the Prophetic Imagination

This book by Walter Brueggemann was one of the most holistically profound, affirming, challenging, enlightening and generally energising-of-the-spirit books I've read in a while. It explores through radical and faithful analysis of Biblical themes and narratives the lens of sociopolitical critique common in the prophetic traditions, which with deep relevance touch on everything from economics to personal virtue to cultural memory in both their original contexts (as cries lobbied against Israel as an ancient people and state, trying and failing to live in collective relationship with their creator and liberator God) and you-don't-need-to-dig-too-far-down-to-find poignant assessment of the world's ongoing broken mode of being; the theological thrusts found here are characteristically recognisable in the human condition and so universal enough to have a pertinence that fully transcends historical context, speaking to us as persons in a much broader sense. Brueggemann tracks these themes through God's covenant with Israel, as Moses and the Law-based society was intended as a developmental (and flawed/incomplete) model of how humankind could live in relationship with God - and this formed an alternative form of community which was fundamentally at odds with those mainstream form of community prevalent among the species, termed the 'royal consciousness', which prioritises individual gain and power such that everyone is trying to be the king of their own little worlds (which is lucky enough for the tiny minority who actually are kings, or royalty, or whatever, but obviously then leads to entrenchment of inequality and alienation of people from each other which compounds the breakdown of a society of sinners); this is particularly stark reading in our current vein of history, where never before has the average human had so much sheer abundance of resources to consume, concretely or abstractly, in lives of competitively-dulled-to-its-own-spectacularity blasé luxurious discontent. The countercultural forms this alternative community takes are discussed in broad scriptural strokes, as are the forms of counter-countercultual suppression launched in response by the royal consciousness. Next, from closer analysis of prophetic writings, we look at how particuarly gifted members of the alternative consciousness/community are able to stir up remembrance of the betterness of that alternative through: exercising sympathetic and empathetic action as a critique of the lovelessness of the mainstream order; and energising the collective imagination of the alternative community's members to provoke amazement at, and thereby realign social consciousness toward, the God who liberated and established such a community at all. Further chapters then explore how Jesus took these aspects of prophetic function to their extreme in his teachings, life and death etcetera. Finally, there is a chapter and also a postscript considering how these ideas may be applied in practical ministry.
   This is not a book for everyone. It will unsettle many conservative and liberal Christian readers alike, at its clarity of argument and yet the seemingly-radical nature of working through its implications. But Brueggemann is a well-rooted scholar of God's word, and this book is a hugely potent systematic examination of one of the most intangible concepts in theology (relative to the current hegemony of materialistic positivism anyway) in ways that shed great light of insight into recurrent Biblical themes and narratives, while being inarguably of immense and urgent necessity in our world today. As a global civilisation, we are careening slowly across the wilderness without even clear voices to be heard more than few far between shouting in it; I believe as believers the truths of faith are as brilliantly and deeply relevant as ever yet we have lost our capacity for meaningful cross-cultural dialogue in societies poisoned by secular anxiety and corporate blinkers - thus it is even more imperative that Christians with a capacity for communication, for engaging their sociocultural contexts in ways that are as pragmatic, flexible and sensitive as they are conscious of the primary, holistic, eternal context, to do so with such things in mind as they speak, write, create and relate.

Multiplying Churches

This book, edited by Steve Timmis, is a short and readable collection of essays on the broad theme of church-planting. My church is very much a church-planting church by its nature and intentionality, and so everyone in it was given a copy of this a few months ago to help us generally think and talk and pray through corporately how to go ahead with an upcoming pair of new church-plants. I can say straight-up that it's a great book for this; each chapter is accessible, jargon-free, biblically-grounded, and thoroughly proactive and exhortational in style - I won't discuss it in much depth here, because I'm currently also reading another book more centrally focused on a holistic exploration of biblical theology of church, and I'll save reflections for the post on that.

   But yes - the chapters:

• Tim Chester - church planting as the work of spreading Christ's light
• Henri Blocher - church planting as the work of a renewed humanity in Creation
• Steve Timmis - church planting as the work of God's people witnessing to Him
• Matt Chandler - the motive of grace
• Reuben Hunter - the method of Word-centredness
• Matt Chandler - the means of empowerment by the Holy Spirit
• One Mokgatle - how churches can/should transcend ethno-cultural boundaries
• Steve Timmis - men's role in church planting
• Ruth Woodrow - women's role in church planting

   Overall, a great book to work through in church communities facing upcoming plants (or not - yet it might even inspire one!)

