God Alone is Enough by Claudia Mair Burney

My long-time blogger bestie Claudia Mair Burney has just published her first non-fiction work for Paraclete Press. Titled God Alone is Enough, a Spirited Journey with St. Teresa of Avila - it is such a joy to hold the work of my dear friend in my hands. We have read each others words for more years than I can count and watching her journey has been a true joy.

I am the ninth step on a blog tour through the book and was asked to blog on Chapter nine - Ecstasy is Not a Drug - an appropriate chapter for a "redemption junkie" :)

Before talking about Chapter 9, I want to explain the book to those who aren't following the tour.

Claudia makes Theresa's writings so accessible. It is a beautiful primer for the saint(s) - and a beautiful introduction to centering prayer. It is fun, funny and filled with the reality of both the author's and the saint's struggles and joys. The only criticism I might make is that the cover shows a prim and proper woman in prayer - it belies the very nature of this book. If this book was my neighbor I wouldn't have to clean my kitchen, or even get out of my pj's before I invited her over for tea. It is as real as it is lively - just like my friend Mair.

I think a more "Rosie the Riveter" kind of sister on the cover would have been a more accurate visual representation of the sense of the book. Don't get me wrong - it is a beautiful cover - I just am such a visual person that I do unfortunately, at times, judge by said cover. Okay, on to chapter 9...

If anyone is at all familiar with St. Theresa and her Interior Castle you will know of her ecstasy.Theresa opines that there are four stages of prayer that the learner passes through. She uses the metaphor of watering a garden to explain:

"Now let's see how we need to water the garden, so we'll understand what we have to do, how much the labor will cost us, if the time and work we put into it is worth it, and how long it will last. Our garden can be watered in four ways: We can draw water from a well, which is a lot of work. Or you can get the water by turning the crank of a waterwheel and drawing it through an aqueducts. I've tried this myself and know it's not as much trouble to do as the first way. And you get more water.

Or you can channel the water from the flow of a river or stream. The garden is watered much better this way because the ground is saturated and you don't have to water it as frequently. This is a lot less work for the gardener.

Or the water may come from an abundant rain pouring on the soul; the Lord waters the garden himself, without any work on our part. This is by far the best method of all." (pg. 43, 44)

Chapter 9 is focusing on that fourth level of centering prayer - when God sends the rain - Theresa calls it "that sacred kiss" - this is the intimacy of the ecstasy with God that very few, myself included have ever experienced. Theresa explains, "The soul detaches itself from everything, daughter, so it can abide more fully in me. It is no longer the soul that lives but I. Since it is not capable of comprehending what it understands, there is an understanding by not understanding."

The holy longing for that level of intimacy with God - where our soul is joined with God has been lost to most of the church these days. We spend our time hauling water and building aqueducts instead of praying for rain. Centering prayer is a lost art form to the evangelical church and we are poorer for its lack.

This is a book I will be passing on to my daughter and one I'd use regularly with teen girls to teach on centering prayer. Thank you Mair, both for the book and for venturing into non-fiction. I adore your story and look forward to one day holding THAT book in my hands.

When You Reach Me

Every so often a book comes along that weaves a story together so beautifully I am left in awe. As a wanna-be author these books teach me to reach and to stretch. When You Reach Me is one of those books. We just finished it last night as a family and all of us were so pleased and a bit sad it was over.

Rebecca Stead not only wove her own story, she brought the threads of one of my most favorite stories, A Wrinkle in Time, into it so beautifully and thoughtfully - and did it so well. She just won the 2010 Newberry Award and it is well deserved. To tell you any more would damage your own experience - all I can say is go read it before someone tells you some of the plot - you want to experience this unsullied. Madeline L'Engle would be proud.

Tesser well!

Reading List

I have scads of little pieces of paper, index cards and emails I've sent to myself with books recommended or talked about by people I admire, I try to toss those little tidbits on my desk and then regularly do amazon searches and add them to my wish list so that at least somewhere I have a searchable record of those books. I began doing this when one of my favorite people in the world made his recommended reading list. I grabbed a few of those books and they changed my life forever. Nothing I had read up to that point had touched me as deeply as those books. I guess that's because the man who recommended them touched me more deeply than anyone else had before.

