My parents gave me a $30 Barnes & Noble gift card for my 30th birthday back in June. I used half of it on these three books: one on design and creative thinking; one on lectio divina (sort of for me and sort of for school); and one non-Disney, non-princess, non-Berry Bitty City coloring book.

They are all on their way now. Thanks, mom and dad.

An Observation and Two Favorite Quotes from a Book I Recently Finished

The Observation:In reading Flanney O’Connor’s words/thoughts/discussions on the nature of writing fiction, one of the highlights for me was her the notion that stories should show humanity pushed to its limits, both positive and negative. Stories shouldn’t stay safe or in the middle. They should spelunk the depths, explore the edges, trying to find the dropoff at the end of the human personality.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Timedid that, but it took me awhile to figure out how. Christopher, the main character and narrator, is at an unstated point along the autism spectrum. He does complex math in his head to calm himself, sees and remembers everything, and really wants to figure out who killed Wellington.

About halfway through the book, it was difficult for me to feel invested in anything more than finding out how the plot resolved because that is what Christopher focused on. I couldn’t see emotional development in the character. He just repeats his patterns.

Then, the part at the train station made me realize that this book assumes a different set of edges for this particular human. The dropoff at the edge is the same as a normal day for most people. After I realized that his emotional development was happening in excruciatingly difficult interactions with everyday people like policemen or ticket takers or booksellers or his own father and mother, this book helped me think not only about how individual people are different, but how they each react to the same (sometimes seemingly ordinary) stimulus in drastically different ways. A situation does not need to be extraordinary for every human in order to push the limits of humanity.

Quote No. 1 (Christopher’s pragmatic, yet unintentionally poetic explanation of the end of all things, which made me think of the part in Fahrenheit 451 when the bomb drops and Bradbury beautifully and horribly slows down time, and also of the Book of Revelation with its astronomical anomalies announcing that this will be all for the current incarnation of our world)

And when the universe has finished exploding, all the stars will slow down, like a ball that has been thrown into the air, and they will come down to a halt and they will all begin to fall toward the center of the universe again. And there will be nothing to stop us from seeing all the stars in the world because they will all be moving towards us, gradually faster and faster, and we will know that the world is going to end soon because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing of billions and billions of stars, all falling.

Quote No. 2 (A little perspective on acknowledging how we are all imperfect, whether we are labeled or not)

I’m meant to say that they have learning difficulties or that they have special needs. But this is stupid because everyone has learning difficulties because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult and also everyone has special needs, like Father, who has to carry a little packet of artificial sweetening tablets around with him to put in his coffee to stop him from getting fat, or Mrs. Peters who wears a beige-colored hearing aid, or Siobhan, who has glasses so thick that they give you a headache if you borrow them, and none of these people are Special Needs, even if they have special needs.

Summer Reading: One of My Favorite Writers is a Dead, Southern, Catholic Woman

Flannery O’Connor didn’t write Mystery and Manners; the book exists because the people in charge of her estate collected various papers—published, unpublished, spoken—into a volume that revolves around no particular locus but delivers evidence of certain gravitational centers in the solar system of her mind.

First, the creative work of any writer is grounded in the concrete: sensory details provide the grist for the mill. This sentiment arises in several different places in the book, and since she didn’t sit down to pen this particular book with this particular central point, the fact that multiple works point to the same conclusion proves that the sentiment was deeply ingrained in her writer’s life, an idea submerged into her way of thought that surfaced whenever necessary and beneficial to those with which she was communicating.

She makes the point that sensory information is how all humans get all their information about the world. We collect nothing other than what our eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue can bring us in terms of data about our surroundings. That would seem to fail to rise to the level of themes, of abstract ideas like freedom and hope and desperation, because we cannot directly taste freedom and hope and desperation. The idea of our senses being our only connection to the outside world can start to feel constricting: we only have the acid of oranges, the scratch of sandpaper, the clamor of construction equipment, the glare of focused sunlight, the freshness of newly-cut wood.

