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Two on theology and faith

Title slide showing covers of the two books reviewed

While I don’t review all that I read, I’m way behind in writing reviews of books I planned to review. Here’s an attempt to catch up a bit on what I have been reading in the religious and theology realm.

Adam Neder, Theology as a Way of Life: On Teaching and Learning the Christian Faith 

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 158 pages.

This is a small and somewhat simple book with profound insights into the teaching profession. While Neder is a professor, much of what he says in this book can be applicable to all levels of teaching (especially teaching the Christian faith). This book grew out a lecture the author gave at a Karl Barth symposium on Barth’s Evangelical Theology. Neder shifted focus from Barth’s thoughts on writing to teaching. In addition to Barth, he draws heavily on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Soren Kierkegaard and the Scriptures. He also draws on his own experience in the classroom and acknowledges the lessons (sometimes hard lessons) he has learned.

Each chapter focuses on a different theme that together helps create a portrait of one who might teach Christian thought. The first theme is “identity.” Our identity must be bound in Christ, who reconciles us to God. Everyone, the teacher and student, must make a decision as to whether or not the accept Jesus Christ. Furthermore, the teacher needs to understand his or her inability to teach faith. That can only come from the Holy Spirit. 

The second chapter examines “knowledge.”  The author begins by noting that some of his best students of theology were not Christian. In an academic setting the teacher can only evaluate academic work. However, as the case was made in the first chapter, knowledge doesn’t save us. It’s our willingness to trust and follow Jesus. As Kierkegaard insisted, “the Christian life cannot be “reduced to thinking the right thoughts about God.” The teacher has to help the student develop his or her own thoughts about God, which is risky as the teacher cannot control the outcome. Neder also examines objections to such knowledge such as the idea that God is unknowable. While that it true we can’t know God with our own efforts, we must remember that Jesus reveals God to us.

The third area of exploration is ethos. Christian teachers need to be humble for we are witnessing to a larger truth. While Barth lays out such ideas in Evangelical Theology, Neder acknowledges that he, too, fell short. It’s easy for us to think higher of ourselves that we should. We need to be humble and to realize that we’re always teaching, not just when we are behind the podium. Can God’s truth be seen in our lives? How can we, as a teacher, remain connected to the truth? Can we become less so that someone else become greater?

Danger is the subject of the fourth chapter. Our theology takes place in an encounter with a living God, which means we’re moving out from our comfort zones and walking a precarious path.  Using the story of Nicodemus (John 3), Neder demonstrates how we can’t follow Jesus from a safe distance.  Christianity is more than knowledge and doctrine. While that might think we can maintain a safe course, faith demands otherwise.

Neder’s final chapter is titled “Conversation.” Here the conversation is between us and God (and God’s word). Barth describes this as “primary conversation.” But we also need what Barth called secondary conversation, that between the student and other students (past and present). We learn from others, not just from the living, but also from those who preceded us. That’s why we study their written records, but it’s all in service to the primary conversation. their attempts at understanding God.  Neder encourages his students to read widely and outside their tradition, to gain appreciation of and to maintain a healthy skepticism of their own traditions. Learning from a broad perspectives reminds us that in this imperfect world, we can always improve ourselves. 

Neder then goes into detail about having such conversations in the classrooms. He encourages the teacher not to answer their own questions and to engage the students to help them arrive at the answers. It is also important for the teacher to understand the student’s questions. Failure to do so will cause a student to shut down. 

There is much to commend in this book for teaching, but especially for the Christian teacher. 

Some quotes:

Grace is not opposed to working but to earning and self-reliance. (30)

Jesus wants followers, not admirers. (41)

Christians do not only receive from him (Jesus Christ), they also partner with him in the work he is doing in the world. (72)

Conversations with Jesus rarely unfold according to plan. Jesus continually shocks and astonishes people, rattles their cages, upends their expectations, eludes their traps, and zeroes in on their deepest motivations.” (96)

“Jesus is the most hazardous of all hazards.” -Barth in his Epistles to the Romans commentary (99)

“[W]e tend to talk about God as if he is not present. Few things are harder than remembering that God is alive and active in our classrooms, few things easier than teaching as if he is not.” (101)

“The pressure to sell Christianity at discount prices is intense, and Christian leaders who refuse to adjust to these conditions create very real problems for themselves.” (111-I would add, and for others.)

“Our aim is to lead students more deeply into the subject matter to which Scripture bears witness, and we cannot do that apart from the history of Christian reflection on Scripture.” (121).

“We read because we are not yet who we want to be, because our knowledge and our lives are not yet what we think they could or should be.” (128)

Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism 

(2019, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing 2022), 342 pages including notes and index.

Katherine Stewart focuses her journalistic lens into the rise of religious nationalism within the United States. Following the money along with individuals who seem ubiquitously present (but always in the background such as David Barton, Tony Perkins, Peter Wagner, and R. J. Rushdoony), she shows how the movement is more than a cultural crusade against perceived social ills such as abortion or the LBGTQ community. Instead, she suggests the movement is about power. The movement isn’t necessarily conservative (as in maintaining the status quo), but radical at its core. One of its goals is to undo the democratic processes and grab power. As one founder noted, if they could just get support of 10% of the county, they could control the change. Along with being political, the movement seeks to mobilize churches to achieve their goals of creating a society based on their vision of a biblical worldview. 

Stewart acknowledges the best resistance to the Christian Nationalism will probably come from other Christians. However, she only focuses on the movement itself. While she is honest about this from the beginning, her reporting left me feeling hopeless against such an onslaught. 

In each chapter of the book, Stewart follows a particular organization or idea within the larger movement. She begins with a gathering of religious leaders in the Carolinas at Unionville Baptist Church just before the mid-term elections in 2018. The gathering was a forum for Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council, to reach pastors to help them organize voters. While he didn’t mention the Republican party, everyone present knew he was promoting their candidates. Much of the danger of the Christian nationalist movement is they use politicians, preachers, and key moral arguments to consolidate power. 

As has many others before her have pointed out such as Kristin DeMez in Jesus and John Wayne, Protestant Churches haven’t always been against abortion. Even in the early 70s, the Southern Baptist Convention supported abortion rights. Ronald Reagan as governor signed the most liberal abortion law to date. The big issue for many pastors of large conservative churches (such as Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones) was how to maintain tax exempt status of their segregated schools. Into this discussion came Paul Weyrich. He was a former Catholic (who’d joined a Melkite Greek Catholic Church after Vatican II). Weyrich saw an opportunity to help conservative causes as they made abortion a political issue hidden within a religious framework. This decision helped the conservative movement “Get Religion.” In the 60s and 70s, the liberals appeared to have religion on their side. This was especially so during the Civil Rights movement. 

In other chapters, Stewart examines how Christian Nationalist attempt to rewrite history. Some within this movement draw deeply from historic teachings from the likes of Robert Lewis Dabney. He was a Southern theologian and an apologist for slavery before and during the Civil War. However, it’s wrong to think of the movement as only white as she explored those of other races within it. She looks at how others in the movement have developed massive data bases to help conservative pastors to get out the vote. Not surprisingly, home schooling is a big issue for many, as well as helping church sponsored schools.

Writing a few years before the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, she explores the movements attempt at remaking the nation’s courts. In addition to abortion, she also looks at how the movement, especially within Roman Catholic hospitals, who often limit medical care that’s provided. In the final chapter, she looks at the global movement and the draw to authoritarian leadership in other countries (including Russia) for those who identity with Christian Nationalism. While she shows the international reach of Christian Nationalism, I would recommend the reader check out Ann Applebaum’s The Twilight of Democracy.

We live in a fast-changing world. As a result, some of this book is out-of-date after less than five years. After all, after January 6, we have some Americans being willing to undermine democracy openly. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe vs. Wade thanks to the packing of the court with those who had that as a primary focus. And Russia has shown its hand in its invasion of Ukraine, claiming partly their goal is to save Christianity. This study provides the background for how this came about. It will be up to us to heed Stewart’s warnings. If not, the book might become prophetic. It’s my hope, by pointing out the goals of Christian Nationalists, this book can be an antidote to bringing about a world view that seems out-of-step with that rabbi from Galilee.

I recommend reading this book.  Even more than that, I encourage those who see the danger of Christian Nationalism and strive to follow Jesus to consider how we can confront this attack on American Democracy. The abortion debate is one area that I find particularly disheartening. How can we discourage and reduce abortion on demand, which I feel should be the goal, while removing it from arena of politics?  But if it has political advantages for some, I’m afraid it will continue to divide people and make our society even more unstable.  Christian Nationalists have their own world view. Christians who strive to be faithful to their Savior need to articulate a world view that’s faithful to Scripture and Jesus Christ.

This morning–the smoke from fires in Quebec are filling our skies and making the air unhealthy.
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Arriving in Virginia City, 1988

Title Slide for "Arriving in Virginia City" Photo of author in front of First Presbyterian Church and a second photo of the city taken from Flowery Mountain
Mt. Davidson from the tailing piles of the North End mines.

I pulled into Virginia City early in the afternoon. It was a Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, 1988, twenty-four hours after leaving Camp Sawtooth in Idaho. The summer had been idyllic, running a camp with plenty of time to hike in the mountains. Now I was heading again into uncharted territory.

The Drive from the Sawtooth Mountains to Virginia City

The previous afternoon, I’d driven from the camp to Elko on Highway 93. As I crossed the border, I was needing a place to relieve myself. However, I wasn’t sure about going into the casinos at Jackpot. I continued on, finally stopped in Elko, checking into a Motel 6. After diner, in the waning evening hours, I walked around the town watching trains run through and the sun set across the desert. 

Up early the next day, I grabbed breakfast at McDonalds and hit the road. I drove west on Interstate 80, which parallels the Humboldt River across northern Nevada. Stopping for gas in Winnemucca, I noticed a tire was low. I added air and continued, but with an uneasy feeling. Earlier in the summer, I had read a book about pioneers traveling across the 40-mile desert, from the Humboldt Sink to the Washoe River. This was not a place I wanted to have a flat tire. I pulled over in Lovelock and checked the tire again. It was low and leaking. I’d picked up a nail. Thankfully in the center of the tire, so it wasn’t ruined.  I found a garage who patched it in about fifteen minutes while I had lunch. Without losing much time, I was on my way. 

