Category Archives: Books

Paging Bruce Banner

A friend recently shared with me some thoughts on anger from Chip Dodd’s The Voice of the Heart.  I’ve not quite thought about anger in this way before, but I like it: Authentic anger is a caring feeling, telling us that something … Continue reading

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Stories as Catechism

Author N. D. Wilson recently gave an interview for DRTV’s “Above the Paygrade” show.  It’s a good thirty minutes and is time well spent for those who like to think faith, the world, and books.  I especially like what he … Continue reading

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Saturday Song: “We are people born of sound . . .”

I recently started a reread of Tolkien’s Silmarillion.  The first section, which recounts the creation of the world, is beautiful.  It involves the creation of all things through music.  Genesis 1 also speaks of the creation of the world, this … Continue reading

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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

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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

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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

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Prefacing Scary Close: Intersections

I remember well when my friend Cathy introduced me to Blue Like Jazz and the work of Donald Miller. It was early in my time in Hawaii, and it felt like I was finally settling into some kind of routine. … Continue reading

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How the Way Becomes Common

There’s one particular idea from Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress that has stuck with me since I reread it last semester.  Early in the story, Christian is told to go to the wicket gate, that he will receive further instructions there.  … Continue reading

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Let the Took Decide

From The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien: As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things  made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous love, the desire of the hearts … Continue reading

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Forgetting, Losing, and Finding Ourselves

One last selection from Bonhoeffer’s Life Together concerning reading the Bible together: Consecutive reading of Biblical books forces everyone who wants to hear to put himself, or to allow himself to be found, where God has acted once and for … Continue reading

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