2057/5738

I have a hard time with limits.

A couple months ago, when my little reading list idea came into being, I thought that a book a week would be a good, simple goal. I read quickly, and I love it deeply, so it'd be a good exercise. Well. Then I moved to a new city, where my social life now consists of Disney movie marathons with a 2 year old and a 3 year old - not something I'm complaining about. The observations of toddlers are endlessly amusing, to be honest. So my recreational activities became very limited, and I soon discovered that spending your days off watching Netflix gives you a headache and makes you feel like a slug. Consequently, I read. A lot. I've mostly knocked out the "fun" end of my list, and mostly have school books left (which haven't arrived yet, I'm not procrastinating!) and I haven't even been here a month.

Conclusion: I ordered more books; 5002 pages has become 5738; 17 books has become 20. And I'm going to a used bookstore tomorrow. Who knows how long this list is going to get. But I'm going to continue keeping a list, because now I've started. And I hate to leave something like this unfinished, even if no one but me will read these.

I already wrote a post about Andy Crouch's Culture Making - one more push, please read it! Christ Centered Worship by Bryan Chapell was good. Again, like Rhythms of Grace, it had plenty of good information, but not much I was blown away by, since it's something I've studied in other contexts. But it really did give me a good grasp of where my mentor is coming from as he and the other leaders structures the services here.

The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson was an impulse buy (shocking). Maureen Johnson is a nerdfighter related author, so when I saw her name at a thrift store, I couldn't say no. It was a sweet book. Parts were predictable, but not unpleasantly so. It was a relaxing read for a Friday afternoon.

Sneak peak, I'm starting Works of Love by Kierkegaard this week, and I've been assured it will be a game changer. Tune in again for more ramblings about things!


theList//

Spiritual Leadership: Henry and Richard Blackaby 

Reaching Out: Henry Nouwen 

Unceasing Worship: Harold Best 

The Dangerous Act of Worship: Mark Labberton

Silence: Shucaku Endo 

Christ Centered Worship: Bryan Chapell 

Rhythms of Grace: Mike Cosper 

Mere Christianity: CS Lewis 

Culture Making: Andy Crouch 

Works of Love: Soren Kierkegaard 

Awake: Noel Brewer Yeats 

Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury 

Till We Have Faces: CS Lewis 

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Betty Smith 

Beauty: Robin Mckinley

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Blue Like Jazz: Donald Miller 

Click: Various Authors 

The Last Little Blue Envelope: Maureen Johnson
Out of the Silent Planet: CS Lewis
Perelandria: CS Lewis
That Hideous Strength: CS Lewis

3:12:120

I've just finished a book that I've been meaning to read for a while. Almost two years ago I heard about it, a while later researched it on Amazon and added it to my wishlist, for my birthday a couple months ago I got it from my best friend (There's your mention LeClaire ;) ) and last week I started reading it. The anticipation had my expectations in the stratosphere. I was not disappointed.

Culture Making by Andy Crouch is a very thick book. Only 280 pages, but intensely researched and carefully practical. The idea of changing or influencing our culture is common place in our world, and exists in a unique way in Christian circles. We have tried to influence the culture, we've tried to change it, we've copied it, dismissed it, tried to create our own outside of "the world". Crouch makes the theoretical world of culture simultaneously concrete and fluid. He takes the world we live in, of a million cultures woven together, something we can begin to perceive and influence.

Please, if you have any understanding of how important Christianity's interaction with culture is, read this book. I can't even start to explain all the points Crouch makes, and if I did, I really don't think it would do them any sort of justice. So instead of summarizing the whole host of concepts he discusses, I'm just going to tell you to read the book. And now I'm gonna talk about a bit at the end, which sparked my particular interest, and I hope makes you think about your impact differently.

Crouch goes to great lengths to accurately reflect how the individual is influenced by and also influences culture - the immediate culture of their family unit rippling out to the global culture at large. He is realistic, noting that while all humans have the capacity and inclination to shape culture, often those impacts don't ripple much farther than their own homes. But at the tail end of the book, he offers hope - not just hope, but practical, realistic, and feasible application toward helping the individual make a cultural difference in the long term.

