Category Archives: Books

Aging with Grace

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In Aging with Grace: Flourishing in an Anti-Aging Culture, Sharon Betters and Susan Hunt “want readers to ask, ‘What if aging, though challenging, is not a season of purposelessness, but rather an opportunity to discover our true identity in a way we couldn’t in the first half of life? What if we purposefully prepare for the afternoon of life while we are in the first half of life?'” (p. 18, Kindle version). The book is helpful for those already in their later years as well as those wanting to prepare for them adequately.

Susan writes, “The world tells us aging is our enemy, and we should fight it; the Bible says it’s our friend: ‘Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days'” (Job 12: 12)” (p. 27).

God promises the righteous “still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green” (Psalm 92:14). Susan acknowledges that, with the physical problems that often accompany getting older, we don’t always feel fruitful, full of sap, and green. But “this promise of growth does not mock my physical reality; it transcends it” (p. 28).

The gospel imperative to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3: 18) does not have an age limit. The same grace that gives us new life in Christ empowers that life to develop, mature, and flourish. We never finish growing. There is always more grace to experience and more to know of Christ’s love. This growth is gradual. We don’t produce it, but as we trust and obey God’s word, we can anticipate it (p. 28).

Susan and Sharon alternate chapters. Some chapters delve into the Bible’s teaching about getting older, particularly Psalm 92 and 71. The chapters in-between take a closer look at some of the older women in the Bible: Anna, The “matriarchs of the exile,” Elizabeth, and Naomi.

Anna was the older widow who came up when Mary and Joseph brought baby Jesus to the temple in Luke 2. At first the elderly Simeon rejoiced that he had lived to see “the Lord’s Christ” and prophesied about Him. Part of that prophesy was to Mary, that “a sword will pierce through your own soul also” (Luke 2:35). I hadn’t thought about it this way before, and the Bible doesn’t specifically say that Anna spoke to Mary, but Sharon proposes that Anna’s coming right at that moment helped comfort Mary.

Simeon told Mary the hard reality that a sword would pierce her soul. Can you sense Mary holding her baby boy a little tighter, her throat constricting and tears welling up? This young mother needed a tangible touch of God’s tender love. At this intense moment we meet eighty-four-year-old Anna. God providentially met Mary’s need through an old woman who hoped in God. At exactly the right moment, Anna shows up (p. 48).

The exile Sharon refers to occurred after Israel had repeatedly rejected God and turned to idols. God had sent prophets and sometimes delivered his people into the hands of their enemies. But even if they repented for a while, they eventually turned away from God again. So God allowed Nebuchadnezzar to remove them from their land and take most of them to Babylon for 70 years. God tells the people as a whole in Jeremiah 29 to settle down, plant, build, marry, and pray for the land of their exile. The older people would have realized they would die in exile and never see their country again. Again, I don’t think the Bible specifically mentions the older women in this scenario, but Sharon posits what they might have done.

Though the elderly women might not be able to physically build houses, their status in the family gave them a key opportunity to influence the attitudes and stability of their households. They could be life-givers or life-takers. They could choose to joyfully embrace God’s call to cultivate a godly, peaceful community or they could choose bitterness, whining, and complaining, and so can we (p. 84).

A few of the other quotes that stood out to me:

There are many things we can no longer do as we age, but age does not keep us from fulfilling our purpose to glorify and enjoy God. An ever-growing knowledge of God’s undeserved love—his grace—changes our motivation: “The love of Christ controls us” (2 Cor. 5: 14)” (p. 39).

Repenting women who find rest in Jesus become life-giving women who flourish as gatherers. When our heart is Christ’s home, we can become homey places for troubled hearts to find refuge,” (p. 70).

The world equates flourishing with activity and productivity. A biblical perspective does not mean we do more; it means we become more like Christ. We mature in faith, hope, and love” (p. 98).

As counterintuitive as it sounds, flourishing is a slow and progressive death that brings abundant life. Our new heart has new desires. Even as our physical bodies grow old, God causes our new desires to flourish as they are fertilized by his word and Spirit, and we die to self-centered desires, dreams, and demands (p. 99).

As life slows down, we can become controlling and critical, or we can reflect on God’s sovereign love that chose and planted us in his house. The more we live in the light of the reality of his presence, the more we flourish as his Spirit fills us with sap to nurture and encourage others to flourish (p. 105).

One joy of aging is a stillness of soul that helps us see the small moments as sacred moments when we can reflect God’s glory to someone else (p. 145).

The plot of dirt where we die [to self] is also the place where we flourish (p. 146).

To me, flourishing means gratefully accepting the past and present trials God gives me, and looking for opportunities to use what I have learned to help others. . . Whatever situations we find ourselves in as we age, there are nuggets of gold in our past that we can pass on to others. God never wastes a trial, a grief, or a wilderness wandering. We flourish when we give to others the lessons God has taught us (p. 151).

