Book Review: War and Peace

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Barbara Harper

I did not grow up reading many classics. Louisa May Alcott, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Charles Dickens were my most-read classic authors. I don’t remember coming into contact with many classics even in school, though I must have and probably just can’t remember most of them. But because of this, over the last few years I’ve determined to read more classics.

Whenever I’ve perused lists of classics or “books everyone should read,” War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy is almost always mentioned. Whenever I read a short description of it, I never could get a clear idea of what it was about. After reading my first Dostoyevsky last year and finding him not as difficult as I’d thought, I determined one day to read War and Peace. Over the last few months I’ve listened to the audiobook version with occasional forays into the library’s paper and ink version.

And now I know why the descriptions of the book didn’t really give much substance. It’s such a massive book with so many characters, it’s hard to sum up in a few sentences what it’s all about.

It covers the period from the time Napoleon is first seen as a threat in Russia in 1805 to his invasion of Russia in 1812 during the reign of Tsar Alexander and is basically about the lives and interactions of five aristocratic families and how the war affects them.

Pierre Bezukhov is one of many illegitimate sons of a crusty old count. He is kind-hearted and sincere but socially inept and awkward. He’s not afraid to speak his mind, even on controversial issues, but is too naive to realize when it is not socially appropriate to do so. Surprisingly, when his father comes to his death he has Pierre legitimized and leaves the bulk of his fortune to him. But Pierre is ill-prepared for the responsibility and doesn’t realize that everyone’s being nice to him now is because of his new wealth, not because they finally got to know him well enough to like him. He makes a disastrous marriage and spends much of the book searching for the meaning of life.

The Bolkonsky family consists of a cantankerous father and two adult children. Andrei is tolerant of his father, intelligent, ambitious, cynical, married and expecting a child but dissatisfied with his wife and indeed much of life. His sister, Marya, is very religious and tries to show her father love though he takes out the bulk of his eccentricities and bad moods on her.

The Rostov family, with children Nikolai, Natasha, and Petya, are a loving, fairly normal family whose finances are constantly a problem. An orphaned cousin, Sonya, lives with them. Sonya is quiet and dependable, but the three Rostov children are impetuous and immature at the beginning.

Prince Vasili Kuragin is crafty and wily, and his two adult children, Helene and Anatole, are good-looking but immoral.

Anna Drubetskaya has great ambitions for her son, Boris, and doesn’t mind asking for consideration and favors for him. Boris, in turn, has great ambitions for himself and learns quickly how to work the system to move ahead in life.

Tolstoy takes us from the ballroom to home scenes to the battlefield and back again. The lives of these characters intertwine and intersect with each other and historical figures. Some fall in love and marry; some don’t make it to the end of the book.

He also intersperses his story with essays about a number of things: his view of a particular historical event, his disagreement with the general consensus, his low opinion of Napoleon, the belief that great men and great events do not make history but rather there are innumerable small issues that work together to direct the course of history. The last is one of his major themes. In fact, the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry for War and Peace says:

As Tolstoy explains, to presume that grand events make history is like concluding from a view of a distant region where only treetops are visible that the region contains nothing but trees. Therefore Tolstoy’s novel gives its readers countless examples of small incidents that each exert a tiny influence—which is one reason that War and Peace is so long. Tolstoy’s belief in the efficacy of the ordinary and the futility of system-building set him in opposition to the thinkers of his day.

One of the main ways this is shown is on the battlefield. It’s hard to see how anything got done on the battlefield when the information relayed to the commander would have changed by the time he got it, when his orders were disobeyed or not received or when someone acted of their own accord without waiting for orders.

Tolstoy said of this book that it “is not a novel, even less is it an epic poem, and still less an historical chronicle.” He doesn’t say what he does call it, but it is kind of an amalgam of the three.

I had heard that Tolstoy was a Christian, so I was surprised that at first the religion in the book was mixed up with icons, superstition, and freemasonry. I read in various places that after his religious conversion, he renounced his earlier works. But reading about his conversion was confusing as well: it seemed to center primarily in non-resistance to evil (which led to pacifism) and in trying to divest himself of his property (which his family resisted and resented). There are nuggets of spiritual truth in this book, but it’s not where I’d send someone who was seeking to look for answers.

I wondered why so many Russians were speaking French at the beginning of the book. Wikipedia explains that it was the fashion of the day and for some years before in the upper class. But when Napoleon started attacking Russian territory, speaking French fell out of favor.

There is so much I feel I am leaving out, but with a book of 1,316 pages, it would be hard to include everything. I am indebted to SparkNotes, Wikipedia, the online Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the introduction and notes of the library copy I had for giving me more insight into the book that I would have gleaned on my own. I enjoyed the audiobook version narrated by Neville Jason in two parts over 60 hours. It did take a while to settle into it and get the characters straight. I do admit that my mind wandered a bit during the essays, especially the last appendix – I have a harder time listening to nonfiction and usually need to reread it parts of it a number of times to truly “get” it.