   Regular readers (ahahahahaha who?) may suspect, rightly, that I do have some thoughts on the last pair of chapters which I haven't divulged in this post - and that's because, to put it quite honestly, I have been convicted in recent months about the extent to which my social/political consciousness is allowed priority over my life in Christ (which then necessarily entails a degree of accountability and humility toward the body of Christ which is the church) to determine my opinions and reactions to things. And that's not to say that I'm still far from in agreement with many of the senior leadership (in both my church and the wider Acts 29 network of which it is a part) on the issue of gender roles (the thoughts I laid out here are still basically what I think), but I recognise that such arguments aren't as neat as I'd've liked to think. My uptake of support for feminism was rooted in hearing and reading the experiences and reflections of women, talking about the oppressions they faced; and while I'm not convinced the church isn't complicit in this to a significant degree (especially considered historically), I also have to recognise that there are many wise and socially-conscious women in the church who accept the seniors' position on gender roles (in a nutshell - complementarianism, so men-only-leaders), and that doesn't end the argument, but in humility creates new space for constructive discussions about where to go from there. I don't know. We're in an interesting period of political and cultural shift regarding gender norms, as we also are regarding the role of traditionally hegemonic religion: my personal opinions aren't as important as the wider attempts by the church to seek unity for all in Christ, which won't be overly aided if the whole church is busy arguing internally about the finer shades of theological nuance in this or that egalitarian theory, or where we draw the line between being subversive in a Spirit/grace-led sense and just being downright subversive. I wish I could explore these avenues further because trust me I've got views - but so what? Maybe some day there will come a time and a place for these conversations between the secular, the philosophical, and the church to take place, with all degrees of no-holds-barred criticality alongside an earnest intention to find workable common ground: and if or when that day comes, I will spring into action and try to help radical feminists and complementarian church leaders realise where their concerns overlap - or whatever else may come about. But until such hypothetical scenarios arise, I am not complacent, but merely refraining from unhelpful or divisive arguments.
   Let dialectics get on with themselves.
   You just get on with being.

Vagabonding

This, by Rolf Potts, is one of the most simplistically profound and positively challenging books I've read in quite a while - for certain one of those all-round well-worth-keeping-as-an-indispensable-dogeared-companion-that's-been-reread-multiple-times kind of books.

   Ostensibly, it is a reference/guidebook for people who want to go travelling around the world long-term. But it is far more than that: Rolf's advice, though thoroughly and flexibly practical, cuts deeper to the whole point of travel itself, and brings the reader (who can be presumed as a would-be traveller) to question some serious unexamined things about goals, attitudes, and various mixtures of these that may hinder the actual experience of travel. I would not even dare to summarise his broad reflections on this - as there is so much wisdom and insight packed into this relatively short and delightfully readable book, derived both from Rolf's own travel experiences, his friends', loads of other travel writers from contemporary and historical times, and anecdotal biographies of people who should be inspirational goal/attitude-models to people who might consider vagabonding. Travel is ultimately, argues Rolf, about broadening your understanding of yourself through broader experience of more of the world: and so an openness to unconventional and unexpected, a sociality and generousity, an ability to rest in the present moment and take things as they come, getting to know people just as much as (if not more than) places; this is how adventures happen, not by intricate planning and paid tours.

   I've already pencilled in a short list in the back of this book of places I want to visit. Not that I travel much but after a charity hitch-hike from Sheffield to Croatia via Krakow I went on nearly four years ago now (yikes) I definitely developed an adventure bug, and so when I've paid off the bulk of my post-postgraduate debts and saved up a decent chunk of annual leave, I'll be ready to hit the road.

   But - as Rolf also wants to make clear from his philosophy, this approach to travel isn't one that strictly even necessitates travelling particularly far from where you live: soaking up new experiences and avenues of society and culture is literally something that can be done any place people are, and most people tend to live in places where people are, I mean, I know I certainly do.

   So what does that mean?

   Live is an adventure - treat it like one!