Naomi did not know her ordinary little family would become an extraordinary link to the coming Messiah. In fact, she died without knowing how her seemingly insignificant life fit into God’s magnificent eternal tapestry (p. 154).

At the end of each chapter, the authors include testimonies from older women in various circumstances who share how they found God’s grace to flourish. 

I very much enjoyed this book and it’s encouragement that we can keep growing and flourishing at any age. I’m pretty sure I’ll be reading it again in years to come to keep reminding me of its truths.

Updated to add: I forgot to mention that I’ve been reading this book in conjunction with InstaEncouragements. They’ve been going through the book and summarizing chapters each Tuesday the last few weeks. The comments have been enlightening as well. This book was on my to-read list anyway, and when I saw they were going through it, I jumped in. Reading with a group helps reinforce what I learn plus draws out things I missed. So, if you read this book, you might want to check out those posts as well.

Shadows In the Mind’s Eye

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In Janyre Tromp’s novel, Shadows in the Mind’s Eye, Sam Mattas is on his way home from WWII. He’s changed and scarred physically and mentally by what he has experienced, seen, and had to do. He jumps at loud sounds. He’s not always sure what’s real and what’s imagined.

But he’s going home. Back to his dear wife, Annie, and Rosie, the daughter he’s looking forward to getting to know. Good, hard, familiar work on the farm and peace and quiet will set him right soon. He hopes.

Annie has dealt with trauma of her own even before her marriage. Her abusive father was a corrupt judge. When she was a girl, she found her dead mother in a lake. But Sam rescued her from all that. Life was hard while he was away. She had to scrabble for supplies, do all the farm work herself, and take in her mother-in-law.

But Sam is on his way home. She knows, from what her mother-in-law told her about her husband’s return from war, that it might take a while for things to return to normal. But everything will be all right.

Except everything is not all right.

Much has changed, and their wounds run deep. They have to learn new rhythms and ways of relating.

Then Sam starts seeing things. Lights in the woods, men in the shadows. Sam is convinced that something nefarious is happening out there, and he must protect his family. However, his delusions only put them in harm’s way.

But what if he is not actually hallucinating?

The chapters switch back and forth between Sam’s and Annie’s points of view. Their mistakes and learning how to deal with each other is interwoven with the suspense of what’s actually happening behind their house, not knowing whom to trust, and everything not seeming as it appears.

I had not heard of Janyre Tromp until Anita interviewed her about this book on a podcast, Working Through Trauma in Literature and Real Life. Janyre’s experience with caregiver trauma and her grandfather’s experiences after the war led her to study PTSD. Her book was not out yet at that time, but I pre-ordered it then.

Some of the quotes that stood out to me:

Happily ever after don’t happen lessen each person in marriage works. It’s like a team of horses, They both have to carry their own load (p. 155).

Once you let yourself start feeling, it all breaks loose (p.147).

I stood quiet, soaking in her peace. Every motion was calm, sure, She knew where she belonged, and that sent her roots deep into the ground, able to weather whatever life threw at her (p. 122).

You’d think holding joy right up against sadness would shatter a body. But it don’t. Joy…it sneaks in all around where things is broke, sticks it all together and finds a way to make you whole. It’s where things is broke that joy shows through.

My one criticism is that characters say “Lord Almighty” and such. In my book, taking the name of the Lord of glory and using it as an expression is taking His Name in vain. If something is done in vain, it’s useless; it hasn’t accomplished the purpose for which it was meant. God’s name in meant to be reverenced, used in prayer, in worship, or in talking about Him.

Other than that, I really enjoyed the book. Parts near the end were quite suspenseful. I liked the realistic way Sam and Annie reached out to each other yet made mistakes as well.

The Paris Dressmaker

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The Paris Dressmaker by Kristi Cambron is a tale of two women in WWII Paris.

Lila de Laurent is a dressmaker and budding designer for Chanel. But the salon closed its doors as Nazis took over Paris. Working odd jobs for a while, Lila is surprised by a call from an old friend from Chanel who has become a collaborator with the Germans. She needs a gown for a party and knows Lila’s style. At first Lila is repulsed, but then decides this opportunity affords her the chance to pick up information for La Resistance.

As Lila flees from danger one night, she runs into the man she once loved, whom she thought was dead. But whose side is he on now? Can she trust him with her secrets?

Sandrine Paquet’s husband is a French soldier, and she lives with her son and mother-in-law. The place where she works is taken over by the Nazis, who demand that the employees catalog and crate art work the Nazis have stolen from French Jews. The German captain, von Hiller, has taken an interest in her. To refuse his attention outright would be fatal, but she takes pains to be cooperative while keeping him at a distance so things don’t get too personal. Neighbors misunderstand, however, and accuse her of being a collaborator. What they don’t know is that she and her boss are working for La Resistance as well, right under the Nazi’s noses. Though their shop doesn’t deal with textiles, one of the items that came to them was a beautiful blush Chanel gown. In a few moments alone, Sandrine searches the gown and finds a cryptic note initialed LDL sewn in the hemline.