As with many older classics, there were parts that were a little dry, and due to the different time period and nationality there were ways people acted that didn’t always make sense to me. But I liked following the characters on their journey, especially Pierre, Natasha, and Marya and one minor character, a peasant named Karataev whom Pierre meets while in captivity. I liked where the ones mentioned at the end of the book ended up. There were moments of great pathos in the book, moments of truly feeling a character’s pain and joy. Though not a “keep you on the edge of your seat” type of book, there were a few of those moments, such as when Andrei is waking up from surgery in a battlefield hospital and in his hazy state sees someone who looks familiar and is trying to figure out who it is. When I realized who it was, I think I gasped out loud. One of my favorite moments was during beloved oldest son Nikolai’s first battlefield experience when he is astonished that people are shooting at him, thinking, “Me, whom everyone loves!”

Years ago I read a couple of Richard Wurmbrand books about persecution behind the Iron Curtain, and he pleaded then that people not be prejudiced against the whole Soviet Union because of the Communists, remarking that the average Russians were big-hearted people. That came back to mind while reading this book, especially in the characters of Pierre and Count Rostov.

There is a 1970s BBC miniseries starring a young Anthony Hopkins as Pierre that I’d love to see sometime, but it would be quite an investment of time. I just learned that another BBC miniseries is in the works to be shown in six parts this year. Now I am even more glad I read this now!

I was dismayed when I saw a ballet segment from War and Peace in the opening ceremony at the Sochi Olympics that I didn’t know what was going on in it. I was delighted to find that segment on YouTube and watch it again after reading the book. This is Natasha’s first ball and the first time to dance with Andrei. The video quality isn’t great and there is an annoying sound like a rocking chair squeaking, but I was just glad to be able to see it again and understand it this time:

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Book Review: Being Mortal

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Barbara Harper

I could wrap up my comments on Being Mortal by Atul Gawande succinctly by saying that if you plan on getting old or dying or helping a parent as they age, you need to read this book. But I’ll try to give you a bit more to go on.

I don’t know that I would have noticed this book at all except that Lisa and Joyful Reader both mentioned it. I knew they had dealt with deaths of parents and grandparents, Lisa’s mom had been in assisted living and Joyful’s grandmother lives with her, so with their experience, their praise for this book meant a lot.

I ended up marking many more pages than I can possibly share, but it’s safe to say that much in this book resonated with me.

The subtitle of the book is Medicine and What Matters in the End, and it’s a frank treatment of end-of-life issues. Medicine, Dr. Gawande asserts, is geared to fix things. But in some cases the treatment is worse than the disease itself. And this tendency is part of what had led to institutionalizing people as they age and making it a medical matter rather than trying to give people in such situations the best days they can have in the time they have left.

Gawande notes that until fairly recently, most deaths occurred at home. Now most occur in hospitals and nursing homes “where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life” (p. 9). In addition, it used to be that, unless you had a long, wasting illness like consumption, most deaths came suddenly like a thunderstorm. Modern medicine has been a marvel and a gift from God: many things that used to be fatal can now be treated. But like any gift, there are good ways and not so good ways to use it.

“The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, and that is, of course, its most basic task. Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And, in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don’t want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knew how to fight for territory when he could and how to surrender when he couldn’t, someone who understood that the damage is greatest if all you do is fight to the bitter end.”

I appreciated his explanation of how the style of doctoring has changed over the years, from the authoritative “Dr. Knows-Best” who made all the decisions for you, to “Dr. Informative,” who merely laid out all the options and let you decide. The problem with the latter is that we don’t always know how to process the options. When the author’s own father faced a tumor in his spine, he, his father, and his mother were all doctors yet felt overwhelmed by the information and options they were receiving. A third kind of doctor is called “interpretive” and gives information as well as guidance after asking what’s most important to you and what your concerns are (pp. 100-102).

Gawande proposes a series of questions to consider when the diagnosis is terminal, questions concerning what’s most important, what one’s goals and fears are in facing the time they have left. One man said he wanted to continue to eat ice cream and watch football on TV, and he wasn’t interested in any treatment that interfered with those activities: life wasn’t worth living without them. Some are willing to live with different degrees of disability and pain: some don’t want to suffer at all. It’s good for a family to have these discussions so they have some idea what would be the most important to their loved one. Sometimes it requires more than one hard discussion: “Arriving at acceptance of one’s mortality and a clear understanding of the limits and the possibilities of medicine is a process, not an epiphany” (p. 182), and your preferences might change over time as well. But these discussions are necessary to find the best means of “living for the best possible day today instead of sacrificing time now for time later” (p. 229).

Gawande also details the journey from being independent to needing assistance to needing full time care that elderly and their families face. We’ve faced much of this with my mother-in-law over the last few years. I especially appreciated the history of nursing homes and assisted living facilities and the goals and purposes that Keren Brown Wilson, who “invented” assisted living, had when she started, and how those were originally implemented and maintained and then encroached upon to the point that she had to resign from her own board. Nursing homes themselves “were never created to help people facing dependency in old age. They were created to clear out hospital beds” (p. 71).

Many of the problems he lists in assisted living and nursing homes were the same as what we had found: loss of autonomy and privacy, loss of purpose, “tasks [coming] to matter more than the people” (p. 105), “safe but empty of anything they care about” (p. 109). “Making life meaningful in old age…requires more imagination and invention than making them merely safe does” (p. 137).

