The Great Sex Rescue

The Great Sex Rescue, by Sheila Wray Gregoire

(A Book Review)

About 13 months after she’d gotten married, a close friend confided to me that she and her husband – who were both virgins prior to marriage – had settled into having sex about once a month.

Once a month? After having worked so hard at remaining a virgin during four years of dating? For real?

I was heartbroken for her. A newlywed myself, the thought of once-a-month-only sex sounded downright tragic. (I would of course come to know my own woes, down the line…)

Because I didn’t know what to say, I squeaked out a timid, “Wow,” and changed the subject. Clearly, this wasn’t going to be a topic of our day trip.

But the sadness of her revelation stuck with me, and spurred me to action. Over the course of the next several years, as more and more friends tied the knot, I appointed myself “Giver of The Talk” to the women (as if I were some kind of Masters & Johnson, dear me). All of us were from evangelical Christian backgrounds, most were virgins, and, virgin or not, everybody was nervous about how sex could/would/might/should go. Everybody wanted to get everything right, from wedding night to first baby.

So I sat down each of my friends, a few weeks before her marriage, and laid out all the things I’d wished a friend had told me. What to expect. What not to expect. Tips on attitude and tips on…well, specifics. Recommended books. Things to look forward to. Things to be prepared for. The vital importance of communication. The equally vital importance of holy selfishness.

Thank Godthere were no books on my “recommended” list like the titles that began emerging after I got married.

Thank Godthere was no Every Man’s Battle or Sheet Music or Love & Respect.

Thank God I myself didn’t grow up in a faith community that saw women’s bodies as problems….or sex as a dirty little secret…or men as sex-monsters-in-waiting.

Because if I had, I would be in a lot more need of The Great Sex Rescue. As it is, I’m super grateful that these three women wrote this book, because everywhere I’ve turned in the evangelical community in the past 20 years, I’ve heard distorted messages.

Ms. Gregoire and her co-authors offer a refreshing definition of sex, as they assert God intended it to be: personal, pleasurable (to both parties, and not just when the stars align), pure, prioritized, pressure-free, putting the other first, and passionate. (What is it with Christian teachers being unable to resist alliteration?!)

The authors conducted a survey with 20,000 women over the course of six months, and followed this with focus groups and in-depth interviews. They also read and evaluated the top 10 Christian marriage books that devote significant attention to sex. And, they read and evaluated the top secular marriage books as well.

Their book takes down the distorted, harmful messages that so much Christian literature propagates, one by one, and replaces them with the most affirming, life-giving, refreshing, soul-stirring, compassionate, and tender blessings. It includes lots of data, lots of stories from respondents, and a whole lotta quotes from the Christian books that send the distorted messages (however well-meaning). It also has an interactive section for couples at the end of each chapter, and a few points on how Christian leaders can “reframe” their language to better reflect a holistic Biblical perspective on sex.

The Great Sex Rescue includes a chapter what they call “the orgasm gap,” and insists that women’s sexual pleasure absolutely matters, and not just in name only. Another chapter addresses the message that it’s a wife’s responsibility to keep her husband from looking at porn; the chapter is entitled, powerfully, “Your spouse is not your methadone.”

More than one chapter addressed “duty sex,” the notion that women should have sex even when they don’t much want to (for a whole host of reasons). Spoiler alert: “duty sex” doesn’t have Biblical backing.

Another chapter address the idea that women should stay physically attractive so their husbands don’t cheat. I can’t even get started on that without my blood pressure rising, so….just read the book.

In fact, just read the book. You will not read it and feel stupid, or beyond hope, or insignificant, or pressured. You won’t feel like you have failed and are doomed to forever fail. This is not a book of fear and fear-based rules.

Rather, it’s refreshing. It’s affirming of women and of men. It’s life-giving. You will be told, again and again, that your needs and desires are important, that they matter, deeply, and moreover, that sex can be the great thing our good God intended.

The Great Sex Rescue offers a sweet, tender, passionate, selfless, and utterly beautiful blessing in its teaching on sex. It elevates this intimate gift of marriage to a place that you want to visit, and linger.

White Fragility

White Fragility

by Robin Diangelo

Early on, on page 14, author Robin Diangelo says, “I expect that white readers will have moments of discomfort reading this book. This feeling may be a sign that I’ve managed to unsettle the racial status quo, which is my goal. The racial status quo is comfortable for white people, and we will not move forward in race relations if we remain comfortable. The key to moving forward is what we do with our discomfort….To interrupt white fragility, we need to build our capacity to sustain the discomfort of not knowing, the discomfort of being racially unmoored, the discomfort of racial humility.”

Well sir. She achieved her goal with this read. Boy howdy I felt uncomfortable on at least every other page of this bold, assertive book. But it was the good kind of uncomfortable – like the ache in certain muscles when you use them for the first time in a long time.

White Fragility’s subtitle succinctly communicates the content of the book: why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism. Carrying it into the mostly white clientele of my local Starbucks recently, I wondered if I’d get less side-eye if I was toting Fifty Shades of Grey.

Diangelo bluntly unpacks the truth of our thoroughly racist society: built quite literally on racism, and sustained in its current form through one variation of racism after another. Apparently racism adapts from one era to another like a shape-shifting virus.

She has the street creds to speak: she’s white (speaking to white readers), and she’s been training and researching on diversity and racism for about 25 years (in the workplace, primarily, and alongside people of color as colleagues).

My most significant takeaway from the short (but intense) book is that racism is too tightly bound with a good/bad binary. That is, we have the belief that “good people aren’t racist. So if you accuse me of being racist, you’re attacking my character.” She devotes an entire chapter to debunking this false dichotomy. (Or you could watch one of her videos.)