Persepolis: the Story of a Return

This book, the second part* of a graphic autobiography by Marjane Satrapi (see first part) was even more gripping, radical and brimming with righteous indignation than its prequel. In part two, we follow her through teenage years struggling to find her identity as an Iranian in Europe, as she explores new experiences and subversive ideas - only then to return home to Tehran in desperation for belonging; but here, she meets obstacles of the post-revolutionary Islamic Republic repressing freedoms (especially for women) that only deepen her sense of struggle. As with part one, it's as educational as it is entertaining, and cannot be read without rowing out across a sea of empathic storytelling in a dinghy made of simplistic and striking illustrations; the dialogue matter-of-fact, sharply succinct, so that developments and relationships that spanned years are neatly condensed to their essence in the wider life story in a few pages, and the visual style and deftness of person and setting characterisation really pulls the reader into Satrapi's world.

* Okay fine I know that link is actually just for a book containing both parts - childhood and return - as I received it for Christmas and didn't see the point in reading the whole first half again just so I'd be able to do a post about the whole book. My blog, I make up the rules as I go. Maybe follow the link to the post about the first part anyway as this post is particularly short because I don't want to have to re-type out all my broad reactions to the general style and thrust of what Persepolis is, and the post about part one deals with those adequately.

Window to the World

This ebook by Andrew Knight* is a short, punchy little text designed to psych up Christians for world mission. Bookended by some powerful chapters on the urgency and simplicity of the church's global task of evangelism, the bulk of the book is a series of statistical overviews giving a birds-eye big-picture view of the state of the world today - in terms of missional reach, need, and socioeconomic factors that real and effective Christian work should be pervading and changing. These include global economies, poverty, missionary force, urbanisation, refugees, world religions, people groups, Christians and money, and world evanglism: the statistics appear well-sourced and build up a striking outline of large trends in the world, many of which are somewhat disheartening but just as many show signs of encouraging promise in slow aggregate change. The discussion sections relate it all with biblically-centred grounding to the calls of all Jesus' followers to personal faith, mission and service, and overall the book reads well as a wholesome exhortation to the church to continue and ramp up its work.
   It's very readable, and given that it's free to download for Kindle I'd recommend giving it a look and sharing around church circles if you think your missional community could benefit from a shot-in-the-arm of evangelical hype - and which one ever doesn't?

* He used to be student worker at my church; Andrew is humble and passionate, a natural gospel-sharer, and he and his family have been the source of good friendship and much inspiration to me in the years I've known them.

OFF. your digital detox for a better life

This book by Tanya Goodin is basically what it says on the tin - a kickstart book for those who want to, or feel or think they want to, or want to want to, embark upon some extent of digital detox. To be honest I just read it because it's short and I didn't have much to do this afternoon, and my flatmate Adam (whose it is) said it had some quite nice little tips in it - also last week I watched all the new series of Black Mirror, and (though I've been slowly digitally detoxifying myself in all regards but YouTube and Netflix for the past year or so, the insidious tendrils of social media still cling to me far too closely day by day) am inspired anew to maintain my course of steadily weaning myself off extraneous usage of the internet, especially in its mobile forms.

   It's practically perfect for its purported function. Goodin splits the book up into six sections, each peppered with soothing and attractive images of whatever non-screeny activities a given page is exhorting its pixel-addled reader to undertake, and while not at all text-heavy, the prose therein is focused but accessible, giving clear explanations of the simple human flaws or needs that give rise to a particular aspect of digital addiction and simple human strengths or needs that provide straightforward avenues for behaviours and attitudes to escape.

1. Setting boundaries - this section has really good common-sense hints, like putting aside certain times for not using screen-based technology, committing to not using it before bed, at mealtimes, whatever.
2. Go with the flow - basically just a list of mindful activities to try out instead of going by default onto a screen whenever boredom itches; e.g. cooking, reading, colouring, jigsaws, exercise, etc.
3. Get back to nature - extending the mindfulness out of your house! Go for a walk and look at clouds! Sit on some grass or near some water! Plant something!
4. Tame your triggers - common-sense tips on structuring your lifestyle or adjusting your technologies to reduce the temptations they exude.
5. Choose analogue - using difficult and esoteric methods known these days only to hipsters and people older than 37, can you work out how to perform basic tasks without using smartphones or the internet? Give it a go!
6. Reconnect - social media is a lie! The real social network is the innavigable shambles of delightful abundant beautiful mess comprising human civilisation, and guess what, you and everyone you know have free lifelong accounts, and the range of options for creative and positive interactions between users is almost limitless!

   Frankly, I don't feel like I've learned very much from this book, but that's because I'm a reader with a well-developed suspicion of the digital world anyway, and so much of the content herein struck me as being wonderfully basic. But it still needs saying. My generation is one lost looking down its own nose, crippled by its own self-induced anxiety and loneliness, and I dearly hope this book may spark people who need it into choosing to be present and awake in their own lives. Would make an excellent gift-book to your friend who's always on their phone and always seems sadder than they think they are.

