Poetic Diction

This book by Owen Barfield (see this about his Christological work expanded upon); and it is immediately up there with my top twelve books of all time for sheer nonfictional grandeur of scope, efficacy and implication.

   It's a study in meaning, which is pretty complicated from the off - but I reckon with a bit of effort getting into his philological boots and throwing your imaginary Poeting Hat into the air a few times so you can really practice catching it on the way back down - this book does for poetry what the Necronomicon presumably does for necromancers. I don't touch that stuff personally. Or this for vegans. You get my gist? I hope you do, because I think I've got Owen's but it's hard to tell, because he will just lump a Latin or Greek or French or Aramaic quote at you like "OOF" with no subtitle translation. Editors take note.

   But still, I feel loath to even write a blogpost about it in case my fellow poets read it and surpass me in my dark powers of understanding. Jokes. Great book.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

This book, the first Dirk Gently novel by Douglas Adams,* is - and it truly pains me to write this, but I must be sincere - a bit of a mess.** I have actually read it before - in the hazy, distant past of 2007ish; having loved the Hitchhiker's series and hungry for more by the same author - but at the time I found it too dense and impenetrable and just not as funny. And my conclusion now, on having reread at the wise old age of thirteen [assuming that is that that's how long it's been] years older than I presumably was then, is - still that it's too dense, somewhat impenetrable, and just not that funny. It's a very clever book - I have to concede that - but much like the chief character Dirk himself, one gets the sense as a reader that Douglas is revelling in his own cleverness with the construction of the story, and I had to step back away from each chapter several times and then read stuff on the fan wikis just to figure out what the hell was even happening, and that's the kind of reader experience I expect from David Foster Wallace but not Douglas; & while of course there are many excellent bits and funny details and plot elements that are easy enough to follow that you do get the typical sense of engaged excitement one expects from a sci-fi comedy romp novel, these are, in my opinion, lost somewhere in the predominant tidal flows of deliriously elusive holistic mind-manglage that stands in for any semblance of any halfway cognizable plot to the book. That's not to say it's not worth a read - for the sense of humour and deftness of playful linguistic whimsy alone, any fans of the Hitchhiker's Guide will probably find a lot in here to enjoy - but probably not the story, because it's just bloody hard to find one, until it ends, and Dirk congratulates Douglas on having done such a clever job, and you're left scratching your head at what even it was. Maybe I'm just projecting bitterness at my own feelings of inferior readership at not having found it such an easy story to follow as it seems to think it is to read? Or maybe that's the point? Maybe it's not meant to make sense unless you do actually go away and read Coleridge's entire works, with abundant historical-contextual analysis thrown in for good measure, just to really get exactly what happens with Kubla Khan and the Electric Monk and all that - as I do think were holistic detectives to properly exist that's the kind of thing they'd do? I don't know. And if this the point, I missed it for not having done this and the blame is mine. But it just feels like it ends on a bit of a lazy half-arsed note, where you see the shape of the story that's just happened but have no idea where or why it went as it did, and surely one can't be too roundly derided for expecting a novel about a holistic detective agency to be able to disentangle these kinds of things in a way somewhat more satisfyingly explicable to the client - or reader. I feel like I'm taking the biggest most overegged shit on this book and I don't hate it at all - it's a fun read, and a good story, I think. It just gets lost in its own fluff at every corner. Though perhaps this is the point, and if so, I'm slightly less fond of it for its having so.

* The same author as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series - for which I've done my introductory post on the first instalment, and my totally-excessively-deep dive into the themes/shit on the last.

** Bizarrely, the same can be said of the Netflix series, though where this novel loses itself in its own ridiculously-overconvolutedness, the screen adaptation takes exactly the right liberties with dialing this back - just a notch, but it's enough - effectively liberating the characters and content to do something similar enough to be faithful to the Adamsian spirit while being something entirely new, and through its being somewhat easier to follow than the book actually ends up being riveting science-fiction and thoroughly entertaining... Also the cast is great, with Netflix-Dirk being an extremely likeable figure who speaks with great relevance to the Millennial malaise; and the Elijah Wood character they have instead of Richard has bucketloads more personality. It's very rare that I'll concede TV or film does a book better than a book does but in this case I think it has. Sorry, Douglas...

