Read a day at a time

this blog continues now at...

2006-03-24T11:31:00.000-08:00

This blog continues now at http://discipledavid.blogspot.com

reading list

2006-01-27T04:03:00.000-08:00

I finished Genesee Diary by Henri Nouwen. It is both a deeply spiritual book in its message, but also is very introspective in helpful ways for me personally about the practice of my spiritual life.

On my list now are:
Thieves of Baghdad by Matthew Bogdanos...who I heard on NPR. He is a district attorney from NYC, and a colonel in the Marine Reserves with a degree in antiquity studies. This book is about finding the ancient treasures of Iraq that were stolen AFTER the US invasion.

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century by Thomas Friedman. The globalization of the economy has happened. But the US is still back decades in understanding and practice of the mix of technology and the world economic situation.

Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ by Dallas Willard. So...you read the Bible and other books about being a Christian. What does that mean for your personal life? Are you finding a way to change and grow into Christ or do you still "read" as though your mind and "knowing" the data of Christianity is the essence of following Jesus.

Discerning God's Will Together: A Spiritual Practice for the Church by Charles Olsen. Churches have become so much like secular organizations even as they communicate about being spiritual in Christ, they have forgotten how to keep the focus of their organizational life on the spiritual practice and the mission of Jesus Christ.

read to bring peace

2005-09-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

For the Confirmation class I am teaching for 8th graders we are beginning with the book by Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Create Your Life, Your Relationships, and Your World in Harmony with Your Values. Here is a good short article by Marshall that explains how to develop compassionate communication to help make the world function more peacefully...personally and globally. I have known Marshall for over 30 years. His work internationally is amazing. An international movement with practical ways for people working to make the world more peaceful comes out of his Center for Nonviolent Communication.

also reading "Genesee Diary"

2005-09-13T06:38:00.000-07:00

I've also been reading The Genesee Diary by Henri Nouwen in preparation in a few weeks for a week long silent retreat at Abbey of Genesee, south of Rochester, NY. Nouwen, who was a prolific author before his death in 1996, spent seven months at the monastery in the 1970's as a time away from being on the faculty of Yale Divinity School. It is really a journal about one's spiritual life and how to grow spiritually. He is very honest about his foibles as well as the high moments of the journey. I think it connects up well with the 12 Steps of Recovery. This is about going inward to face the truth of your life as you also seek God's direction in changing your life day by day.

Nouwen lays it all out. The days when he is frustrated. The days when he is ready to chuck it. The days he feels so in touch with God. The great experiences of learnings he gleans from the life at the monastery and specifically from individual monks and the abbot. This book is not simply for "religious" types. In fact, I think it connects more with folks who are turned off by the way most of the church functions today.

I just found the site for the Henri Nouwen Society. Looks good. Here are some online articles by Nouwen: Moving from Solitude...
Waiting for God
The Strength of Weakness
From Action to Passion
Jesus Gives All

been reading Ecclesiastes

2005-09-13T06:31:00.000-07:00

I've been reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. This is a book for our times. There is a consistent attitude of why bother. Whether you are rich or poor, everyone winds up dead. Doesn't matter whether you work hard or not. You can't take it with you. The best human wisdom is folly. In the end you die. So there are two roads offered: 1) eat drink and be merry because tomorrow you may die OR 2) why bother, don't do anything, you won't get anywhere but dead anyway. You choose. Its almost like reading the diary of a person who changes their attitude about life from day to day. Yet, throughout, the consistent underlying and at times overt message is, God is in charge. What the "Preacher" of this book is saying that in the end, all of it including we wind up with God. That should be our quest throughout life.

This book of the Bible is one that a whole lot of people wouldn't believe is in the Bible because it seems to run contrary to the predominant or the assumer predominant message of the Bible. But it is in the Bible, so don't try to eradicate it or discount its message. You don't have to like the message or agree with it, BUT you do have to come to grips with it and struggle with it. Too many folks overlook the books in the Bible like Ecclesiastes and just turn the message into whatever they want it to be anyway, or their favorite portions or passages of the Bible. Can't do it.

