Gods of Sen

This book* is the first instalment of David Brookes's imagined mythology for ancient Britain.** I found this an astounding work of imagination: it genuinely reads like real mythology. From the prehistoric origins of the Bone Tree, finally bearing fruit to give birth to the supreme creator god Ah, to Ah's creation of the Old Gods Bet, Gon & Rif - Bet & Gon falling in love with each other & clocking out of conscious existence to become the sky & the land respectively, while Rif proves to be a troublesome character & is exiled but not before they create the beasts & monsters of the world; to the union of Bet & Gon spawning the nine Living Gods, who are nursed by Rif's creatures (these include Mhin-of-the-Mouse, Glim-of-the-Wolf, Ahma-of-the-Deer, etc); to the giants, the immortals, finally the humans; all of which are wrapped up in a nonlinear perplexing web of struggle. I particularly enjoyed L's epic five-part voyage & the chapter about Gedda the Blind - also the brief conflict involving Nask, King of the Newts (although he is far from the coolest monster in here).

   I read David's poetry & short stories last year but I sense that this was his magnum opus; I truly wish I'd ever had a chance to talk to him about it when he was alive. But if you like the literary texture of mythology & are interested in the modern capacity for inventing it, you'd love this book. I fully intend to read the next four instalments over the coming week.

* Unfortunately not available anywhere, hence no link. It was never published within David's lifetime & he committed suicide last year, leaving PDFs of all his work on his website, which since, given his death, has tragically been taken down. If you like the sound of what I describe here & would like to read it, comment your email address & I'll send you the PDF.

** The central conceit of this series is that in the 2010s there was a large earthquake in the English Lake District, which tore open a mountain - within which was discovered the remains of a Bronze Age civilization with advanced literary recording skills; the mythological texts discovered carved into the walls of that ancient ruined city are presented here, the mythos of the Sena people.

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.