Seven Sacred Spaces

This booklet by George Lings is one of the more famous publications by Church Army (my current employer). It explores seven commonly-recurring features of buildings designed to house monastic or faith communities (the cell, chapter, chapel, cloister, refectory, garden and scriptorium), and meditates on what it means that such features recur as they do - drawing their practical everyday functions into a picture of various aspects of how healthy spiritual rhythms can be cultivated and maintained in such communities. George walks us through established Rules in various monastic traditions with regards to each of these spaces, but also draws practical and poignant connections with aspects of these spaces' functions present (or absent) in current spaces or practices in contemporary Christian life; as such this book yields a surprising amount of insight into how shaping the context of shared life together can have considerable positive (or not) effects on how the people living in that context are able to cultivate and maintain healthy spiritual rhythms to their shared life as a Christian community. I'll admit I read it mostly out of curiousity as it's a resource that gets mentioned a lot and seems to be widely-known among Church Army people, but I would thoroughly recommend this to anyone who'd be open to some refreshingly practical and historically-grounded exploration of how faith communities can use structure in simple ways to encourage harmony.

2017 overview

So, every new year on this blog I do a recap post for the year just past - and man, what a year 2017 has been. The world continues noisily going mad, I've finally finished university having submitted my Masters dissertation in September, and I'm lucky enough to have gone from studenthood straight into a part-time job with the Church Army, alongside which I continue to write - poetry here and there, but mostly grinding away in an effort to produce a workable draft of the first in my planned series of novels, The Improbable Interplanetary Revolutions of Naomi Moss; but you don't care about my life, dear internet stranger who for whatever unfathomable reasons may be reading this weird little blog of spewed idiosyncratic reflections on various wodges of paper and ink - you care, like me, about books, and so if you're reading this recap post I can only imagine it is to glean some insights into my final reflections on the material my brain has eaten and digested (and in places excreted) across the last twelve months. And wow! In 2017 we saw a new record set for this blog, with 69 books finished - a full 23 more than the previous best.

   To what can we attribute this enormous disparity?

   Well, to an extent it's because I've read quite a lot of really short books, which I'm still obligated to write individual posts for, but which I won't be mentioning most of here. To a larger degree, it's because I spent most of summer dedicatedly reading masses of material about Kurdistan for my dissertation - which is easily the most enjoyable research project I'd ever undertaken.

• Most interesting specific field in non-fiction: Kurdistan

   Also, since November last year I've been trying to develop as a poet, and so have been reading lots of poetry: these books tend to be a lot shorter than typical others, but are far more often worthy of wide recommendation, so:

• Poets worth checking out: Alan Ginsberg and the beats generally, Vikram Seth, Kate Tempest, e. e. cummings, Mark Waldron

   Eh, there's quite a lot of books I'm going to link into this, so rather than keep trying to preface each mention with a properly couching bit of prose I'm just gonna dump them all in no particular order. C'est la vie.

• Best comic strip (in anthology format): Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson
• Most redundantly common-sensical non-fiction: The School of Life's On Being Nice
• Most reductively status-quo-apologist non-fiction: The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Friedman
• Non-fiction that uses immense philosophical complexity to assert conclusions that are basically common-sense morality: Peter Unger's Living High & Letting Die
• Books by Noam Chomsky to convert hand-wringing liberals to genuine progressives: Occupy and On Anarchism
• Most sentimentally enjoyable series I've revisited: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• Classic kids' book (The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) which, though good, is nowhere near as good as an edgier funnier modern classic kids' book - Terry Pratchett's The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
• Classic experimental play (Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett) which, though interesting, is frankly just a bit pretentious and boring compared with a play with similar experimentation applied in a far more theatrically rewarding setup - Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
• Really good Christian book on healthy perspective: John Ortberg's When the Game is Over It All Goes Back in the Box
• Really good secular book on healthy perspective: David Foster Wallace's This Is Water
• Best textbook - Feminism: Issues and Arguments by Jennifer Saul
• Most depressing non-fiction - James Lovelock's The Revenge of Gaia
• Least depressing non-fiction - Helen Russell's The Year of Living Danishly
• Books all conservative Christians would benefit humankind greatly if they read and absorbed - James Jones's Jesus and the Earth and Justin Welby's Dethroning Mammon
• Probably the most difficult to describe: The Age of Earthquakes
• Thinking back, probably the highest enjoyment to word ratio - Where Cats Meditate
• Most likely to become a legit classic in the future: W. P. Young's The Shack
• Best biographical work - George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia
• Most satisfying non-fiction (also a bonus mention for being the only book on this blog so far which has been stolen by a party-crashing drug dealer and then returned to me safely) - Benedict de Spinoza's Ethics
• And I read lots of really really really good novels this year, and they're all good in different ways but in also kind of overlapping ways, and it would be hard to break them down into 'best emotional tuggings' or 'funniest' or 'most exciting' or 'most poignant' or whatever, so here's just my selected top seven: James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Kate Tempest's the bricks the built the houses, and Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