Blue Like Jazz

2005-08-04T13:33:00.000-07:00

I finally finished this book. It was a journey of reading. At points I thought Donald Miller the author was too self-absorbed...which is what he says is the great dilemma for all of us wanting to follow Jesus. But what he did was to take us through his experience of being self-absorbed and how God through a lot of different relationships and life experiences brought him in to being a servant.

I didn't feel the desire to always read this book, the way I have some others. But as I slogged through a few times where I wasn't sure where he was headed, the last few chapters really bring out what this journey is about.

I am using his six page description of some experiences that caused him to really understand what a tithe is. It will be part of our church info in helping others to tithe and to grow deeper spiritually. Whereas a lot of the church approaches a think like a tithe from a practical aspect, Miller wanders in through his conversation by conversation realization of how it is really an act of faith, risk, servanthood, obedience and spirit.

I would encourage a lot of folks to read this. Folks who want to read from one end to the other of a book and "get it", probably shouldn't read this book. But then, most of my life doesn't unfold that way anyway.

Blue Like Jazz

a book connected with my past

2005-07-24T06:59:00.000-07:00

I guess I am not in "literary circles." I have probably heard the name of author Jonathan Franzen, but I never picked up on anything about him or his books. Through something I read yesterday in The Christian Century magazine, I found out I have some once removed connection with him and especially an article he wrote for New Yorker magazine on June 6th, Franzen grew up in Webster Groves, MO where I was born, lived my first few months and then returned for seminary. Franzen's article is about his experience at First Congregational UCC which was down the street from us and two of my best friends were seminary field work students apparently with Franzen and the amazing youth program they had there in those days. So, my next step is to go to the library to read the whole New Yorker article, which isn't available online, and then to get his most famous novel Corrections and read it...with commentary posted here later.

Franzen is the winner of the National Book Award in 2001 for his book Corrections.

Franzen's author site
blog with excerpts from the article that relate to my experience
article from newspaper about UCC minister I knew and who is the key player in Franzen's article

finished Gilead

2005-07-18T06:29:00.000-07:00

It isn't exactly easy to read, but it isn't hard. I couldn't put it down. A few times I plowed through.

I left out of the earlier note that the narrator is a Congregational minister from Iowa. That's the "brand" of church I am part of...but these days I don't think it matters as much as it use to. The time of this is 1956 and in its own way, it indicates how much those denominational church traditions were transcended anyway as this pastor reflects on the life with his life long friend who is a Presbyterian pastor.

What struck me as I finished was how moving and reflecting were the lives of these people who nobody would really know about outside of their little town. In a time when we are living out our lives through Bush, Armstrong, Woods, Nicklaus, and so many entertainers one sort or another, they all seem so shallow in light of the lives of this book. Yet, these folks are content to live out their lives on the "small" screen of the world.

There is an open ended resolution at the end. Figure that one out.

now reading "Gilead"

2005-07-17T17:21:00.000-07:00

I am now reading the book "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson. Almost done. This is a wonderful, and must read kind of book. It is the journal of an elderly near death father to his 7 year old son. It winds up being about life as it is, faith, profound theological wisdom, and religion. I will write more when I finish. Which should be soon.

catching up...the book "Dear Senator" on Strom Thurmond

2005-07-12T04:41:00.000-07:00

Well, I think our team approach to this reading blog has broken down, so I will just keep on doing it as my own personal reading blog.

I read in two day's an intriguing book by the African-American daughter of the late Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. The title is "Dear Senator".