At Fernley, having crossed with 40-mile desert without realizing it, I left the interstate and took Alterative 95 south to Silver Springs.  There, I turned left on Highway 50, heading toward the Sierras. The country was barren and I felt isolated. Shortly before reaching Dayton, I looked up a canyon to the northwest and glimpsed the white “V” high on Mount Davidson, my destination. At Moundhouse, where at night one could see several long red neon lights advertising legal brothels, I turned north on Nevada 341. From there, it’s a steep grade up the mountain to Virginia City.

I drove through the waning town of Silver City and squeezed through Devil’s Gate. This was a crack in a ridge barely large enough for a highway. On both sides of the strip of asphalt were relics of the past. Old headframes for mines, abandon trucks, wooden shacks, and rusty hardware. In an open pit mine, I noticed the old tunnels honeycombing the exposed side of the mountain.

The next town was Gold Hill. From there, the road became extremely steep. I pushed the gas to the floor. My car creeped up the 13% grade that wound around a large open pit mind. Cresting at the Divide, the road dropped slightly. From here, it was known as “C Street, the main drag of Virginia City. After passing the old 4th Ward School, I pulled into a parking place in front of the old wooden church on the south end of town. 

Arriving in town
First Presbyterian Church in 2018

The doors were locked. I was hoping someone would be there, as volunteers tried to keep it open for tourists during the summer season. I looked carefully over the 120-year-old whitewashed building, wondering what I was getting myself into. Slowly I walked around the building. The vacant lots on each side were barren, except for a few hardy weeds attempting to defy the Nevada desert. Broken bottles, bits of rusty iron, and weathered, sun-bleached, chunks of wood, all remnants of an age past where hidden under the weeds.

Afterwards, I stood for a few minutes on the front porch, leaning on the rail, looking east, down Six Mile Canyon. It would become a familiar sight with Sugarloaf, the core of an ancient volcano rising the middle of the canyon. In the distance, a couple thousand feet lower, was an alkali desert simmering under the afternoon sun which I’d just traveled through on Highway 50.

“Well, I better get on with it,” I thought, attempting to encourage myself to walk the boardwalk to the Bucket of Blood, a saloon where I had been told to pick up the keys. The sun was warm and although the peak of the tourist season was over, there were still quite a few sightseers on C Street, vying for the slot machines that stood just inside the doors of all the establishments adjacent to the boardwalk. The noise of the electronic bandits and the smell of the sausage dogs and spilt beer overwhelmed me. I lengthened my stride, sidestepping tourists, quickly covered the three blocks.  

The “Bucket” in 2008

The Bucket, as it’s locally known, is a grand saloon. Except for slot machines, a 20th Century invention, it appeared little had changed since the last century when the mines produced broken men and millionaires. Chandeliers hung from the punched tin ceiling. The wooden bar was adorned with polished brass behind which hung a large mirror. Pictures of another era on the Comstock hung from the walls. I leaned against the bar and asked for Don McBride, the owner of the Bucket and husband of a member of the church. 

“He’s not here,” the bartender said looking at me sideways as he washed glasses.  “Are you Jeff?”  

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“He told me to give you this,” as he handed me an envelope.  I opened it. Onto the bar dropped a set of keys, one for the church, another for a house where I’d be staying, and a third for the post office box. There was a map, a church directory, and a sheet with names and phone numbers for people who might be of help. I returned to my car and drove to the house on B Street.   

Settling in
Where I lived on B Street

The little house the church rented for student pastors, my home for a year, was nothing to write home about. I’d been here in April, staying with Laura and David Stellman, the previous year’s student pastors. I’d flown out for the weekend to check out the position. The house had two small bedrooms, each barely large enough for a full-size bed, along with a living room, kitchen, and bathroom which sported an antique iron tub. None of the floors were level, but this is true for most of the buildings in Virginia City,. Mines held up with rotting timbers honeycomb the ground underneath the city. The earth constantly settles and occasionally sinkholes develop.  

I later learned the house had an interesting history, but for now it was comfortably furnished. There was a chair, couch, coffee table, and bookcase in the living room. There was also a television, but since I never signed up for cable, it remained unused. Both bedrooms had beds. I decided to live in the front bedroom, which had a single bed and enough room for a small desk and a dresser.  The bathroom was off this bedroom, and it also had a small closet. It was warm and stuffy inside. Opening the windows, the regular afternoon breezes began to blow and it was soon comfortable. 

On the Formica kitchen table was a note from the women of the church, welcoming me. They also had left a few groceries. In a box was a loaf of bread, peanut butter, jelly, cooking oil, and a few cans of soup. I looked inside the refrigerator and sure enough, there was a dozen eggs, a carton of milk, some orange juice, along with a six pack of beer and a bottle of wine. 

I walked out to my car and started shuttling the suitcases and boxes that I’d lived out of at camp that summer. When the car was empty, I drove back down to the church. There in a corner of the small narthex were four fruit boxes of books I’d shipped via mail on book rate, along with two larger boxes that I’d shipped via train. Howard, one of the church’s elders and a school principal in Reno had picked them up for me at the Reno station. I’d shipped these boxes in late May, which now seemed a lifetime ago. Curious as to what I’d packed, I hauled them into the house where I began to unpack.

The books quickly filled the shelves. The big boxes contained stuff for the kitchen: utensils, a wok, a coffee maker, all wrapped in dish and bath towels. There was also a light for my desk, a small fan, winter clothes, a couple of blankets, a two sets of sheets, and a few framed photos to make the house look like home.  

By six o’clock, everything was unpacked. I’d even hung the pictures. As I fixed a peanut butter sandwich for dinner, I noticed the house had cooled. The sheer curtains blew in the late afternoon breeze. The sun had long set behind Mount Davison which shadowed the town to the west. The evening appeared pleasant. I ate out on the front steps. I’d been in town nearly four hours and had yet talked to anyone except the bartender. Eating my sandwich and swishing it down with a bottle of beer, I read The Peace Pilgrim.

About halfway through my meal, a man who was obviously drunk and carrying a tutu, stopped by to introduce himself. Virgil Bucchianeri said he was the district attorney. I wasn’t sure whether to believe this man holding a lacy tutu, but he was friendly and wanted to welcome me to the town. He knew I was to be the pastor at the Presbyterian Church. “I’m Catholic,” he said, “but we all get along here.” He had to run, saying he had a rehearsal of a mountain man ballet at the Piper Opera House, which was just down the street beyond the courthouse. Well, I thought to myself, if I was to wear a tutu, I’d probably be drunk, too. I finished my sandwich and picked up my book and continued to read.

Meeting Victor
Victor

A little later, another guy walked over. Victor introduced himself and said he had been attending church since moving to Virginia City from Reno a few months earlier. He invited me to go with him down to the Union Brewery. I put my book up and dropped my plate into the sink. We then walked to the bar on the north end of C Street. I learned that Victor was a relatively new attorney in Reno. Although older than me, he had left behind an academic career for law school. He had been in practice for a little over a year, choosing Nevada because it was a state without a law school. He hoped meant there would be less competition. 

A few minutes later we arrived at the Union Brewery. The bar was housed in an old storefront building along C Street. It was long and narrow, rather dark, with wooden floors and plastered walls filled with photographs, bumper stickers. An artificial tree dangled from the punched tin ceiling, decorated with bars that patrons had tossed up onto the branches. The bar was decidedly local, with even a sign behind the cash register that read, “Have you been rude to a tourist today?” 

The Union Brewery

We entered and took our places on stools in front of the bar. The bartender brought Victor a non-alcoholic imported beer that they kept on stock for him. Victor introduced me to Julie, telling her that I was the new Presbyterian preacher. She gave me a quizzical look and asked him if I was one of his jokes. Then she asked me what I’d have. When I asked what was on tap, I learned that they made their own beer. This was long before the brewpub concept that taken off. The only homebrew beer I’d had up to this point had been bad, but I decided to try it. She nodded, twisted around, filled up a glass and plopped it in front of me. It was dark with a foamy head.

One sip, and I fell in love with the beer as I’d already fallen for the ballerina-like bartender, with her golden curves and beautiful smile. Julie wore tight fitting jeans and a half-opened shirt. In the low light she seemed angelic, dancing around, keeping everyone glass full, laughing at the jokes, and smiling at the compliments. But up close, the wrinkles around her eyes betrayed her carefree ways. 

I later learned she was married to Rick, the bar owner, who made the beer in the basement. I’d have to keep my admiration to myself. As for the beer, I would later learn it was like being in a relationship with someone suffering with bipolar tendencies. Some days are great, others less so as the quality of the beer varied, depending on Rick’s temperament and sobriety. Word would get around town to avoid the latest batch and I would switch to Sierra Nevada or Anchor Steam for a week or two. 

We didn’t stay very long in the bar that night. We both nursed down one drink as we got to know each other, then headed back to our places on B Street. Victor had to be in the officer early the next morning and I was exhausted from traveling and unpacking. We said our goodbyes as Victor climbed the steps up to his apartment across from the courthouse. I walked south the half block to my new home where I fell into bed.

The Next Morning

I don’t remember anything else until early the next morning when light flooded the room. Sitting on the eastern flank of Mount Davidson, Virginia City catches the first rays of the sun and they all seemed to gather in my room that morning. Having spent the summer in a narrow north-south running canyon surrounded by tall mountains, I wasn’t used to seeing the sun until late morning. Getting up, I went for a walk. It was time to check out my new home.  

Other memoir pieces from this time in my life

Driving West in ’88

Matt, Virginia City 1988

Doug and Elvira: A Pastoral Tale

Christmas Eve 1988

Easter Sunrise Services (a part of this article recalls Easter Sunrise Service in Virginia City in 1989)

The Revivals of A. B. Earle (an academic paper published in American Baptist Historical Society Quarterly, part of his revivals were in Virginia City in 1867)

Looking at Virginia City from Flowery Graveyard (Southeast of the town)
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RIP Timothy Keller

Photo of Timothy Keller and six of his books

I wasn’t going to post this week. I’ve been busy. A contractor is preparing to add a large addition to our house and I’ve been trying to get the garden in, and I’ve done volunteer work, and I have all kind of other excuses. Then, today, I learned of the death of Timothy Keller. After a long battle with pancreatic cancer, our last enemy death finally claimed him this morning. In recent days, knowing this time was short, Keller (and his son) sent out tweets telling of his struggles and his hope to soon be with his Savior.