   I'm still very much enjoying writing this blog and finding value in it as personal project, so buckle in for a buttload more books in 2018. There's been a pre-selected pile of items which I'd been planning to read alongside the start of my writing project, which I've now started working my way through, so there are some very interesting posts coming along hopefully. I'm still trying to tip the balance more toward reading books from female and minority background writers, as I'm painfully aware that most of the stuff I read (and most of the stuff most people read, given the nature of privilege in publishing industries and the tides of literary and academic history) is by white men, not at all to say that these aren't generally good books, but if one of the core points of reading widely is to broaden your empathic horizons then it is woefully shortsighted to read without taking such factors of context into account and seeking to correct for them in what one chooses to imbibe.

   Anyway.

   Whoever you are, dear reader, I wish you all the best, and thank you for visiting this blog whether you are a regular or first-time-stumble-across-googler: happy new year.

   Peace & love

   Isaac Stovell

Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops

This book by Jen Campbell is very much what it says on the tin: a humourous compilation of zany things that customers have said in the small handful of bookshops whose owners collaborated in the making of this humourous gift-book. I got given this for Christmas (only yesterday) and so hate to be nit-picking so soon, but the majority of these weren't funny. The majority of entries attest, at best, to customers either having a range of toxic views (a handful of racists, a bagful each of xenophobes and homophobes, and a whole lotta sexists) or simply being outright ignorant of what a bookshop actually is or is for (dozens of entries of people who seem to think that a bookshop constitutes the same roles as a library, cafe, creche, general store, or almost infinitely variable helpline services); the more I read, the more I felt that the occasional genuinely amusing entries weren't worth the ever-mounting sense of despair I felt at a society so losing its grasp on literate culture that requests like the ones contained in this book were possible at all. Basically, it entertained me far less than it fuelled my incumbent misanthropy, which at least has a kind of value in that I have always been somewhat put off independent bookshops by their tendency to have very grumpy misanthropes as owners/staff - but now I see why, and if one of the main points of reading is to develop empathy, then I have developed such with a small group of people who I have given lots of money to over the years but struggle to like or understand, but if bookshops truly are plagued by customers coming in and asking things that are bafflingly dim or gobsmackingly rude or both and everything inbetween, then... ugh. Neil Gaiman's commendation on the front calls this book "so funny... so sad" - ditto. I do not recommend this book except as a present to anyone who works in a bookshop themselves, as to read of ludicrous customers whom they themselves have not had to deal with may be vaguely cathartic.

This Is Water

This book is the text of a commencement address given by author (of Infinite Jest, which I will probably get round to reading at some poi- oh, who am I kidding) David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005. It also belongs to my flatmate Jack, who has gone home for Christmas, so I figured I could read it, blog about it, and return it all without his noticing in the interim few days of otherwise-festivities. The general thrust of his speech is about the complexity, difficulty, and ultimately the absolute necessity of trying to live a compassionate life. He's talking to a bunch of liberal arts graduates, so he hopes that something of the proactive and critical use of ideas which their education purportedly challenged them to grow in their capacities for might pay off here - that they may enter the world, twisted and nonsensical though it may be, and hold firmly able to interact with it as independent rational agents who are deeply and warmly aware that they are also very much interdependent beings, and they will need others' help just as others will need theirs, and to close themselves off from being able to ask for or offer this is to render themselves less than fully human for the sake of pursuing some insidious constructed lie. I found it interesting that David, though by no means a man of faith, talks at some length in this about the need for finding a coherent centre to one's worldview to help one retain the keenness of their grasp on this truth: "everyone worships... the question is what?" and goes on to include what is probably the most cogent and universal meditation on the nature of idolatry that I've ever read in a secular text. Overall he's very clear that the whole point of this conversation is not one in which anyone really learns anything new, but in which we are constantly having to remind ourselves and each other of the deep old fundamental truths that pervade our cultures and consciences just as thoroughly as they are regularly and easily forgotten. That's where the title's from: he wants us to be so fully aware of the network of moral obligations that hold society together that we become constantly cognizant of it surrounding us, like fish, patiently reminding each other as they swim along, 'this is water,' even though they cannot see it and could very easily forget it was there altogether, swimming about their own business and looking straight through it. This is water. This is water. This is water. David Foster Wallace was an outrageously clever man, and this transcripted speech veritably swells with a perspective rich with clarity and blunt wise truths.