In older history and in other countries, the old are revered as having great knowledge and wisdom: “Now we consult Google, and if we have any trouble with the computer we ask a teenager” (p. 18). At least one sibling used to stay with the elderly parent(s) and help care for them, and then got a larger portion of the inheritance or perhaps the family home in place of what they gave up. Now both parents and adult children value their independence. But “our reverence for independence takes no account of the reality of what happens in life: sooner or later, independence will become impossible” (p. 22). Yet the author researched and visited several creative ways for an older adult to retain as much independence and autonomy as long as possible.

One problem is that even though geriatric specialists have been shown to enhance the lives of the elderly, geriatric units are shrinking or being closed rather than growing. “97 percent of medical students take no course in geriatrics” (p. 52). One reason is that it doesn’t pay well; another is that insurance doesn’t see the need for it. It remains for those of us who deal with the elderly or who look ahead to our own old age to be aware of issues.

When I was first looking at information about the book, I was wary that the author might promote assisted suicide for those with terminal illnesses. He does not promote it, but he would support legislation to enable giving people lethal prescriptions if asked, noting that half of them don’t use them: they just like the assurance that they could. He does note, though, that in countries where it is legal, use has grown: “But the fact that, by 2012, one in thirty-five Dutch people sought assisted suicide at their death is not a measure of success. It is a measure of failure. Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end. The Dutch have been slower than others to develop palliative care programs that might provide for it….We damage entire societies if we let this capability [assisted suicide] divert us from improving the lives of the ill. Assisted living is far harder than assisted death, but its possibilities are far greater, as well” (p. 245). (A good Christian source on some of these thorny issues is When Is It Right to Die: Suicide, Euthanasia, Suffering, Mercy by Joni Earacekson Tada.)

He also points out that it is difficult to know exactly where the lines are sometimes. “We also recognize the necessity of allowing doses of narcotics and sedatives that reduce pain and discomfort even if they may knowingly speed death” (pp. 243-244). Sometimes it is wrong to turn off a ventilator: sometimes it is right. If a 20-tyear-old was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and wanted to let “nature take its course” rather than treating the illness, we’d try to convince her that the quality of life she could have with treatment would be well worth it despite the complications: it would be ridiculous to die of diabetes when there is treatment available and the possibility of a long, productive, and happy life. On the other hand, when my father was dying of various other issues and they suspected he had colon cancer, they decided not to put him through what would be involved in diagnosing, much less treating it, because in the long run it would not make a difference in how long he would live and would only make his last months miserable.

The author writes from a secular viewpoint. As a Christian, I thought a lot about how a Christian worldview would affect this topic. As Christians we know where we and our believing loved ones are going, which takes some of the sting out of death. But we don’t take it lightly or flippantly, either. Death is still called an enemy. We hold life as a gift from God and believe He is the only one with the right to end it. It is to be given back to Him and used for His purposes. Sometimes that includes suffering, yet we’re also called to alleviate suffering if possible. While there are fears about loss of independence and abilities in older age, we can trust God to help us through that time: And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. Isaiah 46:4. But issues and question the author brings up are needful to consider, preferably before crises hit. In some cases there is no one right answer for what kind of treatment to pursue: the answer will vary depending on a number of factors.

I like this summation near the end of the book:

I am leery of suggesting that endings are controllable. No one ever really has control. Physics and biology and accident ultimately have their way in our lives. But the point is that we are not helpless either. Courage is the strength to recognize both realities. We have room to act, to shape our stories, though as time goes on it is within narrower and narrower confines. A few conclusions become clear when we understand this: that our most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one’s story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone’s lives (p. 243).

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Book Review: Songs of the Morning: Stories and Poems for Easter

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Songs of the Morning: Stories and Poems for Easter was compiled by Pat Alexander and includes excerpts from the writings of C. S. Lewis, E. B. White, Dickens and others, some (mostly poems) written by children. I had bought it ages ago from a clearance section, put it on my shelf, noticed it it off and on through the years, and kept forgetting about it at Easter time. Finally this year I remembered to pull it out in the weeks preceding Easter. I like to read something devotional pertaining to Easter during that time, and while this wasn’t that exactly, it was both pleasant and beneficial.

I don’t think I realized, or I had forgotten, that it was geared primarily to children, probably the same age as those who would be able to read the Narnia series. But adults can gain from it, too.

I like that it couches the Easter story within historical context. The first section is “How It All Began” and begins with a short excerpt from a children’s Bible about God creating the world and sin entering in (Pat Alexander also wrote The Lion’s Children’s Bible, which I had not heard of before this, so I don’t know how well it expresses Biblical truth, but the excerpts I read here were fine). Then there are Narnia excerpts about the founding of Narnia and the White Witch and a couple of other sources to further illustrate those truths.

Other sections follow a similar pattern and focus on the birth of Christ, the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. There’s also a section of “The Greatest Love,” with several historical and story illustrations of sacrificial love (like Sydney Carton’s in A Tale of Two Cities and a story about a boy’s dog risking its life to save the boy’s), one called “It’s All Right,” dealing with how new life in Christ should affect our lives in practical terms, like forgiveness of others, and a final one called “A New Beginning.”