I first became familiar with the ministry of Timothy Keller while on a month Sabbatical for Preachers interested in how literature can inform our preaching led by Neil Plantinga at Calvin Theological Seminary in the summer of 2003. In discussing Franz Kafka’s writings, he played a sermon that was in a serious Keller preached on the hopeless many feel in today’s world. In these sermons, in addition to scripture, Keller depended upon Kafka’s The Trial. I was impressed and had never imagined using Kafka in the pulpit.

While I never met Keller, I heard him speak once. Even though we are from different Presbyterian denominations, I once worshipped at the church he founded, Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City. But it was summer, and he wasn’t preaching. I’ve read six of his books. In addition to the two below, which I first reviewed in another blog, I have read and have on my shelves The Reason for God, The Meaning of Marriage, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just, and Centered Church: Doing Balanced Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City. I may not have always agreed with him, but I learned a lot from him. His arguments were always compiling and his gracefulness came through in his writing as well as in his speaking.

May Timothy Keller rest in peace.

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters

(New York: Dutton, 2009), 210 pages

Idolatry is not just a failure to obey God, it is a setting of the whole heart on something beside God. (171)

Idolatry is prevalent in our world, our communities, our churches, and our individual lives. As Keller points out over and over, idols are not necessarily bad things. In fact, they are seldom bad. They are generally good things (family, sex, money, success, and even religion), but when we look to them to “satisfy our deepest needs and hopes,” they fail us. They become a counterfeit god. (xvii, 103). I found this to be a powerful and challenging book. It was published following the 2008 financial melt-down, written by a pastor whose church on Manhattan draws many of the investment bankers that were at the forefront of the crisis.

Using Biblical stories as illustrations, Keller attempts to expose the idolatry of our lives. For idolatry of the family, he draws on the story of Abraham and how the old man pinned his hope for a legacy on Isaac, essentially making his son into an idol. For sex, he explores the story of Jacob’s courtship with Rachel and Leah. For money and greed, he looks at the call of Zacchaeus. For success, he looks at Naaman, the leper, who question Elijah’s method of healing. For success, he looks at Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of clay feet. His examination of how “correct religion” can become an idol leads him into the story of Jonah. And finally, he looks at how we need to replace our idols with God by exploring Jacob’s wrestling.

There are two levels to our idolatry according to Keller. We all have surface idols that mask our deeper idols. These surface idols are mostly good things, but they become idols because we place our ultimate trust in them as we strive to satisfy our deeper longings for power, approval, comfort or control. (64) We can fight against the surface idols, but new ones will pop up unless we address our deeper needs, which can only be handled by replacing such idols with a total trust in God.

Keller confronts our worship of success. He even challenges how some place total trust in “the free market.” “The gods of moralistic religion,” he proposes,” favors the successful.” It could be argued that such folks are attempting to earn their salvation. But the God of the Bible comes down to earth to accomplish our salvation and give us grace. (44) Later in the book he writes that the “Biblical story of salvation assaults our worship of success at every point.” (94) He challenges Adam Smith’s theory of capitalism for “deifying” the invisible hand of the market which, “when given free reign, automatically drives behavior toward that which is most beneficial for society, apart from any God or moral code.” He ponders, in light of the financial crisis, if the same dissatisfaction that occurred with socialism a generation earlier might also occur with capitalism. (105-106)

Keller also challenges our political and philosophical ideals, especially those that we place above our faith in God. Straddling the political fence and refusing to place himself on the right or left, as a Republican or Democrat, he observes that a fallout of us making idols out of our philosophy/politics may be the reason why when on group loses and election there is often an extreme reaction.

“When either party wins an election, a certain percentage of the losing side talks openly about leaving the country. They become agitated and fearful for the future. They have put the kind of hope in their political leaders that once was reserved for God and the work of the gospel. When their political leaders are out of power, they experience a death. They believe that if their polices and people are not in power, everything will fall apart. They refuse to admit how much agreement they actually have with the other party, and instead focus on the points of disagreement. The points of contention overshadow everything else, and a poisonous environment is created. (99)

The author closes with an Epilogue where he discusses the discerning and replacing our idols. To discern our idols, Keller suggests we contemplate where our imagination goes when we’re daydreaming, where we spend our money, or where we really place our hope and salvation instead of where we profess to place it, or where we find our uncontrolled emotions unleashed. (167-9) To handle our idols, we have to do more than repent, they have to be replaced with God. I found this last part of the book to be the weakest, with just a few pages of suggestions, drawing heavily from the opening of Colossians 3. He calls for us to rejoice and repent together and to practice the spiritual disciplines as a way to invite God to replace our idolatrous desires. His final comment is an admission that this is not a onetime program, but a lifelong quest for as soon as we think we’re got our idols removed, we’ll discover deeper places within our psyche to clean out.

This book has given me much to think about. We can all benefit from what he says about the difficult to discern our own greed (52) and on how we worship success and our political ideals. Only one did I get excited about a “theological error,” and I feel pretty certain it was more from carelessness in language than in what Keller actually believes. On page 162, Keller speaks of when our “Lord appeared as a man” on Calvary, which sounds to me a lot like the Docetism heresy. Docetism held that Jesus’ humanity was an illusion. However, Keller concludes the sentence saying that Jesus “because truly weak to save us,” which sounds as if Jesus’ humanity wasn’t just an illusion. 

I recommend this book and am grateful to Mr. Keller and Dutton Publishing for providing extensive notes and a detailed bibliograhy. 

An Essay and Review of The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith 

(New York: Dutton, 2008), 139 pages.

There are two kinds of sinners, as Timothy Keller explores in this book. One kind of sinner is rather obvious. They live only for themselves, breaking God’s laws and perhaps even the laws of the land. Such sinners are represented by the younger son in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son, who after wishing his father’s death so he can inherit his portion of the estate, is given his inheritance and runs off to a foreign country.

We have a love/hate relationship with the younger boy. In God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, James Weldon Johnson captures the flavor of American-American preachers early in the 20th Century. Many of these preachers could not read and write, but the way they told stories were poetic. In a sermon on the Prodigal Son, the preacher paints a vivid picture of the young wayward son with his daddy’s inheritance burning a hole in his pocket…


And the young man went with his new-found friend,
And brought himself some brand new clothes,
And he spent his days in the drinking dens,
Swallowing the fires of hell.
And he spent his nights in the gambling dens,
Throwing dice with the devil for his soul.
And he met up with the women of Babylon.
Oh, the women of Babylon!
Dressed in yellow and purple and scarlet,
Loaded with rings and earrings and bracelets,
Their lips like a honeycomb dripping with honey,
Perfumed and sweet-smelling like a jasmine flower;
And the jasmine smell of the Babylon women
Got in his nostril and went to his head,
And he wasted his substance in riotous living,
In the evening, in the black and dark of night,
With the sweet-sinning women of Babylon.

Why is it that we are fascinated with the younger son? Certainly we’re glad that he’s redeemable, but we also relish in the visions of his sinful past. If truth be told, we’re a little jealous of his freedom. Over time, the parable has even been named for him. He’s the prodigal, the one who lavishly spends his inheritance. And we forget about that this is a parable of two sons.

Timothy Keller reminds over and over again that there are two ways to be separated from God. Yes, we can be like the younger son and live wildly. This is the popular view of a sinner and many of us have been down that road. But we can also be the dutiful son and do what’s expected of us, but deep down despise the father for whom we work. Sometimes even free-spirited younger sons can become zealous older brothers. The sins of the older son are not so evident. Such sins live in the heart where they fester and boil and eventually boil over in anger and rage. Keller makes the point that churches are filled with “older sons,” those who look down on their younger brother’s sinful ways. But these “older sons” don’t enjoy the father’s company any more than the “younger sons” who want to strike out for the territories, sowing their oats along the way. Older sons are those who give religion a bad name and make the church seem harsh and judgmental. Because of their hard hearts, they don’t get to enjoy the banquet the father throws for the return of the younger son. Instead, they sulk in anger, showing the condition of their hearts.

Prodigal means reckless extravagant, having spent everything. Keller suggests that the true prodigal in the story is the Father in the story, who represents God. God goes to great distances to restore the lost son, that even though the son has already cost him a fortune, he spends it again to reclaim the boy. Redemption is not cheap, as the older boy discovers, for he feels the father is stealing from what belongs to him in order to redeem the younger boy. He’s not gratiful at all. Keller is writing, not to call the wayward younger son home, but to remind those who have never left, the older brother, not to be so self-righteous and to look down on others. This book calls those in the church to task, asking that we not be so judgmental. It’s also a book that confirms one of the main critiques made against the church, that it is a place of hypocrites. Certainly, if our hearts are like the older brother, such a critique is justified. We should take the critique as a warning for in the story, it is the younger son, not the older boy, that experiences salvation.

This is a good, easy to read, book. It can easily be read in a sitting. I recommend it.

Peaceful waters: The Thornapple River, May 2013
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Great Grandma McKenzie’s Death and the purpose of a funeral

Cover slide for Great Grandma and the purpose of a funeral

A decade ago, I read Thomas Long and Thomas Lynch’s The Good Funeral: Death, Grief, and the Community of Care. I’d taken a of study leave to read and was staying at my grandma’s house outside of Pinehurst. While there, I did what I have always done when here in Moore County, attend church at Culdee.  Afterwards, my daughter and I spent some time walking around the cemetery. Some of the tombstones brought back memories. At this time, I could count at being on being there for at least seven funerals. 

Since then, I can add two more, a grandmother and an aunt (of which I officiated as the church was without a pastor at the time). There are also those whom I never knew who are buried there, such as my great-great grandparents and an aunt that died from leukemia when she was three. The cemetery held other memories. As a young teenager, I recalled helping my grandmother clean up the cemetery. 

My first memory of the cemetery was from when I was eight years old. We left Moore County when I was six and was living in Petersburg, Virginia at the time. When the call of death came, we headed home… When I die, having lived all over this nation, I have often imagined my cremains coming home to rest on this sandy ridge between the Little River and Nick’s Creek, while awaiting the resurrection.