O’Connor, though, speaks of the freedom to see. She advocates that writers (and I would add artists/creatives) observe what is there. O’Connor is a devout Catholic who would know that the Bible instructs us to taste and see that the Lord is good. She is also a believer who is not afraid to compare the milk and honey of a life with Jesus with the bitterness found in biting into the world. She advocates for that, too.

If a Christian creative is to be effective as either of those classifications, he must connect to the community, know its manners and modes of operation. Separation is not possible. O’Connor is from the Protestant South, and her fiction is not bashful in its portrayal of racial, socioeconomic, intellectual, and moral differences or difficulties. Her characters use racial epithets. They pursue illicit physical relationships. They lift hands and other instruments of violence against their fellow man. They do things that people do when they are pushed to the limits of human existence, and they do so in the dialects and cities of the South that O’Connor knew.

I’m going to use Flannery O’Connor early in my Honors Sophomore English class next year, and this book will serve as a basis for what we talk about. She writes honestly about what she sees and hears, paying attention to the reality of the world, not bending it to fit what might be perceived as Christian art, and I think this will be a proper way to open up two semesters of reading and writing in a school that integrates the theological truth of God with the observable truth found in his creation. We’ll read several of her short stories together and look at how they push people to the limits of our experience, how they experience both the fall of man and the grace of God.

First Book of the Summer: Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne (Janice and I are reading this together, to be followed by Grace Based Parenting)

Books I’m Packing for Our Trip to Oklahoma+Kansas: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon,The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, and Diceroscope No.1 by Pusch Ridge Christian Academy’s Creative Writing 2.0 (three novels! a literary anthology!)

Last night, I hung out with a bunch of Second Mile dads at Derek’s house to watch a bunch of Second Mile kids during the Iron & Iron Ladies’ Night. I noticed an interesting book on Derek’s bookshelf: The Message//REMIX: Solo. I’m all for interesting books, The Message, and Eugene Peterson, so I asked Derek if it was his.

Derek said, “No, it’s not mine! It’s pink!” The spine and the back cover, which are not visible in the above Amazon link, are indeed hot pink, and the book belongs to Jen, not Derek. I mumbled something about punk sometimes involving pink, smirked, then went to look up the book on my phone.

As Amazon is designed to do, looking up Solo brought up another interesting book: The Message//REMIX: Pause. This one divvies up the Bible into one Old Testament passage and one New Testament reading per day over the course of a year. My immediate thought was that it sounded like a great way to begin (OT!) and end (NT!) my days in a consistent, regular manner.

In my post about prayer journaling, I talked about needing to develop consistent habits in my spiritual life. For Persevering in the Second Mile, I just read the Discipline chapter in The Character of Leadership. Jeff Iorg suggests a year-long project aimed at developing discipline in a specific area of life that, well, needs discipline. I saw Pause as a way to develop this, so I told Janice about it when I got home—and we ordered a pair of the Pause versions.

Here’s why I’m enthusiastic about the idea of reading OT + NT passages every day for a year along with my wife:

I’m reading it with my wife. This is more than just a relationship development intention. I’m a team player. I do better at staying consistent when I’m staying consistent alongside someone else. If I’m going to develop consistent habits, I need Janice. One of her StrengthsFinder top five is Consistency. She’s the perfect partner for this little adventure, and not just because she lives in the same house as me. She’s good at something I need to get better at.

I’m reading it with my wife. Okay, it is a relationship development intention. I am anticipating great conversation with the woman I have committed to live alongside for the duration of my life on earth. I want to strengthen our marriage through strengthening our spiritual lives together. In The Character of Leadership, Iorg also says that we should invest in having a great marriage, which I wholeheartedly believe. By purchasing two copies of Pause, we are taking a specific step to invest in our marriage by studying God’s word together.