The reason I read it through so quick is because I couldn't put it down. There are historical pieces of this I already knew. But the more personal side that is revealed in this book is what is compelling. Thurmond comes across more as naive and a stuffed shirt with a human side than a rabid segregationist. Remember, this is being written by his daughter who is from his falling in love with a 15 year old servant at his family's estate when he is 23. He stays in love with this woman until she dies in her 40's. Even though they are never publicly linked. He has periodic contacts with their daughter, and "helps" her out, but it is always for him in the seeming naive view that blacks and whites can't really be in the same circles in the south. His daughter also paints most of his political rhetoric as that of a man who is naive and gets worked up in public speaking and oversteps what he really believes.

I strongly recommend this book!

...been cheating

2005-06-18T05:38:00.000-07:00

I've been "cheating." I am reading more than one book...which is normal for me. So I kept putting off adding something here because I haven't been fresh on Blue Like Jazz. I am also reading The Genesee Diary which is written by Henri Nouwen about his six month stay at the Abbey of the Genesee in upstate New York. Our group will spend a week there in October. As I read it, I yearn to be there now. Let me share with you a piece I sent to our congregation this morning (the original post was to our daily scripture listserv):

Psalm 147:14 (The Message)
14He keeps the peace at your borders,
he puts the best bread on your tables.
===================
David reflecting: in which basket do we put most of our time and energy: the agenda and busyness of our lives and the world...or the peace of God? I have been reading Henri Nouwen's book "The Genesee Diary" about his six month experience at the Abbey of Genesee in up state New York which is a Trappist monastery. I will spend a week there in October.
Is the only way we can know this peace by going to a monastery or hiking in the park? Or is it possible to know the depth, fullness and confidence of the peace of God in our daily lives...when we think we need to get the working, the thinking and all the anxiousness taken care of before we can find that peace? Or that the peace of God can only come as short little diversions or respites from the crazy obsessiveness of our lives and our days?

David

on a reading retreat

2005-06-08T06:03:00.000-07:00

We are on a 24 hour reading retreat at Loyola of the Lakes retreat center.
http://www.loyolaofthelakes.com/loyola/default.shtml

whoopee!

David

David Loar
http://discipledavid.blogspot.com ...David's blog
http://readeachday.blogspot.com... clergy reading blog featured in the Akron Beacon Journal
http://www.fairlawnwest.org ...church
http://www.loar.org ...family

Grace

2005-05-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

Chapter 7 deals with grace, one of those wonderful, majestic words that often eludes a definition that is real and understandable. Miller tries to redeem the word from Churchspeak by relating the time in his life when he was a fundamentalist. It only lasted a summer, he said, a summer when he worked at a fundamentalist Christian camp in Colorado. Along with seven other guys, "the whole lot of us fell into this militant Christianity that says you should live like a Navy SEAL for Jesus."

Miller spends a few good paragraphs describing the experience--fasting, praying twice a day, memorizing Scripture, patting each other on the back and feeling proud that they were doing all of this, and then creating a contract, as the summer waned, to continue such a life beyond the camp. "We were the direct opposite of a frat house; instead of funneling our testosterone into binge drinking and rowdy parties, we were manning up to Jesus, bumping Him chest to chest as it were, like Bible salesmen on steroids."

This would be one of the last groups of people I would want to be around! How far from the gospel message of freedom and love and abundance and service. In my vocabulary, this fundamentalism makes Christianity into a bad and suffocating word, one that is played out across the country in so many churches. Even worse, it has seeped into politics and the national agenda. Oh, here comes my mainline, liberal, progressive bias but I want nothing to do with a religion that seems militant and restrictive and self-righteous.

I read on with some sense of solidarity with Miller as he described his failure to live up to such a contract. First, the Bible readings went, he just forgot. Soon every other part of the contract eroded and his failure to keep it led him to hate the entire year, to the point where he "got ticked at all the people who were having fun with their lives."

Miller felt like a failure, to God and to his "fundamentalist brothers."

So what about grace? It was embodied in his pastor, whose faith journey included failure and suicide and finally a realization that he could "humbly receive God's unconditional love." Such love doesn't come from self-discipline or contracts or walking around feeling like a failure, but by simply accepting God's unconditional grace and "ferocious love." It's falling in love with God and only then can our behavior change, he says, because when we fall in love we can accomplish what we never thought possible.