Kristy Cambron is one of the best storytellers around. She weaves historic and personal details into the lives of these two women with suspense, pathos, and a touch of humor. The faith element is subtle but vital.

I miss the days of linear stories that start at the beginning and unfold until the end. But that’s not the fashion these days. The scenes alternate between the two women at different times in their lives, before and during the war. It was a little hard to keep up with at first until I learned to pay attention to the dates at the beginning of each chapter.

The author’s afterword shares which elements were historical and which were fiction, something I love to see in historical novels.

The Kindle version of this book is free with Amazon prime membership at the moment, and I got the audiobook at a 2-books-for-one-credit sale. With the Whispersync function, it was nice to delve into whichever one worked best for me in a given situation and pick up where I left off in the other.

Kristy has written another winner, in my opinion.

Be Compassionate (Luke 1-13)

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In the gospel bearing his name, Luke, “having followed all things closely for some time past,” undertakes “to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught” (Luke 1:3-4).

Luke is a doctor and very detailed in his account. He is also a Gentile, and he emphasizes the availability of the gospel to everyone.

Luke begins before Jesus’ birth with the prediction of John the Baptist’s birth. Luke progresses the angel’s announcement to Mary that she would bear the long-awaited Messiah, the well-known Christmas story, Jesus’ ministry and teaching, death, burial, resurrection and ascension.

Because the book of Luke is so full, Warren Wiersbe divided up his commentary on Luke into two books. The first is Be Compassionate (Luke 1-13): Let the World Know Jesus Cares.

Wiersbe says Luke’s “key message is, ‘For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost’ (Luke 19: 10). He presents Jesus Christ as the compassionate Son of Man, who came to live among sinners, love them, help them, and die for them” (p. 16).

In the passage about Jesus’ temptation, Wiersbe says:

Satan questioned the Father’s love when he tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread. He questioned His hope when he offered Jesus the world’s kingdoms this side of the cross (see Heb. 12: 1–3). Satan questioned the Father’s faithfulness when he asked Jesus to jump from the temple and prove that the Father would keep His promise (Ps. 91: 11–12). Thus, the enemy attacked the three basic virtues of the Christian life—faith, hope, and love (p. 52).

I’ve often heard that this passage shows Satan tempting Jesus with “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” that 1 John 2:16 describes. I think that’s true as well as Wiersbe’s viewpoint.

In response to Jesus answering Satan’s temptation with Scripture, Wiersbe says:

Jesus balanced Scripture with Scripture to get the total expression of God’s will. If you isolate verses from their contexts, or passages from the total revelation of Scripture, you can prove almost anything from the Bible. Almost every false cult claims to be based on the teachings of the Bible (p. 53).

Some of the other quotes that stood out to me:

It was our Lord’s custom to attend public worship, a custom His followers should imitate today (Heb. 10: 24–25). He might have argued that the “religious system” was corrupt, or that He didn’t need the instruction, but instead, He made His way on the Sabbath to the place of prayer (p. 54).

Jesus was not teaching that poverty, hunger, persecution, and tears were blessings in themselves. If that were true, He would never have done all He did to alleviate the sufferings of others. Rather, Jesus was describing the inner attitudes we must have if we are to experience the blessedness of the Christian life (p. 80).

Life is built on character, and character is built on decisions. But decisions are based on values, and values must be accepted by faith (p. 81).

There is a difference between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is a matter of the mind: We cannot understand what God is doing or why He is doing it. Unbelief is a matter of the will: We refuse to believe God’s Word and obey what He tells us to do. “Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong,” said Oswald Chambers. “It may be a sign that he is thinking.” In John’s case, his inquiry was not born of willful unbelief, but of doubt nourished by physical and emotional strain (p. 93).

There are many people today who criticize the church for not “changing the world” and solving the economic, political, and social problems of society. What they forget is that God changes His world by changing individual people. History shows that the church has often led the way in humanitarian service and reform, but the church’s main job is to bring lost sinners to the Savior. Everything else is a by-product of that. Proclaiming the gospel must always be the church’s first priority (p. 94).

Power is the ability to accomplish a task, and authority is the right to do it, and Jesus gave both to His apostles (p. 117).

It is impossible to be wrong about Jesus and right with God (p. 121).

We must first say no to ourselves—not simply to pleasures or possessions, but to self—and then take up our cross and follow Christ daily. This means to be identified with Him in surrender, suffering, and sacrifice (p. 122).

