Books, Books, Books!

Yesterday morning I met Wayne for coffee in downtown Bellingham (thanks for meeting up Wayne!). Walking to my car I passed a local used book store and decided to dig through their free book boxes out front. Usually I can find a book or two I like on a good day. Instead, I discovered that they had decided to dump piles of amazing books! I left with a good 20 to 30 books! Here are some of the titles I picked-up that I can remember right now:

The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantakis
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A'Kempis
Principles of Sacred Theology by Abraham Kuyper
Basic Writings of Jonathan Edwards
Listening to Your Life by Frederick Buechner
Christianity through the Centuries by Cairns
Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell (already own, giving away as a gift)
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (already own, giving away)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Best Known works of Flaubert
A Preface to Paradise Lost by C.S. Lewis
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
Selected Poems of Robert Browning
The Aeneid by Virgil
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
China's Cultural Revolution: not a dinner party
White Man, Listen! by Richard Wright
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

There were more, but my memory is not that swell. That my friends is what I call a productive morning!

Peace,
Matt

Really?

Apparently Seattle is one of the greenest cities in the U.S. That's cool, and gives me some pride in the area in which I live, but I have to ask; really? I mean, there are some people working hard and doing some cool stuff for the environment here in the northwest, but whenever I drive south I avoid Seattle because the traffic is so bad. And if traffic is bad, that means emissions are not pretty. Which means, if a gridlocked city like Seattle is #3 on the list, how bad are the other cities in the US? Ouch.

Just a thought/question...

Peace,
Matt

What's Next?

When I first started getting involved in the church, it seemed like everybody was talking about how to reach the Gen Xers. It was all anybody seemed to be talking about in the church. There was a new "must-read" book put out daily, along with a monthly conference on how to reach Generation X people.

Funny how we don't really hear about Gen Xers anymore.

Of course, it then became the Postmoderns. It took me a bit of time before I realized I had been sucked into a marketing scheme. What finally tipped me off was when I was reading a particular book and it kept talking about what Postmoderns believe, what they want, etc, without really producing any evidence as to how these conclusions were reached. That's when I realized Postmoderns were the new Gen Xers for the church, which means the new way for twenty somethings to feel cool and trendy within the church as they talk about what their church is doing on Sunday mornings.

Lately I've noticed a decrease in the amount of Christian books being published with the word postmodern anywhere on the cover. Which is great, but feels like the calm before the storm. Right now I am wondering what is replacing postmodernism for the cool thing for churches to talk about. Do you have any ideas? Have you seen anything trend-wise going on? I don't want to be caught off-guard again and so would love your input!

Peace,
Matt

Book Review: The Willow Field

My goal for a very long time has been to review every book I read on this blog. But I have not even come close. Regardless, I still try to add one here or there, and today I happen to have some strange desire to do so with William Kittredge's The Willow Field.

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First, a few facts that you may or may not know. I grew up reading a lot of Western books, especially Louis Lamour paperbacks. Also, as an English Lit major at Western Washington University my culminating class and thesis was on literature of the American West. I focused specifically on A.B. Guthrie Jr's The Big Sky. Since that time I have spent a lot of time with my nose in books based in the American West, especially when written by folks like Wallace Stegner, David James Duncan, Norman Maclean, Sherman Alexie, Jim Welch, or even Ken Kesey, Raymond Carver or Douglas Coupland. Although we don't seem to have the same recognition as Southern Gothic, the writers of the West have made a name for themselves and I include my name on the list of their followers.

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The Willow Field, though Kittredge's first novel, fits right into the genre of modern Western literature. It deals openly and honestly with the violence, contradictions, and evolution of life in the West. Rossie, the story's protagonist, begins the book as a hard-headed young man out to make a living riding horses and being a good ol' fashioned cowboy. In other words, the story begins and the reader quickly falls into a panic, thinking this is going to be a cliched Western with quick-draw cowboys, hard drinking, tough talking, and big brawls. But Kittredge honors the American West. Rossie's life mirrors the times and locations in which he lives. He starts wanting to be a classic, cliched cowboy, but he matures and changes with experience and with the help of varied relationships. He becomes the classic Western sage; practical, independent, stubborn, opinionated, and displaying a strange mixture of book-knowledge and everyday wisdom. As his life progresses, he changes and grows. Some of the people around him do the same and others do not. Which is what I think this book is about: change and how to adapt and respond to it in the West. The kind of changes I am talking about have to do with outsiders coming in, the West's correspondence with the larger world, land use versus exploitation and conservation, public lands, private lands, big and small governments, race, etc. Kittredge presents these issues and more with only one or two soap box messages (having to do especially with mines, which if you've never read about mining in Montana, you should know that somebody definitely needs to get on a gigantic soap box to talk about it).

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Here's my issue, and it really has little to do with Kittredge or The Willow Field, at least directly. Why does Western Literature always seem to be based in Montana and Wyoming? I'm a bit confused as to how places like Western Washington and Western Oregon fit into this genre, because supposedly our literature fits into this category as well. So often I read books like this and I feel forgotten, poorly represented. I wonder if we should have our own genre, maybe call it Far-Western Literature or something of that sort. Because honestly, a story like Snow Falling on Cedars or Sometimes a Great Notion speaks about this region in a much better fashion, yet seems to have little to do with books like The Willow Field. Just a thought.

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Peace,

Matt

Two Posts in One

These two things on my mind are really quite connected, so I am making the blog version of a run-on paragraph...

First off, a friend (thanks Shauna!) was listening to a Rob Bell sermon and heard him mention Banksy. She looked him up, then convinced me to do the same. Spend at least twenty minutes on his site. Then check him out on youtube. This guy is awesome. I want to be him. But instead I'll just continue to look at his artwork and be glad.