The stories come from a variety of countries. Some are old, some are new. Some are from adults’ work, some from children’s books. Some are fun, some are serious. Pat did a fine job putting all these sources together. It doesn’t look like the book is in print any more, but there are copies that can be purchased online, or perhaps you can keep an eye out for it at library sales and such.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Book Review: A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live

Posted on March 30, 2015 by Barbara Harper

When you disagree with a foundational statement eighteen pages into a book, it’s hard not to let that color the rest of your reading. But I tried to give it my best effort. More on that in a moment.

I got A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live by Emily Freeman because I enjoyed her Grace For the Good Girl so much. The title sounds like it might be about finding ways to be more creative or finding time to express yourself artistically. However, though that is involved, that’s not exactly what the book is about, at least not in the way you might be thinking at first glance. The basis of the book is taken from Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” Other versions use “handiwork” or “masterpiece” in place of “workmanship,” and the Greek word they are translated from is poiema, from which we get our English word poem.

Being his workmanship doesn’t mean we are all poets. It means we are all poems, individual created works of a creative God. And this poetry comes out uniquely through us as we worship, think, love, pray, rest, work, and exist.

Jesus reminds us we are art and empowers us to make art.

There isn’t one right way to do the job of glorifying God. There are many ways, a million little ways, that Christ is formed in us and spills out of us into the world.

Knowing you are a poem doesn’t confine you to be artsy, it releases you to be you (p. 29).

So the art she is talking about our creating isn’t writing or painting or sculpture – unless we’re called to that – but rather finding the purpose for which God made us, that which makes us most “fully alive” (a phrase she uses often), and then doing that by the enabling of God and for His glory, whether it is being a doctor, a mom, a janitor, a hostess, or whatever. But she is not talking primarily about our occupation, though that’s a big part of it:

I don’t believe there is one great thing I was made to do in this world. I believe there is one great God I was made to glorify. And there will be many ways, even a million little ways, I will declare his glory with my life (p. 40).

So we can express God’s glory whether we’re listening to a friend’s troubles, making dinner for our family, playing an instrument, or whatever else is a part of our day.

Part of uncovering what we are uniquely called to do is examining our desires. “Our passions aren’t the goal, but they are the signposts, like arrows pointing to our center” (p. 60).

Could it be possible that the thing the thing you most long for, the thing you notice and think about and wish you could do, is the thing you were actually made and equipped to do?

Could it also be possible that somewhere along the way you got the message that to follow desire would be selfish, when, really, it would be the opposite? (p. 47)

A couple of chapters discuss the ins and outs of that in greater detail, including redeemed desires (not everything we desire is something we should pursue). Other chapters discuss the need to do all leaning on God’s power and enabling, realizing we can’t do it on our own, handling criticism (I especially appreciated the thought that criticism has a purpose even when unfounded), waiting on God’s timing, learning when to say “no.” Probably my favorite chapter was “Wonder.” A close second would be the one on waiting, from which this favorite quote came:

The Spirit came over Mary in a moment, but it took nine months for him to grow. Jesus waited thirty years to begin what we cal his earthly ministry. But really, wasn’t he always being God in the world, from his first breath to his last? He was crucified and waited until day three to resurrect. Don’t lose hope on day two (p. 155).

Another favorite quote came neat the end: “One masterpiece is the work of ten thousand rough drafts” (p. 195).

So what was it I disagreed with so strongly at the beginning? A statement on page 18 that “God is not a technician. God is an artist.” My immediate thoughts ran something like this:

God is a technician AND an artist! When He creates a beautiful sunset, He doesn’t just throw colors in the sky: there is science behind it, and it’s not the less wondrous for that. When you think of the marvels of human biology, the mathematical properties in the universe that enable space travel, and so many other factors involved in his creation, it’s impossible not to see that He is a master technician. (My kids used to have a book titled God Thought of It First, showing that many of man’s inventions were based on properties in creation, like the similarity between how a submarine and a chambered nautilus works). My husband was a physics major and has worked for most of his career in the science of color, first in textiles and now in plastics. He can’t just say, “Hmm, this looks a little too blue” and add a dab of another color until it looks right, like an artist might do on a canvas: there are formulas involved which enable them to get the right color not just for the moment, but to be able to reproduce it in massive quantities for carpet fiber, plastic bottles, and even paint in artist’s tubes.

I think Emily would agree that God is a God of detail, engineering, and technology as well as artistry and creativity. But that’s not really what she is talking about when she says God is not a technician. She precedes that statement with these thoughts:

Is he only a God of right answers and right angles and acceptable behavior? Have we exalted the will of God and the plans of God above God himself?

He does not manage us, to-do list us, or bullet-point us. He loves us. Is with us. And believing him feels impossible, until we do, like a miracle, like lukewarm water turning merlot red right there in the cup. And hope sprouts new, because God doesn’t give us a list. He invites us into the story (p. 17).

Actually He does give us a list or two, like this one and this one. But, yes, I do get the point she’s making that we’re not saved or sanctified by keeping lists or commandments. It’s possible to keep commandments and totally miss God, as the Pharisees did. We’re saved by grace through faith and sanctification and service come about the same way. Or, as she says later, when discussing Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and then instructing them to do likewise, “Maybe Jesus is inviting them into a relationship of do as I do rather than pointing to a list and saying, Copy me” (p. 75).

