Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Simple Church

Sunday, June 6th, 2010

It’s exactly a month since my last post. I have been doing a lot of reading and a similar amount of thinking about many things including my faith and how that is expressed in my life.

I heard a story today about a boy who struggles to read and write but really enjoys reading Bible stories. For various reasons, the boy only gets to do this when he visits his grandfather during the school holidays and for this reason he describes himself as only ‘half Christian’.

Some days, I’d say that’d be a pretty accurate label for me. I struggle with mainstream denominational church and what the Christianity ‘brand’ seems to represent. Likewise, I feel uncomfortable with the literalism and selective interpretation of much that is presented to those who attend church.

Rather than being put off by these aspects as I would in the past, I have been trying to look for ways in which I can connect with God in a way that has more meaning, less baggage and make a positive impact on others.

In reading what others have written on their own search for a more authentic church experience, I found a good many references to house churches, simple churches and their like. After a enjoyable workday lunch hour spent browsing pre-loved books in Evermore Books, I came away with a book called Simply Church. Written by Tony & Felicity Dale, the book provides a good introduction to house church movement.

Slim enough to read in one day, the book basically covers the scriptural foundations for house churches and covers the increasing number of simple church and house church networks around the world. The premise of a simple home-based church modeled on the meals and meetings of the New Testament Apostles seems more authentic than the denominational services I have been to and a more direct way to engage with God. Certainly something I shall be reading and praying on more in the weeks to come. You can read more on these types of churches at House2House and Simply Church.

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While in Evermore, I also picked up an old copy of the Good News Bible. I remembered the logo from my childhood and as I flicked through the pages I was delighted to rediscover the wonderfully evocative illustrations of Swiss artist Annie Vallotton. Since than and via the Amazon Marketplace, I have also scooped up a copy of Priority, the English translation of Valloton’s 1969 French language book, Priorité. This book is a simple retelling of Jesus’ life in sixty drawings with selected scriptures.

Dear Kristine Elizabeth Hoffman

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

Dear Kristine Elizabeth Hoffman

I love the occasional and unintended glimpses of other people’s lives that I find in the second hand books I read.  I have been idly wondering about how many degrees, in this internet-connected global village of ours, separate two complete strangers whose only connection is a paperback book.  For instance, take the book above, Anne Lamott’s Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.  It was one of three I received as a birthday gift a few weeks back, purchased by my wife in New Zealand over the internet from a secondhand bookseller in the US via the Amazon website and shipped via a friend’s address in the UK.

Why am I telling you this?  Because earlier today, halfway through chapter twelve, I came across a Delta boarding pass with your name on it. This, together with the window sticker that dropped from between the last few pages when I first opened the book a week or so ago, is the just sort of happenstance that intrigues me.  Are you a die-hard Lamott fan or a first time reader?  Are you strong in your faith or working through years of stuff like me? Do you ever wonder who else reads the books you read?

I’m no Sherlock Holmes but from the boarding pass it would seem that in late June. last year or the year before – the boarding pass is not yellowed or overly faded – you flew Delta between Salt Lake City and Atlanta.  Did you fly as a crew member on standby?  The pass is marked ‘NRSA’ which, Google tells me, stands for Non Revenue Space Available and means free seating for airline personnel and their family members. As for the ‘Montana Native’ sticker, who knows?  Maybe you’re a native Montanan flight attendant who deadheaded out of Helena down to the Atlanta hub via Utah after an early summer family reunion.

Oh, I almost forgot to ask – do you wear Vera Wang perfume?  I only ask because, when I checked the other two books, I found a ‘Bouquet’ perfume tester card wedged a third of the way through Grace (Eventually).  There again, there is every chance that book is part of an entirely different person’s story.

Blessings and happy reading!

bnug

A work in progress

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

As mentioned elsewhere, I have been reading Matthew Paul Turner’s blog and enjoying his tweets for a while but I have never got around to checking out his books. That all changed yesterday, when we went shopping for soccer kit for our resident goalkeeper and then dropped into a bookstore nearby.  There, I found the very last copy of Turner’s Churched on the shelf.

Taking this as a nudge and having read a great sample chapter online, I bought the book and returned home to enjoy an afternoon siesta with a cup of bush tea in one hand and the book in another.  The first few chapters of the book explore the impressions of a young Turner as his parents leave the Methodist church of his early years to help plant a fundamentalist Baptist church.  Whether he’s describing the pastor’s wife – a piano-playing, hymn-singing Farrah Fawcett double – or getting his first ‘Jesus’ haircut from the unbeliever Mr Harry, Turner neatly sketches the claustrophobic world of church, law and eternal damnation through the eyes of a boy looking for straight answers to his questions.

