SOUL SURMISE

STOCKI'S TOP 5 MUSIC BOOK READS OF 2011

Not all of the following books were published in 2011 but I read them in 2011 and these are my favourite 5 Music book reads of last year.

1. Brian J Walsh - Kicking At The Darkness; Bruce Cockburn and Christian Imagination

To have one of my favourite artists looked at by a theologians who knows his music and his Cockburn was a treat.

for Stocki's full review

2. Leagues O’Toole - The Humours of Planxty

I thoroughly enjoyed this read. I happened to pick up a vinyl copy of Planxty’s debut album and it got me discovering this band that featured Christy Moore who I have been researching for a project Fitzroy is now doing in March called The Gospel According To... Christy Moore. That led me to pick up this book by Leagues O’Toole in another charity shop! O’Toole has done an amazing job at not only telling the quite complicated Planxty story but also contextualising them in the history of Irish traditional music. Written the way I like musical biographies to be written. Off the record detail with really good lengthy insight to the records!

3. David Browne - Fire and Rain

This book had me living my summer in the music of 1970. Informative, culturally contextualised and intriguing.

Stocki's full review

4. Daniel Lanois – Soul Mining: A Musical Life

Lanois’ first person account of the development of his own art as musician, songwriter and producer and a few little snippets about U2, Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Neil Young etc...

Stocki's full review

5. Olivia Harrison – George Harrison: Living In The Material World

This coffee book of mainly photographs that was part of the Scorcese movie project is fantastic. Tenderly and honestly done by George’s wife Olivia it is more exciting because of the never seen before private shots like the one with Dylan and Harrison playing tennis! Beautiful and brilliant!

Stocki's review of the Living In The Material World movie

STOCKI'S TOP 5 NOVELS FOR A HEALTHY SOUL 2011

1. DOUGLAS COUPLAND – PLAYER ONE; WHAT IS TO BECOME OF US

Written for prestigious CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) sponsored Massey lectures Player One was to be read over five hours, in a plot spanning five hours, in another apocalyptic Coupland-like scene in a Toronto Airport Cocktail Bar. Yes, it’s another Coupland story of five freaks drawn together and working through their modern psychological, spiritual and emotional modern ills. Some might say it is repetitive but of course this wasn’t set out to be a novel and that is why he can quote my favourite lines from his other books, delighting me that he and I liked the same quotes! Coupland’s books are all about who we are as humans, what might be astray with us all and what might happen on down the road in the future or eternity. Those are my daily thoughts, discussions and sermons and Coupland stimulates and gives great quotations to my world!

2. KATE MUIR – WEST COAST

I had come home from a weekend in Plockton and spotted this novel about that area of Scotland and thought I’d ponder my time there with a good read. Little did I know that it would allow me to ponder lots more. There is a rural life verses the urban life thing going on and all in the context of the life of a photographer and to a soundtrack I knew too well; any book where the main characters go to a Lloyd Cole and The Commotions gig in 1984 has to be worth a read!

3. DERMOT HEALY – LONG TIME, NO SEE

I loved this new novel and first in over a decade by Irish novelist, poet, playwright Healy. Not much of a plot but its pages led me into a community in the west of Ireland that I was glad to get to know. From the teenagers too innocent to kiss, to the village idiot and humane pillars of rural society this little community was able to deal with everybody’s foibles and quirks and repair the broken down divides of class and race with ease and grace.

4. RODDY DOYLE – THE DEAD REPUBLIC

I’d been reading Doyle’s Trilogy about Twentieth Century Irish history for the entire decade he’s taken to write it. There were places in the first two books where things trudged along for me, though I’m glad to have read them. This, the final part, was the most gripping for many reasons particularly as it brought his main character Henry Smart into the Irish time and events that I have lived through. Smart who helped birth the Republic in the first book at the GPO in Easter 1916 gets involved in the peace process 80 years later having had his life saved by Henry Fonda, John Ford and John Wayne; fascinating! In the entire trilogy Doyle rips up all the romantic notions of Ireland that anyone ever tried to caricature.  