3:12:120

All a person needs, to make a difference, is an absolutely small group of about 3 people. A group that knows each other, realizes the strengths and weaknesses of each, and shares a passion and complimentary gifts. We all are a part of these intimately small groups. Not many, but at least one, and likely a few. Each individual is surrounded by more people, who encourage and help cultivate the new cultural good created by the small group. This circle amounts to about 12 people, give or take a few. These 12 are those willing to help, who can be extra hands and ears in moving from concept to reality. Outside those 12 are the 120, the people who are putting the good in motion, who immediately enact it and benefit from it. Crouch gives numerous examples, from books to political policies to movies to restaurants to technological innovations, all of which follow the pattern of 3:12:120. From an absolutely small group, to their circle of cultivators, to their enablers. This pattern allows for any and all of us to begin realizing our God-given potential as culture-makers.

Which starts me thinking about who my 3 would be. The title of the chapter in which Crouch discusses the 3:12:120 concept is Community - something I spend a good deal of my time thinking about. The longer I think about it, I realize, I have several "3s". They don't all number exactly three. They range from three to six, but all still quite small groups, who have the potential to create and cultivate culture in unique ways.

So how do I harness that? How have I already, possibly? I think back to those groups, and in fact, we have made changes. Many of those groups exist on my university's campus, and have impacted the culture of our campus home simply by making choices about how we spend our time together. We didn't do anything purposefully, we didn't change much, and likely our impact will fade once we and those we know there have moved on - but we did have an impact. I've seen this principle in church planting - the church I currently work with began with two or three men who had an idea of what church should look like and how it could impact this city. They, with their families, began ministering here; they reached out to people in the city and outside of it. 3:12:120. And the church grew.

At the end of the last chapter, Crouch makes an incredible statement:

"So, do you want to make culture? Find a community, a small group who can lovingly fuel your dreams and puncture your illusions. Find friends and form a family who are willing to see grace at work in one another's lives, who can discern together which gifts and which crosses each has been called to bear. Find people who have a holy respect for power alongside the powerless. Find some partners in the wild and wonderful world beyond church doors. And then, together, make something of the world."

One of the many brilliant beauties of this book is that Crouch turns our - at least my - ideas of culture on their heads. I have mostly thought about culture as something shared, yes, but still largely enjoyed and impacted by individuals who happen to make up a whole. We value the individual, and we see individuals change the world. But look a little closer, and those individual could not do what they did without the 3:12:120 in their own lives. The 3's in your life could impact the world in powerful ways, if cultivated well.

Why not explore the possibilities?

1159/5002

That last book post was so long. Kudos to anyone who actually read it, because it was a monster. In an effort to not write a forever long post every week when I do a book update, I'm posting mid-book. I finished two, and I'm still in the middle of two. So here we go!

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. This was a recommendation from Craig (Hi!), since I'm constantly saying "You need to read ______!" he felt like he could make a suggestion for my list. So, Haruhi. I want to try and explain what this book was about, but I'm afraid I will just confuse you, since I was confused for the vast majority of the book. Suffice to say, Haruhi is a teenager who is in possession of extreme power that she's unaware of, and her unlikely friend Kyon is responsible for making sure she doesn't accidentally end life as they know it. I spent the first half of the book confused and a little scarred, but after finishing it and having a few days of distance from it, I liked it! It was weird. Really weird. But once I got to the end and saw where the author was trying to go with all the weirdness? It kind of worked. I might read the rest of them. All in all, not a bad book to spend an afternoon with.

