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Author Archives: awtraughber
Risky Business Revisited
One of the things that I’ve had to keep in mind while reading Donald Miller books over the years is that as a writer, he often works alone. I know that’s not totally true, though. He has editors, first readers, … Continue reading
Posted in Reading Scary Close
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Catching Up with Yourself
One of my favorite “story cycles” in Scary Close begins in the chapter wonderfully titled “Everybody’s Got a Story, and It’s Not the One They’re Telling.” That part of the book deals with Miller’s struggles with childhood insecurity and self-preservation … Continue reading
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Safe People, Risky Business
One of the benefits of reading is that it helps you find yourself, identify yourself through what you read. Here’s a point where I identified with Miller early in Scary Close: At some point, I just stopped trusting people. I … Continue reading
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The Present Form of the Future
It often seems like Douglas Coupland feels things before we do and finds some way to name things well. From his most recent Financial Times essay: I’ve spent much of my life waiting for the future to happen, yet it … Continue reading
Posted in Internet
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Saturday Song: Brother’s Keeper
This week I’ve been listening to Rich Mullins’ Brother’s Keeper. The title track is succinct and wonderfully pointed at something I find extremely difficult but somehow necessary. “Unless you’re pointing to the truth,” indeed.
Reading Scary Close: The Wedding Bride
The other relational through-line in Scary Close (beyond the guides) is Donald Miller’s bride. When we meet her in the book’s beginning, she has just become his fiancee. It’s a reads like a classic “Miller” moment: I’d spent more than … Continue reading
Posted in Books, The Long Story
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Reading Scary Close: A Good Guide is Hard to Find
Donald Miller spent most of his last book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, encouraging readers to tell good stories with their lives, to be heroes of a sort. Early on in Scary Close you get a sense of … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Faith, The Long Story
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Anachronistic Allowance (or: Jesus and Calvinball)
I recently (re)heard the story of Jesus’ response to his disciples after they rebuked the parents who brought their children to Him. Jesus, upon seeing the rebuke, is indignant (ESV) and says: Let the children come to me; do not … Continue reading
Posted in Faith
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The John Who Loves
From Donald Miller’s Searching for God Knows What: The way John writes about Jesus makes you feel like the sum of our faith is a kind of constant dialogue with Jesus about whether or not we love Him. I grew … Continue reading
Prefacing Scary Close: The Significance of Place
One of the best parts of Donald Miller’s Searching for God Knows What for me was the preface to the second, expanded edition. One of the significant part’s of Miller’s story that helped me was his simple understanding of place … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Faith, Teaching, The Long Story, Travel
Tagged Searching for God Knows What
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Space Enough, and Time 