So the chapter on grace ends. I'm not quite convinced that Miller is painting the full picture of grace, of it being an incredible gift that we don't deserve, but it is a start, and some good stories, and something to think about. Until next time.

Harry

Incense & Mirrors?

2005-05-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

On page 29, there is a paragraph where Miller references God having something that he wants. The problem he notes is that “God was in the same boat as the guy selling knives”.

Later on in that same paragraph he also notes that because of that dilemma, he says “I pictured my pastor as a salesman or a magician, trying to trick the congregation into believing Jesus could make us new. And honestly, I felt as though he was trying to convince himself, as though he only half believed what he was saying.”

Believing my motives to always be suspect to the influences of selfish or maniacal influences…how is that the Apostle Peter warned us “Our enemy, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion.” (1 Peter 5:8)..I always want to be sure my message is pure.

I carry what my insurance company calls ministry insurance. I wonder if what Miller is referring to might be spiritual malpractice. No…in a day and age where any Pastor (or Christian- or even church) would preach a message that they/he or she was not living or believing to be their life's intention…well, that’s just sad!

There but for the grace of God go I….

-John

self-absorption

2005-05-19T05:50:00.000-07:00

Miller reflects a lot about "self-absorption." He sees that as the basic sin of humanity in western culture. Even for the rhetoric that people spew about Christianity, charity, social justice, and so on, he sees that very few folks really work at changing their lives to reflect what they espouse. He uses his own life as an example.

So, what's the role of God in our world, if we talk a good line, but don't really offer our lives to be used by God? No wonder so many folks are turned off by "religion." Because they don't see "religious folks" acting any different than non-religious folks. There are the real notorious folks like Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, and Ghandi. But they are held up as ideals. As impossible models that most of us can't really attain. Yet, it is the way that the three of these folks lived that Christian scriptures communicate are the norm for those who follow Jesus.

Miller is doing a good job, though, of not just pointing out this disparity, but also of how in his own journey through the spirit of God, his own life is becoming more consistent between what he believes and espouses and how he lives.

David

Blue Like Jazz

2005-05-16T08:48:00.000-07:00

I finally got the book, Blue Like Jazz, finally read some of it, and finally ready to post my initial thoughts.

Fun book so far. I like the way Miller writes. He has the ability to draw me in with his words and images. I can only hope and trust that what he is writing really happened, or at least in a way that is authentic. I don't need him to be literal in his memory but I am always wary of people who tell stories as if they happened (preachers are especially on slippery ground here) and I find out later that they didn't. (I read Life of Pi recently and to the last page I thought it was a true story!).

But Miller rings true, taking small life events and building on them to make a subtle and poignant observation about life and about God. Like the Christmas Eve, when he was 13, when his image of God disintegrated as a slot-machine God. "If something nice happened to me, I thought it was God, and if something nice didn't, I went back to the slot machine, knelt down in prayer, and pulled the lever a few more times." It disintegrated because he realized for the first time that his actions affected people, as he feared his Mom would be sad and disappointed that his gift to her was only a "shabby" book, bought with the left-over money after he purchased fishing equipment for himself. His guilt was so heavy that he fell out of bed that night and prayed, not to a slot-machine God, but to a "living, feeling God."

That was only chapter one. In the coming pages he begins to tussle with this living, feeling God. I'll get to more of those stories next time.

Harry

blue like jazz web site

2005-05-06T07:35:00.000-07:00

Here is the Blue Like Jazz web site

http://www.bluelikejazz.com/

David Loar
http://discipledavid.blogspot.com ...David's blog

http://readeachday.blogspot.com... clergy reading blog featured in the Akron Beacon Journal
http://www.fairlawnwest.org ...church

http://www.loar.org ...family

reading and jazz

2005-05-06T07:31:00.000-07:00

I was really brought into listening to jazz by hearing a piece on the jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. It was a review of his album "Alegria." His wife and niece were killed in a TWA plane crash in 1996. He stopped playing for a while. In 2000 he began to play and record again. He said he was going to dedicate his life to the love he shared with his wife. That he was going to celebrate life for the rest of his life!