Memories of my first funeral home visit
The Frye/Puckett Funeral Home, 2016

My brother, sister and I stood in front of the casket holding the body of my great-grandma, Callie McKenzie. Behind us stood our mom, hovering over like an angel as she wrapped the three of us in her arms. We gazed at the body which everyone said looked so much like her. It didn’t. Bodies never look life-like, and great-grandma’s body was no different. Mom pointed to her hands. Wrinkled, they were covered with brown liver spots. Mom reminded us of all the strawberries she’d picked, the tomatoes she’d raised, the apples she’d peeled, and the corn she’d shucked. 

When I was younger, we lived next door and sometimes on Sunday afternoon, after church, we’d gather with our extended family in her backyard, under the pecan trees. The boundaries of her lawn were marked by the back porch, a dirt road over beyond the well, a corncrib in the back, and a smokehouse and woodpile on the far side, just in front of the canebrake. Tables were set out and we’d have lunch, followed by a slice of pie that she’d baked Saturday evening in her wood burning range. She had a gas range but preferred the wood burning one. “We’ll never taste another of those pies,” Mom sadly reminded us.  

Inside the funeral home, 2016

After a few minutes, Mom shuffled us out on the porch of the funeral home in Carthage, into the warm humid air of a July evening, telling us to behave as she went back in with the adults. Much later, we drove to my Dad’s parent’s home, where we stayed the night. 

My grandmother was gone at the time of her mother’s death

It was unnervingly quiet at my grandparent’s home on Juniper Lake Road. No one was home. There were no ice cream and Pepsi floats before bed, as was my granddaddy’s habit. My grandparents and my uncle, Larry, who was just a teenager, were in Florida on vacation and unaware of our presence at their house. Nor did my grandmother know her mother had died.

In this day before cell phones and computers, it was nearly impossible to find someone on short notice.  My dad called the highway patrols in Florida and the states in between with a description of their car, in the hopes they could get a message to my grandma. In the heat of July and the tobacco harvest beginning, my great granddaddy decided it was best to go ahead with the funeral on the third day. 

My grandparents arrived home a day later. No one was sure when they would be back, and we were visiting with my other grandparents. They pulled back around the house and neighbors, who had been on the lookout, didn’t see them arrive. My grandmother came into her house and saw the newspaper with the obituary open on the dining room table. Well into her well into her nineties, my grandmother spoke of how upsetting it was not to be present, not to be able to see her mother before her body was lowered into the dirt at Culdee’s cemetery.   

Great Grandma McKenzie’s death

My great grandma was in her 70s, which now doesn’t seem so old. She was out in the fields, by her son’s pond, picking strawberries, or so I’d remembered. But that must not be right. The harvest of strawberries in this part of the country occurs long before the heat of July. Maybe it was blackberries or some vegetable that she and my great granddaddy were gathering when she had a stroke. Granddaddy, who was five years older, ran back home to call for help. But it was too late.  

Her funeral

We lived in Virginia then. My Dad loaded up the car and we drove south, in time to make the visitation at the Frye Funeral Home in Carthage. The next day, I attended the first of many funerals at Culdee. We sat up front with the family, a couple rows behind from my great granddaddy. He sat on the first row, in a bit of shock. The casket, now closed, was up front, just below the pulpit. After the service, three men on each side carried the box containing the lifeless body of one who had dedicated a lifetime to her family and church out to the adjacent cemetery. There, Mr. Fitch, the preacher, quoted a few final verses of scripture, reminding us of our hope in the resurrection. Then they lowered the casket into sandy soil watered with tears. I’m sure we had a big dinner afterwards, but I don’t remember it. My main memories nearly sixty years later are of my great-grandma’s hands, the dinner in the back lawn, and how happy she was to see us whenever we walked through the woods from our house to hers when we lived next door.  

The purpose of the funeral

Long and Lynch, in The Good Funeral, reminds us that taking care of the dead is instilled in our humanity.  We have to deal with the body whether it is to be buried, burned or disposed at sea. We also must deal with our own grief, for the loss affects not just the deceased and those close (their spouse or children), but the whole community.  So the community comes together to remember, to take care of the body in an honorable way, and to offer up the life that is no more to God. We honor the dead for to do anything else would strike a blow at our own humanity.

Similar memoir pieces from this side of my family

A poem written by a distant relative titled “Out at Aunt Callie’s Place“. His aunt was my great grandmother McKenzie.

A memoir piece about her son, my great uncle Dunk.

From left: My great grandma McKenzie, my father, my uncle Larry, me in the hands of my great grandpa Mckenzie, and my grandmother. Photo probably taken in late 1957 or early 1958
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Eddie Larson: another good shepherd

title slide of Eddie Larson in front of his cabin on Cedar Mountain

Last Sunday, I preached on the 23rd Psalm. Today, I thought I would share the story of another shepherd, a man I knew when I lived in Utah.

Eddie Larson at a cabin on Cedar Mountain
Eddie O. Larson (late 1990s)

“How are we today,” Eddie asked with a big grin. 

I always found him cheerful even though he’d known his share of heartache. His wife, Ned, the love of his life, had died of cancer in 1990, a few years before I met him. In his living room was a photograph of a large aspen tree. When the tree was small, Eddie had carved a heart and added his name along with the names of his wife and daughter. Carving on aspens was common among sheepherders. Eddie had forgotten about this tree, but as it grew so did the carving and one day a hunter came upon it. He photographed the tree, framed it, and presented it to Eddie as thanks for allowing him to hunt on his land. Eddie was pleased.

Eddie also loved his daughter. He doted on her and made sure she was well cared for. She was a few years older than me and mentally challenged. Although I never asked, I couldn’t help but wonder if his wife’s cancer and his daughter’s limited mental capacity had anything to do with those blinding predawn sunrises from the west Eddie and his wife experienced back in the early 50s when the herd was on the winter range in Nevada. Above ground nuclear testing was common in that decade as Eddie started out in the sheep business. Although the government said it was safe and there was nothing to worry about from the white ash that sometimes fell afterwards, we now know otherwise. 

Eddie’s early life
The old Community Presbyterian Church
1927-1997

Eddie Oscar Larson was born in Southern Utah to Swedish sheepherders. His father, Oskan Ludig Larsson changed his name to Oscar Larson. He and his wife, Alma, had only one son rather late in life. Oscar was in his mid-50s and his wife in her forties when Eddie was born.

They were gentiles in a land in which most people followed the Mormon religion. There were three Swedish sheepherder families, along with a few government and railroad workers who made up the Presbyterian Church in Cedar City in the 1920s. The other two families were the Lindells, who sold out and moved in the 1950s, and the Lundgens, who are still in the area. I recently wrote about Roy Lundgen and his wife in this blog.

Eddie was first local resident to be baptized in the new church which was built in 1927, just a few years before his birth. The first baptism was for a child of the pastors, but they soon moved on.  While often shunned in this religiously dominated world, his father was successful. They never lived extravagantly, but Eddie was able to go away to school. He first attended a Presbyterian boarding high school, Wasatch Academy, in Mount Pleasant, Utah. From there, he headed to Utah State in Logan, but had a hard time finding a place to stay as he was a gentile. If my memory is right, Eddie graduated from Westminster College in Salt Lake City. While he was in college, his father died. 

Eddie had set out to be a coach but decided to follow his father’s footsteps and began to build a herd of sheep. While he never had the size of a herd as his father, he was very successful and limited the size to better manage his land. Eddie would run his herd, with the help of a hired hand, for most of adult life. Right before I left Cedar City and maybe five years before he died, Eddie finally sold his sheep. By this point, he was having trouble with his eyes. About a year before he died, he was moved into a nursing home. Age and illness had robbed this man of the things he enjoyed, running up and down the mountain in all kinds of weather and basking in the beauty of God’s creation. 

A Proud Sheepherder

Eddie always proudly proclaimed to everyone that he was a sheepherder, even though for him it was business. For most of his time as a sheepherder, he hired another herder to stay with the sheep. This man lived in a sheep wagon and generally liked being alone. Occasionally his herder would come to town for supplies and drink, and after a few days of the latter, go back up on the mountain or out in the Nevada desert, where he’d dry out while tending and protecting the sheep.

Eddie made almost daily trips to check on his herder and the herd, bringing in groceries and feed for the horses. He’d help haul water for the sheep. Eddie kept around 1600 ewes in his herd. When that many animals are away from a watering hole, a lot of water had to be hauled. He had an old oil truck that allowed him to carry several thousand gallons of water. Such a herd also required many rams, along with horses and dogs to help with the work. 

At night, Eddie did the books and dealt with government leases. Although Eddie was one of the largest landowners around, he still leased land for grazing, especially for winter pasture in eastern Nevada. The annual livestock banquet in Cedar City often honored Eddie. There, this humble man seemed larger-than-life. People knew he worked hard, and it paid off. Not only did he have a successful operation, he own a huge parcel of land up on the mountain, some in Nevada including a four acre spring that was the envy of Las Vegas, and a lot of commercial real estate in Cedar City. 

The Seasons according to a sheepherder

Eddie lived by the rotation of the earth. In the summer, the ewes and lambs would feast on the grass in the high mountain plateaus. In late summer or early fall, he culled the lambs from the ewes and trucked them to market. It was always a guess as to how long to wait. The longer the lambs ate the mountain grass, the heavier they were and the more profit they’d bring. However, there was always the risk of early snows trapping the herd and then Eddie would have to haul in feed. This would eat up any profit he might have made. 

Some years were harder than others. There was the year of the fire. With much of the grass on his range burned, the lambs had to be sold off early, when they were a good 20 pounds light. On another occasion, he told me about an early snow. The lambs had already been sold, but the ewes remained on the mountain. His truck was stuck in the deep snow. It took him a day to walk out. Hhis herder stayed with the herd which was nearly immobilized by deep snow. Getting back to town, he hired a bulldozer to come and clear a path so the sheep could make it down the mountain. 

In the fall, as the aspen turn bright yellow, he’d ride a horse, trailing the sheep down the mountain and around the south end of town, using a 100-year-old livestock trail. As the days shortened, he and his hired herder would move the sheep from one alfalfa field to another, where the sheep would eat the remains left from the harvest as they moved toward their winter pasture in Nevada.