Randomly enough, "Banksy" did a series of images on the wall put up by Israel to keep the West Bank out of sight, along with the Palestinians living there. This of course continues to prove why the nation of Israel is one of the worst in the world, and doesn't make us look good supporting it. But I digress. The fascinating thing was one particular image shown below, which is Mt Shuksan (at least I'm 90% sure it is) randomly enough, painted in Palestine.

This becomes two posts in one because the image within an image seen above is where I spent last weekend. I was up in the mountains and it was BEAUTIFUL! I was the Northern Lights for the first time in my life and all I can say is that I was reminded once again that the PNW truly is the most beautiful place in the world. End of story.

I took some teens up there on a retreat. I am thinking that sooner or later I am going to have to do some writing/thinking about what a retreat is and why we have them. But that's for another day.

Peace,

Matt

Six Months

It was six months ago today that my dad passed away. He fought so hard right up to the very end. The only person I knew who had died from cancer had finally ended up in a drug-induced coma for over a month. Dad hated taking any of the drugs and chose to fight to the end instead. And he did it.

I told Effie this morning that time just feels like a growing band-aid. It covers the wound more and more each day, but that doesn't mean it has actually healed at all. Until you see somebody go through that much crap you just can't understand how hard life can be. Seriously messed-up stuff.

Miss you dad.

War, Borders, Prisons, Torture and the Gospel

I have been trying not to rant lately, and overall have done very well, especially because I have stuck to my Lenten fast from political campaigns. But today too much is in my head and heart and I have to let a little bit out or I will explode.

A few days ago I had lunch with a person from my church, who I had a nagging suspicion was a neo-con. Truthfully, I think a majority of my brothers and sisters who I attend church with fall into this camp, but I try not to think about it or engage in any sort of discourse that relates directly to politics (though I am consistently subversive on matters). At my lunch, though, my fellow diner brought up his love for Bill O'Reilly and Fox News. Oy. I am a calm person, and tried to remain so as I asked a few probing questions, such as: "Doesn't O'Reilly support slaughtering innocent Iraqi's by the truckload?" or "Isn't he a big fan of torture?" or "Is it true that he wants to force illegal immigrants out of the country?" The truth is that I really don't know, as I don't have a television and if I did, I would never watch a moment of his show, after once seeing 3/4 of an episode. But apparently I had opened the floodgates. My fellow diner gave strong reasons why everything O'Reilly says is true and good. It was hard to listen to him.

The problem is that none of his reasons were supported by the Gospel. I'm sorry, but I am just plain sick of this. You cannot follow Jesus and say that it is okay to kill people. You simply cannot do it! You cannot love your enemy while blowing him to bits or torturing him. You cannot love your neighbor as yourself when you are killing innocent civilians so you can feel safer at night. You cannot force people back into their impoverished countries, chanting all the while "it's illegal for them to be here," and claim to love your neighbor. If you are willing to punish these men and women just because of where they are born, I have little doubt what you would have done with Jews in Germany in the 40's or escaped slaves in the U.S. After all, it was illegal to hide them as well. And don't get me started on prisons, which were initially meant to house people as we get them on the right track, but are now meant to punish, punish, punish. Should we be at all surprised at what happens when the average prisoner is released?

The Gospel of Jesus is impractical. It does not provide earthly safety. It does not punish but forgives. It is gentle and kind and forgiving and full of mercy and love. I see few fruits of the spirit showing when a neo-conservative talks about living in America. It saddens me. How about a consistent ethic of human life, where we care about all people and are concerned about nothing other than their complete salvation? Salvation in the Bible is not just about eternity after you die, but about how you live right now. How you are cared for and care for others. All others! This requires forgiveness, hospitality, gentleness and understanding. And it is desperately needed in this country today. No more hate. Please!

That's my rant. It was written on the fly, with little in the way of systematic thought, so I hope you can forgive me. I needed to get all of that off my chest.

Peace (and I really mean it!),
Matt

The Darjeeling Limited

Last night I finally watched The Darjeeling Limited. If you haven't seen this, you should at least have a good idea whether or not you will like it...all you have to do is look back on every other Wes Anderson movie you have seen, and you will like it as much as you like those.

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This is Anderson's best movie yet, in my humble opinion. Beyond the fact that I truly enjoyed this movie soley for the sake of the story it told, I also loved the message it conveyed. Three brothers traveling through India looking for a "life-changing experience," trying to find something powerfully "spiritual." Not surprisingly, they fail. I won't give away what happens next, but I will say that as they move away from their desperate attempt to experience the profound, the profound finds them. It reminds me in many ways of Eugene Peterson's writings on spirituality, where he reminds us that the spiritual is rooted deeply into the everyday. It is in relationships, both new and old, and in the everyday world around us.

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Last note on the movie, then I will shut up. Two of my favorite images in the movie are the train and the baggage. The train is where everybody is, searching for something more without seeming to really be looking. When the brothers finally leave the train, while everybody else remains, they finally begin to find answers, or at least better questions, as well as themselves and a way to be brothers and friends once again. The bags seem to be representative of past baggage (maybe a bit of a cliched read, so I apologize), as the brothers attempt to hold onto the past. Holding onto the past keeps them out of the present, and when they finally toss the bags on their way back to the train at the end of the movie I wanted to stand up and cheer! They were back on the train, but they were not the same people anymore, nor was their relationship the same. Hallelujah. Perfect movie.

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Peace,

Matt

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Oh yeah, and the soundtrack was awesome. Again, not surprising. But still cool.