I Believe in Evangelism

This book by David Watson was one I've been reading as part of an ongoing literature review on discipleship in my new job with Church Army's research unit. While perhaps not as practical as other books on evangelism, Watson gives a deeply biblical and thoroughly encouraging exploration of what constitutes the subjective life of the individual Christian - i.e. continual response to the gospel. This should manifest itself in calls to love one another truly and fully, both inside church communities and from within those to outside: and bringing the gospel to people who have not been properly presented with it before is among the greatest acts of love a Christian can perform. Watson's view is a holistic one - effective evangelism emerges from rightly-motivated communities of grace-led people boldly diving into dark and marginal contexts to demonstrate the power of the Holy Spirit and God's word against the sinfulness prevalent in attitudes and cultures among the lost. This is not easy work. But ultimately, Watson reminds us, it is not work we do alone: it is God's work in which we share as instruments, and by stepping out in faith and with joy proclaiming the gospel's truth as we love all, particularly in difficult circumstances, the church can be expectant in God's part in this work. Tying up lofty quantified expectations of 'harvests' from cleverly-planned outreach schemes or making-the-church-cool-again events - well, these things can and often do yield fruit, but it is God's work. David Watson in this book gives a deep and potent series of chapters about the true nature of what we are doing in the work of discipleship, church life, evangelism, and all the parts of life in Word-centred Christian witness in which these all-too-frequently-compartmentalised things overlap in gloriously messy simplicity, rest on sustenance of faith and are powered by the Holy Spirit.

Freedom Movement: 500 Years of Reformation

This book by Michael Reeves is a very short discussion about the sheer historical potency of the Protestant Revolution, the first tinder-strike of which flew half a millennium ago. While this may be one of the most fascinating and powerfully-long-reaching threads in the whole of Western intellectual, social, political and moral history (and I do hope to read more on the subject, especially given [somewhat dangerously given my book addiction] that my new workplace is also home to South Yorkshire's largest library of Christian theological and historical texts - hence the relative shortness of this post), the book's aim is not to explore this in much depth. to remind us of the profoundness of the gospel truth which the Reformation was key in effectively democratising: before Wittenberg and Gutenberg the Roman Catholic Church was of unparalled power in controlling public understanding of the religion to which an entire continent was almost forcibly adhered; Luther's rediscovery of biblical grace was a radical return to the church's proclamation and effective witness of actual good news. Reeves plumbs the depths of the mysteries of the gospel for all people in all ages, and thereby shows the revolutionary brilliance of the Reformation in provoking and facilitating individual responses to biblical truth. It made me reflect with deep gratitude for the historical currents that birthed Protestantism (and more roundaboutly, dozens of gigantic and profoundly impactful ideas emergent from post-Catholic-hegemony European thought - the Reformation changed everything), as this heavily shaped our modern world and continues to do so - for better or worse, given the fractal-like nature of its spiralling influences and responses to these, but the fundamental change that sought to establish access to the gospel for all men and women and so helped rediscover the incredible paradigm-shattering truth that salvation is by faith alone: this is worth remembering with celebration. Martin Luther said, "I have done nothing by myself", and he's kind of right - God used him in history to challenge corruption in the church that had grown up to protect itself above proclaiming truth, and kickstart an immense process of rediscovery and reformation.

* Why should it? There's a very thorough wikipedia page, not to mention a pretty good documentary-drama on Netflix about Luther and his upstart protestance's impact. 

