A Bowl Full of Fun

My youngest was reading to me this morning from one of her favorite series (and mine too). Cynthia Rylant, who authors many books, has a series called Mr. Putter and Tabby. The illustrations are marvelous and the stories make my six year old crack up (and me too). This morning we read Mr. Putter and Tabby [...]

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How Splendid Are Your Surroundings?

What made Scrubb look so Dingy was the splendor of their surroundings.
When compared to the court in Narnia, Scrubb and Jill looked downright horrible. What do your surroundings look like? No, here’s a better question: What do you surround yourself with? Do you surround yourself with splendor? Or do you surround yourself with the ordinary?
I [...]

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The Shack: Style and Semantics

I have finished listening to The Shack. The recording included an author’s explanation of how the book came about as well as a “friendly” interview (I have also just finished listening to an “unfriendly” interview.) Young answered my concerns about the quality of writing: basically self-published.
As stated in an earlier post, I struggle to comment [...]

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Probable Impossibles

Madeleine L’Engle in Walking on Water quotes Aristotle: “That which is probable and impossible is better than that which is possible and improbable.” Fiction works this way. We buy the boy riding the dragon (an impossibility) because the author has made it a probable occurrence in his novel. However, when a normal character does something [...]

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Going Home

As a man aches for his evening meal when all day long his brace of wine-dark oxen have dragged the bolted plowshare down a fallow field–how welcome the setting sun to him, the going home to supper, yes, though his knees buckle, struggling home at last.
Odysseus longed for home. Do I? Or am I too comfortable [...]

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Entertaining Strangers

Four times now in The Odyssey, a group of people have entertained strangers without first asking who they are (twice for both Odysseus and Telemachus). What made these people so inclined to offer food and lodging to complete unknowns? Maybe the Greek culture lent itself to this type of activity. Regardless, the practice made me [...]

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The Fractal Garden

Theology aside, the concept of a fractal garden as created by Young’s Holy Spirit character in The Shack fascinates me. I have always loved mathematics. The endless complexities of this world and the amazing order that accompanies these complexities excite my inquisitive mind. Think about pi: a number that never repeats and never ends yet [...]

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The Fastest 18 I’ve Ever Played

I don’t do it often. No time. Too many competing joys, family and school and teaching. I actually can’t remember when I last did it. But with the school year approaching, I thought, “It’s now or who knows when.” So last night, I started Par for the Course by Ray Blackston. I finished it this [...]

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The Shack—so far, so bad.

I have heard much praise for The Shack. I have heard nothing about its contents, surprisingly, other than it is the “Pilgrim’s Progress for our day.” Interested, and seeing it for $5.99 on i-tunes, and having some money still on my account from a Christmas present (yes, I shop selectively), and having 25 minutes of [...]

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Offering belief in suffering

Kumalo said, 
…so in my suffering I can believe.
How? In the face of what he had suffered: a child condemned to death, a sister forsaking hope for sin, starvation among his people, how could he believe?
Kindness and love can pay for suffering.
The body of Christ rose up and held his hand, supported his frail body and [...]

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