The second major takeaway was more personal: I have a long way to go. And humility is my passport. By definition, humility is uncomfortable. But interrupting racism is worth it.

Friends (and strangers) of color: I am sorry. I want to do better. If you have advice for me, I want to hear it. Thanks in advance.

Some worthy quotes:

“Today we have a cultural norm that insists we hide our racism from people of color and deny it among ourselves, but not that we actually challenge it. In fact, we are socially penalized for challenging racism.” – p. 50

“‘In a postracial era, we don’t have to say it’s about race or the color of the kids in the [school] building….We can concentrate poverty and kids of color and then fail to provide the resources to support and sustain those schools, and then we can see a school full of black kids and say, “Oh, look at their test scores.” It’s all very tidy now, this whole system.’ Readers have no doubt heard schools and neighborhoods discussed in these terms and know that this talk is racially coded; ‘urban’ and ‘low test scores’ are code for ‘not white’ and therefore less desirable.” – p. 67

“I often ask people of color, ‘How often have you given white people feedback on our unaware yet inevitable racism? How often has that gone well for you?’ Eye-rolling, head shaking, and outright laughter follow, along with the consensus of rarely, if ever. I then ask, ‘What would it be like if you could simply give us feedback, have us graciously receive it, reflect, and work to change the behavior?’ Recently a man of color sighed and said, ‘It would be revolutionary.’ I ask my fellow whites to consider the profundity of that response. It would be revolutionary if we could receive, reflect, and work to change the behavior. On the one hand, the man’s response points to how difficult and fragile we are. But on the other hand, it indicates how simple it can be to take responsibility for our racism.” – p. 111

“Stopping our racist patterns must be more important than working to convince others that we don’t have them.” – p. 129

“Racism hurts (even kills) people of color 24-7. Interrupting it is more important than my feelings, ego, or self-image.” – pp. 142-143

“Feedback is key to our ability to recognize and repair our inevitable and often unaware collusion. In recognition of this, I try to follow these guidelines:

1. How, where, and when you give me feedback is irrelevant – it is the feedback I want and need. Understanding that it is hard to give, I will take it any way I can get it. From my position of social, cultural, and institutional white power and privilege, I am perfectly safe and I can handle it. If I cannot handle it, it’s on me to build my racial stamina.
2. Thank you.” – p. 125

Work Like Any Other

a novel by Virginia Reeves

A review

Oh, to write a first novel that wins out of the gate!

Work Like Any Other is the story of one Roscoe T. Martin, an electrician in 1920s rural Alabama, who, to save his own vocational dignity and possibly salvage his wife’s inherited farm and therefore his own marriage, siphons just a wee bit of electricity from the Alabama Power Company onto his farm. It works fine and seems to be lifting his marriage from its doldrums – until a young man from the power company gets electrocuted by Roscoe’s homemade transformer.

Roscoe gets convicted of manslaughter and sent to Alabama’s first “rehabilitative” state prison, where he works, alternately, in the dairy, in the library, and with the hunting dogs who go after escapees. His wife and young son abandon him to his fate.

Despite telling the story alternately from third person narration to Roscoe’s first-person perspective, Reeves manages to paint subtly nuanced characters. Just when I thought my sympathies lay primarily with the convicted electrician, I would read a passage that made me pause. It was refreshing to see characters developed with such complexity, particularly when the story itself was not fairly straightforward: Roscoe moves to the farm, Roscoe siphons the electricity, Roscoe gets sent to jail, Roscoe works in different areas of the prison while his young son grows up without him, etc. There are relatively few twists or turns, and most of the action happens in slow-moving settings like prison, a dairy, a farm. Yet I was transfixed.

Along the way, Reeves addresses themes of marriage and parenting (and the complicated junction of the two); class, race, and justice in early 20^th-century Alabama; loyalty and power dynamics; and most especially, tightly interwoven in all these themes, the notion of how our work does and does not, can and cannot, define us.

A few note-worthy passages:

“In his jail cell with his high, barred windows and stone walls, Roscoe played back his son’s birth, the place where his marriage to Marie shifted like a tree uprooted in a storm, tipped so that its roots spread out over air, rather than ground. Roscoe knew it was not the boy’s fault, that he hadn’t meant to loosen those roots in his flooding and swelling – storms don’t know their cruelty – but still, Roscoe had assigned him blame. The tree that had been his marriage remained, made up of the same components, but it stood at odd angles, its parts misaligned, its growth stalled.” – p. 71

Beautiful word picture. This division happens so often in marriage.

Then this passage, which references many plot points, multiple occasions in the story where Roscoe or Wilson (the black farmer convicted along with him) endured loss of freedom, dignity, and even limb in the course of their prison sentences:

“‘That’s right.’ I was nearly done. Scoop, I told my arms. Pitch. Scoop. And then, Set the shovel down. Grab the bar. Hold it firmly, damn it. Hold it. Now, strike. Again. Even with Wilson there, it was just work – work like any other, like milking and cleaning stalls, building pens and running dogs, rolling carts down narrow aisles, organizing cards, memorizing numbers. It was picking at coal veins on your side and breathing rushes of coal dust, awaiting explosions, lifting and loading. It was tamping and shoveling and pitching. And work is measured in time as much as it is measured in pay. I am uncertain how many hours of running equal a man’s hand, his wrist, and forearm and elbow. How many books must be stacked in exchange for one finger? How much milk driven into a pail? How many holes dug, how many dogs pulled from the ground and then buried back even deeper? How many wives and sons?