By December, the sheep roamed around the deserts of eastern Nevada, between Caliente and Pioche, where they ate sage and what grass remained from the summer. If there was snow on the ground, it was easy work. The sheep could also eat snow for moisture. But if there was no snow, Eddie and his herder had have to drive the old tank trunk to the warm springs at Panaca or another spring on the west side of his property, where they would fill it up and haul the water back to the sheep.

At the end of winter, Eddie’s sheep got to ride in trucks back livestock trailers as they headed east to the lambing barns near Kanarraville. They first sheared the sheep. Usually by men from Australia and New Zealand sheared the herds in the American West from late February through April. These crews would then returned home, shearing sheep Down Under in their spring which is our fall. Lambing always came after shearing. A sheared ewe had less problems giving birth. For a few weeks, Eddie would hire a host of people to help him by serving as mid-wives to the ewes. He was always in church on Sundays, except for this time of the year in which Easter often fell. During lambing, he lived by the lambing sheds. 

Finally, as the weather warmed and the snows retreated on the mountain, they’d move the herd up to higher elevations, where the cycle would repeat itself.

My experience with Eddie 

Part of the reason I felt called to Community Presbyterian Church in 1993 was the congregation’s vision of expanding and building a new church building. Eddie, the first local child baptized in the old church, volunteered to help raise the money for the new complex! He shared the vision for the church to grow and to serve the community he loved and helped us achieve it. We moved into a church complex in 1997. Just before I left Cedar City, in January 2024, Eddie donated mountain land to the congregation for use as a camp and perhaps a future conference center. 

I am thankful for the few times I took Eddie up on his invitations to take a day off and ride with him. We’d head out early. Sometimes we stop for breakfast or coffee. In his truck, he’d have some groceries and a few tools to repair fences or gates, maybe a salt block or two. Depending on where the herd was located, we’d drive an hour or two, all the while Eddie told stories about his dad and about the sheep business and about how lazy the cattlemen could be.

There is little love between sheepherders and cattlemen, a feud that goes back into the 19th Century. Part of the anger between the two groups is that sheep can eat grass down to the dirt and if the cattle come in after the sheep, they are unable to graze. Another source of conflict came, according to Eddie, from the sheepherders who work harder, but also tend to make a lot more money than those who tend cattle. However, after World War II, many sheepherders sold their lambs for cattle. 

When we were on the range, lunch was always at the sheepherder’s wagon. In the summer, we’d sit around under cottonwood trees. In winter, we’d all crowd inside the wagon, to get out of the cold and wind. The smells were enchanting. Pinion burned in the stove as coffee perked. Mutton was always served. Some days we’d eat it with potatoes and carrots, other days we’d have it in a sandwich, the bread slathered with mayonnaise and cheese. We’d wash it all down with coffee.

Some afternoons we’d scout out the next spot for the camp. Others, we’d take the tank truck out to the spring for water. As we drove around, Eddie would talk about the land. He showed me where he worked to stop erosion and to restore the grass that use to be more abundant. Over-herding animals in the first half of the 20th Century had taken its toll. When Eddie got into the business, he decided to run half as many sheep on the land as his dad and the previous tenants. His decision was slowly paying dividends and he was proud of his work and of his land. After he’d finished with the chores for the day, as the sun dropped in the sky, we’d head back toward town.

Eddie’s death

“When I was in my 20s and just starting out, I was told by another herder that sheepherding was a young man’s business,” Eddie confided in me one day. “Now I believe him.” Eddie died in 2008 at the age of 79. He was finally able to relax and let the Good Shepherd take over.

Sheep forging in an aspen grove on Cedar Mountain, 2008
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Review of Martin Clark’s “The Substitution Order” and other books

Author Clark title cover with his books

Years ago, I read several books by Martin Clark and reviewed them in an old blog. Clark, a retired judge, just down the mountain from me in Stuart, Virginia. I meet him in person about a year ago. I’ve finally have read and now reviewed his most recent book. Much of his recent book takes place around where I live and serve in ministry.

A note about my reading: We’re 1/3 of the way through 2023. When I reviewed my readings from 2020, I noted that I needed to read more fiction and books by women authors. So far, I have exceed my 2022 totals for both categories.

Martin Clark, The Substitution Order

book cover for The Substitution Order

 

(2019, New York Vintage Books, 2020), 338 pages.

A substitution order is a legal term for when an attorney turns over a case to another attorney and a judge has to sign off on the exchange. This is just one of a string of events Protagonist Kevin Moore secretly arranges to obtain revenge on those who had scammed and helped ruin his life even more than he had already done. On his own, attorney Kevin Moore quickly developed a cocaine habit after trying it at a law conference. The urge to get high led to his quick downfall, ending in an arrest, the loss of his law license, and his divorce. While he confesses his mistake, he didn’t need someone trying to scam him from legal malpractice. But that happened. 

With his life in ruins, Moore lives in a cousin’s house in Meadows of Dan, Virginia. Disbarred, he leaves his legal career and now spreads mayonnaise on sandwiches at the SUBstitution, a Subway knock-off in Stuart, Virginia. Substitution orders and orders at SUBstitution, Clark is a master at double-entendres.  While working at the restaurant, Moore saves a puppy from a dumpster. He names the dog Nelson, and he becomes a part of Moore’s life.  A stranger offers him an opportunity to benefit on a scam. Moore who (except for three months) appears to have lived the life of a Sunday School superintendent, declines. The stranger who offers Moore the chance also threatens him if he doesn’t participate with them. 

It appears Moore’s life couldn’t get worse, but it does. A crooked probation officer plants dirty urine in his drug test as well as a gun and bags of drugs in his car. Moore finds himself in real trouble. 

In the middle of his problems, Moore has a stroke. Thankfully, a farmer who was renting farmland from Moore’s cousin, happened to be driving by and see’s Moore collapse. As a member of the local rescue squad and fire department, he rushes in. Seeing the obvious symptoms, he takes Moore in his truck down the mountain to the hospital. Moore slowly gets better and falls for a home health nurse. 

While he is getting better, he must deal with a legal malpractice scam. His insurance company is willing to settle, but Moore has an idea of what’s happening. To everyone else, Moore’s theory seems farfetched, and he must take things in his own hands. But everyone is skeptical. 

It looks like Moore is going to attempt to run from the law. But there are some twists in the plot. Despite a somewhat happy ending, Moore spends time behind bar. He also would prefer everything would not have happened and that he would have never tried cocaine. 

I enjoyed this book and surprised by the ending. My copy of the book came from a gift without an expectation of a review.

Martin Clark, The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living

Book cover for "The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living"

( )

This is one crazy book. My life has been crazy for the past few weeks and it has been a pleasure to occasionally retreat into Evers Wheeling’s world. Wheeling, a young district court judge in Norton, North Carolina is bored and ready for adventure. It arrives one day when the beautiful Ruth Esther English, one of the top car sales associates in the Southeast, seeks his help with her brother’s trial. She must get her brother Artis out of jail to help her recover money and a letter left by her father. Wheeling refuses to do anything illegal to help Artis, but when his case comes up, the police have screwed up the evidence so that he has no choice but to free him.

Soon everyone, including Evan’s brother Pascal, are off on a trip to recover the hidden money in Salt Lake City. Pascal, like Evers, had inherited a small fortune from their parents. Unlike Evers, Pascal lived as the Prodigal (except there was no father to come home to), and after blowing much of his inheritance, spends his days living in a double wide, smoking pot. Evers also has a fondness for the weed and seems to get most of his caloric intact in the form of distilled spirits.

When I reviewed Clark’s other novel, Plain Heathen Mischief, I noted that it had more twist and turns than Lombard Street, San Francisco. The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living has more twist and turns than the highway out of Owen’s Valley and into Yosemite via Tioga Pass.

There are many characters and more than a few deaths and a lot of “who-done-it” questions. Those who die include Evers’ non-live-in wife (she refused to live in Norton). After Evers discovers her in bed with a “cow farmer,” they are locked in a divorce battle. Although her death seemed to be a suicide, it was also suspicious. At first, Evers seems a likely suspect, but then Pascal confesses although he later recants. Due to the many problems with his confession, he is offered a plea bargain that nets him only a couple of months in jail.

Of course, there’s more to the story but to tell it all would be to ruin the story. Read it and laugh. And don’t get too hung up on all the characters, because some just disappear without explanation and not all questions that are raised by the story get answered. The book may not be neat and tidy in that way, but such is life in a double-wide inhabited by a bunch of lazy pot smokers.

There are also many characters in the book. Paulette is a sharp dressed African American attorney from Charleston, West Virginia. Paulette represents Ruth Ester and later defends Pascal. Ruth Esther’s brother Artis is short and African American and obviously not blood related to his stately “white” sister. There are also boozing doctor and a handful of good ole boy cops. And then there are some mysteriously white tears. A hint of mysticism is found in the pages of the novel and at one point, I wondered if I was reading a legal thriller or fantasy. The mix-mash of characters create lots of humorous moments—such as when Judge Wheeling does a double take when he’s introduced to Artis, Ruth Esther’s brother, realizing there is no way they’re real siblings.

There are a few things in this book that I will have to blog about later. The first is the town of Climax, NC (yes, there is a town and when I was a high school debater, we often drove through it going to tournaments in the High Point, Greensboro, and Winston Salem area).

Next is William Jennings Bryan. The letter that Ruth Esther wanted was written by Bryan to a “teenage” lover of his, a letter which is real would have tarnished Bryan’s Puritan image. When I was in college, I did a paper on Bryan and discovered that I wasn’t at all interested in the Scopes Monkey Trial (for which he is remembered) but as him being a populist (probably in reality a socialist) candidate for President in 1896. He carried much of the nation. Although many in the religious right revere Bryan for being the prosecutor in the Scopes Trial, they would be horrified to realize that his political philosophy wasn’t anywhere near theirs.

The final thing I should blog about sometime is Salt Lake City. I’ve spent a lot of time in that city when I lived in Utah. Two corrections that I might suggest to Clark, you don’t need a cab to get from the Hilton to Temple Square (if I remember correctly, the Hilton is only two blocks west). Secondly, Mormons don’t’ wear crosses.