5. ALISTAIR MacLEOD – NO GREAT MISCHIEF

Found this 1999 gem in a charity shop, drawn to it because it was about Cape Breton where my friends Eric and Mary Whyte are from. It is a fascinating read set in contemporary time about a family history, sweeping out into a clan history of those who’d left Scotland to settle in Nova Scotia. The conclusion that “all people are better when they are loved” brought it back into my belief about the Christian concept of grace and its benefit too humanity.

BRIAN J WALSH - KICKING AT THE DARKNESS; Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination

When my friend Gary Burnett told me about this book I thought that all my Christmas’s had come early. A theological treatise on Bruce Cockburn has been very necessary for years but surely he was such a cult artist that no publisher would ever see a book on him as profitable; fair play to Brazos Press under the Baker Publishing Group for the courage and vision. The author might have swayed the deal. Brian J Walsh has had some notable success himself particularly his Colossians Remixed; Subverting the Empire, written wife his wife Sylvia Keesmat and read by most people I know with an imaginative Christian mind. I’ve used it as a foundational text for preaching through Colossians – twice! Walsh like Cockburn is Canadian, a Christian Reformed campus minister at the University of Toronto and Adjunct Professor of Theology of Culture at Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology. That he was perfect for this particularly important and skilful task has been obvious for some twenty years since, in partnership with Richard Middleton, he has written the first serious theo-musicology I had ever read, a very lengthy essay on Bruce Cockburn called Theology At The Rim Of The Broken Wheel.

Walsh does a good few things in Kicking At The Darkness; Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination. He confirms all your thoughts on your favourite Cockburn lyrics; they were as theologically potent as you always thought! He also reminds you how many great lines the Cockburn has written causing you to scuttle back to re-listen to every record right back to the first one. He actually causes you to realise the width and depth and breadth of Cockburn’s theological comment. Songs that you hadn’t looked at that close because you were so taken by other songs on the same album suddenly open up rich strata of Christian thought you’d never before seen.

Walsh’s approach is actually very simple and he uses this simple foundation to weave his immense insight into Cockburn’s songs to finish with much more than a commentary on Bruce Cockburn but a Christian worldview. Walsh has used these questions before particularly in his books The Transforming Vision; Shaping a Christian World View and Truth is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age, both again collaborations with Middleton. The questions are where we are? Who we are?  What is wrong? And what is the remedy? From these questions Walsh dialogues with endless lyrics of Cockburn’s to answer the questions in very articulate Christian ways. From Cockburn’s creation dance songs particularly on Dancing In The Dragon’s Jaw to the brokenness of humanity on Humans to the justice at the rim of the broken wheel (Justice from Inner City Front) to some sense of kicking the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight with particular reference to the more recent album You’ve Never Seen Everything we are showered with memorable line, couplet or verse after memorable line, couplet or verse. At times it seems that all Walsh is doing is being the thread that weaves Cockburn’s words together. It is an astounding work on an astounding music catalogue.

For me it made me fall in love with Cockburn all over again. It caused me to listen to songs like Dialogue with The Devil that had gotten lost in such a huge catalogue. Yet, it went way beyond that. It gave me a refresher course on my Christian worldview. It led me into theological thinking and inspired me to imagine the way the world is and how the world can be and how as a preacher I can at least attempt to share those thoughts in ways that are at least a percentage as creative and imaginative as Bruce Cockburn.