Ravenor

This book - actually trilogy, being an anthology comprising the novels Ravenor, Ravenor Returned and Ravenor Rogue - by Dan Abnett, is the second in his "trilogy of trilogies" [this being the first] dealing with the dark and daemonic happenings around the Imperial Inquisition of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

   Somehow, though having owned this book for well over a decade, I'd never got round to reading it - I think the disquieting subtextual impacts of Gregor Eisenhorn's prior adventures may, perhaps, have been slightly too much for my innocent autistic teenage Christian brain at the time, and so I just parked the idea of ever reading the sequel trilogy - apart from now having revisited the former and loving it and having read this and thinking it's even better - like, it's a chonky ~900 page tome but I devoured it in a couple of days; the characters are ridiculously fun, the psychic scenes play out like nothing I've ever read and the plot - oh Holy Throne of Terra the plot! Well suffice to say, I fething almost lost mine, finishing the second half to this whole trilogy in a single all-night sitting because just - there isn't a sci-fi writer out there who does high-concept thrilling action like Warmaster Dan, and these three novels are probably the best of his I've read. Sorry, men of Tanith...
   Now to somehow stay sane until the third trilogy is completed to a readable degree, because I've certainly come away from this whole thing with considerable warp-taint if naught else.

Fight Club

You know the drill. We don't talk about this one.

Counterfeit Gods

This book by Tim Keller is a fantastically rigorous, counter-cultural deconstruction of probably our three biggest idols in contemporary culture: love/sex, power and money. Throughout he maintains the really helpful standpoint of not only showing why the pursuit of such things as Ultimate Goals is not conducive to healthy biblical living, but have deep-rooted & insidious negative tendencies within even the secular realms of psychological well-being, social justice and long-term human flourishing too. His discourse is replete with examples herein, and lends itself well toward equipping a discerning reader to better identify where idols are being worshiped or followed in their own lives as well as the lives of other individuals or entire cultures around them; as with any theological topic as dense & nebulous as "the god-shaped hole in the heart" it's far from a comprehensive survey of contemporary idolatry, but as a general introduction that isn't academically challenging and maintains Scriptural and pragmatic groundings, it's a really solid text on the subject and one I'd recommend strongly for Christians' fleshing out of relevant apologetics.

the Sheffield Anthology: Poems from the City Imagined

This book is, as its title may suggest, an anthology of contemporary* poems written in, about, or by people from the greatest city in Yorkshire (and therefore Europe); and much like the city itself, it's an exceptionally diverse collection, ranging widely in theme, style, length, and [sorry] quality.** I did find that reading them aloud in a strong local accent did make basically all of them better - but common sense aside, there's more than a few that did leave strong impressions on me, talking about everything from walks in the Peaks and the joys of multiculturalism and crumbling old graveyards and homeless people on West Street and trees and rivers and students in pubs and bus drivers and the scrub-dank backdrop of post-industrialism that seeps through this city & deeper through t'memories of its longer-lived inhabitants. If you like poetry and love Sheffield, there's guaranteed to be several pieces at least in here that'll tingle you somewhere.