Martin Clark, Plain Heathen Mischief

Book cover for Plain Heathen Mischief

 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2004), 398 pages. Reviewed in 2007


The Reverend Joel Clark has lost everything. The pastor of Roanoke’s First Baptist Church pleads guilty to having sex with Christy, a 17-year-old parishioner. He’s sent to jail for six months. When released, his wife serves him with divorce papers. He’s also issued a lawsuit from Christy. She hopes to receive five million for her emotional damages. With his world crumbling, he left with only one loyal friend, Edmond, who picks him up when he’s released and takes him to his sister’s house in Missoula, Montana.

On the way, they stop to see Sa’ad X Sa’ad, Edmond’s Las Vegas lawyer friend (Las Vegas, Edmond assures Joel, is just a little detour on the way from Virginia to Montana). Both guys are flim-flam men. They offer Joel a stake in an insurance scam. The disgraced preacher at first rejects the temptation, but when he’s unable to secure a job and he finds himself with a crook for a probation officer, he accepts the offer to make some quick cash so that he might help his sister and his former church (Good motives, bad ideas). As soon as he agrees to participate in the scam, Joel’s luck changes and he lands two jobs, one as a dishwasher and the other as a weekend fishing guide on Montana’s rivers.

Plain Heathen Mischief has more twist and turns than Lombard Street in San Francisco. Every time I thought I had the plot figured out, Clark threw another twist. This book was anything but predictable; making it both enjoyable to read while keeping me from doing other things because I was unable to put it down. I will not spoil the ending of the book by giving additional details of the plot except to say that Joel’s interpretation of “having sex” is a lot broader than our former President’s interpretation.

Through the misfortunes of Joel, many which he brings upon himself, Martin Clark explores ethics and morality. By seemingly resigning himself to the notion that he must do something, and the end justifies the means, Joel finds himself deeper and deeper in trouble. Although he preached grace, Joel appears to have little of it for himself. He seems to think it’s up to him to keep his former congregation and his sister afloat. Such a burden almost drowns him. The book also demonstrates how wrong we can often be about other people and their motives. Although Joel is an educated man with a master’s degree, he is naïve, which provides many comic scenes throughout the book.

I wonder about Martin Clark positioning Joel as a Baptist minister. In many ways, he seems Baptist in name only. I don’t know too many Baptist ministers (or any or ministers for that matter) who keeps Aquinas’ Summa on the nightstand. Joel also reads Tillich, Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr and Barth. Although Joel doesn’t drink, he doesn’t have a problem being with those who do, as we learn when he enjoys a night in Vegas, accompanied by Edmond and Sa’ad and three beautiful women.

My favorite characters in the book are Sophie (his sister) and Dixon (his boss at the outfitting service). Like Joel, Sophie’s life crumbled when her well-off doctor husband left her and took off for France in the hopes to make it as an artist. Although she has problems with organized religion, she comes off as a good person who refuses to cut corners or to do anything that’s morally questionable. Likewise, Dixon is a person who tries to do right. I love his comparing churchgoing to the blues.

Churchgoin’ to me is a lot like blues music. Everybody always talks it up, says great things about it, and you know its supposed to boost your soul, but when you actually do it, when you go sit in a smoky club for two hours hearing some old brother with a bum leg an a pair of Ray-Bands play the same slow, self-indulgent, strung-out three notes and squeeze his eyes shut, you start thinking, man, his crap ain’t so hot. Truth is, you’d rather be down at the Holiday Inn lounge tossin’ back dollar shooters, pawing the strange women and dancing to disco… (page 263)

My only complaint is that the book is a bit long. The story could be tightened up a bit, which I think might make the book funnier. However, I’m really shouldn’t complain. Not only did I enjoyed the book, I didn’t want it to end. I’m looking forward to reading Clark’s other book, The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living. Martin Clark is a circuit court judge who lives in Stuart, Virginia. 

Martin Clark, The Legal Limit 

Book cover of "The Legal Limit"

(New York: Alfred Knopf, 2008), 356 pages

Mason Hunt, the Commonwealth Attorney, has come a long way from his horrific childhood with an abusive father. Respected in the community, he’s married to a devoted and sexy wife. They have a beautiful daughter and live on a gentleman’s farm. He also has a dark secret, one that can destroy him. And then, fate turns against him. His wife is killed in a tragic car accident and his convict brother, with whom he shared the secret, decides he’s going to use the secret to get himself out of jail. Life unravels.

Gates Hunt, Mason’s older brother, took the blunt of his father’s blows, often protecting his younger sibling. Gates was a promising football player, but couldn’t hold it together and as a young adult, slipped into the world of drugs and crime. Mason graduates from college and goes on to law school. Home one weekend, Mason and Gates are riding together when they have a run-in with Wayne Thompson, Gates’ girlfriend’s ex. They were on a remote road, no one was around. Threatened, Gates pulled out a pistol, shoots and kills Wayne. The two of them flee. Mason creates alibis, which they rehearse over and over. He also takes his brother’s pistol and disposes of it. The crime goes unsolved.

Twenty years later, Mason has come back to his hometown as the prosecutor. His brother, having shunned a plea bargain and demanded a jury trial for a drug bust, is serving a long sentence in the state penitentiary. As a single parent after his wife’s death, Mason finds himself struggling to raise a teenage daughter. He also finds himself being wooed into supporting a business opportunity for the country, an opportunity which promises short-term jobs and is funded with money from the state’s tobacco settlement. Then, to get out of prison early, his brother fingers him in the unsolved murder of Wayne Thompson.

I won’t spoil the ending, but it suffices to say that Mason’s troubles are never truly over. The book demonstrates how secrets come back and haunt us. We also see howitzers are nearly unredeemable. Finally, we see how we get caught in our lies. Except for his youthful mistake, helping his brother beat a murder rap, Mason is a good man. In fact, his honesty and integrity (in all but this one area of his life) causes his downfall (he wasn’t about to let an innocent man take the fall for his brother’s crime).

This book raises many questions for the reader to ponder. What role does fate play? Why was Gates the older brother? Why does one’s wife die in an accident? It also raises questions about the evil intentions of some people (Gates, prosecutors, those in law enforcement, and those involved in schemes to spend tobacco money on a questionable development which only promise that they’ll be financially rewarded). Another question is about loyalty to family (Mason to Gates, Mason’s mother relationship to Gates, Mason to Curtis, his colleague who also have secrets, and Mason to his daughter). And finally, as the reader I pondered the question of justice. Was justice done in the case? Not really. We’re reminded of the Thompson family and their questions. A better question might be, “Could justice be done in this case?”

I enjoyed this book. The Legal Limit is not as funny as Clark’s other two novels, but in many ways, this is a more serious and tightly constructed work. I’m still pondering the ending of the book. Although I think I understand what Clark is driving at, I also feel that the ending is the weakest link in Clark’s cleverly told story. 

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Three Reviews: History and Theology

Photos of three books reviewed in this post

Bill Bryson, One Summer: America 1927 

(Random House Audio, 2013) 17 hours and 3 minutes.

book cover of One Summer, America 1927

I can’t say I have given much thought of what happened in the summer of 1927, but Bryson is able to make the year come alive. It was a time when America was on top of the world in most areas except for aviation. Partly due to the Great War and the invocations made before our entrance into the war, Europe held the lead. By 1927, commercial passenger flights were flown between London and Paris. While few American cities had airports, most cities in Europe did. Against this background was the “race” to fly non-stop from the United States to Paris. Most people thought larger planes with a crew to handle the flying and the navigation were required. Many of the top contenders were Europeans. Then Charles Lindberg comes on the scene, flying solo in plane without even a front window. Lindberg had barnstormed and flew across country for the postal service. He would surprise the world as he flew across the Atlantic and landed in Paris.  Afterwards, New York City gave Lindberg the largest ticker tape parade seen up to this point in history. He would tour the country receiving parade after parade. 

Other things also happened in America in 1927. This included Babe Ruth hitting a season homerun record that stood until the early 1960s.  It was also a great year for another support, boxing. 

In the political world, President Calvin Coolidge, not known for many words, made a sparse announcement. He was on vacation in South Dakota, where he informed gathered reporters that he would not seek his party’s nomination for the Presidency in 1928. Also in South Dakota, workers started carving on Mt. Rushmore. Others feared archaists and the summer would include the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, two suspected archaists. America feared communists and radicals led to restricted immigration. Others took an interest in eugenics, a pseud-science that sought to create a better humanity by discouraging births of those supposedly of those of an inferior race.  The Klux Ku Klan also enjoyed a national revival with their anti-black, Jewish, and Catholic views.

Ford Motor Company shut down its production of the Model T during the summer as it retooled for the Model A. Henry Ford, himself, who had shown his antisemitic strips in his newspapers, would cease making such statements. In Hollywood, motion pictures began to shift toward the “talkies.” A private meeting between the top bankers from the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany were held. Their decisions would guide the world toward the Great Depression. 

Bryson ties together these stories and more in a readable and sometimes even in a humorous manner. At the conclusion of the book, he looks ahead to the troubles of the Great Depression and the rise of fascism which led to Lindberg’s downfall from the public eye. America’s beloved aviator had befriended many in Nazi Germany and encouraged the United States to remain neutral as war clouds began to gather. 

As I have enjoyed all the books I’ve read by Byson (especially A Walk in the Woods and Thunderbolt Kid, this book was a delight. I recommend it as a look back at our country almost a century ago.  

Fleming Rutledge, The Undoing of Death: Sermons for Holy Week and Easter 

(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 360 pages plus copies of historical artwork depicting Jesus’ passion and resurrection appearances and notes.

Book cover of "The Undoing of Death"

These 42 sermons begin on Palm Sunday and continue through Easter Week, with most falling on Good Friday. The cross is central to Rutledge’s theology. She develops her theology of God reaching out to humanity through the cross. She defends the cross from distractors who either ignore or downplay its role in salvation history. Most of these sermons were not preached on Sunday morning. Rutledge often humorously builds up her audience by congratulating them on their faithfulness for showing up at worship. 

These sermons are faithful to scripture. Rutledge not only builds her message from the text supplied. She also draws on other passages from the Bible to support her message. Her sermons reflect on issues going on in the larger world. Sometimes, she mocks the Jesus Seminar and others who like to “publish” scandalous ideas about the faith around Holy Week. She also makes it clear in many sermons that all of us are responsible for Jesus’ death, that it is not something to be pinned on the Jews. 

This is a classic series of sermons and I’ll return to this resource during holy week. While I have known of Rutledge’s work and have read her articles and sermons in magazines, this is only the second book of hers that I read. During the last Season of Advent I read her book, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ. Like her Advent book, I recommend this collection of sermons. 