I am still unsure of my debts.” – pp. 226-227

“Work like any other.” From Roscoe’s deeply-held belief that his job as an electrician absolutely defined him, to this statement – that it’s all work, and it’s all debt to be paid – this passage beautifully illuminates his journey.

Are we what we do? Or do we exist above and beyond our jobs? Are we the roles we play – wife or husband, mother or father, prisoner or free? Or do we exist above and beyond our titles?

Well done, Reeves.

Girl, Wash Your Face

Girl, wash your face (Stop believing the lies about who you are so you can become who you were meant to be)

by Rachel Hollis

Bottom line opinion: Meh.

It’s definitely got some good content – enough that I’ve been inspired to make a couple of immediate practical changes in my life, and I’m genuinely grateful for that – but it’s just too fluffy to take serious root.

On the positive side:

• It’s well-organized: an intro, and 20 chapters, each one devoted to stating and debunking a specific lie she once believed about herself. As a ghostwriter and editor, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate an organized self-help book.
• It’s funny. Funny like her hero/mentor Jen Hatmaker. Funny like your favorite upbeat blogger. Funny like a Dry Bar Comedy set. Witty and charming and self-deprecating and colloquial and snappy.
• It’s encouraging. Even when she’s telling you to get over yourself and get up (“Girl, wash your face!”), it’s encouraging. Like a good counselor or a good coach, Hollis accepts you, her reader, as you are, but pushes you to be your best. She challenges you as much as she cheerleads you.
• It’s refreshingly honest. She shares difficult secrets, failings, worries, doubts, and even some ugly things about herself that most of us won’t say out loud to anyone, much less put in print. So, kudos to Hollis for keeping it real.

On the downside:

• Girl, Wash Your Face is, at its root, another verse of the overplayed “this is the impossible way that you ought to live your life” song. On the one hand, we shouldn’t be workaholics and we should recognize that we’re good enough moms. However, if we have a dream, we should pursue it with every single thing we’ve got, however taxing it is. So which is it? Take care of myself and don’t work too much? Or pursue my dreams wholeheartedly? (The truth is, both. But Hollis doesn’t seem to recognize the tension involved in doing both, much less give any hints for how to live in that tension.)
• I dunno, but Hollis seems to think an awful lot of herself. If I read it once I read it a dozen times: she is the CEO of a major media company and has fulfilled her dreams and has been on the cover of Fortune magazine and has…blah blah blah. We get it: you’re successful. Tooting your own horn to make a point only works once.
• It’s very, very self- Over and over, Hollis tells us how brave, and beautiful, and strong, and capable we women are. Whatever has happened to us, whatever poor choices we’ve made in the past, whatever may be going down now, we can rise above. Do I believe this? Yes. Do I believe the power lies within me? Absolutely not. Do I believe I must put in the hard work of becoming who I was meant to be? You bet. Do I believe the power lies within me? Heck no. If I am ever to be who I was meant to be, I must follow the Source of that calling…or I will never reach my goal. Dear Rachel, all that you have overcome has been by his grace at work within you. Over and over, I got frustrated at Hollis’s failure to cite the source of all true power for life transformation. Furthermore, she perpetuates the distinctly western individualistic mindset that we can transform ourselves on our own, no matter the systems around us. You might need a therapist, but you aren’t working under or against any systemic obstacles. I understand she was trying to reach a wider audience, but she does her readers a disservice when she implies that if you just work hard enough, you can do anything you set your mind to. Bullocks & Joel Osteen.
• It’s fluffy. No research. No citing of reputable studies. No psychology or sociology or even theology of any depth. I realize this isn’t a downside to some readers, but I find I want authors who’ve done the hard work of study, not just lived a life and learned some things from it that now they want to share. Success in one area does not equal expertise in another. Give me Timothy Keller and his reformed self for theology. Give me Brene Brown and her serious, reputable, peer-reviewed research on shame and vulnerability. Give me Malcolm Gladwell and his truly deep dive into every subject he’s ever written about. Give me John Eldredge or Eugene Peterson and their pastors’ hearts and years of shepherding people. Kudos to Rachel Hollis for overcoming difficulties and becoming successful by every worldly measure….but she’s still just one gal telling me how to live my life by writing exclusively about her own.

Some would say it isn’t “Christian enough.” It is true the Christian teaching in the book is more veneer than substance – at no point in this book would Jesus come across as a stumbling block to anyone. However, I suspect this is intentional. I bet Hollis is trying to reach as wide an audience as possible, in hopes of drawing non-believers gently into a Christian worldview. I have no problem with that. The book isn’t marketed as a Christian self-help volume, after all.

In short, if you’re looking for an easy, inspiring, feel-good read, check it out. It’ll be a good read. You’ll laugh, you’ll be moved, you might even change something about your life for the better. Those are all good things.

However, if you’re looking for depth and counsel that doesn’t just put more pressure on you to “best your best person now doggone it,” may I suggest Brene Brown or Timothy Keller or John Eldredge. Pair any of them with a related Bible study, a book club, and a friend to process the material with – and you will have a truly good combination for growth.

The Girl Who Smiled Beads

The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A story of war and what comes after

by Clemantine Wamariya & Elizabeth Weil

The Girl Who Smiled Beads makes the fifth book I’ve read about Rwanda, a country I’ve visited twice and which has carved its own green hilly space in my heart.

This one is by a young woman – the same age as my sister, a commonality not lost on me – who fled the Rwandan genocide in 1994. She was six; her sister was 15; their parents and two siblings remained behind, to face an unknown fate.

