This That and the Other

Alright. I'm going to confess right here and now - no burying the lead... I have not done what I wanted/said I would do. I had it in my head that I would read a book in a couple of weeks and then I would write up a little blog post about the book. You know - just write up a little something in between the sermons and other such things that I write in my day-to-day to life.

It's a funny thing, but there are folks who still don't know that a minister actually does work four (and sometimes five) days of the week beyond Sunday. We compose - on paper or in our heads - sermons. We write grant applications. We write bible study programs. We write newsletters. We write prayers, worship services and blessings for babies. We help with Committee work. We host programs. We make phone calls and visit those who need a pastoral presence in their lives.

You get it. I know you do. But sometimes I forget. And I think I can write just one more thing before the At-a-Glance gets sent out on Thursday afternoons. Which is a long-winded (I am a preacher after all) way of saying, there's no way I could write a blog post for each book I've read so far this year.

A valuable piece of advice I received as I was contemplating becoming a leader of international study trips was:

When things don't go the way you thought they would and you realize you can't achieve your goal, you change your goal.

Isn't that amazing? Makes life infinitely better most days.

Anyway, this is me changing my goal. I will - I WILL - read all the books I set out to read this year but...the blog posts will happen when they happen. And one is happening today. And, with this post I will be more than doubling my finished book listing...so, as my new ministry colleague and most favourite person with the last name Harper says - strap in cause things are about to get a little crazy.

I've consulted my Goodreads account and according to it and this blog, the last book I mentioned here was Reasons to Stay Alive - book 7 of the intended 26 I want to read in 2018. But I have been reading. Slowly but surely. Here are the books I've read since my last post...

#8 - Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A lovely quick read about how to guide your child to respect themselves and others. To treat others as you would like yourself to be treated. To honour each and every being and expect the same in return. I think I knew/had learned most of what was mentioned in this book but there were still some very good realizations in this book.

#9 - Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist by Franchesca Ramsey

I saw an interview with Ramsey about her activism as a result of making the short video Sh*t White Girls Say...to Black Girls She was catapulted into the limelight with the video and had a steep learning curve on the ins and outs of being an activist. She writes about what it means to be a black woman in America and how challenging it is for a black woman to navigate in the world. If you read only one chapter of this book, read the one about black women's hair - the politics of hair, the discrimination of hair and the rude behaviour associated with hair. 

#10 - Yes We (Still) Can - Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump by Dan Pfeiffer

As many of you know, I'm on a bit of an American politics kick these days. Dan Pfeiffer was very much an insider to the Obama Whitehouse and he continues to offer political commentary on the podcast, Pod Save America. Living through the chaos of the Trump Whitehouse, this book is a fascinating read. And...I want to share this story about my decision to read the book. I had been contemplating ordering it, especially since ordering it within a certain time would mean a certain good charity in the States would get a small cut of the book sales. But I was wavering on whether I would actually read a whole book on politics and forgot about it. At least I thought I did until a box from Amazon arrived at home and this book was in the package. I thought, 'oh, I guess I did order the book - huh.' And I read it. Meanwhile, my eldest son, who follows the same pollical commentaries as I do, asked if I had received a package from him lately. No. No I didn't, I told him. Finally, when he was visiting in August, he tells me that this book was the package that he sent. Oh! That's why I don't remember ordering the book! I thought I was losing it for a little while there. He knew I had it because he and I are connected on Goodreads and he saw that I was reading it despite not realizing the Amazon box had had a gift enclosure note that I had missed. I thanked him and then gave it to him to read.

#11 - More Ready Than You Realize: The Power of Everyday Conversations by Brian McLaren

An interesting read about the power of evangelism, testimony, story-telling and friendships. I really appreciate McLaren's gentle push and pull of going deeper in theological exploration.

#12 - The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs

After reading Jacobs' Year of Living Biblically, I figured he'd be worth reading again. This book is fun but tedious. It's basically a summary of the Encyclopedia Britannica interspersed with vignettes from his life with his wife and extended family - which are the nuggets of hilarity that kept me reading. I do feel a bit smarter having read the book but new bits of information I have are a bit esoteric and likely not very helpful in day to day life.

#13 - Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person - Shonda Rhimes

This book made the pile of books my dear hubby chose to read over the summer. I write that sentence like he chose the books in that pile. How it happened went more like this... 

Him: I think I'm going to read 6 or 7 books this summer.  Me: Oh, can I do that with you?

Him: Sure. Me: Do you need suggestions? 

Him: Sure. Me: Okay, this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one. 