DANIEL LANOIS - SOUL MINING; A MUSICAL LIFE

“Being an artist is, in and of itself, an incredible parable for having faith.You’re in this position where you have to step into the unknown without hesitancy, with all your resources and with every intention of seeing it through and you know it might be disastrous”

My good friend Scott Jamison put this quotation from artist Linnea Gabriella Spransy up as his Facebook status as I was reading Daniel Lanois’ biography and it might be a review in a nutshell. Lanois’ memoir reaks of a man who lives and breathes his own art, whether songwriter or producer . He is so committed that love and family life never seem to be in his picture. It seems as though one night as a child that music stood at his bedroom door and said “Follow me...” and Daniel did. This is a book that flits about like Lanois’ life, the book from past to present and everywhere in between, the life from Quebec to Ontario to California to New York to Mexico to New Orleans with Dublin and various other spots in between.

If the reader is looking for lengthy detail about his work with Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Brandon Flowers, Robbie Robertson, Neville Brothers, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris and particularly U2 then they might be a little disappointed. Lanois writes about them all but it is merely moments and never too detailed. The key to the whole thing is most perfectly described when he is working with U2. It is during the Joshua Tree sessions and Lanois is waxing lyrical about Bono improvising and thus transforming a song. He writes, “This is a wonderful magic place to get to, the room of splintered metal I call it, where you can only respond to what is thrown your way. Years of knowledge and life experience exorcised out of mind and bodies. The room full of splintered metal and shattered glass is the birthplace of some of my U2 favourites...”

This quote, and indeed the very title of the book, betrays the spirituality at the heart of Lanois’ life and work. Throughout the book Lanois speaks of his pedal steel guitar as his “Church in a suitcase.” He writes of seeing God as a little bit like that room of splintered steel - “This is the same way that I see God, as little pieces flying by, tiny molecular pieces of information constantly flying by. Some people see them, some people don’t.”  In the end he thanks God for the ability to get excited and ends the book by encouraging other artists to find belief and passion.  God lurks everywhere and his belief in the transcendent is taken as read. We are back to Spransy’s quote. As I read about reflections on art I felt that it was spiritually informative and nourishing.

If you are a fan of the artists Lanois has worked with as listed above then you’ll be intrigued. If you are an artist yourself then I’d say it is an obligatory textbook. He brings such wisdom to the process. If you are a techie either to do with guitars or recording processes then this will be your Christmas come. Some reviews I’ve read speak of Lanois’ ego coming through. I didn’t see it. I saw a man who believes that he was created to do what he does and that his creations are dependent on much more than himself. He is more in awe of what he has been privileged to have been a part of than arrogant. I found it fascinating. An artist writing about the mystery of art in a beautifully creative and artistic way.

DAVID BROWNE: Fire and Rain - book review

 
David Browne’s take on 1970 is an intriguing read. He takes four of the era’s major artists, The Beatles, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Simon & Garfunkel and James Taylor and in the telling of their struggles through that year reveals the ending of the dreams of the sixties; cultural and social as well as artistic. John Lennon suggested as much not long after in his song God and Jackson Browne would write his Before The Deluge and The Pretender on a similar thesis so nothing new there but the way Browne uses Let It Be, Deja Vu, Bridge Over Trouble Water and Sweet Baby James and the artists who made those records is an intriguing drama and argument. The idea might be better than the follow through but if you are a fan of the era and these particular artists, as I am, you end up glad that Browne’s wife suggested he do a book about his favourite artists and era. It is informative. I was amazed to learn things I didn’t know about The Beatles and he had me uploading the records that I carefully listened to while reading.

In the end I couldn’t help but ask a question that Belfast singer Brian Houston suggested over a Lisburn Road breakfast; did God bless the sixties with some kind of Renaissance and then withdraw it. Browne gives 1970 an almost Babel-like Biblical cataclysm. This book does argue reasonably well that the artistic dreams of the sixties were switched off just as the housing market was at the start of the recent recession. From Oasis to Fleet Foxes much of the last twenty years has been a rearranging or rediscovering what had been original back in the sixties. Was 1970 a watershed; Browne does his best with his argument and entertains as he attempts to convince. If you’re a fan of two or three or all of the four artists it’s a must read.

