a cosmic anatomy of the Son of God that, while far from intuitive, is straightforward enough to grasp, orthodox enough to grow into, and compelling to ponder.

   I won't lie, I was hoping for more interfaith dialogue from this book.* It's not a long read by any measure but I would have happily spent twice as long reading it should there have been considerations of the Indian & Chinese religions - but alas we are left with solely the Abrahamic trio. I suppose Germany in the mid-1400's is quite a way away from the heartlands of Hindu or Buddhist worshippers. Despite this quibble I found this a very engaging and readable text, and though it is nowhere near sufficient as a total apologetic of Christ over the limited fragments of truth contained [spermatikos logos innit] in other religious traditions it does still provide some very deft philosophical ripostes for the two biggest stumbling blocks in communicating intellectually the fabric of Christianity to those of the other Abrahamic faiths.

* Beyond mere apologetic dialogue I was half-expecting it to be in & of itself an attempt to sketch the metaphysical & theological outlines of all religions brought together in peaceful unity, á la Blake's All Religions Are One.