I do really well with arbitrary/artificial boundaries. I told Janice last night that I recently figured out a reason that I enjoy watching sports: they allow for creativity within a given framework of rules. I love that. It’s part of why I loved being a student and love teaching. Classes provide the skeleton on which ideas can be developed. I look at this year-long adventure of Scripture reading as a chance to think about the ideas and connections found throughout the Bible. I don’t have to plan the readings out; I can just wind it up and let it go.

Initially, I wondered if we would be wise to search around for other Bible-reading plans. I know they are out there. I know there are probably free ones that don’t require the purchase of two new books. However, I saw two directions: momentum and stagnation. If we went with Pause, we would be carrying forward the excitement of developing discipline in an interesting way. If we went to research reading plans, life would get in the way and we’d eventually have a conversation that was basically this:

“Remember when we thought about reading the Bible together everyday?”

“Yeah. We should do that.”

We talked about the plan last night. We ordered the books this morning.

I keep using the word “adventure”. “Discipline project” doesn’t sound all that exciting. “Adventure” does, and this is genuinely how I feel about it, not a way to rhetorically create motivation. Last week, Chad took a moment to focus on God’s word as compared to weapons that split bones. I posted a few images that popped into my head. Later, I drew pictures of those three swords in my prayer journal and asked God to help me connect those images with the experience of reading the Bible.

Let me pause and point out a couple of things. First, I’m not some brute of a man looking for a way to inject testosterone into my spiritual life. I do drink black coffee, but I’ve never shot a gun. I can’t grow a (decent) beard. I don’t wear flannel or watch UFC or brew my own beer, and I don’t need a war-based metaphor to convince myself that God is worth following. Second, the sword metaphor is God’s, not mine. I’m simply asking God to help me experience his word in the way that his language portrays it, not telling him how I would prefer to read the Bible.

His language feels adventurous, and that is setting the tone for this particular discipline project for me.

The first day’s reading, which you can view on Amazon, pairs the first chapters of Genesis and John. The adventure will begin with two perspectives of The Beginning, and I’m excited for where the journey will take us from there.

Praying in Color: Borrowed from John W during Second Mile’s Week of Prayer + Fasting this year

Recommended for: Artist+creative types who love Jesus and want to pray, visual learners who want help remembering their prayer list throughout the day, fidgeters who find their fingers in need of occupation, minds that wander during sustained times of prayer

A Caveat: The author quotes a prayer that refers to God as “Father-Mother”, and that doesn’t jive with my theology of God as a loving and powerful Father (as he refers to Himself in Scripture), but that quoted prayer is not something that kept me from learning from the book and seeking to develop my own intimate relationship with the loving and powerful Father. I just think it’s important to be aware of things like that when we read books. Know sound doctrine.

So Far: I found a blank journal sitting dormant on my shelf. I wrote down the word “future”, and then found the tail of the e swirling out out out into a spiral. As I drew, I found myself adding color and realizing that the red represented where I’m at now, the yellow represented the hopes I have in my future as it lays in God’s plans, and the green near the center represents the seeds God planted for my future long, long ago. My overall impression from this prayer time was one of worship and awe because I came away with a renewed sense of God as Yahweh, I Am, the God who holds the past, present, and future, the God who knows what he’s doing with me and my life. Oh, and I also came away with a visual reminder that I picture throughout the day as I continue to pray. I am secure in my relationship with Jesus, and God has been building on the foundations he began to lay in my life when I was young.

Also: Using one of the illustrations in the book as inspiration, I drew a grid and prayed about my schedule. I want my days to be fruitful and productive for God’s kingdom, and I love the possibilities that each day brings to be different, so I drew different images (some more abstract that others) in each “day” and prayed through all kinds of ways that they could play out. In our culture, busy-ness is often somewhere between an impediment and a crutch, so this was a fresh, hopeful way to lay out my daily walk through life before God.

The Big Thing I’m Taking Away: I love random inspiration, new ventures, and general discovery; I struggle with consistent devotion to tasks. I am hopeful that this act of drawing will help me develop a more disciplined and less sporadic prayer life because it is tangible, it takes devoted time to complete a drawing each day*, and it serves as a visual monument to my conversation with God.