His name was Mike Yaconelli. He is no longer with us physically, but his writing and talks still pay forward in my life, and since I was only graced to see him once a year, it's almost like he's still around practically influencing my life.

I was doing some research for the talk I'm giving at church on Sunday and saved a transcript for the Bill Moyers Journal he had with Parker Palmer back in February - 17 minutes you will never regret - but don't listen until after Sunday if you go to my church! :) (Parker Palmer's Let Your Life Speak was the first book I read on that list and things shifted so dramatically within me that I will never be the same again) When I saved the transcript I found Mike's book list and I'm going to copy it here so that I don't forget again - there are so many books on this list I still get to read and I thought you might enjoy a couple of them too.

Here's Mike's Recommended Reading List (with a bit of advice thrown in) The only thing I'll add is Mike's own book Messy Spirituality:

• Read like a madman.
  

• Most youth workers don't read. Yet reading is absolutely essential to your spiritual growth.
  

• Ask people you admire and respect what books they read. If you're drawn to someone, chances are they have the same reading interests you do, so trust them to get you on the right reading track.
  

• Note those authors you resonate with, then get all their books. I have my own group of authors, who through their books have become my reading-world friends: Eugene Peterson, Barbara Brown Taylor, Walter Wangerin Jr., John Claypool, Earl Palmer, Henri Nouwen, Calvin Miller, Frederick Buechner, Alan Jones, Will Willimon, Evelyn Underhill, Philip Yancey. I read everything they write. Somehow, they know me, they name what I am struggling with, they put into words what I have been unable to find the words for. Put those few books that have really affected you in a bookcase close to where you work. In my study I have all my favorite books——my friends——just to the left of my desk, in arm's reach. I have lots more books in my study, but my friends are right next to me.
  

• Interact with your books. Mark your favorite passages, make notes, mark then file the quotes that grip you. Books are made to be marked——and stained with tears, too. Reading is more than gathering information——it's a relationship.
  

• Don't worry if you take a break from reading now and then. Sometimes your soul needs space and time to process what's going on in your life. At such times reading can actually distract you from soul work you should be doing.
  

• Whatever you do, don't limit your reading to religious books. Read recent novels, old classics, biographies, short stories, essays, articles. Christians aren't the only ones speaking truth. Truth is truth, regardless of who says it.
  

• Stop impersonating yourself.
  

• For what it's worth, here's my recommended reading list. Let it start you making your own book list.
  

• Robert Bensen, Between the Dreaming & the Coming True (HarperCollins)
• Bob Benson, Disciplines for the Inner Life (Word)
• Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Fortress)
• Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews (Doubleday)
• Christopher DeVinck, The Power of the Powerless (Zondervan)
• Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (Seabury)
• Suzanne Farnham and others, Listening Hearts (Morehouse)
• Arthur Gordon, A Touch of Wonder (Jove Books)
• Thelma Hall, Too Deep for Words (Paulist)
• Abraham Heschel, Man's Quest for God (Scribner's)
• Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (HarperCollins)
• Alan Jones, Passion for Pilgrimage (HarperCollins)
• Alan Jones, Soul Making: The Desert Way of Spirituality (HarperSanFrancisco)Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion (HarperSanFranciso)
• Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits (HarperCollins)
• Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies (Pantheon)
• Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (Noonday Press)
• Johannes B. Metz, Poverty of Spirit (Paulist)
• Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (Riverhead)
• Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk (Riverhead)
• Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (Houghton Mifflin)
• Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (Crossroad)
• Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love (Doubleday)
• Henri Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak (Image)
• Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak (Jossey-Bass)
• Parker Palmer, To Know As We Are Known (HarperSanFranciso)
• Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor (Word)
• Eugene Peterson, Living the Message (HarperCollins)
• Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (InterVarsity Press)
• Eugene Peterson, Subversive Spirituality (Eerdmans)
• Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life (Cowley)
• Barbara Brown Taylor, When God Is Silent (Cowley)
• Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life (Morehouse)
• Evelyn Underhill, The Ways of the Spirit (Crossroad)
• Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines (HarperSanFranciso)
• Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan)
• Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing about Grace? (Zondervan)

Are there any you'd add to this list?