   Because that above paragraph is more like an unasked-for spout of Sheffieldy things but also I'll be damned if I'm going to actually write out meaningful reflections on the book as a whole because that's not really a plausible stake given the variety therein*** - I'll instead just provide a list of all the poets who contributed to this book, in alphabetical order, with those in italics being the fine folks who then edited together t'anthology as a whole: Anthony Adler - David Annwn - Charlotte Ansell - Simon Armitage - Ann Atkinson - Angelina Ayers - Elizabeth Barrett - Paul Bentley - John Birtwistle - Matt Black - Joe Caldwell - Clare-Jane Carter - James Caruth - Liz Cashdan - Debjani Chatterjee - Matt Clegg - Jarvis Cocker - Martin Collins - Stanley Cook - Sarah Crewe - Amanda Dalton - Beth Davyson - Russell Dobson - Berlie Doherty - Jenny Donnison - Mark Doyle - Carol Ann Duffy - William Empson - Suzannah Evans - Neil Farrell - Veronica Fibisan - Roy Fisher - Leah Fleetwood - Cliff Forshaw - Andrew Forster - Michael Glover - Sally Goldsmith - Cora Greenhill - Alan Halsey - Geoff Hattersley - Jeanette Hattersley - Lewis Haubus - Ray Hearne - Rob Hindle - Jenny Hockey - Alex Houen - Gary J. Hughes - Karl Hurst - Chris Jones - Donna Jones - Maria Kardel - Linda Kemp - Christine Kennedy - David Kennedy - Jenny King - Agnes Lehoczky - Margaret Lewis - Yann Lovelock - George MacBeth - Jack Mann - E. A. Markham - Roger McGough - Ian McMillan - Allison McVety - Julie Mellor - Bo Meson - Geraldine Monk - David Morley - Helen Mort - Andrew Motion - Fay Musselwhite - Beverley Nadin - Daljit Nagra - Sean O'Brien - Conor O'Callaghan - Alan Paine - Lesley Perrins - Adam Piette - John  Quicke - Karl Riordan - Peter Riley - Rony Robinson - Shelley Roche-Jacques - Ann Sansom - Peter Sansom - Seni Seneviratne - Susan Shaw - Diana Syder - David Tait - Bryn James Tales - Sarah Thomasin - Katharine Towers - John Turner - Carolyn Waudby - Christine Webb - Linda Lee Welch - Ben Wilkinson - Noel Williams - Tony Williams - River Wolton.

   As much as I'd love to provide an in-depth analysis of each poet individually based on their work as compiled in this anthology, my arm is about to fall off and nobody reads this shit anyway. Goodnight

* So none of these feature, more's the pity.

** Don't @ me, most are pretty decent and well over a third are genuinely good-to-great poems, but there are also far more than an entirely-forgiveable share of poems that have virtually no literary or imaginative depth to them and are little more than (-[insert place name] [insert anecdotal memory of activity there] [mention local history nugget or item of reputation associated with aforementioned place name] [oops, add some adjectives!]-), and like - while yeh, these technically are Sheffield-related poems, but I could've stood to see a fair bit more editorial grit. Even the pieces by people literally employed by universities to teach poeting are, in my opinion, miles less noteworthy than the best poetry book to come out of Sheffield in recent years as far as I'm aware.

*** Also because I started reading this book in maybe autumn of 2018 and have only today finished it, so doing anything remotely comprehensive (as per standards I've occasionally been known to hold myself to for these posts) would basically require re-reading the first two-thirds or so, which I'm not going to do solely for the sakes of this blog.

Phoebe

This book, a story* worked out of some hardcore biblical scholarship by Paula Gooder, is an innovative imagining of a snapshot of life in the early church, told through the eyes of a woman called Phoebe, who was a deacon of the church in Corinth and widely accepted as the person entrusted with the task of delivering Paul's letter to the Roman christians.

   I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped, largely down to the writing style. It has a chronic case of telling-not-showing, repeats chunks of character and plot information so often that in places it feels almost patronizing to readers' presumed memory or capacities for reading fiction, is painfully bland in places despite clear efforts to inject humour into some parts, and to top it all off the only character who doesn't come across as totally 2-D is Paul - who doesn't even feature in any single scene of the book** and is left as an enigmatic figure of communal who-know & hearsay.

   All that lit-snob pedantic savagery aside, I do completely understand and support her scholarly choice to minimize creative license in reconstructing a navigable 1st-century Rome & hypothesizing the personal history and context of Phoebe, and despite the poor execution of it in text I do think Paula Gooder has successfully spun a wholesome, believable, gospel-centred tale out of all her academic notes.**** I'd recommend this book to some folks - in fact having finished it I'm lending it straight to my mum - only if going into it with open expectations. I'm pretty confident that most people going in looking for a novel-type story will be rather disappointed, but people looking for a resource that helps engagingly flesh out Christian life in the context of the very young church, in particular the impact of Paul's pastoral theology on relationships across social divisions (slaves and freefolk, Jews and gentiles, etcetera) within the Christian community, then I think this book does actually provide a unique resource to help deeper imagine oneself into that.