Wow! That hit me. Here was a man who instead of sinking into a pit of grief, out of love sought to enjoy life more to remember the love he shared with his wife. I started listening to Shorter and a host of other jazz musicians after that.

There's a story in the book "Blue Like Jazz" that I will include later. It is one I will use a lot. Just don't have time to post it now. I continue to ask myself the question in reading this book "how is God real to the world today?" It makes clear over and over again how we have reduced God down to an idea and most of us are searching for One more real than that in our life. That takes me back to the Wayne Shorter story.

David

David Loar
http://discipledavid.blogspot.com ...David's blog

http://readeachday.blogspot.com... clergy reading blog featured in the Akron Beacon Journal
http://www.fairlawnwest.org ...church

http://www.loar.org ...family

what I'm reading etc

2005-05-03T03:39:00.000-07:00

Today's Akron Beacon Journal has Diane Evans Living Well column on our blog. She also has a community reading blog page.

Right now I am reading three books:
1) A Testament of Devotion by Thomas Kelly, a classic in Christian spirituality. Here are some powerful excerpts.
2) Genuis - A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds by Harold Bloom. Wonderful expansive study. I'm just on the first person that Bloom says is the top of the top - Shakespeare. He sees the Yahwist writer in the Hebrew/Christian scriptures as right next to old William.
3) And then the book the three of us are reading Blue Like Jazz.
Here are some quotes from my recent reading:

"For me, however, there was a mental wall between religion and God. I could walk around inside religion and never, on any sort of emotional level, understand that God was a person, an actual Being with thoughts and feelings and that sort of thing. To me, God was more of an idea. It was something like a slot machine, a set of spinning images that dolled out rewards based on behavior and perhaps, chance."

"What I was doing (with religion) was more in line with superstition than sprituality."

"...When I was young I thought I had forever to figure things out....I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a (person's) mind into habit, he will prevent (that person's) heart from engaging God."

"If you don't love somebody, it gets annoying when they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them you get pleasure from their pleasure, and it makes it easy to serve. I didn't love God because I didn't know God."

He spends a little time describing the injustices in the world like genocide in the Congo, how international economics hurts poor people and so on and how he has worked to change these situations. Then..."but I don't honestly believe we will be solving the greater human conflict with our efforts. The problem is not a certain type of legislation or even a certain politician; the problem is the same that it has always been.
I am the problem. (he describes prior to this his awakening to his own self-absorption, even as he thought he was doing good things for other people)
I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christianity for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest."

Miller reminds me of Brian McLaren in his forthright questions about God, religion, church, life and so on. Miller invites us on a journey with all the questions we were afraid to ask or forgot to ask, but knowing that God wants to answer them with us.God doesn't want rigid, stormtoopers of believers. God wants, in fact created, free creatures to be in wonderful co-creation and conversation with.

David

Jazz & Politics

2005-04-28T07:46:00.000-07:00

Last night as I slipped into my newly arrived copy of 'Blue Like Jazz' I found myself provoked in my thought life, stirred in my imagination, and well, as for my soul... Here's what I wrote last night (at 1am mind you, so please be kind)!

Several years ago I was met by Jazz...it found me in the blues of solitude- a lonely, tired and overwhelmed new seminarian, living in Kansas City (not too far from the ever popular 18th & Vine).

I heard its first notes from a trumpet and then a trombone. Obviously, the music had crossed my ears before, but never touching my soul as it did this night. It was a Saturday night, and oh, what a concert it was!