So once I understood where she was coming from, I could agree, but I still had to fight against that feeling when similar statements were made: “Technicians don’t move us. Artists do” (p. 14); “When a poet writes a poem, he isn’t writing a technical manual or a how-to book” (p. 26); “Are you living like a programmer instead of a poet?” (p. 135).

The bulk of the book is written from a right-brained, creative, artsy vantage point, which will appeal to that kind of thinker but not so much to the more left-brained, literal, logical one (I know the whole left vs. right-brained theory has been labeled incorrect now, but you know what I mean.) Although I struggled with that at times, and I wouldn’t agree with every little sub-point, overall I appreciated the message of the book, was inspired and challenged, and gleaned a lot from it. I’ll close with a section which I think sums it up:

What if we approached the critic, our jobs, the kids at our table with the same wonder and anticipation an artist has when she approaches the canvas? What if we decided our purpose in this world really is to reflect the glory of God?

Would we begin to see ourselves as wildly free to approach the universe – the meal plan, the work project, the yard sale, our neighbor, the roof leak, the doctor appointment, the eternal destiny of our children – to approach it all with a wide-eyed wonder, with an edge-of-your-seat breath, with an expectation that any minute God will show himself in a way we have not yet seen? And he’ll likely do it through us?

When we embrace the beauty of our design, when we recognize that he has made us to be the unique expressions of himself, when we receive the gifts he has equipped us with and have the courage to pour them out, we worship. What else would it be? (pp. 188-189).

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

What’s On Your Nightstand: March 2015

Posted on March 23, 2015 by Barbara Harper

The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the fourth Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read.

Often I am caught off guard when the fourth Tuesday of the month is not the last Tuesday, but this time I saw it coming. 🙂

Since last time I have completed:

Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God. A Broken Mother’s Search for Hope by Christopher and Angela Yuan, reviewed here. Excellent – I am predicting it will be one of my top ten books of the year.

I Deserve a Donut (And Other Lies That Make You Eat) and Taste For Truth: A 30 Day Weight Loss Bible Study, both by Barb Raveling, reviewed together here. Excellent.

She Is Mine: A War Orphan’s Incredible Journey of Survival by Stephanie Fast, review and a giveaway here. Riveting.

To See the Moon Again by Jamie Langston Turner, reviewed here.

The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer, reviewed here.

My Emily by Matt Patterson, a family’s true story of a young daughter born with Down’s Syndrome who is then diagnosed with leukemia at the age of two, reviewed here.

Better To Be Broken by Rick Huntress, his personal testimony of God getting hold of his heart after an accident left him in a wheelchair, reviewed here.

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder, reviewed here.

The Pound a Day Diet by Rocco DiSpirito, reviewed here.

That looks like more than usual – but one was a children’s book, and two were very short.

I’m currently reading:

A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live by Emily Freeman. Got off on the wrong foot with this one but am settling into it now. Will explain more when I review it.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, audiobook. I’m about 2/3 of the way through.

The Swan House by Elizabeth Musser

Songs of the Morning: Stories and Poems for Easter compiled by Pat Alexander, including excerpts from C. S. Lewis, E. B. White, and others.

Next Up:

Hard to say. I’m working on my reading plans for the year, and you people keep adding to my lengthy list of books I want to get to. 🙂 Once I finish War and Peace, I think I’ll get back to the Sherlock Holmes series via audiobook. Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder had been delayed but ~~I am informed it is on its way now~~ just arrived. I’ve seen several people mention Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, and I just ordered it. I may need something lighthearted to break up some of the heavier reading.

What are you reading now?

Book Review and Giveaway: She Is Mine: A War Orphan’s Incredible Journey of Survival

Posted on March 23, 2015 by Barbara Harper

I first became aware of She Is Mine: A War Orphan’s Incredible Journey of Survival by Stephanie Fast through Carrie’s review, and then I won her giveaway of the book.

Stephanie does not remember her birthday or her given name: she gave herself the name of Yoon Myoung in her book. She was born in Korea not long after the Korean War: her mother was Korean and her father was an American serviceman who never knew of her. Because she was of mixed blood, she was not accepted, even by her mother’s family. Stephanie explains:

In Korea, having a fatherless child of mixed blood brought impurities to the ancestral bloodlines. It was culturally unacceptable – a disgrace. And children who were not given a family name literally had no birthright and lived unacknowledged. They were rejected. Worthless. Nothings. (p. 34).

The Korean people had suffered greatly during the Japanese occupation before WWII. Then the communist occupation had come, and then the Korean War–their cultural identity had been ripped away. Although grateful to their Western liberators, their greatest desire was to rebuild their lives, reclaim their land, and forget their pain. The site of mixed blood children such as Yoon Myoung stirred up their anger, frustration, and hurt. The foreigners may have fought to preserve South Korea’s independence, but they were not permitted into Korean families, heritages, or bloodlines (pp. 35-36).