* Not a novel. For which I'm happy to broadly forgive all complaints listed above regarding her narrative style.

** For both theological & historical reasons, I'm very glad this happened to also be the sole redeeming feature*** of the prose in and of itself.

*** Other than the gospel, obviously, which needless to say the story itself and numerous characters within it do strive to convey clearly and properly. But as great as evangelism in prose form is, Gooder can't take creative credit for coming up with the nub of that bit.

**** The story's 216 pages long for 85 pages of notes/references/etc. Hearty enough a ratio to wipe away any last expectations that this was a novel, don't you reckon?

Eisenhorn

This book (or in fact whole trilogy of book in a single slick volume) is another absolute stonker by Gaunt's Ghosts author Dan Abnett - this time, still in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, following the career of Imperial Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn, as he slowly and all but inexorably shifts from being a diehard puritan toward the radical edge of all those sworn to defend the galaxy against the scourge of Chaos.

   The trilogy herein, Xenos, Malleus and Hereticus, alongside the two shorter stories  that accompany it, comprise in my opinion by far the most psychologically and philosophically interesting fiction committed aboard the Games Workshop franchise, and it's a strong rival to most other sci-fi favourites of mine. Gregor's terse narration reflects and conceals his gently changing character - attitudes, allegiances and all, the whole thing woven so deftly to not give away a single "OH SHIT" moment before it's Far Too Late, and by then you're shivering at how obvious it is in retrospect despite never having seen them coming.

   I'm genuinely on a bit of a hyped-up binge recently, but I'd only read this once before and I was only fourteen so I didn't remember it particularly well; I don't remember having enjoyed it as much as this time then either so maybe I've just got a bit more warp-taint as I've aged. Is it excessive if my To-Read Pile gets bumped slightly for the time being while I blitz through another of Dan's omnibus trilogies (also about a growingly-radical Inquisitor?)

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue

This book* by John McWhorter is a scintillating romp across the history of Albion, and the surprisingly wide array of people who've arrived, lived, died, fucked, killed, spoken and written there. The central premise is delightfully simple and is consistently paid off more and more with each chapter - ENGLISH IS WEIRD AS FUCK. Generally most Anglophones are, I think, aware of this basic reality, but prefer not to think about it, as attempting to untangle the logic of some of our most commonplace grammatical quirks can be as totally disorienting as if one had just been presented with an ancient unsolveable riddle. Who's to blame? Nobody really - it's just a shambles, with Celts, Jutes, Angles & Saxons, Danish vikings and those bloody French all getting variably involved, twisting shared syntactical formats almost-but-not-quite to breaking point Over & Over Again, the regular speakers of this malshapen mongrel language child basically just keeping calm and carrying on. And here we are. Fascinating stuff. Also poignant ground for that strange phenomenon that as one ponders the natural histories of language it is difficult to not also toy with a smallish variety of anarchistic axioms. Whatever they are.

* Confession time - I didn't read this book. I got it for free on an Audible trial (and then uninstalled it forever because fuck you Jeff Bezos) and listened to the whole thing while on a walk across northwestern Sheffield's outskirts. Given the nature of the book I'd 100% recommend listening to it rather than reading it because McWhorter himself narrates it & as you'd expect from an archaeo-philologist he genuinely knows how to pronounce all the stuff in Middle English, Old English, Old Norse and whatever else, and so you really get a feel for how the sloppages of evolution went down.