I thought it strange that though it came so simply into my schedule (I just needed something to do to combat the cocktail of loneliness and boredom), how strongly it became more than my time, but rather my new paradigm for all of time.

I didn't understand that at the moment (dare I say I even have a clue now) but it had become a part of who I am. It was for that reason that it hit me hard when I heard of the politics that threatened to close even the Kansas City Jazz Museum. I couldn't believe the "insensitivity!'

However, as quickly as I became infuriated at the powers that would destroy such a record of humanity, I was ashamed that it was really I that was causing its demise. 'Lack of public interest' was the reason given.

Oh, that I should have packed the doors through with hearts needing to be set free by the rhythm- the song! But I didn't...and oh, the guilt!

(I later realized that Jazz is alive and not meant for a museum- but for the places of everyday living and breathing- but still the guilt!)

Miller refers to his guilt as a child. He was guilty of an enslaving politic. It was for him on that Christmas that economic choices adjusted his income over and above his mothers. (In simpler terms, he gave himself presents to make himself happy, but gave her nothing of value.) And he felt awful! He had given her nothing and had squandered so much on himself.

Early on, Miller refers to a girl (the homecoming queen) who is socially admirable. Okay, so he says he has a crush on her. He notes her kindness and it is assumed that she is socially to be praised for her care of someone such as he. She was politically fashionable. A lesson possibly learned from her father.

I couldn't help but wonder why it is that she is for him an image of God- something to which he finds no affinity throughout the years? And yet, until he (Miller) declares his own embarrassing sloppy, selfish politics, does he even begin to experience the God of love and mercy!

Could it be that in our solitude as we sing the song of the blues, that until we find ourselves (personally, intimately) like Miller in his adolescent indulgences- keenly aware of nakedness, 'undoneness' (and distinctly our own), that until then, do we find that all that Jazz is about One who even in the midst of sin still fashions for us a garment of love?

Miller has stirred within me a hunger...I sense a personal hunger for the rest of the Story. That is his story- but also mine.

Read on with me, together I wonder if we might find ourselves in love again- but this time not with the homecoming queen who is 'kinda nice' to us, but rather from the level of the soul with One who brushes your face in a breeze, and soaks you as you swim in Him.

So friends, read with me one day at a time.

-John

its here!

2005-04-27T09:15:00.000-07:00

My copy of Blue Like Jazz arrived today. I started reading right away. Wow! So far Donald Miller is talking about his growing up, but its all around this matter of how he had trouble understanding God as Father since his own father was a big beer drinking man who he only saw three times in his whole life with the last time being when he was in middle school.

A couple of quotes I like so far:

This is from an intro "Author's Note": "I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked jazz music.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.
I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened."

From the first paragraph: "I once listened to an Indian on television say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was because it meant you could swim in HIm or have Him brush your face in a breeze. I am early in my story, but I believe I will stretch out into eternity, and in heaven I will reflect upon these early days, these days when it seemed God was down a dirt road, walking toward me. Years ago He was a swinging speck in the distance; now He is close enough I can hear His singing. Soon I will see the lines on His face.:

David

the book for discussion

2005-04-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

We have decided to read Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller

David

starting

2005-04-20T14:15:00.000-07:00

We have a group from our clergy peer group (our web page) whowill post comments on a book we will read. We are in the process of selecting the book.

David

how presumptuous

2005-04-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

Why did I start this blog? Its presumptuous to think that people might be interested in my commentaries on what I am reading. But maybe it isn't so much that I want other people to ponder what I am reading, but I want to engage with other people about good books, get other reflections on what I am reading, and to get suggestions on other good books to read. I am a computer junkie. I am also a reading junkie. Read daily. Not just to read, but to read stuff that takes me beyond where I usually live, hang out or get stuck in my life.

In my more general blog I posted an entry about this, which prompted me to start this reading blog.

Here are some blogs I have found on reading and books. I will add them to this sites links list as soon as I review them more carefully.

www.blogforbooks.com
the litblog co-op

more later...