Caroline Grego, Hurricane Jim Crow: How the Great Sea Island Storm of 1893 Shaped the Lowcountry South

Read by Diane Blue (University of North Carolina Press, Tantor Audio, 2022), 12 hours and 35 minutes.

Book cover of Hurricane Jim Crow

A late August 1893, a hurricane struck Hilton Head and the South Carolina lowcountry. The death toll included an untold number of African Americans who lived and worked in the region. The storm brought environmental destruction. Most of the crops died on the vine while salt water inundated many of the wells. Thousands of homes were unlivable, and the main industry (phosphate mining and fertilizer production) was ruined. The storm along with the rise of white supremacy would greatly change the region forever. 

The 1893 storm occurred in the aftermath of the Reconstruction and as Jim Crow laws were enacted in the South. This created even more hardship for the former slaves in the low country. Grego explores the development of the region with its crops of sea island cotton and rice cultivation. Because the climate and disease, most of the whites who controlled the region abandon it during the summer months. The slaves in the low country developed a certain autonomy. Early in the Civil War, the Union captured parts of the low country. This allowed them places to refuel and supply ships setting up the blockade of the southern ports. And while the slaves were not immediately freed, this allowed them to live without the oppressive oversight of their owners. After the war, former slaves were able to own much of the land. Beaufort even had a black sheriff during this era. Most of the African Americans owned small farms that raised some cash crop along with subsistence food. 

The storm was so destructive that it set in force a series of events that decreased the African American hold on the region. The Red Cross responded to the storm. They found themselves torn between those wanting white control of the region and the needs of the former slaves. Some white organizations within the state responded to a mistaken belief the Red Cross gave preferential treatment to blacks by creating a white-only relief organization. Grego explains how the white controlled governments surrounding the low country along with the state worked to encourage black migration. Theysought to bring this region into the Jim Crow era. Such events continued even into recent history as the region was “rediscovered” and many of the islands are converted to gated communities. 

Of course, it was not only the storm that helped create an unfavorable environment that forced many of the blacks within the low country to move or to lose their land. Grego acknowledges the role of technology and cheaper production methods. Rice in the low country died out. This was because of fewer workers and cheaper methods of growing it in the Mississippi delta. The same is true with cotton, which also suffered from the boll weevil. 

At the end of the book, Grego speaks of the “rediscovery” of the region. As it becomes a more popular destination, property prices and taxes go up, which continue to force out those whose families have lived on this land for centuries. 

MY interest in the book and recommendations

I have been interested in this book since I first learned of it. From 2013 to 2020, I lived on Skidaway Island, in the low country of Georgia. This island was settled by former slaves after the Civil War. They abandoned the island after a later storm in the 1890s, I was curious as to the parallels. Grego mentions the other storms that destroyed communities along the coast and set up new communities on the mainland like “Pinpoint.” The residents of Pinpoint were known for seafood, especially oysters. Sadly, they lost their income in the 1960s when a causeway was built between the mainland and Skidaway Island. The causeway changed the salinity of the water and much of the area no longer produced oysters. 

Grego mentions white “Red Shirts” who terrorized the black population in the later part of the 19th Century. I am curious about this group. A similar group also known as Red Shirts existed at the time in Wilmington North Carolina. In 1898, they brought terror on the black population of Wilmington and led a violent coup against the local government. 

I wish I had read instead of listened to this book. The book is academic. While the woman who reads the book is clear and easy to understand, I found it choppy. By increasing the speed, I was able to mitigate this to some extent. As a warning, I am sure that many people might consider this book within the genre of “Critical Race Theory.”  However, it’s history and we need to deal with it. I am glad to have read learned more about a region I called home for over six years.  

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Saving Damsels: a memoir

12 years earlier, at the beach (and obviously going to church) with my grandparents and my uncle. I must have been about one and have no memory of this trip..

From the time I was twelve till I started working at the age of sixteen, I spent at least two weeks every summer with my grandparents. These lazy summer days were spent doing odd chores around their house and yard, racing bicycles with the kids next door, and occasional going with my grandmother to visit relatives, dead and alive. Some were living and others were dead. She felt I should know where all my ancestors were buried. 

Every afternoon, my granddad would come home a little after five. Getting out of his truck, he’d yell, “Ready to go fishing?” Grandma had dinner ready. As soon as we finished, the two of us could take off to a lake, a beaver dam, or some farm pond where we’d fish till either a cloud blew up or the light had drained from the sky. Then we’d head home. Out back, under the floodlights by the porch, we’d clean our catch. Often, the next day, my grandma would fry up a mess of them for our dinner. 

It was wonderful to fish with my granddad, but he wasn’t much of a talker when fishing. Instead, he allowed me to have a bit of independence and freedom, as he’d go one direction and send me off the other. I valued the freedom, but now wonder if the real reason was my granddad’s belief that fish could hear you talking. To fish, one needed to be quiet.  

On this one evening, we fished in a rather large pond downhill from a house that belonged to people my granddaddy knew. They were not home. We drove around the house and my granddad parked his truck by the dam. With his fly rod, which is now one of my prize possessions, he fished one side of the lake. I crossed the dam and fished the other. I used a spinning rod and a Rebel, a top floating lure that when pulled fast would dive to about a foot under the surface and wiggle in a way that sometimes drove bass crazy. 

After a few minutes of casting and coming up without a strike, I heard the muffled cry of a woman calling for help. I looked, but didn’t see anyone. The voice seemed to come from behind my grandfather, yet he didn’t seem fazed. When the cry came again, I shouted at my grandfather.  He waved, said it was okay and that I was disturbing the fish. Well, it certainly didn’t sound okay and if someone was in peril, that should take precedence over fishing. When the cry came a third time, I knew someone was in trouble.

I dropped my rod. Checking to make sure my Kabar knife was safely stowed in its sheath on my belt, as I ran as fast as I could around the dam and up the hill. I kept yelling for my grandfather to join me., I couldn’t believe his hearing had gotten so bad, yet granddad didn’t budge. Instead, he yelled, “Come back here.” But I kept running. In my mind I had an image of saving some beautiful damsel in distress. I topped the hill, near the house, and started looking around frantically. 

There was no woman in peril. Instead, there was peacock. Its feathers were displayed like the NBC logo. I didn’t think much about it, except that it was strange. Peacocks are not native to the Sandhills of North Carolina. After a few minutes of looking around and seeing nothing, I walked back down the hill toward my granddad. About halfway down, the cry came again. I turned and saw the peacock up on top of the hill emitting that high pitched cry and heard my granddad laugh behind me. Feeling a bit foolish, I went back to my fishing. 

It’d have to wait for another day before I could make my debut as the new Lone Ranger.

Click here for another memoir piece of fishing with my grandfather.

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HopeWord’s Writer’s Conference 2023

Katherine Paterson speaking at the HopeWords Writer's Conference

I enjoyed HopeWords Writer’s Conference so much last year, that I attended it again last week. It’s amazing the conference can draw such talent and so many attendees to Bluefield, West Virginia. The city which grew up around a railroad hub to serve the coal mines in Southern West Virginia isn’t an easy place to access. There are few flights to the city, there is no longer passenger train service, and even the main interstate bypassed the city by nearly a dozen miles to the north. But this year, the conference sold out of in-person tickets and brought in an incredible line up of authors. 

A tour of Bluefield and the surrounding area

Bramwell

This year they offered something new, a tour of the Bluefield area before the conference began, which took us around the city and to Bramwell, a city at the end of the Pocahontas coalfields. In our bus tour we saw some incredible scenery as well as examples of poverty of the region. After driving around Bluefield, our first stop was Bramwell, a town located west of the city.  In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Bramwell was where the bigwigs who managed the Pocahontas mines lived and many of their mansions have been restored. During this time, the miners lived in shacks in small communities close to the mines. Today, Bramwell is famous for those wanting to four-wheel through mud. While touring this town, we were treated with the best milkshake in West Virginia at a restaurant in the old pharmacy. Our tour also took us east of Bluefield, up the winding highway 58, to overlook the city. This was the way you traveled through the mountains before the interstate with its mile-long tunnels was completed forty years ago.

Highway 52 overlook of Bluefield

The Conference 

Miroslav Volf

The conference began with the keynote speaker, Miroslav Volf, a professor of theology at Yale.  I reviewed his book,  A Public Faith earlier this year. Volf spoke with sadness on how the university has given up on helping students understand how to have a meaningful life. Instead, starting in the 70s, the shift has been more on the means to a good life with the emphasis on students to “follow their dreams.” As he points out, when we follow our dreams, we pursue our means. The means then become our goals. A second challenge is that the old order in western philosophy has been replaced by a more pluralistic idea. In response to this shift, while acknowledging that we live in a pluralistic world, Volf began at Yale a program to have students explore what a good life looks like in different traditions around the world. As each tradition have claims on the truth, his goal was to have students seriously consider each claim by asking thoughtful questions about the good life and to whom we are responsible. 

The question about to whom we are responsible led Volf into a discussion of his own faith in Jesus Christ and on how the myth that we are individuals disturb our world. We are not just individuals, but individuals who depend on one another and share a common vision. With Christians, this includes not just the living but also the dead (the community of saints). 

Volf left us with two questions that disciples (and all people) need to ask themselves. 

1. How do we want to make the world better, and 

2. To whom are we responsible.

Volf on Saturday afternoon

Saturday, after lunch, Volf reappeared on stage with a discussion led by HopeWords’ founder, Travis Lowe.  Here are some highlights:

  • “The story of the Bible is that God decided to make home among us.”
  • “I never write with the idea of audience in mind, instead when I write, I wrestle with ideas I’m interested in.”
  • “The chief virtue of a theologian is to be humble. We want to say something true about God.”
  • “We hope in God which means the future we hope for might be different than what we now think.”
  • Quoting N. T. Wright: “The future is not for us to be raptured, but for the earth to be restored.”

After Volf left the stage on Friday evening, we were treated with a concert by a bluegrass band, “Chosen Road.” We were also served delicious deserts made by members of local churches.

Saturday morning’s marathon session

Saturday morning was a marathon session with four back-to-back speakers. 