Him: Sure. (He finished all seven books. I finished 4.) 

A friend had recommended Rhimes book so I added it to the pile. I wasn't so sure when I started the book but I found it to be a good read. Rhimes is responsible for all the good TV on Thursdays evenings (Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, etc) but she woke up (metaphorically) one day to the realization that she was not living life to its full potential. She was not having fun. She was not living a full life. And this book is about how she figured it out and started living life the best she could.

#14 - The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller

This book was summer homework for the SVUC Board. A great way to help you get focused on what's important and how to accomplish what you'd like to achieve. Easy to read and worthy considering how it can help you get to where you want to go.

#15 - The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. by MLK Jr himself

This was a challenging read. Not because of the writing. But because of the terrible and desperate situation African Americans lived in before the Civil Rights Movement. I had no idea how immediately MLK was thrust into state and nation-wide leadership after he was ordained and called to his first congregation. How much his and his family's life was under constant threat. How VERY BADLY white people treated black people during the era of Jim Crow. This book is worth every minute it takes to read it.

So. There you have it. I'm up to 15 books out of the 26 on my reading schedule this year. Of Mess and Moxie by Jen Hatmaker is next. It promises to be good ready - Hatmaker regular gets told by Evangelical Christians that, because she's a woman, she has no business expressing her thoughts about theology, Jesus and God. I'm thinking she's a bit feisty and I like feisty.

Why Do You Stay Alive?

Two weeks ago I took two books home to read by the end of May. A big one and a little one. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s autobiography and Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig. Naturally I picked up the little one first cause it wasn't going to take very long to read before I started the brick-sized book of Martin Luther King.
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Well. Theory is one thing and reality is another. Matt Haig's book is a compelling read that a fast reader could whip through in a time of dedicated reading. But that would be doing him and his book an injustice.

Matt Haig is a best-selling author who is married with a couple of children. (I did a bit of work on the Google while taking reading breaks.) By all accounts, he is an accomplished man who have people who loves him and who he loves. In addition to his creative talents and his identity as a spouse and father, Matt has another facet to his life - mental illness. It is easy to look at successful people who have found love and who family in their lives and assume they are happy. But we forget each and every one of us has a history and a life full of details that we choose not to lay bare at the feet of anyone who knows of us. Kate Spade comes to mind as I write this - her death by suicide after years of depression came as a shock to those who felt they knew Kate through her designer handbags.

Depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses lie to those people who live with them. I know this because depression is not an unknown entity in my life or those I love. Matt found himself suddenly and completely disabled at the age of 24 by mental illness. With his parents and girlfriend supporting him, Matt crawled out from under his illness over a long period of time. He still has moments when the illness tries to take back power over his mind and life but he has managed to choose life over death for nearly twenty years.

Reasons to Stay Alive is a recounting and description of his debilitating illness and his subsequent recovery. It is a challenging and difficult read. It is also a story of hope and encouragement. It is an excellent read to have a better understanding of the impact that mental illness has on a person's life (and those who love that person). We would never ask someone with a broken leg to help us move our furniture and yet, people who live with mental illness, are often told they are lazy and/or unwilling to get better when they are unable to participate fully in their lives. Mental illness is very real. And it can be incapacitating. The more of us who understand mental illness, whether we have it or not, the better our world will be.

The bookends of this book have photos of reasons why people choose to stay alive. Here's my reason to stay alive.
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What is your reason to stay alive? Feel free to post a photo in the comments of this blog or on my Facebook post. And then go read the book. As always, if you want to borrow my copy, drop in to the church and I'll lend it to you.

PS. I'll read about Martin Luther King next week. 😊

Marching Onward

Disclaimer
I began writing this blog sometime near the end of March.
PEOPLE - it's now MID-MAY!!! I no longer have any idea how time works.

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I've been serving in full time ministry for almost seven years and I still find myself surprised that the distance between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday is so very, very short. When I was a kid, six weeks was an eternity. Remember what it felt like when the first day of summer holidays or Christmas Day was six weeks away and EVERY single day was like a full week worth of time and so it took FOREVER for the celebrations to begin? Pure torture. But now it seems the six weeks of Lent fly by in the blink of an eye. Which is all to say, that I did, in fact, read my March books but the blinking of my eye did not allow for me to sit down long enough to write about them. I found a little time today, in the quiet of this Wednesday afternoon to reflect on the books I read last month. (And now it's a Tuesday in May. SIGH.)