The similarity of his descriptions of early church attendance – right down to the clip-on tie and Sunday-best shoes – made me think back to my Sunday school days at the Quaker meeting for worship I attended.  I have the utmost respect for Quakers and their theology but for those with excitable butterfly minds and single-digit ages, the traditional hour-long silent meetings for worship seems like an eternity.  With a whole world of fun, adventure and Sunday morning television cartoons just beyond the walls, it was impossible for me to understand why we were all sitting in silence, looking for God and the Spirit inside each of us.

Turner’s early religious experiences and teaching left him with distinct impressions of a hellfire and brimstone God of dos and don’ts whose return was to be eagerly but fearfully anticipated.  Mine simply left me bemused and adrift, unable to join the dots between the Jesus of the Sunday school stories and the quiet inner journey of the Quakers sitting silently in meeting.

Each meeting I attended as a youngster seemed like some alternative reality where time stood still.  Not matter my good intentions at the start of meeting, all too soon I would be scuffing my sandals on the pew in front and looking around for distractions.  The slow ticking of the old wall clock, drifting dust motes in the sunlight and the radiant calm of the worshipping faces all provided momentary interest but inevitably I would end up staring at the clock, incredulous that we had only been seated for barely 10 minutes and not the 59 I had carefully judged to have passed.

This realisation would mean that there was at least another 35 minutes to go before one or more of the Friends might (though only might, mind you) feel moved by the Spirit to speak to those present about some matter of import.  Such sharing would often be concerned with issues of peace or social justice, both of which are central in the beliefs of Friends.  With some embarrassment now, I can almost see myself innocently rolling my eyes and mouthing the word ‘Bo-o-ring!’ whilst concerned Friends spoke to the acts of despots, the dispossession of indigenous peoples and any number of bloody sectarian wars.

The alternative to sitting through meeting was to trot across the small courtyard to the Sunday school class in the adjacent hall.  To the best of my recollection, these would invariably be presided over by well-meaning women in tweed suits and sensible shoes.  I can almost taste the musty tang of that hall, feel the splintery roughness of the tables and smell the industrial-grade disinfectant all over again.

The hall was so cold in winter that no amount of frantic scribbling on the colouring templates of Jesus healing the sick could make the wax crayons to give up any colour to the butcher’s paper.  During the short British summers, we’d occasionally play a game in the courtyard, doing so very quietly so as not to disturb those in meeting.  More often than not though, we’d simply sit and listen to the deadpan delivery of another parable or Bible story, read from a book as old as Gutenberg.  While the faithful listened intently, I would conduct clandestine raids into the steamy fug of the the adjoining kitchen in search of biscuits, keen to locate and consume any chocolate ones lurking amongst the plain ones on the chipped plates along the counter. Soon enough, I’d be found out, given a disappointed look and shooed back to the parting of the Red Sea or recounting of how our missionaries were doing in Africa.

That said, I am truly grateful for my Quaker upbringing and experience of meeting for they have worked on and in me for years, helping to form my values, mould my opinions and prick my conscience along the way.  Indeed, amid the flurry of the last week of the summer holidays and the frenetic back-to-school preparations of four daughters, I can at last begin to appreciate the wonder and wisdom of spending an hour in silent contemplation and communion in the company of like-minded folk.  As I have just discussed with a good friend over lunch, it often hard to see the learning close up and so it is only with the passage of time and the accumulation of experience that we begin to understand and start to develop wisdom.  I remain very much a work in progress.

Living Biblically

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

Compared to the US and the UK, books are pretty expensive in New Zealand.  This is due in part, I’m sure, to the fact that we’re a flipping long way from anywhere and, according to a lady in my favourite bookshop, the closure of the last book warehouse in NZ.  Apparently, all NZ booksellers now stock from vast book-caves somewhere in the Aussie outback.

For these reasons, I am grateful that, despite being preoccupied with moving his family of four from autumnal UK to the NZ spring, my good friend Dave, of funkypancake fame, did me a great favour by sneaking a copy of A.J. Jacobs – The Year of Living Biblically into his luggage.

I’m a couple of chapters in and it’s a great read so far.  This is mainly because – though the book is both wry and funny – Jacobs hasn’t gone for the easy/cheap laughs but instead has really tried to explore what it means to live to the letter of the Scriptures in the 21st century.

Time Out Bookstore

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

Time Out Bookstore in Auckland’s Mount Eden is everything you can ask for in a neighbourhood bookshop.  It is cosy, inviting, bursting with great books and staffed by lovely, engaging and knowledgeable folk who’ll happily offer an opinion on whatever you’re flicking through – or leave you to browse quietly.  They have fun author nights in the room upstairs and send out a really enticing snail mail newsletter periodically.

The Winter 2009 newsletter arrived today.  Glancing across the front page, I found a great typo and thought I would gently pull the leg of Wendy, Jane and the Time Out team.

For the Northern hemisphere folk scratching their heads, Normanby Road is a road with a few trendy eateries not far from the store and Normanby is a small township just north of Hawera.