Dungeons & Dragons: Player's Handbook

This book (available online as pdf in many places, if that link doesn't work any more give it a google as good grief don't Wizards of the Coast charge a lot for the real deals) should, I hope, be pretty self-explanatory. It's one of three core rulebooks for the fifth edition of an outrageously effective Satanist sociocultural plot than works through the indoctrination of children, and vulnerably nerdy adults, through emulation of what some may consider "fun". I jest. I'm the Dungeon Master for our campaign, so I need to get into the habit of telling casual lies. No! Stories! Anyway, if you've never had your pickle tickled or boat floated by D&D-etc then I'm hardly going to convince you here, so go away and find some better more entertaining means of getting an introduction if you want one.

the Poet, the Warrior, the Prophet

This book by Rubem A. Alves is an absolute masterpiece of experimental poetry-prose blended theology. It is beautifully crafted, so eloquently argued that you barely notice the intellectual cogs spinning until you're caught up in their imaginative wake like a thrall to transfixing, almost blinding in places, truth: God is love, and life, and all good, and we get by grace to participate in his nature through faith, acceptance as we are accepted... I'm rambling but this central point of enliveningness as central to the Gospel imperative makes up the core of this book, only Alves unpacks it in such glorious terms that it seems petty, redundant even, to try to do better justice than a zealous quasi-anonymous blurb.

   Strongly recommended for people who are spiritually exploring the world more; you will meet an incredible Jesus presented here even if you've never opened a Bible... I'm stopping short of saying this book is 'divinely inspired', but then what is divinity, and what is inspiration? And if you cannot show me how to draw the line between the two, then I will remain trusting the enforcement, theologically speaking, of that boundary to God and Him in Trinity alone.

Living Dangerously

This book, edited by Alan Jacobs, is a collection of extracts from the speeches & teaches of Osho, also known as Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh - a man who were it not for this excellent netflix documentary series I wouldn't have heard of probably. As you'll know if you've seen the doc - things got strange; but as you'll know if you're read this blog much - I love it when things get strange, and I'm always happy to suspend disbelief a bit when the lines between genuine wisdom & odd cultic dogma seem to be blurry. So, without making any judgments whatsoever - I decided it wasn't worth only having an impression of the man's life and/or philosophy without actually exploring some of it directly rather than just via a probably-somewhat-dramatized retelling of all the juiciest highlights. And my verdict is - I mean, my personal jury's still out on the nature of the cultic community his ashram turned into, but in terms of his actual outlook and ideas? The man makes some excellent points, which are highly uncomfortable to hear for anyone from settled ideological perspectives: his reflections on the nature of meditation, modernity & the mishap-overlap in-betweens therein are some of the most striking new poignancies I've heard from any thinker on the subjects of mindfulness and modernism, and much of the rest of his philosophy in my view does bear striking similarity to the clarity of insight and quasi-prophetic character of properly, dangerously enlightened thinking. That's not to say I necessarily agree with him about all the things he said - far less endorse all the things that happened under his watch - but you know, shit happens when you start trying to fundamentally question & uplift the human consciousness beyond the boundaries of convention, so I'm not gonna throw stones. Think for yourself if you want to dare to try to.

[edit - June: I've lent this book to a colleague of mine who's into spiritual mysticism and all that after we had a conversation about the documentary. He's still very skeptical which is totally fair enough - they did have those pink police people...]

Little Turtle Turns the Tide

This book, from author Lauren Davies and illustrator Nico Williams, is an absolute gem of a children's book. It's got every vital ingredient: fun slick non-clichéd rhyming prose and inventive, beautiful pictures, which both work together to tell the story instead of just one following t'other as is so often the case; it squares up to some sea creatures that most kids' books wouldn't touch with a bargepole and succeeds in making them characterful. 
   And it has a strong, praxis-based, optimistic ecological moral, which engages the reader in the turtle's quest to clean up his corner of the reef without its ever having to preach or infodump - it respectfully assumes some general environmental consciousness on the part of children reading,* and then dives headlong into "well no point moping, let's Do Stuff Together & Try & Make Things Better!" in a fully coherent and exciting way. If part of my inclination toward an activism of pessimism could be laid at the feet of certain children's books in the absence of an activist education, this one no doubt could spur many a child onto hopeful practical paradigm-shifting ladders. Or maybe they'll just like it as a book and that's fine too cos it's a damn good** children's book.