I began March by reading A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans. You will recognize Evans name from previous books I've written about in this blog. Evans is a former evangelical Christian. She is still a Christian but no longer identifies as evangelical. She spent her twenties exploring what aspects of Christianity remained important to her and what aspects of her Christian upbringing she needed to let go of in order to live faithfully as a loving and compassionate servant of God.

In her former evangelical world, there had been much emphasis on controlling what women could and could not do as a follower of Christ. Supporting her husband by staying home and raising children was on the "Do" list. Preaching or being in church leadership was on the "Do Not Do" list. Whenever a woman moved out of her lane, so to speak, she was likely to be reminded of her role in God's world. As part of her faith journey, Evans decided to earnestly explore what the Bible (and presumably God) had to say about what it is, exactly that is expected of women and live a year following what biblical rules she could find about womanhood.

After culling the Scriptures for all references to how a woman should behave, Evans selected 12 virtues and did her best to fulfill them, one at a time, each month - following some general guidelines on how to act or not to act such as she didn't cut her hair for a year and covered her head when instructed to do so. The virtues were: Gentleness, Domesticity, Obedience, Valor, Beauty, Modesty, Purity, Fertility, Submission, Justice, Silence and Grace. Many instructions of how the biblical woman is to behave can be found Proverbs 31.

And this is my confession...I got four months into her year of biblical womanhood and became so annoyed with the whole project that I put the book into a time out. There are so many reasons to be annoyed with a religion that attempts to restrict woman that it would be impossible list them here. So I won't. I will just say, the book sits somewhere between my complete pile and my desk and every once in a while I pick it up but progress is slow. Life is too short to read books that cause existential angst.

The next book I read, however, did not cause me any angst other than to be sad that there will be no other books coming from its author, Marina Keegan. Unfortunately this author of The Opposite of Loneliness was killed in a traffic accident within her days of graduation from university. She was a talented writer and had volumes of material which her parents and former instructor curated to create this tribute to this wonderful and talented young woman. The book has a variety of fiction and non-fiction selections.

I want to lift one idea from Keegan's book. She wrote an essay for the graduation issue of the Yale Daily News. She speaks of the variety of communities that she found herself at home in while studying at Yale. She mentions that there is not an opposite word for loneliness. If there was, that is what she felt while at Yale - the opposite of being lonely. As I was sharing this essay with someone who joined the Brene Brown book study earlier this year, he told me - "I know what the opposite of loneliness is - it is belonging. Brene Brown taught us that." Lovely.

This book is definitely worth the time. If you'd like to borrow it, please just ask. You can borrow the other one too. 😉

Next on my list (For April. Cause, remember, I don't know how time works.):
Reasons to Stay Alive  by Matt Haig and a biography of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

On Being Wild

Do you remember the TV show, Gilmore Girls? Before a year and a half ago, I wouldn't say that I did. The show was on from 2000 to 2007 - the precise time I was in the midst of losing my mind trying to keep between two and four little humans alive and somewhat healthy. I had two boys, aged two and under, when the show started. There were four children (another boy and then a girl), between the ages of nine and three by the time the show ended. When I sat down to watch TV in those years, it needed to be the type of show that did not require any sort of maintenance of keeping up with story lines. Law & Order and Survivor were my kind of shows back then.

2012. Or was it 2013?

Fast forward a decade and life has gotten somewhat easier in that keeping the children alive no longer requires vigilant monitoring of their every move. Now I sit in wait, cell phone at hand, ready to help solve transportation issues, giving meal suggestions and taking part in discussions on whether or not the unnaturally bent finger requires a trip to the ER or not. And I can watch TV again. Or rather, I can partake in the joy that is known as Netflix.

I am one of those people who like to start things at the beginning. My dear spouse can just pick up watching TV shows wherever they happen to be in a series. I cannot. I need to start at the beginning. I'm like that with book series too. So, Netflix is totally my jam. I've watched more than few entire series of shows while putting in time in my sewing room. Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, Shameless, Grace & Frankie, 13 Reasons Why and, not only Gilmore Girls but also Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.

If you have watched the follow up season to the Gilmore Girls, and I am, in no way, recommending that you do (it was a disappointing reincarnation of the TV show - as I suppose most reincarnations are - and I know some of you will give me grief over this but, you have to admit, I'm not wrong), you will know that the mom, Lorelai, at one point has an existential crisis and decides that she needs to be off by herself for awhile. Her solution is to go be wild. Not wild, as in 'out of control' but be Wild, as in follow in the footsteps of Cheryl Strayed, who hiked the Pacific Coast Trail (PCT) and wrote a book about her experience.

