« May 2007 | Main | August 2007 »
Here are another couple pictures from vacation, this time hiking up in the Bridger range near where I grew up skiing as a kid. These hills helped me know God and that's the truth. First one is with my family: Sonja, Grace, and Isaiah.
anon, and peace,
Chris
Back, now, after a month away, I'm aiming to pick up some speed here. Briefly:
I spoke at the celebration of 100 years of Lutheran Campus Ministry in Chicago
Visited my family in Bozeman and celebrated by dad's 80th
Attended a wedding of a long-time friend in Spokane
Taught at Holden Village on faith and pop culture
Spent time with former New Haven friends in Vancouver BC
Our first night back, around the dinner table, none of us could come up with one bad day. It was great. Here is one picture of Lake Chelan just to the left of the boat dock where the Lady of the Lake drops off for the trip up Railroad Creek to Holden Village. Click on it for its full spectacular beauty.
While I was away, I read Wise Blood (finally) and began The Habit of Being, both by Flannery O'Connor. More on that soon, but I'm still reeling. She is quite disorienting.
Anon, and peace,
Chris
Stephen J. Nichols: Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us about Suffering and Salvation
Well, in order to get closer to the theology of the blues, and that'd be theology in a minor key, that doesn't skip past Good Friday because it knows Sunday's coming, plan on checking out Nichols compelling new book Getting the Blues. Brazos sent it to me to read so that I can offer a pre-publication endorsement. So far, I like it a lot.
Robert Palmer: Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta
A rich rewarding journey into America's gift to the music of the world, and the root of so much of what I love musically speaking: jazz, gospels, rock and roll, and more. A great starting place even if he is not that interested in the question of theology of the blues, a question I'd very much like to explore
David F. Ford: Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine)
David Ford has become one of the most important theologians writing today, and he has been mulling this one for more than a decade. I heard him speak at Yale in 2003 in response to Miroslav and Dorothy Bass' book Practicing Theology and many of these themes regarding wisdom come up. Especially powerful engagement with scripture from which he draws the idea of "wisdom cries." A practical theologian at his best. Read!
Mary Oliver: Why I Wake Early: New Poems
Here I find a carnal theology, so deeply enmeshed in the glory of the ordinary. finitum capax infiniti. read her and you will not look at an ordinary day as ordinary again. Try, for starters, "This World," on page 27. It begins thus: "I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it nothing fancy./ But it seems impossible./ Whatever the subject, the morning sun glimmers it./"
Charles Taylor: A Secular Age
My teacher, the sociologist Robert Bellah, says: "This is one of the most important books written in my lifetime." Okay, enough. Rush out and get this book, just out, from one of the best living philosophers and certainly the most important for Christians.