[After the transfiguration] As wonderful as these experiences are, they are not the basis for a consistent Christian life. That can come only through the Word of God. Experiences come and go, but the Word remains. Our recollection of past experiences will fade, but God’s Word never changes. The farther we get from these events, the less impact they make on our lives. That was why the Father said, “Hear him!” and why Peter made this same emphasis on the Word in his report (2 Peter 1: 12–21). Our own personal “transfiguration” comes from inner renewal (Rom. 12: 1–2), and that comes from the Word (2 Cor. 3: 18) (pp. 125-126).

I appreciate Dr. Wiersbe’s insights and commentary on the Scriptures.

Hospital Sketches

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In 1862, at age 30, Louisa May Alcott intended to serve as a nurse in a Union hospital for three months. She only made it six weeks before she became ill with typhoid fever and had to go home.

During her time as a nurse, she had written letters home to her family about her experiences. Other people urged her to publish them. She fictionalized and changed them a bit, naming her heroine Tribulation Periwinkle. But the experiences were hers. The “sketches” were published in four parts in the Boston Commonwealth, an Abolitionist magazine edited by a friend of the family.

Louisa didn’t think much of the writings, and mainly hoped just to make a little money off them. But these sketches brought her writing to the public eye, though she had written for the Atlantic Monthly before. She was urged to compile the sketches in a book, so she added material to them and published them as her first book in 1863.

Though there are six chapters in the book, we don’t really get to see Nurse Periwinkle interact with the soldiers until the third. The first story, “Obtaining Supplies,” deals with her decision to go, saying good-bye to her family, and a lot of frustrating detours and obstacles before finding the right people to get her documentation, tickets, etc. She comments about halfway through her troubles on this day:

I’m a woman’s rights woman, and if any man had offered help in the morning, I should have condescendingly refused it, sure that I could do everything as well, if not better, myself. My strong-mindedness had rather abated since then, and I was now quite ready to be a “timid trembler,” if necessary.

“A Forward Movement” tells of her travels to Washington by train and boat, including the sites she saw, people she encountered, problems, fears, and funny things experienced along the way.

Chapter 3, “A Day,” tells of her first day in the hospital where she was put to work right away. Within three days they received a large influx of wounded from Fredericksburg, and she was warned, “Now you will begin to see hospital life in earnest, for you won’t probably find time to sit down all day, and may think yourself fortunate if you get to bed by midnight.”

The sight of several stretchers, each with its legless, armless, or desperately wounded occupant, entering my ward, admonished me that I was there to work, not to wonder or weep; so I corked up my feelings, and returned to the path of duty, which was rather “a hard road to travel” just then.

This chapter and the fourth, “A Night,” are the best in the book. “Nurse Periwinkle” tells of her experiences and the men she met and treated. Some of the encounters are touching, some are funny as she “entertained a belief that he who laughed most was surest of recovery.”

In the fifth chapter, “Off Duty,” she tells of becoming sick herself and isolated. They must not have realized she had typhoid fever yet, because she took walks in town, visited another hospital in much better shape than theirs, visited the Senate Chamber and other sites until bad weather and worsening symptoms forced her inside. Even then, she did mending while observing the goings-on outside from her window. Finally she was so ill that her father came to bring her home.

I never shall regret the going, though a sharp tussle with typhoid, ten dollars, and a wig, are all the visible results of the experiment; for one may live and learn much in a month. A good fit of illness proves the value of health; real danger tries one’s mettle; and self-sacrifice sweetens character. Let no one who sincerely desires to help the work on in this way, delay going through any fear; for the worth of life lies in the experiences that fill it, and this is one which cannot be forgotten. All that is best and bravest in the hearts of men and women, comes out in scenes like these; and, though a hospital is a rough school, its lessons are both stern and salutary; and the humblest of pupils there, in proportion to his faithfulness, learns a deeper faith in God and in himself.

I believe I read in her biography that she’d had to have her head shaved–I don’t know if that was treatment for typhus or due to something else. She doesn’t mention it here except for the brief mention of the wig above.

The last chapter, “Postscript,” includes answers to questions readers had asked but also more observations and stories. I especially liked one quote where she, “having known a sister’s sorrow,” sympathizes with a woman who lost her brother: “I just put my arms about her, and began to cry in a very helpless but hearty way; for, as I seldom indulge in this moist luxury, I like to enjoy it with all my might, when I do.”

Along with the tales of some of “our brave boys,” she writes of mismanagement at the hospital as well as poor treatment of Black people. She also tells of some of the doctors, some kind and thoughtful, some clinical and lacking in bedside manner.

I’d have to say I like her later writing better. But even here, her wit, keen observation, pathos, and humor shine through.

I listened to the free recording of the book at Librivox and read parts in the free Kindle version.

I’m counting this book for the Classic Short Stories category of the Back to the Classics Reading Challenge.