Before I watched that episode, I had a vague memory of the movie of the same name coming out starring Reese Witherspoon but had had no interest in seeing it for some odd reason as I normally quite enjoy Reese Witherspoon's movies. A memory that stuck with me from Lorelai trying to be Wild was that an important component of the being Wild was that one had to throw their hiking boot over a cliff. Which struck me as odd. I didn't get the joke. I didn't know the inside story, which obviously was nagging at me at some subconscious level over this past year. When I sat down to select books to read for my 2018 26 books in 52 weeks challenge,  something triggered in a small recess of my brain and I included Strayed's memoir of her hiking the PCT.

Not only did I find out about the boot throwing, I found out all about it on page one. And despite having that itch immediately scratched, I couldn't put the book down. I don't normally enjoy these types of memoirs but Cheryl Strayed is a talented author who knows how to carry a narrative. The book is filled with facts about the PCT and the mountains the Trail goes up and over that I never knew I would care to know about but am now glad that I do. She shares details of her past life that are neither flattering or inspiring all the while she is managing to hike some 1100 miles with a ginormously heavy pack on her back.

The PCT

I found Cheryl's book to be quite endearing. I kinda sorta (and know that I never will) want to hike out in wilderness as she did, carrying all that I need on my back. I'm happy that she did it so I can know, in some sense, what it might be like. I understand some of Cheryl's pain of having lost a mom too soon but I don't know how to feel about the decisions she made in her early adult years. I appreciated how open she was about her fears, her struggles, her selfishness, her uncertainties, her anger. I also appreciated journeying with her as she began to heal from the inside out, as she received generosity from nearly every person she met along the PCT, as she learned more about who she is and how she wanted to be in the world once she arrived at the end of the 1100 miles.

I loved this book. If you want to borrow, just ask. What's next on my list? Something TOTALLY different...A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I kid you not.

Belonging Everywhere and Nowhere

Have you heard of Brené Brown?

Yes? Skip this paragraph.
No? Then watch here in her first Ted Talk.

Seriously.

Right now. Spend 20 minutes and get to know her.

DO IT.

Okay, good. Now you know why I like reading her books. She writes in the same way she is able to tell a story. She knows how to tell a good tale and all the while she's talking, you are learning something. At the very same time.

At Symons Valley United Church we have found a pattern of doing a book study after Christmas. Often into Lent. Folks like to be challenged a little bit but, like all of us, don't want to be burdened by texts that are dense or too academic. Last year we read Brené Brown's Daring Greatly and everyone loved it.

This year we are reading her most recent book, Braving the Wilderness. In preparation for the book study, I read the book as my 2nd book for the year - Book 2 of 26. We have read through only the first two chapters so I don't to give too much away here but I can tell you some of my favourite parts.

Braving the Wilderness is about belonging. Brown takes a quotation from Maya Angelou:

You are free only when you realize that you belong no place - you belong every place - no place at all.

and...

True belonging doesn't require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.

It seems that so much of what hurts in life is feeling that we don't belong. We don't feel accepted or included as we fully are. We don't belong in our family, in our social circles, in our work place. Much of what Brené Brown writes about is being authentic - about being fully who we are - about being the person that God intended us to be. That is where the Daring and the Braving come into action in Brown's writing.  It's takes courage, vulnerability and faith to stand up in today's world and be okay with being and saying exactly what you know to be right and true, regardless of what the group around you believes. Even if what you have to say is more about expressing doubt and asking questions.

Funnily enough, as these things happen to be now and then, the next book I picked up to ready (Book 3 of 26) was Brian McLaren's A Search for What Makes Sense: Finding Faith. McLaren's book is more for a reader who is struggling with faith - whether because they find themselves in a faith tradition that no longer makes sense to them or because they have not grown up in a faith community and are trying to understand what they are looking for.

In other words, they are seeking to belong.

I was struck how these two books meshed together. McLaren writes:

Good faith is honest. Shouldn't good faith feel free to express both doubt and confidence?

Good faith is communal. Since my individual understanding is so limited, don't I need connection with a group of trusted companions, so we can help and encourage one another in our common search for faith, God and truth? 

In other words, we naturally want to belong. We are pack animals. But belonging to a group should not cost us our ability to seek truth, express doubt, ask questions and to be fully who it is that God made us to be.

Next on my reading list... Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail by Cheryl Strayed.