Ann Voskamp

First up was Ann Voskamp. I have read some of her online writings but while I was interested in hearing what she had to say, her presence wasn’t what drew me to the conference. However, her talk, for me, was the highlight of the two day event. Voskamp began with the Biblical concept of the scribe (Judges 5:14, Ezra 7:6, Matthew 8:19, etc). She encouraged us to be scribes and to tell our stories within God’s larger story. Drawing on quotes from Martin Luther (“Satan hates the use of pens.”), T. S. Eliot, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and others, she offered inspiration for us to explore the gritty parts of our lives. “Jesus’ choses the small and the slow,” she reminds us, “so he can be glorified.”

She shared three ways to handle the pen:

  • Immerse yourself in the Word (read, understand, & live the Word).
  • Realize the power in a parable.
  • Trust that something happens beneath our pens.

And four ideas of stories

  • What is this book/story a theology of (suffering, creativity, community, etc).  Dig into the truth
  • What is this book a psychology of (trauma, grief, love, etc). How do we understand, what are our felt needs.
  • What is this book a story of? Story is what moves us through a book.
  • What is this book an activity of? What is we want people to do after reading our books/stories?

Closing quote: “Shame dies when stories are told in sacred places.” 

Esau McCaulley

Next on the agenda was Esau McCaulley. Having read his book  Reading While Black several years ago, I was glad when it was announced that he would be one of the presenters. McCaulley, an African American evangelical scholar who studied under N. T. Wright, has found himself in a unique position as he critiques both the white evangelical tradition as progressive Christians.

McCaulley began his presentation by proclaiming that he never dreamed of becoming a writer. His plan, from his childhood, was to be a preacher within the black community. But after writing a few opinion columns, he found the Washington Post and New York Times reaching out to him. Pointing out that most writers speak of the need to find their voice, McCaulley said that for him it was finding his place. Coming from the black church in northern Alabama, going to an evangelical college in the Midwest, then doing doctoral work in Scotland allowed him to learn about place. 

He spoke about culture which relates to our places in the world. Culture involves both God’s glory and human failure. 

Drawing on 1 John “I am writing to make your joy complete” McCaulley outlined three insights into his writing:

  1. It must come from me.
  2. It must involve culture making (adding beauty and tearing down that which is wrong).
  3. It must involve courage and joy.
Hannah Anderson

Last year, Hannah Anderson told her story, which is mostly outlined in her book, Humble Roots, which I read after last year’s conference. This year, she used her 45 minutes as an introduction for our last speaker, Katherine Paterson, to whom she insisted on referring to as “Mrs. Paterson.” 

Anderson pointed out the changes that have come to writing as we live in a social media age. The goal of a writer is not to reveal everything, she suggests. Instead, we are to create characters or to reveal parts of our selves. There are stories we may not want to tell and that’s okay. She points to. Mrs. Paterson as a writer who tells “true” stories through fiction and reminded us of the truth of the Velveteen Rabbit, that real is what happens to you. She ended with a quote from Paterson’s first book, a primer on the Christian faith that was published in 1964, in which she reminds us that “grace tells you that you are not a commodity,” but that God wants to make you real.   

In a way, Anderson provided an introduction for the President of Bluefield College to come out and present Katherine Paterson an honorary doctorate. 

Katherine Paterson

Paterson began with a quip. “One of the advantages of being old is that you can’t hear praise. Because if you did, you might believe it.” I looked her up on my phone and learned that she is 90 years old!  Paterson used the theme of the spies being sent into the promised land and suggested that writers need to be like Joshua and Caleb, who offer hope. She also pointed out that Jesus was a storyteller. Quoting Barbara Brown Taylor, she reminds us that stories need “pockets of silence,” or spaces where we can lay down our defenses and not be demanded for a decision. Instead, story is a place where transformation begins. Jesus does this by letting us decide who to identify within the parables. 

Katherine Paterson speaking in the beautiful Granda Theater
Bridge to Terabithia

Years ago, I read Paterson’s book, Bridge to Terabithia, but I didn’t know the backstory of this book, which is her most famous one and won the Newberry Prize. She told about how, when her son was eight, his best friend was a neighbor girl who was struck by lightning while at the beach. Her son felt he had done something bad for her to have died. She struggled with this because she didn’t have a satisfactory answer why the world is a “dark land where bad things happen to good people.” Because we deal with a God of justice and mercy, we must struggle with such situations. Otherwise, we could just pass it off as random event. She wrote Bridgefor herself, as she tried to understand both the girl’s death and her son’s reaction to it.  She also noted how there were those who criticized the book and acknowledged that any story that has power also has the power to offend. Then she offered several examples of people who had read the book as a child and reached out to her later in their lives, telling her how the book helped them through dark periods. 

Drawing on an analogy of a waiting room for a children’s ICU, she suggested there are two kinds of parents who sit there. One is the Psalm 23 parents who see themselves and their child walking with God through the darkness. The other parents are the Psalm 22 ones who cry out to God in anger. 

Quotes: 

“We who work with words are loaded with dynamite, but can bring hope and healing to the world. 

The most important thing is for the word to become flesh. 

Afternoon session

The afternoon session included a discussion with Volf (see above) and a presentation by S. D. Smith and Lewis Brodgan. Because of another commitment, I had to leave before Brogdan spoke, but this year I came away with one of his books which I look forward to read. Last year I found him to be an engaging and thoughtful speaker.

S. D. Smith

Smith, along with Anderson and Lewis, is one of the original founders of HopeWords. He is a fantasy author, which is a genre I seldom read. As a speaker, he’s funny and began by making fun of himself and his lack of awards. His message warned the church that we often push the “creative types” into the enemy’s camp, but that we need such people in the church to help us make sense of the world. 

While he doesn’t have an MFA, he used the letters in a different way to illustrate his discussion on writing.

M is for modesty (we write from our own center)

F is for fidelity (we are to be faithful to Christ and his church).
“If our writing is not doxological, it will be diabolical.” 

A is for audaciously (we are to be bold). 

Smith also reminded us that in the big picture, we are between redemption and restoration (R&R, but it doesn’t feel so relaxing and restful).  We are to live “until our death scene.” 

HopeWords 2024

Part of next year’s lineup has already been set. The keynote speaker will be Daniel Nayeri, who is an Iranian-American Christian writer and author of Everything Sad is Untrue.  Here is the link: https://madetoflourish.regfox.com/hopewords-2024 I hope I can attend again, but I am also hoping to once again attend the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. God willing, I plan to attend one of these two events.

The train tracks cut Bluefield into two halves

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Dear Park Ranger: Essays on Manhood, Restlessness, and the Geography of Hope

Review of Dear Park Ranger: Essays on Manhood, Restlessness, and the Geography of Hope By Jeff Darren Muse
Advance Publication Edition
This book will be released on May 6 and is available for preorder.

Cover of the book
Book cover

Through a series of essays, Muse sews together a patchwork memoir of his life in a quilt-like fashion. Some of these stories are humorous and while others are quite sad. Together, they provide important details of Muse’s life as a middle-aged man dealing with life changes along with environmental and racial issues facing our country. Muse looks at how his family background, his love of nature, the authors he’s read, and being a white male influences his views and creates the man he is today. Many of us reading these essays will find a helpful voice as we struggle through similar issues. 

Born in Indiana, Muse is a Hoosier. His father was an alcoholic from rural Kentucky. In several essays, Muse explores his Appalachia roots, from his early travels to his grandparents with his father, to his return to Kentucky as an adult, long after his father’s death. Muse’s parents split when he was a child. He was mostly raised by his mother who struggled raising two boys. Muse found a place for himself playing football.

In college he met a student from Astoria, Oregon. Visiting her home, they took a car trip down the Pacific coast which changed his life. While the relationship didn’t work out, Muse fell in love with the West. Later, he fell in love with Paula, a ranger for the National Park Service. They married. Parts of this book feels like a love-letter to her. However, Muse is careful to protect her. While he mentions the harassment she experienced in the Park Service and the lawsuits, he doesn’t go into detail. Instead, he lets his readers know that’s her story to share. 

Muse has worked in a variety of positions as he followed his wife’s career around the country. His employment mostly involves outdoor education and park interpretation. Starting in the Pacific Northwest, they have also served at Pipe Spring National Monument (where she worked as Muse took seasonal positions at nearby Zion National Park). They have lived in the Upper Midwest, where he worked on a boat taking tourist up the headwaters of the Mississippi. When the National Park assigned her to Charleston, SC, Muse took a job at a local plantation teaching about slavery. This position allows Muse to explore his white privilege and deal with the issue of race. Shocking, the fire towers in the American West, where one seasonal employee lived, are approximately the same size as slave cabins in which whole families lives in the American South. At the end of the essays, Muse and Paula leave the South and return to the West. 

Along his travels, Muse studied creative writing. One of his professors in an MFA program taught “you can only come from one place.” Muse uses this concept to dig into his Hoosier background, but I found myself thinking these combined essays refute this idea. While he’s from Indiana, each new place and experience adds to his experience and combined creates him into the person he has become. While a Hoosier, I think he’s also a Westerner, drawing from the rainy Pacific Northwest and the arid southern deserts. 

As I read these stories, I found myself pondering my own experiences and decisions.  Surprisingly, there are many similarities, such as how a futile attempt to woo woman brought us both into an appreciation of the American West. Muse often quotes authors who have influenced his thinking, and I have read most of their works. Finally, Muse attempts to understand issues of race while working in South Carolina. Growing up Southern, I have been very conscious of race and its role in my life going back to at least the third grade. 

Dear Park Ranger contains eighteen well-crafted essays. I recommend the book, especially for those who enjoy the wilderness or learning how a person’s experiences inform their lives. I was provided an advance review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

The author’s mini biography:

Photo of Jeff Darren Muse
Jeff Darren Muse

From crawdad creeks and public wildlands to college classrooms and prison gardens, Jeff Darren Muse has worked throughout the United States as an environmental educator, historical interpreter, and park ranger. As a writer, he is inspired by Brian Doyle’s dictum: “The essay is a jackdaw, a magpie, a raven. It picks up everything and uses it.” He has published in Ascent, The Common, High Country News, and River Teeth, among others. Today, while working seasonally as a wilderness ranger in northern New Mexico, Muse lives with his wife where the aspen-studded Sangre de Cristo Mountains tumble into Santa Fe.