Victorian Short Stories of Successful Marriages

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I got Victorian Short Stories: Stories of Successful Marriages both because the Kindle version was free and because I thought all the stories were by Elizabeth Gaskell (author of favorites North and South and Wives and Daughters).

As it turned out, each of the five stories in the book was written by a different author: only the first was from Gaskell. But I generally like stories from this era, and it was an opportunity to read some new-to-me authors.

The first story, “The Manchester Marriage,” is by Gaskell. It opens with a Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw moving from Manchester to London. Mrs. Openshaw had formerly been married to a cousin who was lost at sea. She was known as Mrs. Frank then, and she and her ill daughter and mother-in-law took a small house and took in lodgers, one of whom was Mr. Openshaw. Mr. O., over time, took a particular interest in Mrs. Frank’s ailing daughter, devising ways to amuse her and procuring things to help her. He was not a sentimental man, but he liked how Mrs. Frank did things. He offered an unromantic proposal, but Mrs. Frank accepted. They got along well, had a good life, and the little daughter thrived.

Then Mrs. Openshaw’s first husband showed up.

The second story is “A Mere Interlude” by Thomas Hardy. Baptista Trewthen was thought to be “a young woman with scarcely emotions or character.” “No crisis had come in the years of her early maidenhood to demonstrate what lay hidden within her, like metal in a mine.” She trained to become a teacher, but with her first job discovered she hated teaching. An old bachelor proposed. She didn’t love him, but thought life with him would be better than teaching. So she accepted.

After her term was over, she was going to head to her parents house to prepare for the wedding. But she missed her boat, and the next one wasn’t due for a couple of days. She took a room and then went for a walk—and ran into her former boyfriend from college.

This one had a couple of unexpected twists after this point.

In “A Faithful Heart” by George Moore, a Major Shepherd is secretly married because he doesn’t think his sisters will approve of his wife. He has only a small house and allowance for his wife because “He had so many expenses: his club, his clothes, and all the incidental expenses he was put to in the grand houses where he went to stay.” But she managed. She didn’t care about Appleton Place, her husband’s estate home. Her only wish was to take her daughter to see it one day.

The fourth story is “The Solid Gold Reef Company, Limited” by Walter Besant. Reg loves Rosie, but he has no money, and she has no intention of marrying anyone without money. He leaves, she gets engaged a couple of times without ever marrying, he makes his fortune. Her father gives permission for Reg to call upon Rosie again. But though they both get what they want, it’s not exactly happily ever after.

The final story, “The Tree of Knowledge,” is by Henry James. Honestly, I had a hard time with this one. The author had a penchant for very long sentences made up of three or more clauses. I had sort of followed the thread, but I had to look up some other sources to understand the story.

Peter Brent is a writer who is close friends with a sculptor, Morgan Mallow. He doesn’t think Morgan is talented, however. He loves Mrs. Mallow from afar, but he has never acted on his feelings or indicated them to her in any way. He’s also godfather to the Mallows’ son, Lance.

When Lance wants to go to Paris to become a painter, Peter tries to discourage him. Peter is afraid either Lance will have the same level of talent as his father, or his eyes will be opened to good art and then he’ll know his father is a fraud. They both end up being surprised.

There is nothing at the beginning or end of the book to say when these stories were compiled together. Since most of them originally appeared in other publications, I am assuming that this compilation is recent. The publication date for this edition is 2012.

I don’t know what the compiler thought a successful Victorian marriage was. Not all of these marriages were what I would call happy. But if “successful” meant they made a go of it and stayed married, they were all successful.

I thought Gaskell’s story was very sweet. I didn’t like Major Shepherd in the third story or Rosie in the fourth. But each story had something to offer and enjoy and think about. It’s surprising how many twists and surprises came up in such short works. Short stories are not normally my favorite reading material, but I did enjoy these.

I originally chose this book because a book of short stories was one category in the Back to the Classics Reading Challenge. However, when I was nearly finished, I looked again at the rules, and there had to be six short stories in the book to count for the challenge. This one had only five. So I can’t count it for the challenge, but I am still glad I read it.

As I said above, I was familiar with Gaskell. I’d heard of Hardy and James but never read them. I had not heard of Moore or Besant. Have you read any of these stories or authors?