Clemantine and her sister Claire spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, seeking safety and peace. They endured unimaginable horrors in and out of refugee camps. They encountered extraordinary kindnesses from strangers.

At age 13, Clemantine relocated to Chicago under refugee status. She’s now an American citizen with an enviable and prestigious rap sheet: winner of Oprah’s high school essay contest, graduate of Yale, emissary on behalf of President Obama and countless human rights organizations.

But how could she possibly make sense out of the chaos of her life? How could she feel both six years old and 100 years old when she was in actuality 11 years old? How could she find her own story in the cacophony of her experiences?

This memoir tore me up (to put a Southern spin to my response).

I’ve been to Rwanda. I’ve been to the genocide memorial museum in Kigali, where a wall contains the remains of a quarter million people, and more are added every year.

I have friends whose names and faces are indelibly dear to me, who have their own stories that would make you sit down in sackcloth and smear yourself with hot ashes so that you could taste-test their suffering yourself.

I have a Rwandan friend who says, weeping, with dark knowledge, “I was not meant for salvation. I was not meant to be here, today, talking and crying and praying. I was not meant to live.” She looks like Clemantine, and it breaks the fibers of my heart.

I’ve seen Rwandans carrying machetes on the side of the road, coming out of a shop with a new one, like it’s no thing (it’s as ubiquitous as shovels in American homes), and I’ve felt a shadow cross my soul.

Clemantine’s story is absolutely heartbreaking. In just about every way. Even considering the “happy ending” of “making it” in America, thanks to her own hard work and the kindnesses of many.

This was harder for me to read than any other book about Rwanda. Left to Tell is equally harrowing, but offers the hope of the gospel as a light in dark places, and the power of forgiveness as a beacon to homecoming.

Achingly, Clemantine’s story does not have the same hope. Jesus figures often in her tale, but mostly as, at best, a non-entity, and, at worst, a scapegoat.

But I could not put it down. It haunted my waking thoughts and my dawning dreams.

I cannot turn away from her story. I must face those monsters in this tiny little way and shake a trembling fist at them and speak a trembling anger to them: “I WILL NOT TURN AWAY. I will hear this heartbreak, I will weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn. I will remember, and I will not do nothing.”

Dear, dear Clemantine, I don’t know you at all, even though I’ve read your story, but how my heart adores you, in all your strength and beauty and brokenness and rage and aching and brightness. Please keep talking, teaching, writing; we need your voice. May Imana give you all you need. Peace, blessing, healing, beauty and joy and homecoming to you.

“I did not understand the point of the word genocide then. I resent and revile it now. The word is tidy and efficient. It holds no true emotion. It is impersonal when it needs to be intimate, cool and sterile when it needs to be gruesome. The word is hollow, true but disingenuous, a performance, the worst kind of lie….The word genocide cannot tell you, cannot make you feel, the way I felt in Rwanda. The way I felt in Burundi. The way I wished to be invisible because I knew someone wanted me dead at a point in my life when I did not yet understand what death was.” – pp. 93-94

“To be a refugee was to be a victim – it was tautological. And not just a victim due to external forces like politics or war. You were a victim due to some inherent, irrevocable weakness in you. You were a victim because you were less worthy, less good, and less strong than all the non-victims of the world.” – p. 118

“Sharing was [my mother’s] philosophy, an ideology to counter what she considered to be the emotionally stingy notions of possession or entitlement. We were never to think, This orange is mine. I’m giving you what’s mine. We were to think, This orange is ours. We’re sharing what’s ours.

“I think back to this often in trying to make sense of the world – how there are people who have so much and people who have so little, and how I fit in with them both…I want to make people understand that boxing ourselves into tiny cubbies based on class, race, ethnicity, religion- anything, really – comes from a poverty of mind, a poverty of imagination. The world is dull and cruel when we isolate ourselves. Survival, true survival of the body and soul, requires creativity, freedom of thought, collaboration….We need to see beyond the projections we cast onto each other.” – pp. 176-177

Books of 2017

Turns out I read a little more last year than I’d thought. Guess all those 40-60 minute “I’ll just read one more chapter” nights added up.

As much for my own sake as anyone’s, here’s a round-up of 2017’s good reads (in alphabetical order), along with a short quote from several (a handful of books just didn’t warrant this list).

A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus revolutionized the cosmos, by Dava Sobel

The story of dear old Copernicus, who had the gall to state that the sun was the center of our cosmos, not the Earth. I completely blame my 10-year-old for my even having interest in books like this. Well-written, not quite as thorough as her bestselling Longitude (about the search for accuracy in longitude), a little bit of creative, salacious, dramatic speculation included.

A Thousand Hills to Heaven: Love, hope, and a restaurant in Rwanda, by Josh Ruxin

In telling the story of this restaurant, A Thousand Hills to Heaven dishes out plates full of wise and insightful nuggets about aid, development, horror, heroism, healing, and hope. Even when I thought I might put it down and not pick it back up again, I found myself returning to the book like I open newsletters from friends on the mission field.

Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the heroic campaign to end slavery, by Eric Metaxas

Outstanding biography of this too-little-known hero of the faith, and basis of the movie “Amazing Grace.” Metaxas weaves detail and meticulous research into a well-paced, creative narrative. Highly recommend if you like biography, and even if you don’t.

“The unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations.”

Blink: The power of thinking without thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell

My first read of a Gladwell book; won’t be my last. Love well-researched social scientists who can teach significant paradigm shifts through thorough and engaging story.

“A commander does not need to know the barometric pressure or the winds or even the temperature. He needs to know the forecast. If you get too caught up in the production of information, you drown in the data.”

