A Variegated Summer Reading List

Aug 19

Aug 19 A Variegated Summer Reading List

Reflection Roundup reports from conversations couched in relationships. Here, readers will find boots-on-the-ground and “live from the field” items important to Christian leaders. As always, listening broadly draws together differing perspectives from which we can learn but with which we may not concur.. This month’s post draws from multiple streams of ministry, at the levels of both local and missional congregations, each in a direction toward which the prophetic message flows contemporarily.

There is something immensely satisfying about completely filling a journal. Journals are often quite personal; they are treasures marking a point in time and contained within pages. It was in one such journal that I recently discovered notes taken during a lecture delivered by a favorite visiting author two years ago. Apparently the journal—now full of two years worth of lists— was all I had on me at the time, scavenged from a pocket on an evening where it felt uncouth to take notes on a digital device.

Books like this are old friends. Reading and re-reading them becomes like a conversation between friends, reader and page. The following is a curated list of “old friend” books, some relatively new, in hopes that readers might discover in this list something right for this time.

Here is Part One of “what’s on my stack” this summer.

A Whole Life in Twelve Movies: A Cinematic Journey to a Deeper Spirituality
In this volume, Kathleen Norris and Gareth Higgins each offer their take on a curated selection of movies, serving their audience as co-viewers and co-readers through a journey of spiritual growth and development. Norris poignantly reminds audiences not to lean too heavily on analysis but to think about “how (a movie is) about what it’s about.”[1] Higgins and Norris generously offer more than twelve screenplay titles, a few just to get used to applying some principal questions a person might consider when conversing about content. Norris recommends this book for “anyone open to how cinema can illuminate the spiritual path.”[2]
Seven Sacred Pauses: Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day
As someone who reads the lectionary texts each day, has attempted the monastic rhythm of praying the hours, and clings tightly to the Jesus Prayer, I dusted this book off in hopes of the refresher a summer pace can offer my prayer life. Herein Macrina Wiederkehr unpacks and applies each of the seven prayer hours, reminding readers of two important things. First, the hours of prayer call a person to “being” with God over any certain “doing” requested of God. Weiderkehr invites pray-ers to cultivate “white space,” or capture some unstructured time, saying, “sometimes seeing what isn’t there enables us to see what is.”[3] Second, she emphasizes the importance of discerning which hours for prayer fit the different seasons of the year and of life for them personally. Even within the monastery, a rotation of the hours develops among the monks so that the ceaselessness of prayer is shared among the community.
A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary
Again by Wiederkehr, a tome for practical contemplatives or those seeking what may be a different rhythm or way of moving through the world: slower, less efficient, yet possibly more productive. Wiederkehr shares how personal mementos such as letters to friends, as well as external elements such as the weather and even the daily news, can serve as vehicles for worship. My favorite aspect of this book is the way it lends itself to random selection. Included topics range from shopping malls to trees and childhood memories. A reader could pick up, open up, read an excerpt for less than five minutes, and walk away with the mental scaffolding to continue the journey of contemplation wherever the Spirit applies Wiederkehr’s story to their own circumstances. Each member of the family could find a road to seeing the ordinary stuff of life differently with this book as a lens.
Another Day: Sabbath Poems, 2013-2023
For those unfamiliar with Wendell Berry, he is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer from rural Kentucky.[4] In his 90s and married to his college love, Berry offers much to emulate. It has been suggested that one might read one of his poems each Sabbath and repeatedly several times throughout the following week. This is a good sustainable summer rhythm to develop and maintain throughout busier times. With Berry’s work, even a few words offer robust meaning again when examined slowly and meditatively, so consider a poem a day or even one per week.
Dare Mighty Things: Mapping the Challenges of Leadership for Christian Women
Halee Gray Scott explores the work of many in this publication. Authors and leaders throughout modern history have shared experience of the unexpected energy and life that comes through working out a divine calling, especially amid challenges. Scott thoroughly mines what Christian living looks like when all people take up the responsibility for the use of their Spirit-given gifts. Scott quotes the aforementioned Wendell Berry: “You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: ‘Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.’ I am not capable of so much but those are the right instructions.”[5] Scott contributes this practical book to a growing body of literature about how women alongside men flesh out the mission of God amid diversity while pursuing lives patterned after the ways of Jesus.
Go Together: How the Concept of Ubuntu will Change How We Work, Live and Lead
A bonus! This one is too good not to share. Besides focusing on the African proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together,” this book is written in an easy- to-read, popular style. Shola Richards tells a personal story and then makes immediate, practical workplace applications that have the potential for impact straightaway even through a simple change in perspective. Both Richards’ style and the slower pace of summer gives many people opportunity for reflection and recalibration, which makes this book a great summer read.
Look for five more books from my summer stack next month. Until then, I offer you this blessing and reminder to lean into the change of pace offered by each season of the year and of life, from Basil the Great and paraphrased by Weiderkehr: May you fully inhabit the pain and the joy of being in process using the power of God placed within you.[6]