* Children like nature, don't they? And the ones who don't are little shits who probably don't read anyway. JOKING

** Weird story, I found out about this book by meeting the illustrator in person. She lived downstairs from some friends I was visiting and came back a bit pissed from a night out at the same kind of time that we got back, and we all got chatting (at first about the fact that my friends' toilet had been leaking through her ceiling, y'know, normal London small-talks) and I ended up reading a copy of this book to my friends in their flat, which actually went down surprisingly well considering reading a childrens' book aloud at an aftersesh-type-gathering usually just doesn't happen. I then proceeded to very enthusiastically tell her that I'd been reading lots of kids' books recently*** & could confirm as a connoisseur that this was indeed a really damn good one.

*** That's another story, and is predominantly Big Isaac's fault.

Grace Beats Karma

This book is a collection of letters written from prison* by Neal Cassady, primarily to his estranged wife, with excerpt ripoffs at the footers of each letter to be read to their kids; but also to his godfather who was in the Catholic clergy. We're only getting Neal's letters here, not the responses - if you need a reminder who he was, N.C. was a close friend of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, being immortalized by both as Dean Moriarty in On the Road and in various poetic referentialisms; little of Cassady's poetic writings survive in the world of Actual Publishing, but his impact as a personality is pivotally central to the whole generation of avant garde wordsmithery that followed in his wake.

   We forget too easily how deeply religious the Beat core founders were: Cassady and Kerouac devout catholics, Ginsberg a reformist Jew - as such, a considerable bulk of these letters is Neal talking on and around the history and understandings of his faith, trying to memorize the whole list of all the Popes** there's ever been while doing daily exercises in his cell and committing longer and longer passages of Scripture to memory.

   Ultimately it boils down to his inner wrestling with the transcendental realisations of dharma that he and his fellow poet-beats had 'discovered'*** the dharmic truths of Eastern religions, and were trying, through their business of poetry, to syncretize or harmonize these insights with Western Christendom; ultimately a task they were halfway successful in, but Neal paid for it with his life, being imprisoned by dint of his own trust in American libertarian amenities and losing his family soon after. These letters are not tragic - nor are they entirely pleasant reading; you can see the boredoms and hypocrisies and mental gymnastics he puts himself through each time his wife writes back - and the tidbits he feeds as half-truths to the kids make this an actually interesting case study book for psychologists looking into the neuroses of the archetypal charismatic leader of folks. Well worth a read if you're interested in modern American cultural history, or the roots of all Cool Poetic stuff since WW2.

Since grace, in real Christian life - really does beat karma, I'm going to take the timely opportunity here in this post to talk briefly about my exit from my home church, which I'd already given some intimations towards here and here.
   So, my home church, The Crowded House, has been hemorrhaging members for some years - often under legitimate pretences of planting new churches elsewhere, but also because something was rotten in the local Danish crown, if you know what I mean. Anyway, the dams holding back the leak or leaks of refugee testimonies burst - it made big news - and I don't entirely know where to look to for spiritual leadership now, as it kind of feels like waking up to the fact that Acts 29, the meta-church body of which I was a part, is no different from the personality cult megachurches where book sales and speaking tours take precedence over pastoral care for all in the flock.
   Others have said far more than I would like to say here on the whole messed up scenario, so rather than testify myself (which I have done, to the formal enquiry) I'm just going to linkdump a few things. Some have seen it as fishy since Driscoll days; signs of unchristian leadership were noted and undealt with a full decade ago; from 2016 red lights began popping up more and more - this was the same year both of my parents left TCH, forcing me to stay and decide whether I trusted them or my Elders more for my longterm spiritual welfare; and now, with all that has come to light having come to light - we need to be having serious conversations about what ministry looks like in the 21st century, dealing in Hard and Certain terms with celebrity status and bullying.

* Some policemen gave him a lift home once and he, well-spiritedly and not knowing they were cops, paid them for fuel in form of two or three jazzy cigarettes.

** He lists them, including their dates of popehood, in an appendix. Another appendix is a letter from Neal's long-suffering wife to Allan Ginsberg - or is it the other way around? In any case, it adds a good bookend.