AN ORDINARY KIND OF MIRACLE - Philip Orr

 

Shane Claiborne’s inspirational The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical has been a mainstay on student reading lists over the last five years and all for the better of our youth. On reading Philip Orr’s fascinating history of a wee Christian project in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast I couldn’t help seeing it as companion piece; it is just as much a page turner. I had the privilege of sharing a seminar with the warm and winsome Claiborne at Greenbelt a few years ago. Right there alongside me Shane filled in the gaps that I thought were glaringly absent from his brilliant book; the failings. The book was too easy. I wanted him to give me ten places where it all went horribly wrong, where their efforts just didn’t work. In the more conversational situation of seminar questions Shane shared these with tender honesty.

Philip Orr has gone straight to the honesty. There is nowhere in this thirty year history of the 174 Trust still a thriving outreach project on Belfast’s deprived and dangerous Ardoyne area where it is not a struggle and many times more bad news than good news. It is about everyday heroes and I know because, unlike Shane’s inner city Philly community, I knew the very ordinary heroes of this story. I lived not far away. I knew what was happening and brushed against it occasionally. I am aware of the turmoil of “The Troubles” at the time.

As I read about Heather and Kerry and Bill and Karen and Tonya, the ones I knew best, and read some of the stories they had shared with me at the time I was struck by how frightening parts of Belfast were in the eighties and early nineties. The bullets and bombs and riots were regular occurrences and through it in this little cafe/flat on the Antrim Road many young Christians who had no need to be anywhere near the front had committed to live there or work there on projects that drew in some of the damaged youth of the area. Not for them the lovely middle class youth clubs of the suburbs. The story Philip writes is messy from the confusion at times of the missional intent, something that evolves as the years went on, to questions as to what was achieved in it all, to the personal stories of the toll the whole thing took from loss of faith to loss of life and many things in between.

At the core of the book is the same challenge as Claiborne’s Irresistible Revolution to live real Biblical discipleship in your geographical location. When a friend recently asked about why there were not more seminars on social justice at a major N. Ireland event she was told that they preferred to concentrate on the Bible and discipleship. We have gotten it so incredibly wrong! We are heretics! Books like Orr’s and Claiborne’s are prophetic screams from the fringes to remind us of the cost and courage of following Jesus. They mangle the cotton wool that we have surrounded the Gospel in. The most crucial part is that these are not books of ideas but real life stories of ordinary radicals and ordinary miracles. The stories they tell are not Christianity deluxe or some rare limited edition; this is every day ordinary discipleship. Philip Orr has written a book that records a prophetic challenge to anyone attempting to follow Jesus in Belfast and indeed beyond. Read it alongside Irresistible Revolution and prepare yourself!

STARTING OVER; The Making of Double Fantasy - KEN SHARP

 

I found this a fascinating book. It is an interesting layout. Ken Sharp never gives opinion or commentary but merely allows the major players in the historical piece. You therefore get the stories and quotes from all the session players, producer and engineers and anyone else professionally involved in the making of and publicising of the record. The downside of this is that sometimes we get the same information from a range of players but over all if you are thinking that there could not be enough for a book out of one record then you will be proven wrong. I found myself caught into it; maybe not gripping but intriguing.

The mood of the sessions really comes through. The players, all major session men of the time, are all like kids in a sweetie shop when they find out that they are playing with a Beatle; the Beatle who had been in hiding! They are all fans. They are all a little in awe. They all find lennon in great mood and friendly form. He seems to want to be one of the lads, excited to be back in the studio and keen to enjoy every minute. 

Double Fantasy, the record in the works and therefore under scrutiny was of course supposed to be a conversation between lovers, John and Yoko’s songs turn about in the track listings. For those of us who have followed Lennon’s career and read the other biographies, particularly the sensationalist critiques like Albert Goldman, there is an interesting take on the state of the Lennon’s marriage and nothing but love, love, love comes through here. Interviewers who spent as much as three week with them did not believe they could be bluffing them; these were two forty-somethings very much in love.