When Stephanie was four, her mother’s family found someone who was willing to marry her despite her indiscretion, but who was unwilling to take her mixed child. Her mother sent her away on a train, telling her an uncle would meet her at her destination. It’s unclear whether that was an outright lie or whether Stephanie got off at the wrong stop or what, but an uncle was not there when she got off the train. Instead of trying to find out what happened and taking care of her, the station master just shooed her away when he closed. Stephanie decided to follow the train tracks back the direction from which she had come to find her village and her mother, but she never found them. She wandered around the Korean countryside alone for three years. She had to try to find shelter and forage for food, finding out by trial and error what worked and what didn’t. When she did encounter people, it almost always went badly. She was called names, treated in abominable ways, betrayed at the deepest level from someone she had come to trust. At times she lived with groups of other abandoned children, once at a large encampment of many of them. Over time, due to exposure, malnutrition, and lack of ability to get clean, and everything else she had gone through, she was filthy, had a head full of lice, open wounds, and worms, so that added to the repulsion people felt toward her, but the primary hatred always went back to her mixed race.

At a very few intervals she came across someone kind who rescued her from death and danger, until finally she was near the end of her rope, abandoned on a garbage heap. A Swedish nurse passed by who picked up abandoned babies and nursed them back to health so they could be sent to an orphanage and adopted. She cared for all the children but could not possibly help them all, so she concentrated primarily on the babies. But when she saw Stephanie, she was compelled to pick her up. Stephanie then described her time at the clinic, the orphanage, and finally her adoption by an American missionary couple who actually had been planning to adopt a baby boy.

This is a heart-breaking story. It’s hard to fathom people being so cruel to a child for any reason.

But it is also a story of hope.

Stephanie writes in the third person rather than first because she wants people to think not only of her story but of the millions of orphans in need in the world. She has become an advocate for orphan care.

Overall I was greatly touched by this book, and also convicted about how I would react if, as happened to several in her book, I found a dirty, wounded, and somewhat wild child stealing from my garden or sleeping in my garage. I would want someone to help them but would be more likely to call a shelter or something than to take them into my own home. Yet throughout the Bible we’re told both by instruction and example to care for people. I was convicted to look beneath the surface to the person underneath, to see their souls, and to care for their needs.

Stephanie said in her preface that there were great gaps in her memory, so she filled in some of the story the best she could. I can’t help but wonder if much of the filling in was in the first three chapters about her mother and father and how they came together: I don’t know how much of that her mother would have told her in her early childhood. I would rather have had a little less filling in there than to wonder how much of it was true. And I would have liked to have heard a bit more about how she adjusted after being adopted. She told of many doctor’s visits and the healing of her physical wounds, and mentioned that it was a long time before she could return affection to her adopted parents. But after the trauma she went through, it had to have taken a long time for her to heal mentally and emotionally. I think families need to be aware that adoption, as wonderful as it is, is not necessarily a fairly-tale “happily ever after,” that there is a lot to work through. But I realize, too, that the main purpose of this book is to draw attention to and awareness of the needs of orphans, so perhaps the rest is for another book.

Stephanie says at the end that she eventually came “to a place in my life where I can say with all conviction: There is nothing that has happened to me that I would have been better off without” (p. 224). She plans to write another book about how she came to that acceptance – that is one I can’t wait to read.

A synopsis of her story is here:

I highly recommend this book to you. I’d like to follow Carrie’s example and give this copy away to one reader. I’ll take all comments on this post as entries for the giveaway unless you tell me you would not want to receive the book. Due to shipping costs I am afraid I can only send it to the US and Canada. I’ll draw a name from among those who have commented using random.org a week from today.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

The giveaway is closed: The winner is Michele. Thanks for participating!

Book Review: To See the Moon Again

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Barbara Harper

To See the Moon Again by Jamie Langston Turner begins with Julia, a widowed, middle-aged, introvertish teacher of Creative Writing at a university in South Carolina. Her tightly-controlled world has been shaken up a little by the award of a sabbatical, a paid year off from teaching, and she is not quite sure what to do with herself. But it is shaken up even more by a message on her answering machine: Carmen, a niece she has never met, daughter of her estranged brother, is in the state and planning to come to see her. While Julia hopes with everything in her that Carmen doesn’t come, of course, she does, and while Julia plans to send her off again as soon as possible, for various reasons she can’t.

Carmen is Julia’s opposite in many ways: she is free-spirited, open, gregarious, and a Christian. Julia thinks Carmen’s faith is naive and unrealistic. But as the two women get to know each other, we learn more of what makes each of them the way they are. Both have had a number of hard breaks and tragedies, both have actions in their pasts that they can’t forgive themselves for. Julia takes Carmen along on a trip which takes them both literally and figuratively to far different places than they had first imagined.

I identified with Julia and her introverted way of thinking quite a bit, but I can understand that some readers may not like her. Sometimes introverts can come across as standoffish, and Julia has other reasons as well for holding people at arm’s length. Although I like Julia, I haven’t liked many of Mrs. Turner’s main characters in other books, but as I got to know them, their background, what makes them tick, and came to understand them better, I could at least empathize and usually came to like them as well.

I like the way Mrs. Turner gradually reveals the depth of her characters. I like that the spiritual truth in the book comes not from an expert who has it all together, but from a young woman who is still dealing with issues herself. I also like that the ending isn’t tied up with a neat bow: things are left a little more open, but you know both characters are on their way to where they need to be. I have to admit to a little disappointment with the ending: without revealing anything, I had hoped it would go the way Julia was thinking it would. Yet I can see that the choices that were made were necessary to the growth of both Julia and Carmen.