*** "Disco inferno" I was, somewhere on the internet, told translated from Latin as "to learn through the fires of suffering" - but Google Translate didn't let me get away with this, and only by playing around with its phrasing to "discos infer no" which renders "bring no dishes" - which is arguably a Zenlightened kind of roundabout means of saying what I meant anyway.

Punk Monk

This book by Pete Grieg and Andy Freeman is perhaps the best book I have thus far read about prayer as a communal, lived out practice. Drawing on the ideas of old and new monasticism, the authors passionately and persuasively sketch out exciting fresh means and models of doing church that resonate with these ancient arts - breathing, meditation, lectio divina, fasting, prayer benders [my term], involving creativity with group worship - all things that lend so much spark and life to Christian richness and witness.

   This book would be a great boon in the shelf of a well-discerning leader in any kind of Christian community, much more an encouragement and drive to the imagination of many involved in such communities as 'mere' members little engaged with the "running models" of church activity to indeed get more stuck in, using their individuality and initiative to find new paths to service and outreach. A truly inspiring read, with some really handy appendices which tie in really nicely with some of the models of ministry and smart discipleship that cropped up in 5Q and other books.

the Cloud of Unknowing

This book is the product of an unknown 14th-century Carthusian monk, probably from the Midlands or thereabouts. It deals in an incredibly holistic worldview developed from the mystical  theology of Saint Denis, and contains as well as the introductory essay on Denis's thinking, an epistle on the subject of prayer, and a longer note discussing privy counselling, which I'm just going to haphazardly compare to being medieval term for spiritual direction: the main chunk of the text though is the central work as given the main title.

   The "cloud" refers to the impenetrable fog of ineffability that human minds brush up against during the holy act of contemplating the supreme virtues of God above; only by God's grace over time and effort can we begin to even somewhat penetrate deeper into the fog, and doing so can be psychologically and spiritually ardous even for the most liturgy-hardened monk. The author strongly recommends not reading this work at all if you have no desire to embark upon the road to deeper and greater contemplation of God's nature and works; but I took this warning with a pinch of salt and took the plunge. I regret nothing, but I easily could have lost my mind had God not stepped in to save me from where my contemplative journey started taking me - that's what happens when you, as a well-intentioned Christian, track daemonic energies into your own "holy" mind palace on the bootheels of your ego. So beware, and be mindful, and read this book if you want the inner adventure of a lifetime - for reading this whole thing may irrevocably open your eyes to spiritual dynamics of life that it is very difficult, in my observation, to unsee.

Holy Habits

This book by Andrew Roberts is a wholesome, practical* unpacking of how the community of followers of the Way (as Christianity was originally known before its adherents got called Christians) went about daily life following the Way to Christ's glory, as we're given a remarkably attractive, counter-cultural and transformative picture of in the last verses of Acts chapter 2. Roberts begins by breaking down the nature of what Christian life is, in terms of individual and communal rhythms of discpleship, which entails a commitment to God and one another, through sacrifice and suffering, experiencing signs and wonders of God's love for all - deepened intentionally as all share in things, through the habits. There's a lot to unpack from these and even more that could be said about how we might think of ways to contextualize them for different situations, but broadly we get listed ten habits that signify healthy spiritual and social patterns of discipleship as we follow the Way: biblical teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, eating together, giving, service, gladness and generosity, prayer, worship, and making more disciples. It may seem immediately like these cross over each other quite a lot and they do - they're meant to in real practice too! I'm not sure this book in itself is particularly groundbreaking or insightful but taking the time to walk through these patterns as practiced in the earliest model of Christian church and thinking about ways to apply and inhabit them today is certainly a worthwhile task in any Christian setting and if your church feels like it's missing something in terms of the day-to-day rhythms of normal life, that these aren't naturally helping people draw closer to each other and God, then this book may be a good leaping-off point for further thought on that question. Roberts writes accessibly and concisely, with a strong grounding in both real examples and scripture - and ends on a prophetic note, challenging us not only to see the routine habits of church-as-we-know-it as unchangeable but to push imaginatively onwards in emulation of Christ and his disciples as pictured.

* So much so that in the several years following its publication, it has helped spawn a new range of missional church resources from BRF.