How (Not) to Speak of God

I have got to get my hands on this book:

“…I discovered a way to embrace both the wisdom of those who would say that God is unspeakable, and must therefore be passed over in silence, and the wisdom of those who would say that God can, and must, be expressed. The union can be articulated like this:

That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking.

…those within the emerging conversation perceive a very different way of understanding theology. It is no longer thought of as a human discourse that speaks of God but rather as the place where God speaks into human discourse. In other words, theology is understood as the site in which revelation makes its appearance in the world…If theology comes to be understood as the place where God speaks, then we must seek, not to speak of God, but rather to be that place where God speaks…Our ‘theological’ musings can thus be called a/theological insomuch as they acknowledge that we must still speak of God (theology, as traditionally understood) while also recognizing that this speech fails to define God (a/theology).”

Peter Rollins, “How (Not) to Speak of God” (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006), xiii, 21

ht - Adam Walker Cleavland - pomomusings

Theology Meme??

Okay, I give. My Anj has tagged me for the meme that has been floating through the blogosphere and I have avoided up to this point. It is a theology meme - what are the best 3 books of theology published in the past 25 years???

Sigh. I wasted my young, brilliant brain on really bad theology, so I have avoided it henceforth (or is it forthwith?) Needless to say I have found that the "having all the answers and everything all figured out" that finds it way into theology books seems to makes me itch lately.

I do tend to be a practical woman, and practical theology has changed my life. I believe that what we truly believe, not what we say we believe, shows up in the choices we make, the ways we live our lives and how we treat those around us. Most Christian leaders today look very little like Jesus, and so I don't trust a lot of what they write.

I also seem to have lost my brain somewhere along the mommy-train. Sitting down to actually read NT Wright or Miroslav Volf sounds dreamy and intellectual, but in reality I doubt I would truly get very far these days. Maybe I'm selling myself short, but I find that I can devour good fiction, but non-fiction is slow going as I really sit with the ideas, contemplate them and allow them to change me. Reading good non-fiction quickly makes me feel like a glutton.

So, coming up with three books that a) I have actually read and b) I would consider "best" and c) are actual theology books made me realize that 1) this is my list, and 2) if it changes the way I look at the church and God it becomes a theology book to me, right? So here is my list:

1) Life of Pi - Yann Martel - "I have a story that will make you believe in God"

It did.

2) My Name is Asher Lev - Chaim Potek - "If You don't want me to use the gift, why did You give it to me?"

I felt like this through my whole life in wondering why God made me a woman in love with theology and the church and called me when I didn't have the "right plumbing" or chromosomes? Watching Asher Lev struggle with the God-given gifts that his faith culture told him he was sinful to use changed my life and my understanding of God. Maybe it wasn't God that was the problem???

3) Letters to a Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke - “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions”

I had always been shamed by and ashamed of my questions. The fear that runs rampant in the church when it comes to mystery was stifling to me. Not being afraid of the questions anymore gave me my mind back. It opened the door to all of the wonder and mystery that is God.

So that's my list. These are some of the books that have shaped my theology in the past few years. I know they aren't strictly "theology books" and it will shock anyone from my old life to see that I'm learning more through story than I am through "scripture" lately. But the surprising thing is that story is giving me scripture back.

I should also mention that there are many theologians that I read in snips and bits and they have helped me to rearrange the furniture on my theological landscape. Those mentioned above have helped restore my passion for theology. Others who are helping are Brian McLaren, Phillip Yancy, Parker Palmer, Scot McKnight and even my own pastor Peter Fitch. Maybe one day I'll get my brain back and begin again to be passionate about theology books and doctrine, but right now I find the outworking of that theology to be much more giving of life and hope.


If you haven't done this meme yet and want to play along, consider yourself tagged.

How to Publish Your Own Books!

Oh this thrills my book-loving heart!!

Cool Tools has researched and self-published their way through the least expensive, highest quality options out there and this is what they've found:

Blurb * LuLu

Life just gets more accessible every day doesn't it?