Many of Mrs. Turner’s books have the aspect of an outsider looking in on someone else of faith, and that is an interesting and refreshing perspective. They also have grace and redemption as major themes. She’s often described as a different kind of Christian fiction author, and I would agree.

Since I spent 26 years of my adult life in South Carolina, fourteen of them in the town where Mrs. Turner lives, which is near the town many of her books are set in, I very much enjoyed that aspect of the book as well. I knew some of the places mentioned and knew the pattern of spring blooming that she described and could very much picture it. And some of the different types of Southerners were familiar as well.

Since Mrs. Turner is also a teacher of Creative Writing, there are often literary references in many of her books. This one contains a lot of mention of Flannery O’Connor, someone I have never read but now want to.

An interview with the author about this book is here. I think this is my favorite of her books, and I hope you’ll give it a try.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Book Review: The Pursuit of God

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Barbara Harper

I had not originally planned to reread The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer for Carrie‘s Reading to Know Classics Book Club, this month because I thought I had read it just last year. When I actually checked, however, what I had read last year was Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy. (Good thing I don’t rely much on my memory. 🙂 ) It had been years since I had read The Pursuit of God and I couldn’t remember much about it, so I decided to delve into it again. And I am glad I did.

In his preface, Tozer expresses concern that though there are good Bible teachers teaching vital right doctrine and the fundamentals of the faith, they seem “strangely unaware that in their ministry there is no manifest Presence,” that “God’s children [are] starving while actually seated at the Father’s table,” that “there may be a right opinion of God without either love or…right temper toward Him (pp. 8-9). “The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts” (p. 10). This book is his “modest attempt to aid God’s hungry children so to find Him” (p. 10).

The ten chapters explore different aspects or pursuing God. I had thought about jotting a few notes about each chapter as I finished and wish I had now.

The first chapter, “Following Hard After God,” reminds us that our pursuit of God is preceded by His pursuit of us. Jesus said, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him” (John 6:44a). “The impulse to pursue God originates with God, but the outworking of that impulse is our following hard after Him” (p. 12). “We Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word. We have almost forgotten that God is a person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can” (p. 13). We still pursue Him even after we first find Him, as Moses and David and others did. “Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present” (p. 17). One of my all-time favorite quotes closes this chapter:

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long (p. 20).

The second chapter. “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing,” according to the introduction “reflected his desperate struggle to turn his only daughter over to God” (p. 7). He begins by acknowledging that all good gifts come from God, but we have a tendency to grasp them for ourselves and even elevate them in our hearts rather than Him. Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.” In our pursuit of God, we need to come to a place of “having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (II Corinthians 6:10b), holding all things, as some have said, with an open hand, remembering that they are His to do with as He will.

We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety; this is especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears. Our Lord came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.

Our gifts and talents should also be turned over to Him. They should be recognized for what they are, God’s loan to us, and should never be considered in any sense our own. We have no more right to claim credit for special abilities than for blue eyes or strong muscles. “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?”

Since these truths must be learned by experience and not just as facts, sooner or later God will bring every one of His children through such a test as Abraham underwent with Isaac. Though the struggle is immense, when all is yielded to God, blessedness follows.

Chapter 3 speaks of removing the veil of self-life (“self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them”) which hinders our following God and our need of renunciating it. Chapter 4 talks about the reality of the invisible world and our need to set our hearts on unseen and eternal realities. Chapter 5 excellently explains the difference between pantheism (the mistaken thought that God is in everything) and God’s immanence, which means that God is everywhere. Since God is everywhere and wants to manifest Himself to people, “Why do some persons ‘find’ God in a way that others do not? Why does God manifest His Presence to some and let multitudes of others struggle along in the half-light of imperfect Christian experience?” (p. 67).

I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which they had in common was spiritual receptivity. Something in them was open to heaven, something which urged them Godward. Without attempting anything like a profound analysis I shall say simply that they had spiritual awareness and that they went on to cultivate it until it became the biggest thing in their lives. They differed from the average person in that when they felt the inward longing they did something about it. They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response. They were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. As David put it neatly, “When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek” (p. 67).

Receptivity is not a single thing; it is a compound rather, a blending of several elements within the soul. It is an affinity for, a bent toward, a sympathetic response to, a desire to have. From this it may be gathered that it can be present in degrees, that we may have little or more or less, depending upon the individual. It may be increased by exercise or destroyed by neglect. It is not a sovereign and irresistible force which comes upon us as a seizure from above. It is a gift of God, indeed, but one which must be recognized and cultivated as any other gift if it is to realize the purpose for which it was given (pp. 68-69).

He then reminds that this takes time, something our instant and push-button generation needs to reminds ourselves of. “And always He is trying to get our attention, to reveal Himself to us, to communicate with us. We have within us the ability to know Him if we will but respond to His overtures. (And this we call pursuing God!) We will know Him in increasing degree as our receptivity becomes more perfect by faith and love and practice” (p. 71).

Chapter 6 explores the ways God speaks to us. Chapter 7, “The Gaze of the Soul,” perhaps my favorite, is about faith: not so much a definition as a study of how it works, what it looks like.