When the Game is Over It All Goes Back in the Box

This book by John Ortberg is a powerful and practical exploration of how to maintain our most meaningful perspectives in a Christian life - the eternal. He uses the metaphor of a board game, in which struggling too hard to win is rendered pointless as the game draws to a conclusion and (well, you know the title), and the whole book is structured around this metaphor - with concepts like main rules, being master of the board, getting on with other players, playing fairly, respecting chance, winning the 'inner' game, taking turns properly, understanding priorities, etc acting as springboards for each chapter to build on the same aggregate extended metaphor, and though it might sound like it gets irritating and repetitive Ortberg is a skilled enough writer to couch each reminder in the slowly-updating stream of ideas, and the whole book acts as a deep and powerful series of steps building an extremely well-developed and insightful collection of wise at the things we make life into games of and how such tendencies can be seen, mitigated, and resisted. It's a book that is enjoyable and accessible but, as any gospel-centred book on Christian life should be, is thoroughly uncomfortable at times, because it's written transparently and flexibly enough that readers will be bringing to mind their own struggles on game-boards as they work through each chapter, and confronting places in which we are failing to live our lives truly for the sake of Christ and are desperately still trying to win personal stakes in Monopoly or whatever is never a cosy process - but it does lead us to grace, and so even if we're losing a particular game we can look fondly to the orchestrator knowing that once all the pieces have been boxed away and all is forgotten, we haven't really lost anything, as they we are with them. I don't know, that was a very clumsy sentence, I feel like. It's late and I've had a long week. This book is highly recommended for Christian readers wanting to develop eternal perspectives; it's original, makes practical hints about mindset and attitude, and is biblically-grounded all the way through (although on surface level it may seem to hinge more upon the extended metaphor, this is always merely a springboard into proper discussion of scriptural truth).

Optimism over Despair

This book is a collation of interviews by C. J. Polychroniou with Noam Chomsky about the state of the world in 2017 - and boy, lemme tell you, it's bleak going. I got it chiefly because I hoped from the title that Noam was going to slice through the despair-inducing series of global events and trends dominating the headlines of this past year with a knife made of pure hope, but no, it's basically just a thorough, concise, and horrifyingly well-informed exploration of just how fucked we are, but of course resorting to despair will only make us get more fucked, and so the only morally or politically viable course for all those with progressive agendas to maintain as an attitude is a resigned, stoic, optimism.*

   Throughout, C. J. and Noam discuss:

• Collapsing American hegemony
• Unravelling European integration
• The new phase of the global 'war on terror'
• ISIS, NATO, Russia, and the shitstorm in the Middle-East
• Inequality and unsustainability in the plutocratic model of post-neoliberal 'really existing capitalism'
• Trump and the decline of American civil society
• Republicans (the most dangerous group of people on the planet) and global warming
• US meddling in other countries' elections/societies/etc
• Religion's dogged resistance to separating from politics
• Utter failures of US healthcare and education systems
• The potential of anarcho-socialist democratic change when all these trends/events are placed with optimistic consideration in their historical context

   It is very scary stuff. To be honest, with the level of detail and insight Noam brings to each of these broad fields of discussion, one is left with an overbearing sense of dread at the state of the world far moreso from reading this book than if one had read separate books on each issue or even a potent digest of leftist critique-responses to most of the actual news items comprising these larger problems over the past year. I'd recommend it as an oh-shit-inspirational text for progressive activists, but really most of those already know to a large degree just how fucked we are on all the fronts discussed herein, and so this book effectively just serves as an educational reinforcement from that raspy old prophet of contemporary western anarchism. You would probably learn a lot from this book, especially historical blips of detail that often elude mainstream narratives on these big issues - but overall I don't feel there is as much to be gained from reading this as there is by simply reading the news and maintaining one's dedication to taking action, if one is politically inclined similarly to Chomsky or myself, which if you're thinking of reading this you probably are. But yeh. It lives up to the title in prose conclusion only.

* That's not to say good things aren't happening, because they are. Just nowhere near big or fast enough to substantively offset some of the bigger and more pressing factors in why we're fucked.

