To Light a Fire on the Earthy: Proclaiming the Gospel in a Secular Age by Robert L. Barron with John L. Allen Jr. Knowing John L. Allen Jr. from previous reporting on the Catholic tradition, I am immediately excited about this book engaging Father Robert L Barron. Somewhat of an internet sensation on YouTube and through the production of a series of videos on Catholicism, Father Barron has gotten a wide audience of viewers and readers in a way unseen since the time of Fulton J. Sheen. The subtitle of the book was also appealing since it is the gospel that I believe that is central to the whole edifice of Christianity, both in belief and in practice. Part of the unique voice coming from Father Barron is related to his being raise in the post conciliar time where experimentation and feeling were part and parcel of the Catholic experience. Yet, this kind of deep emotional weight left a kind of fully orbed understanding of the behind. After hearing much ...
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Peter J. Gentry, How to Read and Understand the Biblical Prophets With our noses in the good book, we often plow through the Bible’s pages with the same focus, reading Romans like we read Ezekiel. And yet, as Dr. Gentry so helpfully explains, we miss the point if we read the prophets like an epistle or gospel. There is so much going on that we need to be aware of and pay attention to. In his new book, How to Read and Understand the Biblical Prophets, Dr. Peter J. Gentry, author Kingdom Through Covenant helps us read the prophets well, paying attention to the various kinds of literary forms and theological message they have for us. In the opening chapter, Peter alerts to the central theme of these OT prophets, “Everything in the prophets is based upon the covenant made between God and Israel during the exodus from Egypt, especially…as it is found in the book of Deuteronomy.” Covenant keeping and covenant breaking is part and parcel of the whole p...
How to Think by Alan Jacobs In this frenetic world of information and gadgetry, we often promote arguments and ideas without properly thinking about what we are saying and how we are saying it. Alan Jacobs, Professor at Baylor University’s Honors Program, gives us a pungent dose of sane wisdom on how to think in almost any given situation, including when we want to slam our opponents head against the wall with some overblown illogical and unfair verbal argument and need help. Drawing from C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Daniel Kahneman and others, Alan paints a broad picture of how unthinking brings the whole society down and how clear thinking aided by emotion can bring back a sense of flourishing among human beings. Jacobs posits in the introduction of the book that it is not so much a matter of rational or irrational thinking that is the problem, but something altogether different. He writes, “For me, the fundamental problem we have may best b...
My Favorite Color is Blue. Sometimes by Roger Hutchison Taking a look at the digital copy of this book allowed me to look at the striking art inside the book, and its connection to the words of the page that were focusing on loss. Looking at the physical copy of the book even brings to life more the staggering similarity that the words and pain have together on the page. The focus here is how certain colors express the sentiments of those who have lost a loved one. I did not think that I would relate too well to this book until two days ago, as we lost our little boy, who was only 17 weeks old. The pain is palpable and yet the pages of this book give me good reason to think of my son with a sense of pride and hope. Roger writes, "You are a shooting star. Your light trails across the heavens. I blinked and you were gone." We were full of anticipation at the first and second ultrasounds, and there was the picture of our little boy Jackson, ...
Can You See Anything Now? A Novel by Katherine James Upon seeing this book on my doorstep for the first time, I was very intrigued by the cover, the fact that this was the author’s first novel, and that Paraclete Press was back publishing fiction, alongside their beautiful and profound religious literature. This book, Can You See Anything Now is a novel of intersecting characters whose lives illuminate the themes of friendship, deep brokenness, and immense suffering. Though this book was sure to bring one to both tears and anger, its message was intertwined between hope and despair, a novel that caused the reader to look deeply into the road each character walked. One of the main characters of the book, Margie, was the mother of Noel, and the wife of Nick, the counselor. Margie walks on the precipice of despair, suffering deeply from depression and meaninglessness. Yet, part of the beauty of the book is the way Katherine draws Margi...
As a father to a little daughter who loves to draw, engage in creative imaginative painting efforts, and altogether enjoys designing dog clothes, my interest was piqued by this fascinating book called Foundations of Drawing by Al Gury. I was glad to receive this book and even more happy to read through the history of how drawing, illuminating, and model drawing was part of many cultures, making alive the world that we see everywhere. Al Gury is a wise guide, holding the chair of the painting department at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Here are a few of the most fascinating points of the book for me. One, Al Gury gets into the nitty gritty world of the Medieval period which book illumination and scriptoria, where monks would work at studying, copying, and translating ancient works, even works written papyrus, for their preservation. Unique for the artistic mind, there were elegant illustrations and decorations done in pen...
The Message that Never Grows Old In the messiness that is the Christian life, believers tend to major on the minutiae, the pet issues that develop in the heat of debate and render our witness as shrouded in mystery. We develop intricate points as to what exactly happens to the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper, how God’s election takes place temporally, and when exactly Christ will return for his church. Although the larger issues of the Lord’s Supper, election, and Christ’s return are hugely important for the Christian to understand and believe within his heart and mind, the details of how all these things work often escape our view. Calvin called entering into these matters speculation. In the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin writes, “Not to take too long, let us remember here, as in all religious doctrine, that we ought to hold to one rule of modesty and sobriety: not to speak, or guess, or even to seek to know, concerning obscu...