The Bookshop on the Corner, by Jenny Colgan

A sweet, easy, entertaining read: Nina takes the plunge, drops the library job, converts an old bus to a mobile bookstore, and sets up shop in, of all places, Scotland. Antics and epiphanies and rural romances follow.

“There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them. Books were the best way Nina knew – apart from, sometimes, music – to breach the barrier, to connect the internal universe with the external, the words acting merely as a conduit between the two worlds.”

Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah

I’m usually averse to memoirs by celebrities, because I don’t find their lives any more riveting than the next person’s, but this was a really good one. Funny, insightful, poignant, well-written story of growing up the son of an African and a Swede (“born a crime”) in the last days of apartheid in South Africa. So good I have three pages of quotes. Here’s just one:

“We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to.”

Braving the Wilderness, by Brene Brown

Love me some Brene! (Daring Greatly has pride of place on the mantel above the fireplace, like where you’d put the Oscar statue.) I’ve gotten to where I don’t want to read somebody’s opinions; give me solid research, solid data. And Brene delivers. Plus she’s snarky, shoots straight, encouraging, and above all kind. Which, as it turns out, is just about the most important trait in the world to me.

“Not enough of us know how to sit in pain with others. Worse, our discomfort shows up in ways that can hurt people and reinforce their own isolation. I have started to believe that crying with strangers in person could save the world.”

Brookwood Road: Memories of a home, by Scott Vaughan

A memoir by a friend. Norman Rockwell, meet Jerry Clower. Reading Brookwood Road is like the catching up that happens at a wedding or funeral, after all the guests have left and all the family is sitting around with ties loosened and heels off and the leftovers long left on the kitchen counter. It’s comfortable, familiar, funny, poignant, filled with both laughter and easy silence.

Heaven in the Real World, Steven Curtis Chapman

What it sounds like: Chapman’s autobiography. A good read, a little long, and also inspiring. The man has been pointing millions to Jesus through his music for nearly 30 years, and still somehow has remained clean and above the fray of contemporary Christian music; that alone inspires my respect.

If I understood you, would I have this look on my face? (My adventures in the art and science of relating and communicating), by Alan Alda

Alan Alda is a communications research expert? Who knew??? Could not get his voice out of my head as I read this, which made his humor throughout the book even better. A good read.

Is God a Mathematician?, by Mario Livio

I have NEVER read a book like this without compulsion (re: as an assignment). Apparently I’m turning into an ever greater nerd than I had realized.

This book is mostly accessible to a general, albeit adult, readership. Livio does not in fact really address the title of his book. He does address various philosophical aspects of mathematics, primarily the question of whether math is “discovered” or “invented” – a dichotomy that appears to have been a vexing question for centuries. And, like many academicians, he settles firmly….somewhere in the middle.

Leopard at the Door, by Jennifer McVeigh

A novel of 18-year-old Rachel, who returns home to Africa after six years of exile in an English boarding school following the sudden death of her mother. It’s 1950. Rachel’s father has a new woman in her mother’s place. And Kenya is in its genesis days of the fight for independence from England.

A very well-written, enjoyable read.

My Italian Bulldozer, by Alexander McCall Smith

A one-off (not in a series) by one of my favourite (yes, with a “u”) authors. Entertaining, wry, witty, poignant without a touch of sentimentality, keenly observant and borderline happily cynical of human nature.

Paul Stuart’s girlfriend has left him. To soften the fallout, he goes to Tuscany for a month to finish his latest book. A series of unexpected events puts him at the wheel of a bulldozer, then in the company of a charming American woman, and a quaint crew of locals. Classic McCall Smith.

Not the Religious Type: confessions of a turncoat atheist, by Dave Schmelzer

An atheist-turned-pastor offers a non-angry apologetic for the Christian faith. Refreshing! And a really good read.

“…the religious response to modernity has felt so unsatisfying for so many. It puts faith into the category of ‘being right’ about something, about proving or disproving something. And as we’ve said, being right has fewer rewards than we might have supposed.”

Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton

Re-read this this year, with a friend, which made it way more fun. Chesterton is an absolute master at snark, wit, lyrical prose, and extraordinary philosophical, intellectual, & theological depth. This book, a well-deserved classic of Christian theology, is as rich and dense as a chocolate torte, and this time around I digested it right: slowly, deliberately, in the company of a friend.

“Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves.”

 The Faith of Christopher Hitchens, by Larry Alex Taunton

Provocative title, considering Christopher Hitchens was one of the bad hombres known as the “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheism. But apparently Christian apologist Taunton was friends with Hitchens, and offers this well-written, engaging, lively, and above all very personal biography of Hitchens. He shares a brief background of Hitchens’ journey to atheism, his change of at least some major thinking following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and especially their growing, deepening friendship – a thing that left Hitchens’ comrades in utter disbelief and dismay.

Did Hitchens go to meet his Maker a believer, or did he stand firm to the end in his disbelief? (Well I’m certainly not giving the book away.)

The Life & Times of Persimmon Wilson, by Nancy Peacock

Hands-down the best novel I read all year. The story of the life of one enslaved yet literate Persimmon Wilson, from antebellum Louisiana sugar plantation to post-Civil War Texas and life as a black Comanche warrior. Outstanding writing, historical accuracy, rich, nuanced, morally complex characters, a perfect blend of reflection and action throughout the plot.

“When we docked at New Orleans we were loaded off the ship and chained at the ankles. The air smelt of fried fish and was thick and heavy, like something that needed to be spooned instead of breathed.”