Evolving in Monkey Town

Isn't January great? In the first days of the month we make New Year's resolutions. And the for the first few weeks we actually follow through with said resolutions. And when we do, we feel such a sense of accomplishment. And we try our best to not worry for the next goal cause that's for our future selves to worry about. Right? Or is that just me?

I love New Year's resolutions. In January.

February is another set of feelings. Cause. You know. Ash Wednesday needs planning. So does the AGM. And that stupid Masters thesis proposal isn't going to write itself. And there's the little trip to Ontario that I need to make. (Did I tell you that I have the privilege to be a Youth Group leader for General Council 43? Yay! But there's some traveling ahead to prepare for that.)

Anyway.

Life in ministry has a tendency to hit hard in February because Lent always (ALWAYS) seem to take ministers by surprise. It always (ALWAYS) comes a lot sooner after Christmas than you would think.

But I digress.

This year I've set my reading goal to be 26 books. They are stacked every so beautifully on one of my bookshelf. I am excited to read each one of them as I carefully selected them just last month. I love looking at books. And holding books. And choosing books. And buying books. It's the reading all of that's hard. There never seems to be enough time. I sometimes think having a chauffer would free up some valuable reading time.

Today I am happy to report in about book #1 - Faith Unraveled by Rachel Held Evans. I enjoy Rachel's writing. When I was on sabbatical I read her book, Searching for Sunday and very much enjoy it. As do lots of people on Twitter. I regularly see tweets that are thanking Rachel for her wisdom in that book. So, as I do when I like something, I get more of it. In fact, if you pay attention over the next year, you will see a few repeat authors (Hatmaker, McLaren, Barnes) - I might be able to run workshops on each of these theologians by the time I'm finished the pile. From Rachel Held Evans, I selected Faith Unraveled and A Year of Biblical Womanhood.

The long and short of Faith Unraveled is that it is a memoir about Rachel's faith journey. She grew up as a conservative, evangelical Christian in Dayton, Tennessee, which is where the Scopes Monkey Trial took place in 1925. The trial was a test of the law, at the time,which prohibited the teaching of evolution in public schools. The American Civil Liberties Union sought a teacher who wished to sue the State to oppose its anti-evolution laws. Some bright spark figured that Dayton would be put on the map if the trial took place in their courthouse. A local teacher by the name of John T. Scopes was found and the trial took place in the heat of that summer. Essentially, it was a science vs. religion spectacle. Dayton acquired the name, Monkey Town (a play on evolution's assertion that humans are just a short genetic hop from primates).

The trial was many things and both sides think they won. Scopes ended up being charged with violating the law as he admitted to teaching evolution in his classroom. Dayton ended becoming fervently religious. Conservative religious. Evangelical religious. Rachel grew up in the nineties as a believer in the black and white of God's Word as presented in the Bible. All of life could be seen through a biblical worldview and there was only one correct path - the path of her church and pastor. A critical event occurred as the US was about to invade Afghanistan in 2001 and was broadcast on TV. This event made Rachel ask questions of her faith tradition and her God. Questions that her friends, student colleagues, parents and religious leaders could not answer to her satisfaction - thus beginning the unravelling of almost she had ever believed in. And the building up again of her faith and the establishing of a firm foundation upon which she meets God and Jesus.

I very much enjoyed this book if, no other reason, than it speaks to what we, in the United Church of Canada, know to be true - doubt and questions are not denials of faith but essential components of faithful living. Here's one of my favourite lines, from chapter 19 entitled, Adaptation:

I may have met one or two people who rejected Christianity because they had difficulties with the deity of Christ, but most rejected Christianity because they thought it means becoming judgmental, narrow-minded, and unkind. People didn't argue with me about the problem of evil; they argued about why Christians aren't doing more to alleviate human suffering, support the poor, and oppose violence and war. Most weren't looking for a faith that provided all the answers; they were looking for one in which they were free to ask questions. (203)

If you'd like to borrow this book or any other one that I've written about, swing by my office one day - I'd be happy to lend it to you.

Onto book #2 - Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown - the book we are studying for our Lent Book Study. See the SVUC website for more details.

Don't Be Afraid to Fail. Be Afraid Not to Try.

Happy New Year!

I love this time of year. Not the weather so much. - 20℃ is never pleasant for a person who, as my Beloved says, is allergic to the cold. It's pretty much true--I'm allergic. I have Raynaud's disease where my fingers and toes lose circulation and become very, very, very cold when it's chilly outside. It makes being outdoors uncomfortable. Coming inside doesn't feel much better for a little while as the warming up of the fingers and toes can be quite painful. Anyway, I digress.