Click. This was a book I picked up for a dollar at a thrift store because it had Eoin Colfer on the list of contributing authors (I could talk for days about Eoin Colfer and how much I love his books, but for now, just take my word for how brilliant he is, and go read Artemis Fowl). Click is a story written by ten different authors, each writing their own chapter, and almost every chapter having a different narrator (The exception being that the first and last chapters are both from Maggie's point of view). Click's main plot is the death of a photographer Gee Keane, and his grandchildren's journey to find out who he really was and in that process, figure out who they are going to be. I'd tell you more, but it would ruin some of the mystery that makes this book so delightful. It feels a bit like a choose your own adventure story, with unexpected twists and bizarre turns, ending up in a totally different place than you started out. Every character has a story, and every story is connected to Gee, and Gee is never quite what you expect him to be. It asks some really good questions about what makes each of us, well, us. What makes me different from you? Why are we unique? What makes us different from each other, but still connected? I really quite enjoyed this little novel, and will probably come back to it, and will definitely be passing it along.

1,159 down, 3,063 to go!

theList//

Spiritual Leadership: Henry and Richard Blackaby 

Reaching Out: Henry Nouwen 

Unceasing Worship: Harold Best 

The Dangerous Act of Worship: Mark Labberton

Silence: Shucaku Endo 

Christ Centered Worship: Bryan Chapell 

Rhythms of Grace: Mike Cosper 

Mere Christianity: CS Lewis 

Culture Making: Andy Crouch 

Works of Love: Soren Kierkegaard 

Awake: Noel Brewer Yeats 

Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury 

Till We Have Faces: CS Lewis 

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Betty Smith 

Beauty: Robin Mckinley

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Blue Like Jazz: Donald Miller 

Click: Various Authors 

The Last Little Blue Envelope: Maureen Johnson

Depaysement

A more internship-centered post today.

Is it the nature of home that we don't fully appreciate it until we're not there? Now that's a sappy and unquestionably dramatic question. But it's what was on my mind last night, as I sat on the floor of the auditorium to rest my legs, watching the lights swirl as the band played and the students sang. The speakers had been brilliant, the music was excellent, and the atmosphere sparkled with energy despite the fact that most of the students had been working in the 90 degree heat since early that morning. I was exhausted. I hadn't slept well, and I'd been on my feet and surrounded by people for hours - not ideal for the introvert, as much as I'd enjoyed myself.

But suddenly, I realized I was comfortable.

Not physically. My legs ached and my head was pounding and that Sprite had not settled well in my empty stomach. But relationally, I suppose? I was leaning up against the back wall of the auditorium, between my fellow intern Matt and one of the pastors. We'd been joking about something a few minutes before. Matt leaned over to show me something on his phone. I rolled my eyes, but laughed anyway. My responsibility - getting the speakers set up with mics and notes, getting them from their seats to the stage, and making sure they knew how much time they had to speak - was over for the night, and I was just waiting for the night to be over so we could clean up and go home. I was finally relaxed in this space, for probably the first time since I'd arrived in Columbus. I knew what was expected of me and how to accomplish it. More surprisingly, I knew how to ask for help and how to interact with people I barely knew ten days ago. It was a weird feeling.

That comfort made me miss home.

It doesn't make sense to me. I had found my footing, and suddenly all I wanted to was to take this moment and bring it back with me. I wanted to be in my living room, rambling about it in a way that only made sense to us with my mom. I wanted to try and express it to my friends, knowing that even if my words didn't quite make sense, my excitement would bring them joy. I wanted to take this experience and use it somehow to make my homes a better place. Even in this beginning stage of my experience, I'm seeing the ways that being here will make me more effective there. Ways that I'll be a better daughter, a better friend, a better girlfriend, a better leader, a better mentor, a better theologian, a better servant. Already, I'm straining to be back because I have so much to share. Now that I'm here, I see how important and valuable and influential those places I love so much are.

I'm starting to like it here, and even that makes me eager to be home.



depaysement
n. when someone is taken out of their old world and put into a new one

780/5002

Today's post is both a book review and an internship update. Apologies for any ramblings ahead of time.