There are a few things that I learned too. Now being a hammer dulcimer fan through the work of Rich Mullins and more recently Eric Angus Whyte I was fascinated to learn that there was one on Watching The Wheels. Even more fascinating is that the hammer dulcimer player, Matthew Cunningham was a street musician as they couldn’t find a session player in all of New York. That Cunningham didn’t seem to know Lennon and only picked up who he’d played for a while later is even more interesting. The Cheap Trick saga is also a drama worth having teased out. What they would have brought to the whole record is worth some trajectory but why there version of I’m Losing You wasn’t used is also dramatic intrigue. Rick Nielsen sending Lennon a guitar as a gift is also a lovely little crum!

In the main I found myself reaching for the album again and again, listening for the little bits of instrumental or vocal or lyric info. It allows you to reach into the minutiae and there are lovely things to find. This and the Stripped Naked edition of the record have certainly placed this higher in my favourite Lennon albums.

For fans, a very worthwhile read.

Double Fantasy Stripped reviewed

Sometime In New York City

DESIRING THE KINGDOM - JAMES K A SMITH

My good friend and former colleague at Queen’s Chaplaincy, Father Gary Toman, often speaks about having a grá for something. It is the Irish word for love but it takes on a guttural description for that passion for something that drives you and your life. It is that grá that Jamie Smith is talking about in his incredibly insightful book Desiring The Kingdom. The general premise is that we are not what we think but by what we love. What we have a grá for will be what shapes our lives.

So, I asked early on, is Jamie right? It dragged up an old memory of preaching one evening maybe twenty years ago about what the Bible had to say about a Northern Ireland Protestant’s attitude and relationship with their Catholic neighbours. Whatever I said that evening, it struck a chord with a few young guys who afterwards asked me if I was a Protestant. I suggested that that depended what they meant by Protestant. What did they think a Protestant was I asked? Someone loyal to the Queen they replied? They were surprised when I told them that there were Protestants all over the world who had absolutely no allegiance to the Queen of the United Kingdom. When did Protestantism start I went on? The battle of the Boyne in 1690 they confidently responded. Again, people like Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Knox were completely unknown to them.

These guys had absolutely no cognitive understanding of Protestantism but in every part of their being they were very clearly defined as Protestant in their own parochial form. They were wearing Glasgow Rangers football tops, they were in “kick the Pope” flute bands and were probably some of the guys who painted the pavements in their town red, white and blue. They were not what they had clearly thought through but what they had a chest thumping grá for; though as Northern Ireland Protestants they would have hated the utterance of an Irish word to describe it! There is a “peace” wall in Belfast between the divided communities of the Protestant Shankill and Catholic Falls roads and very few of the people on either side have come to hate their close neighbours on the other side by a well thought through in depth historical, religious or political analysis. They are divided not by what they think but what they have been shaped to love.

So, next question, was how Smith’s theories connect with the Scriptures. It happened that as I was reading the book I was reaching, in my preaching series, Mark 12 where Jesus declares the greatest commandments and speaks of love for God as the Jews would have been familiar with in the Shema from Deuteronomy 6 and then adds from Leviticus 19, an amazing chapter that spells out the love for neighbour. It is these two commandments that would define Jesus followers and he actually never mentions cognitive understanding of God but always emphasises love. Jesus is encouraging the grá that will transform his followers. In John 14 he tells the disciples that if they love him they will obey his commandments. The grá is what drives the Jesus community.

This is what Smith is onto. Being a Professor at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Smith has engaged with the post modern “emergers” without the tabloid sensational dismissal of a Don Carson et al and brought to bear on the very serious and authentic questions of the time a “sustainable theology”, as my good mate Doug Gay so skilfully coined it at Greenbelt a few years back. Smith is a balanced and sensible voice in what sometimes seems like schoolyard stone throwing. This particular book is aimed at the Christian education sector of North America and I think that is a mistake as I think the lessons of this book have something to say for individual discipleship and every Sunday Church worship.