Audiobook Challenge Check-In

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The Audiobook Challenge, hosted by Caffeinated Reader and That’s What I’m Talking About, is having its mid-year checkpoint today. Here are the audiobooks I have listened to so far this year (titles link to my reviews):

  1. The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow. The events of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and beyond from the viewpoint of Mary, the quiet, bookish middle sister. Excellent.
  2. Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope, the fourth of his Barsetshire Chronicles. A young vicar trying to get in with society’s elite gets into trouble. The village matron’s son falls in love with the vicar’s sister rather than the beautiful but cold society maiden his mother had picked out for him.
  3. The Path Through the Trees by the “real” Christopher Robin of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, Christopher Milne. This book is the sequel to his first, The Enchanted Places (both are reviewed at the ink.
  4. The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope, the fifth in his Barsetshire Chronicles, had numerous threads, but the main plot focuses on a widow and her two daughters who live in a small house on the property of her brother-in-law, who owns the manor house and never liked his sister-in-law.
  5. The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope, the final book in his Chronicles of Barsetshire series. A stern vicar is accused of stealing and resistant to the community’s attempts to help him. All the threads from the previous books in the series are satisfyingly tied up.
  6. To Sir, With Love, an autobiographical novel by E. R. Braithwaite about a Black teacher in a London school of rowdy students in the 60s.
  7. The Winnie the Pooh books by A. A. Milne (When We Were Very Young, Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, and Now We Are Six). All four reviewed together. I’ll just count them as one entry since they are so short.
  8. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell. Part helping rich and poor understand each other, part coming-of-age, part unraveling a crime.
  9. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin. Russian classic about a bored young rich man who turns away the naive girl who loves him only to find he does lover her when it’s too late.
  10. The Confessions of St. Augustine. Challenging to listen to, but I am glad I did.
  11. Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan. Novel about a college girl asking C. S. Lewis about Narnia for her dying younger brother.
  12. Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott. Stories about her brief time as a Civil War nurse.

I had chosen to aim for the Binge Listener level at 20-30 audiobooks this year, and I am well on my way to that goal.

Once Upon a Wardrobe

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In Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan, Megs Devonshire is a college student at Oxford in the 1950s. Her 8-year-old brother, George, has a heart condition and is not expected to live long.

George has become enamored with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. George wonders often if Narnia is a real place. If not, where did it come from? When he learns that the author of the book is a professor at Megs’ school, George begs her to ask Lewis about Narnia for him.

Megs demurs. First, she explains to George, Oxford is made up of different colleges, and Lewis doesn’t teach at the one she attends. Plus, Megs studies math and physics and is not much for stories. She prefers logic and black and white answers. Of course Narnia is just a figment of the author’s imagination, she insists.

But George keeps asking, and Megs loves him. So she finds a way to meet Mr. Lewis.

Lewis is very hospitable. But he doesn’t answer Megs’ question directly. Instead, he tells her a series of stories about his life over several visits.

George enjoys the stories. But Megs is frustrated that she can’t get a straight answer. And their mother wonders if George is spending too much time thinking about an imaginary world.

There are three levels, or threads, to this story. One is Megs and George and their family. One is Lewis’ biography. And another is Megs’ learning the value of stories. Having read On Stories by Lewis, I recognized a lot of his points in this novel. He’s not saying that the world doesn’t need logic and math and facts. Rather, “Reason is how we get to the truth, but imagination is how we find meaning” (p. 52).

The middle section of the book seemed a little formulaic. Megs’ point of view is written in the first person. She’d visit Lewis and come back with a story for George. As she begins to tell it, the point of view switches to George’s, but in the third person. Then, as if the scene is unfolding in George’s imagination, a section of Lewis’ story is told in the third person.

In the final third or so of the book, the action picked up and there were no more switches, so it was easier to get caught up in the story.

The scenes with C. S. and his brother, Warnie, made me feel like I was there in their room with the fireplace going, listening in. Callahan had studied Lewis’ life for her first book, Becoming Mrs. Lewis, and I am not surprised another book about him grew from all that research. The details shared showed a familiarity with Lewis’ home and school without overpowering the story.

Callahan writes in her note after the story that she wasn’t interested in “ascribing logic, facts, and theory to the world of Narnia,” as that has been done by so many others. But she wanted to explore how Narnia changes readers and how, as Lewis said, “Sometimes fairy stories may say best what needs to be said.”

I’ve read many biographies of Lewis, so most of his story was familiar to me. There were parts that surprised me, though. For instance, I knew he took some children from London into his home during the Blitz, but I had never heard anything about them until this book. It also occurred to me that, though I had read much about Lewis, I had never read his book about himself: Surprised by Joy. I’d seen that book quoted in anything else I’d read about him, so I thought I knew it. But I should read it some time.

There were a couple of places the theology was a little wonky. I wasn’t sure whether these were from the author’s beliefs or a character’s.

But overall, this was a sweet and touching story.

I listened to most of the book via audiobook, read nicely by Fiona Hardingham. But I had also gotten the Kindle version on sale and looked up many sections there.

The Four Loves

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In The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, he says that when he contemplated writing about love, he thought there were two types: Need-Love and Gift-Love. Need-love is that of a child for its parents, who meet its needs and comfort when frightened. Gift-love is that of a man who works hard for the well-being of his family. Lewis was going to propose that the latter is more like God because He gives and needs nothing. Need-love, however, seemed totally selfish and not deserving of the name “love.”

