Monday, September 24, 2007
Finding God at Home
I love used bookstores for the same reasons as alot of other people: the highly improbable hope that I will run across a signed, first edition of As I Lay Dying (or something similar) wedged between a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Book of Mormon.
This hasn't happened to me, at least not yet. Mostly, I scan the religion, philosophy, and psychology sections and then give half a glance at the fiction aisle on the way out the door. But every now and then I stumble upon something that meets some of the more realistic criteria for a good used-bookstore "find." In this case, it's a book that is: 1) cheap, 2) I've never heard of before, 3) looks like it could be great, and 4) actually turns out to be great once I take the plunge to buy and read it.
The recent used bookstore"find" in question is Finding God at Home: Family Life as Spiritual Discipline by Ernest Boyer, Jr. Boyer trained under Henri Nouwen and writes out of the Roman Catholic tradition. His intent is to develop a theology of family life that pays particular attention to the mundane struggles that attend marriage, child-rearing, house-keeping, living together, passing through different familial seasons of life, etc. There's alot of great wisdom here about how to seek God's face in the midst of life at home; below are a few samples.
"In addition to courage, persistence, trust and forgiveness there is a fifth element of the sacrament of the care of others: the ability to balance the tension between holding on and letting go....Caring is holding...But caring is also letting go. It is releasing those we love to go in the direction they need to go and to develop in ways that may at times be perplexing to us their husbands, wives, parents, or friends, but ways essential to their growth. The difficulty comes in finding ways to do both of these, both holding and letting go, within the same relationship...The general movement of parenthood is from holding - a holding that is almost constant in the early days - to letting go, although each stage of raising children involves a little of each....[This process of holding and letting go] involves for the child a long pattern of stepping out and returning, stepping out and returning, each time going further and further, developing more and more, always in ways that ask the parent to let go, then hold, let go, then hold - but each time to let go a bit more fully than before."
"We are reluctant to see how much God loves us not out of humility, but out of pride. Each of us secretly wants to be perfect. many of us carefully avoid looking at those aspects of ourselves that seem to us to be less than perfect. But to really know God's love, those aspects must be acknowledged simply because they too are a part of what God loves."
"Christianity is the story of something that happened in the past that points to a better future through a life with God in the present."
Another cool feature of the book is that there is a prayer at the beginning of each chapter, most of which are perfect for harried parents: "Dear God, whose name is Love, who in love and with love formed all that is, teach me to see the great worth of those small, everyday tasks involved in the care of others. Teach me to see them for what they are: re-enactments of the greatest truth there is, the truth of your unfailing care for me and for all that is."
This hasn't happened to me, at least not yet. Mostly, I scan the religion, philosophy, and psychology sections and then give half a glance at the fiction aisle on the way out the door. But every now and then I stumble upon something that meets some of the more realistic criteria for a good used-bookstore "find." In this case, it's a book that is: 1) cheap, 2) I've never heard of before, 3) looks like it could be great, and 4) actually turns out to be great once I take the plunge to buy and read it.
The recent used bookstore"find" in question is Finding God at Home: Family Life as Spiritual Discipline by Ernest Boyer, Jr. Boyer trained under Henri Nouwen and writes out of the Roman Catholic tradition. His intent is to develop a theology of family life that pays particular attention to the mundane struggles that attend marriage, child-rearing, house-keeping, living together, passing through different familial seasons of life, etc. There's alot of great wisdom here about how to seek God's face in the midst of life at home; below are a few samples.
"In addition to courage, persistence, trust and forgiveness there is a fifth element of the sacrament of the care of others: the ability to balance the tension between holding on and letting go....Caring is holding...But caring is also letting go. It is releasing those we love to go in the direction they need to go and to develop in ways that may at times be perplexing to us their husbands, wives, parents, or friends, but ways essential to their growth. The difficulty comes in finding ways to do both of these, both holding and letting go, within the same relationship...The general movement of parenthood is from holding - a holding that is almost constant in the early days - to letting go, although each stage of raising children involves a little of each....[This process of holding and letting go] involves for the child a long pattern of stepping out and returning, stepping out and returning, each time going further and further, developing more and more, always in ways that ask the parent to let go, then hold, let go, then hold - but each time to let go a bit more fully than before."
"We are reluctant to see how much God loves us not out of humility, but out of pride. Each of us secretly wants to be perfect. many of us carefully avoid looking at those aspects of ourselves that seem to us to be less than perfect. But to really know God's love, those aspects must be acknowledged simply because they too are a part of what God loves."
"Christianity is the story of something that happened in the past that points to a better future through a life with God in the present."
Another cool feature of the book is that there is a prayer at the beginning of each chapter, most of which are perfect for harried parents: "Dear God, whose name is Love, who in love and with love formed all that is, teach me to see the great worth of those small, everyday tasks involved in the care of others. Teach me to see them for what they are: re-enactments of the greatest truth there is, the truth of your unfailing care for me and for all that is."
Friday, September 14, 2007
Monday, September 3, 2007
Bird
Someone once asked me, with all seriousness, "are you a redneck?"
I suppose this post answers that question.
Isaac's first kill.
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