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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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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Why else do we live?

I have been beyond impressed by Cry, The Beloved Country. While I enjoyed Things Fall Apart, Achebe does not write with the same passion as Paton. The richness of the plot in Cry, the language, the pace, the emotion all make this a most enjoyable summer read. At the same time, I have been listening [...]

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The power of love

I must confess that I was not looking forward to reading Cry, The Beloved Country. After reading Things Fall Apart, which I particularly enjoyed, I didn’t know if Paton’s could live up to Achebe’s. Seven chapters in, I am impressed. Paton does  great job of capturing the emotion of Kumalo’s first visit to Johannesburg. At [...]

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The Conscience in Us All: Part II

In Things Fall Apart, after Okonkwo has been banished from the tribe for seven years after inadvertently killing someone, a friend of Okonkwo’s reflects,
Why should a man suffer so grievously for an offense he had committed inadvertently? But although he thought for a long time he found no answer. He was merely led into greater complexities. He [...]

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Believing despite knowing

In The Village (a must watch for any Christian) the leaders keep the rest of the group in the dark about certain things in order to perserve their way of life. (Even though this is “Thoughts on what I am reading…,” it might be worth it at some point to discuss that movie.) No one [...]

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