The Shack

This book by William Paul Young is a powerful theological novel (a quote on the front claims it has the capacity to do for our times what John Bunyan did for his with Pilgrim's Progress) about suffering, forgiveness, sadness, and trust, wrapped around an exploratory picture of our relationship with God. I've just breezed through it in a few days because though I have read it before (years ago) my friend Charlotte and my little brother Ryan have both mentioned they're currently reading it, and I decided to revisit one of the more poignant stick-in-your-memory stories I've read. The book itself, in terms of the (non-God) characters, the plot, the writing, etc - to be completely honest is pretty contrived and average. Were it not for the fact that the bulk of the book comprises its main character (typical, if jaded, American everyman called Mack who has recently lost a daughter to a random kidnapper-murderer) basically just hanging out with corporeal embodiments of the three members of the Trinitarian Godhead* then I would find very little compelling about this book - but oh boy, the way he writes the character of the trinity is just kind of under-the-skin-tingles familiar and brimming with wisdom and truth. Loads of respectable theologians complained about this book's portrayal of the Trinity as three distinct persons as committing this heresy or that - but ultimately I don't really think it's meant to be taken as a speculative attempt at realistic imagination, more a leap into 'what if God wanted to do this, what would it look like, how could we observe the members of the Trinity interacting in ways that were recognisable to everyday human life?' - and this, I think, it does very well. Mack and God eat together, run across a lake, do some gardening and digging, and have several chapters-worth of extremely poignant gospel-infused conversation about his pain, his faith, the complex nature of right and wrong in a broken world and the God who is right there around him who he refuses to humbly and lovingly accept. These conversations are where the book comes alive and is where the meat of its being worth reading occurs: W. P. Young has wide and deep experience with worldly loss but also knows the character of God well, and this comes across in his writing - ultimately it's a book about how Christians can learn to practice living in joyful awareness of and sensitivity to the presence of God, regardless of how much confusion or trauma they feel separates them from that same grace and love. Many are the lines in this book that I think have a particular, soft-spoken but powerful straightforwardness in making a point rooted in biblical thought that speaks of our relationship with God, and couched in the (arguably heretical but artistically allowable?) interpersonal manifestations of these characters' conversational responses to human questions often deep truths will bubble to the surface and you will think, 'oh, I'd never thought of it like that before,' and you may be prompted to revisit your own attitudes and find them growing in humility and joy. And frankly, what more can one reasonably expect as a good outcome from reading a Christian novel?

* Jesus is portrayed with historical-ethnic accuracy, which is refreshing. God the Father is a motherly Afro-American woman who goes by the name of Elousia. The Holy Spirit takes the form of an ethereal Asian lady who calls herself Sarayu.

Meanwhile, Trees

This book by Mark Waldron is the first book of poetry I've ever bought purely because of its title. I am trying to read more poetry, but aside from the obvious span of classic or well-renowned names, it's hard to discover new ones - so in my last jaunt past a local bookshop I simply browsed the shelf of poets for any titles that sprung out at me, and obviously something about Meanwhile, Trees did the trick. And as haphazard and noncommittal as that sounds (and if it sounds so it's because it is), I actually very much enjoyed this book. Mark Waldron's poems have a darkly kind of twisted character to them, but also a bizarre and often verging on surreal current of playfulness, weirdness, irony and levity. The blurb proclaims, 'these poems may pretend they're joking but they never really are' - and that comes across; one can find oneself laughing out loud at a turn of phrase throwing a stanza headlong into absurdity only for the following lines to drag it back into a larger grimmer picture of, well, still absurdity. Would recommend to poetry-readers with a stomach for visceral imagery and shapeshifting ennui.

Jesus and the Earth

This book by the Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, is a powerful short little tract on the implications for Christian environmentalism that can be derived directly from the life and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament accounts. Long-term readers will probably be aware that Christianity and environmentalism are both very much up my street - and I'd like to devote a longer post to some relatively in-depth discussion of how these two things overlap and converge, but I'm gonna do this in a later post as there's another book I'm reading at the moment that will empower a much juicier wodge of reflection. James Jones here has provided an extremely accessible text both strongly grounded in biblical text and mainstream theology as well as capable of discussing ecological issues without risking confusion or alienation of the average Christian reader (times are changing, but I still often get the impression that many in the church are almost hostile to environmental concerns, or at best actively passive - on numerous occasions my voiced concerns about climate change or whatever have been brushed aside with a deft 'oh well, it won't matter if Jesus comes back before then!'). In the years since this was published, the urgency of environmental matters facing humankind has rocketed, and the church could be doing so much more to pursue a renewed and beneficent stewardship of this one planet God has given us to live on; but such change is always a gradual process, with different persons or parts progressing at different rates - with that in mind, this book is one I'd recommend (as a text to recommend to or give to) to Christian readers who are for want of a nicer word ignorant about environmental issues: Jones' faithful and scriptural approach makes this book probably a good one to nudge those who love Jesus closer to practical up-to-date realisations about what that means for lovingly living in Jesus' creation.