But, he reasoned, no one thinks a child is selfish for looking to its parents for comfort or an adult selfish for wanting the companionship of friends. And man’s love to God is almost totally Need-love.

It would be a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast ‘I’m no beggar. I love you disinterestedly.’ Those who come nearest to a Gift-love for God will next moment, even at the very same moment, be beating their breasts with the publican and laying their indigence before the only real Giver. And God will have it so. He addresses our Need-love: ‘Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy-laden,’ or, in the Old Testament, ‘Open your mouth wide and I will fill it’ (pp. 3-4).

Lewis also differentiates between Need-pleasures and Appreciation-pleasures. One quote stood out to me here because I see this in online discussions all the time.

We must be careful never to adopt prematurely a moral or evaluating attitude. The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value; hence those fatal critics who can never point out the differing quality of two poets without putting them in an order of preference as if they were candidates for a prize (pp. 14-15).

Next he writes a chapter titled “Likings and Loves for the Sub-Human”—about love of nature, home, family, country. There’s much to contemplate here, but I’ll just share this one quote from this chapter: “All natural affections, including this, can become rivals to spiritual love: but they can also be preparatory imitations of it, training (so to speak) of the spiritual muscles which Grace may later put to a higher service” (p. 30).

Then Lewis determined that there were four loves and dedicated a chapter each to each one.

First is Affection, or storge in the Greek (“two syllables and the g is ‘hard,'” p. 41). He describes Affection as “a warm comfortableness . . . satisfaction in being together . . . the least discriminating of loves” (p. 41). Affection is “the humblest love. It gives itself no airs” (p. 43). Affection can be in combination with the other loves or not.

Next comes friendship. You’d think that would be part of Affection. But Affection can be felt for pets and even people we don’t like very much. If I understand it rightly, it’s not as deep as friendship.

This chapter contains Lewis’ famous quote, “The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one'” (p. 82).

“To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it” (pp. 72-73). This book was published in 1960 and its elements were first shared in a series of radio talks. I don’t know if Lewis would say the same today. However, I am sure he would emphasize even more in our day that “It has actually become necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual” (p. 76).

Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest (p. 77).

Friendship is also not just between two people, though it can be. A group of friends enhances the friendship of each with the other. “In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets” (p. 77).

Friendship also has its good and bad sides. There is a certain exclusiveness to friendship–we can’t be as close to everyone as we are with our closest friends. But that can turn to snobbishness or cliqueishness. It can also form an “us against the world” attitude where we close off criticisms or efforts to point out problems or disagreements. Friendship must “invoke the divine protection if it is to remain sweet” (p. 111).

The third love, Eros, is what Lewis calls romantic love. I’ve always heard the Greek word eros meant sexual, physical love, but Lewis call that Venus. People can experience Eros and Venus together or just one or the other.

Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved. The thing is a sensory pleasure; that is, an event occurring within one’s own body. . .

Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give (p. 120).

Eros, like Friendship, can have good and bad sides. Our fallen nature can corrupt any good thing.

The last of the four loves, according to Lewis, is Charity or agape in Biblical Greek. Lewis warns many times that our natural loves can act as rivals to the love of God. But he also warns that love of God does not erase or demean our naturals loves. Rather, His love infuses them to be what He created them to be.

Lewis gives an example from Augustine (which, in the providence of God, I just finished reading). Augustine had a dear friend, Nebridius, whose death plunged him into despair and desolation. “This is what comes, [Augustine] says, of giving one’s heart to anything but God” (p. 153). Therefore, he concludes we shouldn’t love other people so much. “If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away” (p. 153). Lewis responds:

Of course, this is excellent sense. . . I am a safety-first creature. Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as ‘Careful! This might lead you to suffering.’ To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities. I doubt whether there is anything in me that pleases Him less (p. 153-154).

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken (p. 155).

The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness. It is like hiding the talent in a napkin and for much the same reason. . . Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness (p. 155).

We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it (pp. 155-156).

Lewis then goes on to a good discussion of what it means when God says He loved Jacob but hated Esau, or what God meant when He tells us we can’t be His disciples without hating mother, father, etc., which He tells us in other places to love. One helpful quote from this section:

To hate is to reject, to set one’s face against, to make no concession to, the Beloved when the Beloved utters, however sweetly and however pitiably, the suggestions of the Devil. A man, said Jesus, who tries to serve two masters, will ‘hate’ the one and ‘love’ the other. It is not, surely, mere feelings of aversion and liking that are here in question. He will adhere to, consent to, work for, the one and not for the other (p. 157).

But then we’re called to show this agape kind of love to others. And when we try, we quickly see it’s not in us naturally.