A Couple More Things: There were a couple of times in the book where she kind of made it sound like there was an intentional absence of thought+words, like she was allowing color and shape to be prayers. I have doubts about that, and I didn’t do that. I used this as a time to focus my thoughts and bring them to God. It was a time of discovery as I allowed the Holy Spirit to open my eyes, and it was a time of conversation as I prayed through what I discovered in the time of devotion. I even took time to write down the reflections that God brought to my mind during my prayer time about my future because I don’t want to forget them in the future.

*Each Day: Um, that is my goal. It has not happened yet. The first one was on February 5, and the second was today. But the cool thing is that I remember the images long after I finished the drawing. The book has examples of praying for individuals, for longer periods (like during Lent or Advent), and for praying through and memorizing Scripture, so there’s plenty to explore.

I decided reading Pulitzer winners would be a good idea after reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. In line at Bookman’s, I saw The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao on that little table where the put the bestsellers and books of critical/popular acclaim. I thought, Hey, I’ve been wanting to read that. I bought it. I don’t remember what I was actually in line to buy.

Oscar Wao sat on my shelf for awhile. That’s what happens to most of the books I buy. I don’t know why I picked it up. It has nothing to do with anything I’ve been reading, studying, or doing at work. Maybe that’s why I picked it up.

I don’t quit books. I almost quit Oscar Wao. The only book I’ve ever quit in the middle was The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. It was insufferably bleak, plus I already knew the twist at the end. Oscar Wao is not insufferably bleak, but there is a certain bleakness (it does begin with a discussion of fukú, the notion of being cursed in the Caribbean) added to a certain rawness made of the characters’ identities in sexual behavior and abusive/broken relationships. I’ve been searching for the right phrasing for why I wanted to quit that book, and I’ve come down to this: it’s just not a hopeful book. But I didn’t quit, and I have Eugene Peterson to thank for that.

See, when I read The Contemplative Pastor, I read an entire chapter focused on Peterson advising pastors not to forget to view the people in their churches as sinners. He says some beautiful things about sinners, the foremost of which is the clarification that the term is not a “theological designation” nor a “moralistic judgment.”

He points out that it is not a term dealing in comparisons between you and me and everyone we know and hear about on the news. There is no more or less involved, no relativity at all. Peterson would have us realize that referring to someone as a sinner “is not a blast at his manners or his morals. It is the theological belief that the thing thatmatters most to him is forgiveness and grace.”

Forgiveness and grace matter to broken people. Oscar Wao is full of broken people. Oscar is an obese kid who fails in the Ladies Dept. and thus exiles himself to Dungeons & Dragons, fantasy literature, and the hopes of one day making it as a sci-fi writer. Lola, his older sister, is a runner both literally (she’s the star of the track team) and figuratively (difficulties send her away: away to college, away to Europe, away to Santo Domingo, away away away but always returning, too). Belí, their mother, is defined by abandonment during her childhood (the climax of that portion of her life involves a full-back hot oil burn and confinement in a chicken coop) and objectification from adolescence on (the men in her life only see the body that takes her from unknown to a fling with the most popular kid in town to a fling with a character we only know as the Gangster—yeah, that doesn’t end well for her).

I saw all these broken people and I challenged myself to keep going. I saw some connection to the brokenness I’ve seen in lives of people I’ve known and loved since coming to Tucson. I saw a connection to how we talk about influencing culture instead of being influenced by culture (this book is soaked with What It Is To Be Dominican). I saw a connection to what I talked about this summer: Jesus did not shrink away from coming to save broken people, which I am, a sinner, just as much as people like Oscar, Lola, and Belí.

So I kept going. I finished the book. It won’t be one I recommend to people, but I’m glad I didn’t quit it because Jesus doesn’t quit broken people, and churches are made of them, too, including ours. Reading about characters like this helps me dig into the motivations, reactions, and consequences that come up in real lives around me.