Smith is convincing in his argument as to what grabs our gut and owns our grá. He uses the Shopping Mall, the religious nature of which he paints provocatively over a few poetically crafted pages, and the sport’s stadium. He argues very compellingly how even the Christian who thinks he/she has his/her brain switched on and is what he/she think cognitively can be subtly caught in allegiances that would quite simply have been described is idols in the Old Testament. The powerful gut stirring symbolism the American national anthem at sporting events leading to a belief that God is American and dying for the flag is a belief worth holding receives his ire! That we could be doctrinally well thought through but miss the hold that consumerism has on our well being is also well pointed out.

Once we are shaped, Smith goes on, we then aim our loves at what we believe to be human flourishing. This end result will again not be so much decided on by cognitive doctrinal statements but the social imaginary of what we are steeped in at mall, sports stadium and wherever else we inhabit. Christian thinking over the past decades has targeted the mind with great books and lectures and conferences. Smith is not saying that we replace these, or the book itself would be dropped from the publisher’s catalogue, but he is saying we have missed the more potent spiritual formatives; the stories, movies, songs and worship that are pedagogies of the kardia. Smith is suggesting that the liturgy of worship takes on an enormously important role in challenging the social imaginary of the mall and sports stadium in order that we recognise the Kingdom of God as what human flourishing is really about and our hearts get aimed at the right loves to bring that kingdom around.

Smith has articulated what I have been thinking for years that this generation in particular are more subjective than objective. Modernity had us lost in a phase where that might not have been so but the “word becoming flesh” was God’s best revelation of truth and that was aimed at the subjective gut not the intellectual mind. Desiring The Kingdom has opened up all kinds of leads for me in how to pastor a Church, lead worship, form the Christian core of the young, develop the spiritual maturity of the older, how to evangelise and teach. Before all that I am reassessing the habits of my own life to reconsider what feeds my social imaginary and where the idols of our time might be subtly having their way.

 

FRIENDSHIP TOWARDS PEACE - RONALD WELLS

 

Reading Ronald Wells’ account of two of Northern Ireland’s greatest peace makers Rev. Ken Newell and Fr Gerry Reynolds is an inspiring and in many places challenging book. These two men, rooted in their different traditions that have been at logger heads in Northern Ireland society since its inception in 1921, becoming friends was visionary and incredibly courageous in a society that speedily dismisses the critique of anyone in their own community as betrayal.  Wells catalogues with an academic researchers detail the friendship of Newell and Reynolds as well as the developing cross community relationships of the Clonard-Fitzroy Fellowship, from both of their Churches, and also the other contributions they made from their pulpits, within their denominations and the wider political and social issues of Northern Ireland.

The great dismissal of reconciliation as a theological or discipleship issue in Northern Ireland by Presbyterian ministers, is an astounding neglect of their Reformed and Biblical heritage, and without doubt comes from a deep insecurity in identity and indeed the theology that the dismissers often shout so loudly about. Wells records Newell’s belief that theology is merely an excuse to not have to deal with inbred sectarianism or count the cost of what it would really mean to follow Jesus.

The personal challenge for me was that I used to be publicly courageous about these very issues but in recent years I have been a little hesitant. Back in the early eighties I was a naive young preacher who used to preach on Chronicles 7 v 14 which was used by many of my fellow evangelical Protestants to call the people of God to pray for the healing of the nation. Somehow, missing from the declaration was the repenting of our own sinful contribution to the violently divided society in Northern Ireland. A call to prayer without the rest of the verse was an incredible neglect of the Scripture. I also remember when the Anglo Irish Agreement was signed in 1984 and the Protestant town councils put up Ulster Says No banners seemingly everywhere I was asking in sermons if we felt that there was a union jack draped over the throne of God with an Ulster Says No banner hanging over the gates of heaven! I remember my parents coming to one such sermon and leaving quickly and asking that I tell them what I would be preaching about before they came again!

