Month: December 2017

Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

~ Kate Friederichs ~ Leave a comment

51+5EHbLWwL._SX319_BO1,204,203,200_ I chose to go through this book with my Bible study group. I enjoy Tim Keller and this was a subject I needed to delve into.

I came to this book in some desperation. I believe a number of things that are not evidenced by my daily life. We all feel this to some extent. For me, prayer is the area of my life that least resembles what I believe. Insofar as I am able, I’ve had to ask myself Is it really belief? Part of me thinks and feels in black and white. We believe something, we act in accordance. If the action is not there it is because true belief hasn’t taken place- doubt is in the mix. The other part of me knows all too well that the spirit can be willing and the flesh still weak. This is the murky condition in which I opened this book to read and to work out these inconsistencies alongside some others. If you are one of those others, thank you for the patience, the honesty, and the safe place you have been each Tuesday night this past semester. I know some weeks I came ready to fight and at other times, clearly indifferent.

If I was hoping to get some clear answers, this was not the book. Luckily, that wasn’t what I was looking for. I tend to find wanting the man or woman who has all the answers. I was looking for help- a space and a people and a guide to help me wrestle. This book was the guide, and I recommend it wholeheartedly. But if you really want to dive deep, I would recommend reading this with at least another person to robustly discuss it with. Within some bounds, Keller is open to several different methods of prayer and gives the reader a multitude of different tools. This widened my natural understanding of prayer and gave me the freedom to pray differently than I have historically.

One of the early questions we discussed as a group was How did you learn to pray? Did your parents teach you, did you only hear prayer from the pulpit, or was it at school? We all had widely varying answers, coming from a multitude of different backgrounds religiously, but the bottom line was we weren’t taught. Prayer is not something usually taught. It is something you watch and try to copy, but not directly instructed. I can understand some reasons for this, but overall, it seemed to have negatively affected many of us in the room to have never had any instruction. In that way, this book was helpful without being too narrow on how one should pray.

If you enjoy Luther, Calvin, or Augustine, then you will particularly appreciate some of the history of thought surrounding Christian prayer. It was a bit long, and toward the end, I was just ready to be done with it. My biggest critique of the book was that it took 300 pages to give instructions for how to pray, how not to pray, and extensive examples of prayer that would take significant amounts of time (some of the referenced theologians had the habit of praying for three hours a day). This seemed in stark contrast to the Lord’s Prayer, which was Jesus’ answer to the plea teach us to pray. The Lord’s Prayer: a simple, short, direct, thoughtful, unsophisticated prayer. To Keller’s credit, not all of the methods required an hour or more, he encouraged the reader to start small, and raised up the Lord’s Prayer as the ultimate example. Even still, one could come away from such reading overwhelmed and a bit disheartened. This does not, for me anyway, override the amount of helpfulness the book contained. And based on our group’s reflection on never having been taught how to pray, its existence is absolutely necessary.

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

~ Kate Friederichs ~ Leave a comment

Ivan I bought this to read to my five-year-old. She is creative and loves story. She is, herself, a storyteller. She has the ability to be moved without losing it. Because of this, I’m able to read to her things that I would otherwise wait on until she’s a bit older, things I still haven’t read to my seven-year-old because she’s so sensitive she wouldn’t handle it well.

Again, there are no chapters. This one is written like snapshots in the daily life of Ivan. Some are a few sentences. Some go on for a few pages. He is a gorilla, after all. It took me some time to get Ivan’s voice right (since I was reading it aloud). I probably should have read further ahead of time to get a better feel for Ivan, who seems at first, rather aloof. But as the story progresses, the many pieces of Ivan begin to come together, and it is beautiful and touching. I will warn you though, that there are many sad parts, like when Ivan’s family is killed by humans, or when his best friend dies. It does, however, have a happy (but not too-happy) ending. Judge the appropriateness of these subjects for your children- you will know best. Penny Mae loved it, as did I.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

~ Kate Friederichs ~ Leave a comment

Mrs. Dalloway I began this book in a study of point of view, specifically when an author has several POV characters. There are rules for this, and though Virginia Woolf breaks most of them, she is heralded for it. Artful prose, like poetry, is that balance between following form, and knowing when to break with the form. Being consistent enough with your reader that they can follow where you are leading them, but making exceptions at some points to allow you to take them by surprise. We readers want this too. We bore of the books that do exactly what we predict, and even those that do what we want.

It is beautifully written, and reflected the inner life of the mind well. I valued hearing the inner monologue and its relationship to the outward actions of each of these characters. It would often bring up a memory or a thought such as, “Yes, I’ve done that before,” or “Yes, I have felt that same way.” It allowed me to connect with the characters, especially those of which, if one hadn’t heard their inner monologue, one would have guessed they had nothing in common, or even made up their own simple reasons for why that character did what they did. It is equal parts novel and study in human nature.

The difficulty I had with it was the lack of structure. At first I was baffled. There are no chapters. It begins and does not stop until it ends. I knew, before reading, that it would only cover one day of time, but dozens of pages in and only 15 minutes into the day, having jumped from the thoughts in Clarissa’s head to (anyone!) the florist, the couple passing by on the sidewalk, then back to Clarissa- I was bewildered. It jumped, and it jumped, and it jumped again with no warning, no transition. Once, about 10% of the way in (I read it on a Kindle) I realized this is what the whole book would be like, and I was able to let go of every assumption and drift along the current of her thought. Some people would take to this style of writing better than others- it may be too scattered for some. I did find it hard to keep up with all of the characters- some she returned to over and over again, while others you would hear from for a few pages and then never again. You never knew if this person, whose thoughts you were hearing, would be a significant part of the story or not.

All in all, it is truly different from most books and beautifully written. And if you are nervous because you’ve seen the movie The Hours, fear not! It was barely resembled.