Why Won’t You Apologize?, by Harriet Lerner

Like many self-help titles, Why Won’t You Apologize is full of truths we already know but forget, or wish weren’t true, or just don’t feel like dealing with. But it articulates them in fresh, relatable, easily readable stories and counsel.

“Words of apology, no matter how sincere, will not heal a broken connection if we haven’t listened well to the hurt party’s anger and pain.”

 

Leopard at the Door

Leopard at the Door, by Jennifer McVeigh

A Review

Reading a novel of eastern Africa is different after you’ve been to eastern Africa. Of course that’s obvious, but that doesn’t mean it was any less startling to me, these lines:

“…The smell of a city whose people live life outdoors under hot sun” – and I can smell it, too, the cooking fires of Rwanda.

“…This other side of Kenya: a raw physicality that has no shame in the inevitability of pain.” Yes. No whitewashing of life’s harshness like the too-feel-good culture of America.

I can see this, too: “Two Africans are dragging branches across the lawn, building fires in the pits that sit beyond the veranda. From the window I can see the last of the sun’s light, reflecting like flames on the surface of the dam. A line of white birds flutters over the golden waters.” I can see those flames, those pits, that sun and those birds.

Leopard at the Door is the story of 18-year-old Rachel, who returns home to Africa after six years of exiled in an English boarding school following the sudden death of her mother. It’s 1950. Rachel’s father has a new woman in her mother’s place. Kenya is in its genesis days of the fight for independence from England. The lines between whites and Africans, master and servant, ally and enemy, are drawn ever clearer and often in blood, while Rachel is grieving, confused, harassed, and, inconveniently, falling in love.

McVeigh’s descriptions of the land and culture are transporting; her pace of alternate action and setting are impeccable; her characters are for the most part believable and complex; and the story is well grounded in historical fact and research. Above all – as is needed for any story to work – Young Rachel drew me into her world from the first page, and I was breathless to reach the last page.

A very good read. Highly recommend.

 

 

 

Notable passages:

“I haven’t been in the presence of someone like this before. It is as though all the people I have known up until now have been like toy soldiers with their feet set apart on a lead base, and he is real; in movement; on a course that I am compelled to follow.

“‘Authority is not a substitute for truth.’” – p. 101

“‘It wouldn’t suit him for a minute to admit that it might be a political movement, the inevitable economic hangover of British rule in Kenya, land hunger, a rootless proletariat, and a government build on discrimination. We have seen these things the world over and there are still men who look at the fight against injustice and call it savagery.’” – p. 153

How timely. Or, as the cliché goes, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

“‘Men have legitimate voices, even if they are not sanctioned by your press.’” – p. 230

“Sara [is] peeling an apple with a small knife, so that the skin separates in one long curl…She is still working the little knife. There is something unlikable in her determination to peel the whole apple without breaking the curling strip of shiny green skin.” – p. 238 (Okay, that’s just sharp use of symbolism.)

“‘There is a Kikuyu proverb,’ Michael says. ‘Njita murume. When you knock someone about – if you ask him to call you God, he will do so; but the truth is still that you are not God.’” – p. 302

 

 

A Thousand Hills to Heaven

A Thousand Hills to Heaven: Love, hope, and a restaurant in Rwanda

by Josh Ruxin

a book review

Word to the wise: don’t read books about Rwanda before bed. (It only took me two reads to realize this.) Even if the book isn’t “about” the genocide of 1994, it’s still “about” the genocide. That is, most unfortunately, as much the defining event of modern-day Rwanda as 9/11 is for contemporary America.

Still, A Thousand Hills to Heaven is the most genocide-light book I’ve read yet about this east central African nation, in preparation for my mission trip there in June. (Other reads: Broken Memory and Left to Tell: Finding God in the Midst of the Rwandan Holocaust.) The title is a double entendre – Rwanda’s geography has earned it the nickname “land of a thousand hills,” and Heaven is the name of the restaurant this author and his wife operate in the capital city of Kigali.

It’s a steady, interesting, heartwarming, heartbreaking, insightful, educational read. Josh Ruxin is an accomplished, successful veteran of the development world; his wife Alissa is a wellness expert and coach; both are foodies who’ve managed to birth and maintain a Michelin-star restaurant in a landlocked African capital.

In telling the story of this restaurant, A Thousand Hills to Heaven dishes out plates full of wise and insightful nuggets about aid, development, horror, heroism, healing, and hope. Even when I thought I might put it down and not pick it back up again, I found myself returning to the book like I open newsletters from friends on the mission field.

Some of the nuggets:

• Josh’s “five finger rules of development”:
  • Rule one (the thumb): people who are starving cannot be asked to do more than eat. Translation: do the hunger relief first, then pursue development.
  • Rule two (the pointer finger): demand high standards where they improve performance and upgrade the institutions that serve people and help them have better lives.
    • “To see poor sanitation in a newborn nursery and to say, ‘Well, we’re not in the U.S., after all, and this is their way,’ is soft bigotry of the worst sort….We should not demand that developing nations find their own Louis Pasteurs and Jonas Salks. Our first charitable instinct should be to share what we know from our own history, and we should share it with confident determination, pushing aside unhealthy and cruel traditions where we find them….To equate [female genital mutilation] with our own culture’s male circumcision…is a failure of critical thinking and true helpfulness.” (p. 123)
    • “The most important reason to demand high performance standards in development work is that you should be able to leave someday…If you give out too many things for free, it is hard to make people feel industrious and entrepreneurial.” (p. 124)
  • Rule three (the middle finger – yes that one): you can’t do successful, sustainable development in hopelessly corrupt countries.
  • Rule four (the ring/wedding finger): we (the developing agencies, etc.) are not here as a lifelong commitment, not married to our programs.
    • “We should ultimately never be the essential party, even though we do have leadership responsibilities at the beginning. The better NGOs would nurture Rwandans to lead their efforts, and they would find ways to make the improvements sustainable, then they would leave.” (p. 174)
  • Rule five (the pinky finger): trust the market as the biggest player, even if the power of the market looks small now.
    • “Never be afraid of the profit model, as it can carry the heaviest load of long-term development. Profit brings sustainability, not to mention dignity.” (p. 202)
  • “Don’t start anything that won’t be sustainable after you leave – and do leave: that is the rule. There were no signs [on our health centers] announcing ‘Brought to you by foreign donors.’ When foreigners stay too long, they become a reason for people to doubt their own abilities. When foreigners come with unsustainable projects, they are often doing it for their own pleasure or as an excuse for fundraising and salaries, not for love.” (p. 175)
  • “Rwandans have a funny relationship with God, which they convey through a story anyone can tell you: ‘God worked very hard for six days creating the heavens and the earth. But on the seventh day, he needed a break, so he picked Rwanda as the place to take a much-needed sleep. God sleeps in Rwanda, then keeps busy at work everywhere else.” (p. 169) The negative takeaway from this is that God only shows up in Rwanda to take a nap, so you can’t count on Him to hear you there. The positive is that Rwanda is so cool and beautiful that naturally God comes here, when he’s not punching the clock, to rest.
  • “Rwanda may have its share of bureaucracy, but it is not a kleptocracy. It’s a place where a good program doesn’t die the death of a thousand bribes, a thousand misallocations, a thousand brothers-in-law who must have a piece of every pie.” (p. 156)
  • “If your town ran out of food, would you want someone from another nation handing out the food, or would you want your longtime neighbor to hand it to you?” (Take that, Operation Christmas Child!) “That way, your dignity would be intact. Your children would see neighbors doing something together to feed their families – they would not see their parents looking like helpless victims.” (p. 109)

And two last quotes, one for laughs:

“There is such a thing, by the way, as an Africanized vehicle. Land Rovers and Land Cruisers and a few other makes come to Africa with big running boards, safari-style cargo racks atop, tougher and higher suspensions, supplemental fuel tanks, and, most visibly, snorkel pipes that come from the engine, up alongside the passenger side of the window. That pipe allows the engine to keep going in waist-deep water, and it allows the engine to stay cleaner, gulping its air a few feet higher up from the surface of the roads, which are often traveled in fast, close, dusty caravans. I think the main reason you see such vehicles, however, is that they look very cool, and many of the charities operating them want badass vehicles pictured in their brochures and websites. Our vehicles were picked up on the cheap, however – no sexy snorkels.” (p. 96)

And this one which feels prophetic:

“When people leave here they perhaps want some sushi and Ben & Jerry’s first, but then they want to continue with meaningful endeavors. You cannot leave Africa and then expect to be satisfied in ordinary living. You will have to continue doing extraordinary things, because you know what can be done in the world, and you know what you are capable of doing, and you know that, wherever you go, many lives will depend on your willingness to exercise your privileges and skills on their behalf.” (p. 207)

“Why won’t you apologize?”

Why Won’t You Apologize?   by Harriet Lerner

A review

Confession: Half the reason I gave this book a second look is because of the cover shout-out from my sociology heroine Brene Brown, author of Daring Greatly, one of the best books I’ve ever read. So, authors and would-be authors, take note: the cover endorsement makes a difference.

Like many self-help titles, Why Won’t You Apologize is full of truths we already know but forget, or wish weren’t true, or just don’t feel like dealing with. But it articulates them in fresh, relatable, easily readable stories and counsel.

Lerner, a therapist and “apology researcher” for 20-plus years, discusses what a meaningful apology is and isn’t, how to deliver one even when you’re the wronged party, how to receive one, how to live without one when you need it, and the role of forgiveness.

We all know when someone’s apology is sincere and when it isn’t, even if we can’t articulate why; Lerner breaks it down. She also explains why some people over-apologize and why some won’t apologize under any circumstance. She delves into trickier territory in a chapter about apologizing “under fire” – when you’re being criticized, fairly or not. She then offers tips on apologizing to those “defensive” people.

The last third of the book deals with the topic of forgiveness, and here I had to demur, because our definitions of forgiveness are rather different. Lerner seems to believe that forgiveness is the equivalent of absolution; I do not. I can forgive someone but still hold him or her to consequences. I do this on a regular basis as a parent: I forgive Samuel for the red Sharpie on the piano keys, but he is still going to lose Minecraft privileges! Forgiveness is a gift; it’s trust that must be earned.

Lerner also teaches that forgiveness must be earned. If the wrongdoer does not apologize and change, forgiveness is impossible. But that’s a prison I’m unwilling to call home. I must have a means to get free of the wrongdoer’s hold on my life, and forgiveness is the tool. Forgiveness means I no longer dwell in the wrong done to me.

Lerner takes serious issue with those who tell the victim that he or she has to forgive the wrongdoer, thereby adding pressure and shame to the victim. I concede her point there. While forgiveness is always needed eventually, there is no prescribed timeline or even method for getting there. I would never tell my friends who’ve been abused that “it’s time to forgive now”; that would be unconscionably insensitive. What I will do is pray and be a friend and be a listener, and encourage them in the acts of forgiveness when their hearts are strong enough to start on that path. No whitewashing allowed, only real healing.