I love this TIME of year for a few reasons. The house gets tidy after the clutter of the Christmas decorations get put away, schedules go back to normal after a month of Adventing, Christmasing and New Year's Eveing and we get to think about New Year's resolutions.

Some people don't appreciate resolutions. Too much pressure, too much potential for failure, too much to keep up with, too much, too much. It's easy to get caught up in thinking you can change this and you can change that just like that, after a lifetime of living into the very habits you might be trying to change. Our brains can also trick us at this time of year into believing we can just add something more into our schedule that's already jam-packed full.

Over the years I've made New Year's resolutions that have failed to materialized into being. And some years I've been quite successful in tweaking something here or adding in something there. Last year I shared with all of you that I was striving, in 2017, to read a book a week. And I shared that my Beloved thought I was being slightly too ambitious. Let's be honest. He thought I was being overly ambitious. He worries how I might feel if (when) I fail to accomplish some grand plan. He frets that my spirit might get bruised or broken a bit if I fall down in trying to achieve my grand schemes. I appreciate his concern. It's kept one or two of my more wild ideas in check over the years. However, for the most part, I note his concern and carry on.

So, last year, he was pretty certain that reading 52 books during the calendar year would be impossible. I secretly agreed with him but I set the resolution anyway. And invited y'all along on the journey. As committed list-maker, I kept track of what I was reading and when I read it. I did really well for the first five months of the year. And then disaster hit. We put ourselves through a significant home renovation and the enemies of planning entered my life in a major way - stress, moving not once but twice, packing, uncertainty and did I mention stress? Never mind celebrating a high school graduation in the midst of all of it.

I got back on track during my two weeks at the lake when reading was high priority in the mornings and then when I was in Zambia - the time in the bus seemed endless some days. I took a few books with me that I could give away after I finished with them. But, upon my return from Zambia and the beginning of fall programming, I felt like life was a race against time and reading was not really a priority.

The long and short of it, I managed to read 26 books in 2017. Exactly half of my goal. And, I'm happy with that. I certainly would not have read even a fraction of that number if I had not put that goal in front of myself. These are the books I read:

1. Insurrection - Peter Rollins
2. Help, Thanks, Wow - Anne Lamott
3. A New Take on an Ancient Story - Clair Woodbury
4. Jesus for President - Shane Claiborne
5. The Girlfriends' Clergy Companion - Melissa DeRosia
6. Stitches - Anne Lamott
7. Why Christianity Must Change or Die - John Shelby Spong
8. Wings Like Eagles - Claire Woodbury
9. Standing Naked Before God - Molly Phinney Basket
10. Preaching the Big Questions - Catherine McLean
11. Rewritng: How to Do Things with Texts - John Harris
12. Bullseye - Jamie Holtman, Debbie Johnson
13. Economy of Love - Shane Claiborne
14. God & Empire - John Crossan
15. A New Life - Awakening to Your Life's Purpose - Eckhart Tolle
16. In the Beauty of the Lillies - John Updike
17. The Happiness Project - Gretchen Rubin
18. An Altar in the World - Barbara Brown Taylor
19. Transforming Congregational Culture - Anthony Robinson
20. Follow Me to Freedom - Shane Claiborne, John Perkins
21. When Spiritual But Not Religious is Not Enough - Lillian Daniel
22. Purpose Driven Church - Rick Warren
23. Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
24. With or Without God - Greta Vosper
25. The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical - Shane Claiborne
26. Theological Worlds - Paul Jones

And so, you might be wondering what resolution/goal I have set for myself this year? Well, just because I didn't read all 52 books last year doesn't mean I'm not interested in reading. So, this year, I plan on reading another 26 books. That's just over two books a month. As I compiled my 2017 book list from the books I already owned and were being neglected on my bookshelf and I didn't dare buy new books as I trying to make my way through the pile, I had most of my 2017 book allowance still left in December. Please don't talk to me about the inconsistency of buying books when I still had half of my 2017 books to read. As I explained in another blog post - I'm a bit of hoarder when it comes to books. Let's face it, there are worse addictions in this world. Anyway, I spent a fun day in December spending my 2017 book allowance and when the books arrived at the church, it was like early Christmas.

Here are the books that I have selected for 2018:

I'm nearly finished my first book. I will write about it next week.

**If you're interested - I've got Brene Brown's Braving the Wilderness in the pile. I will be leading a book study on it. The study begins February 4th. If you'd like to join in, send me an email by January 15th and I will order you a copy. Details of the book study can be found on the Symons Valley UC website.

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