The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job, and the Scale of Creation

It’s partly a theology book. Partly a personal meditation. Partly a Jeremiad. Partly prophetic.
That’s a lot of categories for a book just 95 pages long. Crisply written, provocatively presented, and compellingly argued, The Comforting Whirlwind by Bill McKibben offers an analogy between Job facing down the religious orthodoxy of his day, and modern-day western culture’s need to confront a similarly bankrupt [...]

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A Cry Like a Bell

I wasn’t aware that Madeleine L’Engle had written a volume of poetry till I went looking for this title, published in 2000, in the fiction section of the library and couldn’t find it. (I’ve discovered since that she has at least one other collection, The Weather of the Heart, which I’ve yet to see). Though L’Engle is most [...]

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Journalling Job III: Big picture

When all is said and done, this is a baffling book to me. For years I’ve settled for bits and pieces of what others have said about it, and though I’ve read it several times myself, I’ve never truly faced my bafflement. Now I’m acknowledging it.
It’s a tremendously rich book, one with many doors into [...]

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Journalling Job II: Emerging themes

Here’s my Job journal through Chapter 20.
The inadequacy — or adequacy? — of speech: Over and over again, Job’s friends chastise him for his words. Some examples:

“How long will you say such things? Your words are a blustering wind.” (Bildad, 8:2)
“Are all these words to go unanswered? Is this talker to be vindicated?” (Zophar, 11:2)
“Your sin [...]

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Journalling Job

I haven’t written anything about my Bible-reading for a long time, for two reasons: one, my posts didn’t say much of anything worth saying; two, my reading has been extremely dry and dutiful. But now that I’m up to Job, I want to try writing a bit to see if it revives the dialogue between [...]

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Carnival of Homeschooling

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up, hosted this week at Walking Therein. There’s plenty to ponder for homeschooling parents as we wrap up the schoolyear. Head on over for some wisdom and encouragement from homeschoolers, and for more info about the Carnival.

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Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies

This is a phenomenal nature video. I caught the second Nature episode on television back in the fall, and this week I netflixed it. It’s a documentary made by Ginger Kathrens that traces the life of Cloud, a palomino stallion in the Rockies, from birth to fatherhood.
Ginger Kathrens’ photography is spectacular, and her commentary provides a [...]

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Still

Still feeling sorrow for the Chapmans. Still praying for them. Still tearing up as I try to think straight about unthinkable things. Descriptions of little Maria Chapman’s memorial service are here and here.
The automatic question is always, “Why?” Why this family? Why this child? Why this way? Why with such devastation to other family members?
But even [...]

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Death’s kinship

645
Bereavement in their death to feel
Whom We have never seen—
A Vital Kinsmanship import
Our Soul and theirs—between—
So writes Emily Dickinson here. Her words capture a rhyme and reason behind the grief we feel over the children killed in last week’s earthquake in China. We mourn with these families we’ve never met because their story strikes at the heart of our [...]

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Booking Through Thursday: Books vs. Movies

Suggested by: Superfastreader:
Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?
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Usually I prefer books to movies. The characters and scenes in the movies rarely resemble [...]

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