Notable passages:

“With my husband, Steve, for example, I like to apologize for exactly my share of the problem – as I calculate it, of course – and I expect him to apologize for his share, also as I calculate it. Needless to say, we don’t always do the same math.” – p. 2

Ouch. Painfully true.

“The best apologies are short, and don’t go on to include explanations that run the risk of undoing them. An apology isn’t the only chance you ever get to address the underlying issue. The apology is the chance you get to establish the ground for future communication. This is an important and often overlooked distinction.” – p. 15

“The higher the anxiety in any system, the more individuals are held responsible for other people’s feelings and behavior (‘Apologize to your dad for giving him a headache’) rather than for their own (‘Apologize to your dad for not turning the music down when you knew he had a headache’).” – p. 19

“Words of apology, no matter how sincere, will not heal a broken connection if we haven’t listened well to the hurt party’s anger and pain.” – p. 51

“Say it shorter. If you’re trying to get through to a non-apologizer – or any difficult or defensive person – keep in mind that overtalking on your part will lead to underlistening from the other. This is true whether the offense you’re addressing is large or small.” – p. 76

“We want change but don’t want to change first – a great recipe for relationship failure.” – p. 109

“The best apologies are offered by people who understand that it is important to be oneself, but equally as important to choose the self we want to be.” – p. 125

The Faith of Christopher Hitchens

“The Faith of Christopher Hitchens,” by Larry Taunton

A review

Few biographies are bona fide page-turners. This one is. Hitchens had a faith?? Really? Must read….

Confession: I never read the late celebrated atheist’s 2007 bestseller, god Is Not Great, much less his memoir, Hitch-22, which was published three years later.

More significant confession: It’s super-hard for me to pray for the likes of Christopher Hitchens, Peter Singer, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins (bad hombres known as the “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheism). Like, it’s easier for me to pray for the militants of ISIS, because, you know, everybody outside of ISIS knows that ISIS is nuts. Pure-tee evil. They’re horrid, but they’re hardly subtle, and they’re not exactly winning hundreds of thousands to their cause. Whereas these “Four Horsemen” and their ilk use more formidable weapons against the cause of Christ – words, intellectualism (okay, pseudo, usually), bestselling books, debates and lectures to sold-out venues. They swing their sword of militant unbelief at any shadow of faith from any follower of any religion, but they do it behind shields of warped data and philosophical argument and sophisticated debate skills – and this makes them subtly appealing. They sound so….reasonable, often, and therein lies their danger.

And so, I’ve always had a hard time loving these particular enemies (their term for themselves, not mine).

Christian apologist Larry Taunton’s well-written, engaging, lively, and above all very personal biography of Hitchens has turned me completely around. He shares a brief background of Hitchens’ journey to atheism, his change of at least some major thinking following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and especially their growing, deepening friendship – a thing that left Hitchens’ comrades in utter disbelief and dismay.

Here is a reminder that the “evangelical” part of my evangelical faith is about sharing my personal relationship with Jesus through a personal relationship.

People matter. Even arrogant atheists. Before reading this book, I’d give easy lip service to this sentiment. Now, I mean it. Even the “Four Horsemen” are, at the end of every day, still human. Still important to God. Still able to be redeemed, however far gone from him they are, however many people they have led from him.

I found myself genuinely caring for Christopher Hitchens, Public Enemy Number One to Christians for decades…because Larry Taunton genuinely cared for him. Despite Hitchens’ arrogance, despite Hitchens’ public persona of unfiltered hatred for people of faith.

This book was a reminder to me that it always comes down to the person – the one sitting across the table from you with “enough Johnny Walker for a battalion,” the one who knows his diagnosis of esophageal cancer is “a death sentence,” the one who, after a lifetime of bashing believers, answers the question, “Believest thou this?” (re: that Jesus is the resurrection and the life) with, “I’ll admit that it is not without appeal to a dying man.”

I found myself cheering inside for this man I’d previously found it difficult even to lift up a cursory prayer for.

Thank you, Larry Taunton, for making at least this one atheistic horseman human to me again. I needed the reminder, and it will hopefully stick with me and inform my current and future relationships with those who most assuredly do not believe.

A few noteworthy passages:

“Atheism does nothing to restrain our darker impulses. It does everything to exacerbate them…One is reminded of novelist Evelyn Waugh’s famous quip, made in response to someone pointing out his all-too-obvious faults, ‘You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid, I would hardly be a human being.’” – p. 64

“[Hitchens] found himself liking evangelicals. they were eager to debate him and defend their beliefs, yes, but they were also inviting him out to dinner or a drink afterward. That’s what he really came to admire: the combination of deep and sincere convictions, which doctrine-waffling Liberal Christians had set aside, and a willingness to defend those convictions in polite debate wrapped in the warmth of ‘the justly famed tradition of Southern hospitality.’ Declared Hitchens, ‘I much prefer this sincerity to the vague and Python-esque witterings of the interfaith and ecumenical groups who barely respect their own traditions and who look upon faith as just another word for community organizing.’” – p. 88

Ouch on the waffles! Score one for the sincerely convicted!

“I cannot count the number of times that people have given me a note to pass on to Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens thinking that their argument would surely be the one to overcome their unbelief. The arrogance of this is astonishing. More than arrogant, however, this is also bad theology because it fails to understand the workings of the Holy Spirit and God’s sovereign role in salvation. It reduces evangelism to cheap Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People techniques. ‘It does not depend on us that [the Gospel] be believed,’ wrote the late theologian Etienne Gilson, ‘but there is very much we can do toward making it respected.’ Indeed.” – p. 132

“The Faith of Christopher Hitchens” on Amazon