I also remember Ken Newell, having read my first poetry book, which had a good few poems about Northern Ireland, warning me that with such thoughts I would find myself in a wilderness but to hang in and after ten years the Church would listen to me again! I had no idea what he meant but within a few months I did and I think that losing the support of the more conservative end of my denomination caused me to have less confidence to speak out publicly. Even as a Chaplain I have certainly made my thoughts known in conversation but probably have rarely in my Sunday night teaching been as clear and courageous as I was back in 1984, probably aware that my students go home to ministers with more intransigent views and I was not brave enough to publicly oppose them.

This week as I read Friendship Towards Peace I have felt the Holy Spirit’s conviction and vision reignited in my depth of soul. This is perhaps the biggest priority in revealing the power of the cross and resurrection of Jesus in my society in my generation. I have been slow to speak out and even slower to build the friendships that Ken and Gerry have modelled. I thank God that He against my own strategies brought Fr Gary Toman into my life as a colleague in Chaplaincy.  Gary and I have taught each other (he much more than me!) how to respect each other’s differences and yet encourage each other to love and follow our Lord more. For us, we are not involved in some great Satanic conspiracy to make all Northern Ireland Presbyterians loyal servants of Pope Benedict! Indeed, we would probably have made each other much more convinced of our different backgrounds than when we started. At times I see Gary smirk at what he perceives as the chaos of Protestant democracy and I being a contrary wee Ballymena man could never handle a Magesterium telling me what to believe! Our friendship does not benefit from denying our differences but is enriched by acknowledging them and attempting to understand them in the love and grace of the deep fondness of friendship.

Having read about the vision and courage of Newell and Reynolds over the last thirty years I am energised to seek to be a peacemaker and thus a child of God, as Jesus called them. We can thank God that the awful years of death and destruction that Wells’ book records Ken and Gerry leading us through have given way to more peaceful society and we can also thank God for their contribution to that very peace that we now enjoy. However, it will take much longer and will need a whole lot more Newells and Reynolds if we are to kill off the deep seated bigotry and sectarianism that still divides us. Please God lead me to play a fuller part in the bringing of your Kingdom in Northern Ireland as it is in heaven.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

 

A story of a dynasty of minsters might fit too obviously into my reading schedule but quite the reverse.  For me to read about ministers on my holidays, the writing would need to be something special!  Well Marilynne Robinson is something special.  When Bryan Appleyard calls her “one of the greatest living novelists” he is not exaggerating for a back cover endorsement and Pulitzer and Orange prizes (for Gilead and the recent follow up Home respectively) back up his assessment.  She writes with poetic prose that capture stunning images and with deep insight into the intricacies of the human psyche.  More than that she goes to deep soul and asks her questions of love, forgiveness, loyalty, sin and redemption from a specifically Christian context, touching heavily on the Calvinistic; portraying all of that in its better hues!

The book is written in the form of a very, very long letter from an aging minister to a very young son of a second late marriage, to a much younger woman, but ends up as the journaling of a tough relationship between the narrator Rev James Ames and Jack Boughton his best mate another minister’s son.  In the midst of his wider life story and this more specific scenario you get a liberal sprinkling of spiritual nuggets that suggest Ms Robinson has some considerable theological prowess.

At one point she writes, through old Rev. Ames, “This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.”  It is the attention that Robinson gives it that brings a new vitality, indeed transcendence to things that become too familiar, losing their sacredness.  For me those things were baptism which is described as “sacredness under my hand” and benediction “it was an honour to bless him.”  I am sure you will find your own. In the end the words, “Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration.  You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a willingness to see,” sum it up.  Gilead refocused my eyes and strengthened the ardour of my willingness. It was a joy to read and its benefits go on.