It was a slow week in the office. I've started my internship at a weird time in the schedule of the church, between big events and my boss' vacation. So not a lot to do for the worship intern yet - especially when there are three of us. So the majority of my day was spent acquainting myself with the music of the church, learning to make coffee for the staff, and reading a book the worship pastor assigned me. In my free time, I don't have much of a social life. To be expected, if you know me at all. So I spent some time getting to know my host family, binging a Netflix show, and reading. So here are my ramblings on each book I read this week.

Rhythms of Grace by Mike Cosper was informative and well structured. A lot of it was things I knew, when it comes to the importance of how we structure worship and what those structures say about what we believe. But there were some moments that stuck with me. Cosper uses the phrase "so we pray, so we believe" again and again in the latter half of the book, and its a beneficial mantra for worship leaders, and ministry leaders in general. The way that we structure prayers, music, Communion, and gatherings in general not only says something to the outside world about what we believe, but it shapes the way our communities understand God, themselves, and their relationships with each other. In this lens, the order of our worship becomes important not only for encouragement and fellowship, but for instruction and spiritual formation. Whether or not we allow space for silence, for lament, and for the confession of sins forms the life of the individual believer and how they will handle the difficulties of life. (This is not to say that this is the only place that believers learn how to deal with the awful parts of life, but it is one place, and a powerful and habit forming place at that.) Cosper's book does a great job of not only explaining the theories and concepts behind liturgy in current church models, but gives hands on examples - in the form of possible next steps at the end of several chapters, as well as model service orders at the end of the book. All in all, I really enjoyed it. Not a bad way to spend a work week, not at all.

As evidenced by the list below, I've also checked two other books off the list this week - Beauty by Robin McKinley and Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. I'll attempt to be brief, but I do want to talk a little about both of them, if you'll indulge me.

Beauty is a book I read a long time ago, probably when I was eleven or twelve. I've read several of McKinley's books, and loved them all. She writes in one of my favorite sub genres - darker or more realistic re-tellings of classic fairy tales. Beauty, predictably, is her re-imagining of Beauty and the Beast. In this version of the story - which aligns more closely with the German version than Disney's - Beauty is the youngest of three sisters, and whose given name Honour was replaced with the nickname Beauty before she matured into what she considers a rather unpleasant looking young woman. The general flow of the story is peaceful, told from Beauty's practical, no-nonsense perspective. Her family is gentle and loving, making the most of one terrible situation after another. This is one of the things which endears the book to me. Rather than making the two eldest sisters vain and petty because of their beauty, they are beautiful inside and out. They have their silly moments in the first first chapters, but they grow and mature brilliantly through the course of the story. I quite like Beauty, and her practicality. Her heart is easily controlled by her head, and she isn't swayed by much - a refreshing departure from so many depictions of the "princess" characters of my childhood. Her love for the Beast grows naturally and slowly, un-coerced by her sense of gratitude or duty. If I have any critique of the story it is this - it ends abruptly. After the Beat transforms, there is a brief explanation of his curse, a description of her family coming to join them in the castle, and the story ends. I wished to know at least a little more, although I can't exactly tell you what. Despite the abrupt ending, its a refreshing story, and a nice primer to McKinley's other works, which are longer and darker.