The invitation to turn our natural loves into Charity is never lacking. It is provided by those frictions and frustrations that meet us in all of them; unmistakable evidence that (natural) love is not going to be ‘enough’— . . . But in everyone, and of course in ourselves, there is that which requires forbearance, tolerance, forgiveness. The necessity of practising these virtues first sets us, forces us, upon the attempt to turn—more strictly, to let God turn—our love into Charity. These frets and rubs are beneficial (p. 173).

These can be raised with Him only if they have, in some degree and fashion, shared His death; if the natural element in them has submitted—year after year, or in some sudden agony—to transmutation (p. 174).

Even though this is an overly long review, I still feel I’ve only scratched the surface of the book. And even though I gleaned much from the book, I can already tell I’ll need to read it again some time.

I like to read whole chapters of this kind of fiction at a time so I can follow and hopefully retain the author’s thoughts all the way through. But with only six chapters in a 192-page book, the chapters are long. It wasn’t until the last chapter that I hit on the idea of taking it in much shorter bits and chewing on that for a while before moving on. I’ll have to try that through the whole book next time.

As always, Lewis has a way of stating and illustrating some things in a way to make them startlingly clear and convicting.

I’ll close with one last quote sharing the need for surrendering to God:

This pretence that we have anything of our own or could for one hour retain by our own strength any goodness that God may pour into us, has kept us from being happy. We have been like bathers who want to keep their feet—or one foot—or one toe—on the bottom, when to lose that foothold would be to surrender themselves to a glorious tumble in the surf. The consequences of parting with our last claim to intrinsic freedom, power, or worth, are real freedom, power, and worth, really ours just because God gives them and because we know them to be (in another sense) not ‘ours’ (pp. 167-168).

I’m counting this book for the Nonfiction Classic in the Back to the Classics Challenge.

Be Distinct (2 Kings and 2 Chronicles)

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Be Distinct (2 Kings and 2 Chronicles): Standing Firmly Against the World’s Tides is Warren Wiesrbe’s short commentary on those two books of the Bible.

I read this book while reading 2 Kings 2, so it was nice to have the parallel material from 2 Chronicles, Isaiah, and Jeremiah to fill in the rest of the details.

2 Kings covers a sad time in Israel’s history. The northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians, and the southern kingdom of Judah continued its descent from what it had been during the reigns of David and Solomon. A few of Judah’s kings were godly and enacted various reforms away from idolatry and back to the worship of the one true God as He had laid out in His Word. But the next generation would fall away even further than they had before. Finally, Babylon conquered Judah, destroyed the temple, burned Jerusalem, and took most of the Israelites back to Babylon. Different prophets were sent with God’s warnings, but were largely ignored.

It’s not hard to see history repeating itself in our day. America is not Israel, of course. But any people who have had God’s light and turn away from it are going on a similar collision course. As Dr. Wiersbe says:

When society around us is in moral and spiritual darkness, God’s people need to be lights; and when society is decaying because of sin, we need to be salt. We must be distinctive! Paul calls us to be “children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation” (Phil. 2: 15 NKJV). . . .The hour has come for God’s people to be alert to the voice of God and obedient to the will of God—to be distinctive. God is seeking transformers, not conformers (p. 11, Kindle version).

Throughout the book, we also see the grace of God in keeping His promises to David and offering help multiple times.

Some quotes that stood out to me:

The gospel isn’t only a message to believe; it’s also a mandate to obey (p. 19).

During the years that I was privileged to instruct seminary students, I occasionally heard some of them say, ‘Why should we attend school? Charles Spurgeon never went to seminary, and neither did Campbell Morgan or D. L. Moody!’ I would usually reply, ‘If any of you are Spurgeons, Morgans, or Moodys, we’ll no doubt discover it and give you permission to stop your education. But let me remind you that both Spurgeon and Moody founded schools for training preachers, and Campbell Morgan was once president of a training college and also taught at a number of schools. Meanwhile, back to our studies.’ God has different ways of training His servants, but He still expects the older generation to pass along to the younger generation the treasures of truth that were given to them by those who went before, ‘the faith … once for all delivered to the saints’” (Jude 3 NKJV) (p. 21).

Never underestimate the power of a simple witness, for God can take words from the lips of a child and carry them to the ears of a king (p. 53).

To the humble heart that’s open to God, the Word generates faith, but to the proud, self-centered heart, the Word makes the heart even harder. The same sun that melts the ice will harden the clay (p. 74).

[Uzziah] had a wonderful beginning but a tragic ending, and this is a warning to us that we be on guard and pray that the Lord will help us to end well. A good beginning is no guarantee of a successful ending, and the sin of unholy ambition has ruined more than one servant of the Lord (p. 140).

Even though 2 Kings ends on a bleak note, God has not entirely forsaken His people. After 70 years in captivity, they would be allowed to return. And several hundred years later, the rightful ruler of the throne of David would come to earth. He would not to establish His physical kingdom at that time. But He would provide for their salvation.