Best Non-Fiction I read in 2022
Almost everything I read these days is for school. And a lot of it is excellent. Every once in awhile I find the time to read something that isn’t about theology. This was my favorite non-fiction in 2022.
I and Thou
Buber hits the nail on the head with regard to objectification
The Immortality Key. The Secret History of the Religion with No Name Brian C. Muraresku
My nephew gave me this one.
Psychadelics as part of communion?
Yes Please.
Thanks Jason
Book Stack 2020
Some of the titles I’ve been reading for my classes. Recommend Full Catastrophe Living and Into the Silent Land.
Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler
This was my favorite nonfiction last year. The opening lines:
All that you touch You Change.
All that you Change Changes you.
The only lasting truth Is Change
God
Is Change.
The Body of God - Sallie McFague
Would we not then feel obliged to love the earth with all its many bodies?
This should be required reading.
I was at a conference in 2019 and we were talking about climate change and the destruction of our environment. I piped up and said that I felt that perhaps the crucifixion event was a metaphor for our ultimate destruction of the planet. The creation being the incarnation of god on the macro scale and Jesus being an incarnation on the micro scale. Perhaps it will happen that we will destroy the incarnation of god (and in doing so destroy ourselves) and then the creative force behind it all will create something new (ie. a resurrection).
Someone that was sitting in that discussion group with me asked if I had read any Sallie McFague. I hadn’t. I bought this book and have been reading it on and off all year. Over and over. It is falling apart and I’m wondering how to hold the book together. I know I will refer to it over and over again. It is THAT good.
If we had this kind of theology, what an absolute difference it would make. I’ve underlined things on almost every page.
A few highlights:
“There is a profound difference between the early Christian notion of the cosmos animated by ..the Logos of God and the church as the body of Christ with Christ… as the head. The first is a sense of divine immanence in the entire natural order that includes all life-forms…. The second is a dualistic, hierarchical notion of exclusion, separating spirit from nature, human beings (and particularly Christians) from other creatures and the earth…”
“What if we saw the earth as part of the body of God, not as separate from God (who dwells elsewhere) but as the visible reality of the invisible God? What is we also saw this body as overlain by the body of the cosmic Christ, so that wherever we looked we would see bodies that are incorporated into the liberating, healing, inclusive love of God? Would we not then feel obliged to love the earth with all its many bodies?”
“…our current picture of god would be understood as a continuing creator, but of equal importance, we human beings might be seen as partners in creation, as the self-conscious, reflexive part of the creation that could participate in furthering the process.”
“The transcendence of God is not available to us except as embodied”
“The universe as God’s body is also, then a radicalization of divine immanence, for god is not present to us in just one place (Jesus) but in and through all bodies, the bodies of the sun and moon, trees and rivers, animals and people. The scandal of the gospel is that the Word became flesh; the radicalization of incarnation sees Jesus not as an enigma, but as a paradigm or culmination of the divine way of enfleshment”
Just read it.
Tick Tock
It’s like I’m trying to cram life in with a shovel
It seems I’ve developed a problem where reading is concerned. I hop around and don’t finish much. I looked at the books I was reading in February only to realize I haven’t finished any of them. I’ve started others. This is a new phenomenon. I used to read one book at a time start to finish. Then I found it was two at a time. Now it’s four or five and maybe I finish one. I wonder about this and what it’s a sign of. It seems to me that is is probably a symptom of the fact that I am at a stage in life where I feel I can’t get enough. It started when I turned fifty. I felt the clock of life begin to tick in a way I never had before. So much I want to do, learn, experience, say, taste, read, be. So little time left to do it all. No time for one book at a time anymore. It’s like I’m trying to cram life in with a shovel, drink it in from a fire hose. It’s counterproductive. When I was just reading one book at a time, I finished a couple of books a month. Now, I’m reading five and finish one every three months. It’s funny how a thing like my reading habits can reveal an entire existential crisis .
February 10, 2019
Here’s what I’m reading right now
Catch up 2018
Here are a few titles I read last year
I didn’t keep up with this “what I’m reading” section very well. Here’s a pic of a few titles I read last year. The trouble with reading on Kindle is I can’t take a picture of what I read. But I read about the Enneagram, “Soul Feast” by Thompson; “Creating a Life with God” Wolpert, “Christian Meditation” James Finley, “The Year She Left Us” Kathryn Ma, “Anything Is Possible” Elizabeth Strout.
Sabbath as Resistance - Walter Brueggemann
I can't say enough good things about this book. Reading it makes me feel like I missed the WHOLE point of my faith.
The Rebirthing of God - John Philip Newell
The Introduction includes this story:
"One of the great prophets of the modern human soul was Carl Jung (1875-1961), the founder of analytical psychology. Even as a boy he had prophetic intuitions, although for many of these he did not find language, or the courage to speak, until many decades later in his life. As a twelve-year old boy in Switzerland, walking home from school one day past Basel Cathedral with its shining new spire, the young Carl Jung became aware of an image rising up from the unconscious. He was so horrified by it that he tried pushing it back down. But it kept insisting on coming forth. When finally,as he explained years later, he allowed himself to name what he was seeing, he saw that above the spire of the cathedral was the throne of God. Descending from the throne was "an enormous turd" that smashed into the spire and the walls of the cathedral crumbled.
We are living in the midst of the great turd falling. In fact, it has already hit the spire, and the walls of Western Christianity are collapsing. "
You know with a beginning like that, this should be a good read!
Simplicity - The Freedom of Letting Go by Richard Rohr
"When Mother Theresa came to America, she called us one the most unfree peoples in the world. We Americans are paralyzed by all our possibilities. We consider ourselves a tremendous nation because we can choose from a gigantic menu of consumer articles. Even Christians are ready to believe this sort of nonsense. When they do, they avoid traveling through the depths of the wilderness. Again, our enemy isn't pain, but the fear of pain. Jesus came to teach the way of wisdom. He brought us a message that offers to liberate us from both the lies or the world and the lies that are lodged within ourselves. The words of the Gospel create an alternative consciousness, solid ground on which we can really stand, free from every social order and from every mythology" pp 74-75
----The hypocrisy is that even while reading it I am coveting an overpriced coffee table from West Elm.
An Other Kingdom - Departing the Consumer Culture by Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann and John McKnight
A much needed message.
Free market ideology vs. neighborliness and community.
Our culture is built on ideas of scarcity, certainty, perfection and privatization rather than abundance, mystery, fallibility
p. 22: "the disciplines that we most need to question are surplus, control, speed, convenience, competition and individualism."
I'm pondering how to create community.....