Till We Have Faces. I struggle for words to describe this story. I can tell even now, having just finished it yesterday, its a book I will return to again and again throughout my life. Till We Have Faces is Lewis' version of the story of Cupid and Psyche, which I admit, I'm not particularly familiar with. The short version of the original tale is this: Psyche is the youngest of three princesses, and the most beautiful. The goddess Aphrodite is jealous of her beauty, and sends misfortune on the land, demanding Psyche be sacrificed to save her kingdom. The king concedes, and ties Psyche to a tree at the top of the mountain to be eaten by the gods. Aphrodite sends her son Cupid to destroy Psyche, but Cupid is struck by her beauty and cannot kill her. Instead, he hides her away in a palace and visits her only in the dark of night, so his mother will not find out what he is doing. Psyche's sisters visit her on the mountain, and are jealous of her comfort and wealth. They tell her she must see her husband, even though he has forbid Psyche from seeing his face. Unwillingly, Psyche concedes, and lights a lamp to see the god while he is sleeping. A drop of oil from the lantern  wakes him, and he is enraged by Psyche's disobedience. Psyche is cursed to wander until she completes three tasks, which will restore her to the good graces of Aphrodite. In the end, Psyche is victorious, marries Cupid, and is made a goddess.
Lewis was perplexed by the sisters of this story. His version is told from the perspective of the eldest sister, as her book against the gods for taking her sister away. It's difficult for me to explain, but I think what I can say is this: Lewis tells a story of love; not primarily between the god Cupid and the would-be goddess Psyche, but first the love of Orual, the eldest sister. He builds characters who are complicated and terribly flawed. In their brokenness and imperfection, they love imperfectly. Orual's love for her sister is deep and true, but in her own blindness, she is the cause of her sister's pain. Orual loves a man she cannot have, and in loving him the only way she can, she loses him. Orual loves her mentor, but not enough (or too much?) to let him go. Even the middle sister, Redival, is driven by love that has become twisted and vengeful. All the characters in this story are driven by love, but love imperfectly shown. Till We Have Faces is a story that deserves multiple readings, and really creates a desire for them. I just put it down a few hours ago, and I already want to read it again, realizing the questions I have and the details I missed. Of the three books I read this week, this is the one I recommend most highly.

Wow, if you made it through all of that, I commend you, and thank you!
780 down - 4,222 to go.






theList//

Spiritual Leadership: Henry and Richard Blackaby 

Reaching Out: Henry Nouwen 

Unceasing Worship: Harold Best 

The Dangerous Act of Worship: Mark Labberton

Silence: Shucaku Endo 

Christ Centered Worship: Bryan Chapell 

Rhythms of Grace: Mike Cosper 

Mere Christianity: CS Lewis 

Culture Making: Andy Crouch 

Works of Love: Soren Kierkegaard 

Awake: Noel Brewer Yeats 

Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury 

Till We Have Faces: CS Lewis 

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Betty Smith 

Beauty: Robin Mckinley

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Blue Like Jazz: Donald Miller 

Click: Various Authors 

The Last Little Blue Envelope: Maureen Johnson

Bibliothecary

The adventure begins!

During my time in Columbus, this blog will hold a variety of things - probably some sadness from missing my homes, definitely lots of notes on what I've been discovering. It's also going to hold me accountable for a particular, rather silly goal. 

I'm going to read 5,002 pages before I finish this internship. Seventeen books. Some are classics I've always meant to read, a couple were thrift store finds, a chunk are required reading either from the university or the church, a philosophy book, a couple worship books I've collected but haven't finished, and even a few more are recommendations from my friends.

I'm posting this not to brag, but to make sure I do it. I love to read almost more than anything else. It feeds my soul,stretches my imagination, and generally makes me a better and happier person. This is for me, for my own benefit and growth, and I think I need it. This experience in Columbus is going to drain me in a lot of ways, and by making space in my life to read, I'll be taking care of myself.

I'll post a little snippet after I finish each book, most likely. If you'd like to see what I'm reading, I'm going to attach my reading list to the bottom of this post. I'd love to talk with any of you about any of these when I'm done.

Wish me luck!

bibliothecary

(n.) one who loves, care for, and maintains books.

theList//

Spiritual Leadership: Henry and Richard Blackaby 

Reaching Out: Henry Nouwen 

Unceasing Worship: Harold Best 

The Dangerous Act of Worship: Mark Labberton

Silence: Shucaku Endo 

Christ Centered Worship: Bryan Chapell 

Rhythms of Grace: Mike Cosper 

Mere Christianity: CS Lewis 

Culture Making: Andy Crouch 

Works of Love: Soren Kierkegaard 

Awake: Noel Brewer Yeats 

Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury 

Till We Have Faces: CS Lewis 

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Betty Smith 

Beauty: Robin Mckinley

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Blue Like Jazz: Donald Miller 

Click: Various Authors 

The Last Little Blue Envelope: Maureen Johnson