In the New Testament this important bit of history [Numbers 21:4-9] is interpreted for us by no less an authority than our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He is explaining to His hearers how they may be saved. He tells them that it is by believing. Then to make it clear He refers to this incident in the Book of Numbers. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).

Our plain man in reading this would make an important discovery. He would notice that “look” and “believe” were synonymous terms. “Looking” on the Old Testament serpent is identical with “believing” on the New Testament Christ. That is, the looking and the believing are the same thing. And he would understand that while Israel looked with their external eyes, believing is done with the heart. I think he would conclude that faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God. (pp. 88-89).

I made a note in my book that that is perhaps one reason why God often puts us in situations where we must look to Him, not just for salvation but for our everyday lives as well. “The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him. It will be God working in him to will and to do” (p. 91).

“Neither does place matter in this blessed work of believing God. Lift your heart and let it rest upon Jesus and you are instantly in a sanctuary though it be a Pullman berth or a factory or a kitchen. You can see God from anywhere if your mind is set to love and obey Him” (pp. 94-95).

Another of my all-time favorite quotes is from this chapter:

Someone may fear that we are magnifying private religion out of all proportion, that the “us” of the New Testament is being displaced by a selfish “I.” Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers met together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become “unity” conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. The body becomes stronger as its members become healthier. The whole Church of God gains when the members that compose it begin to seek a better and a higher life (p. 96).

This is refreshing to me because there is such an emphasis on community today – a needed emphasis, but we can always get unbalanced one way or another. I don’t hear as much these days about being individually “tuned” to the Lord as I used to, yet without that, we’re not going to be of much use to each other when we do come together in community. But if each individual member is growing closer to the Lord and more like Christ, then we’ll become closer to and more unified with each other.

In chapter 8, “Restoring the Creator-Creature Relation, I have far too many places marked to reproduce here, and chapter 9, “Meekness and Rest,” contains another favorite and piercing quote:

The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? The heart’s fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet the sons of earth are carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against them, cringing under every criticism, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them.

Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method (p. 112).

Chapter 10, “The Sacrament of Living,” talks about what it means to truly “do all to the glory of God” – not just spiritual exercises, but everyday life.

The “layman” need never think of his humbler task as being inferior to that of his minister. Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act. All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For such a man, living itself will be sacramental and the whole world a sanctuary. His entire life will be a priestly ministration. As he performs his never so simple task he will hear the voice of the seraphim saying, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory” (p. 127).

I echo Tozer’s closing prayer in the book” “I beseech Thee so for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee” (p. 128).

I hope you’ll forgive the lengthiness of this review. I was just thinking recently, in wondering how to cultivate time for other writing, whether to make shorter work of the book reviews I write, especially since they don’t seem to be viewed as much as other blog posts. But I write them not just for blog readers, but also as a reminder to myself not only as I go through a book but also as I look back on it in the future.

There is good reason this book is a Christian classic, and I heartily recommend it to you. I am sure I will revisit it again a number of times in the future. At the moment it is 99 cents for the Kindle and free online at Project Gutenberg, and of course it is available as a paper and ink or audiobook as well.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Why Listen to Audiobooks?

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Like most avid readers, I like the tactile experience of a book in my hand and turning pages while taking in the story, though I’ve gotten used to e-readers since so many free and discounted books can be found for it, and there are features of it I like. But my first preference is still an actual book made of paper and ink. Why, then, would I listen to an audiobook? Listening, after all, is a different experience than reading.

I first sought out audiobooks when we moved here. As I have mentioned before, where we used to live, the places we needed to go most often were only five minutes away. Going “across town” only took maybe 15 minutes. When we moved to our present location outside a larger city, it took longer to get most places. I’m not a person who likes to spend time in the car: “going for a drive” is not on my list of fun things to do, and I chafed at the “wasted” time driving, even with a Christian radio station and an abundance of music to listen to. I decided to try a trial subscription to Audible.com: if I remember correctly, the introductory offer at that time was one free book, with the option of canceling the monthly fee at any time. I was hooked immediately. Driving became an enjoyable experience rather than just a chore. Then I also began to listen while getting ready in the morning, doing housework, and exercising. Of course, I listen when I am alone or when other members of the family are occupied in others rooms: since my children are older and are usually otherwise occupied, that affords me more listening time than I would have had when they were younger and usually with me.

Though I have listened to a variety of genres of audiobook, for me they work best for classics that I might not otherwise read. I’m currently halfway through War and Peace, a book I probably never would have tackled in print just because I wouldn’t want the sheer length of it to monopolize my reading time for so long. Plus the meandering narrative or excessive descriptions of classics are easier to take if I am doing something else while listening than if I am trying to slog my way through it by reading. They also work best for fiction or biography for me. With non-fiction, even for the print version I have to reread or review sections to get the most out of them, which doesn’t work as well for audiobooks, plus my attention wavers much more listening to non-fiction than fiction.

Some of the advantages of audiobooks:

They allow you to do something useful with your mind while your hands are busy.
I don’t usually think in the accent of the country the book is set in, and hearing it read with an accent increases the enjoyment of the setting.
Hearing the inflections of the author draws out meanings or points I might have glossed over.
I can get through more books than I can just by reading physical ones.

There are some disadvantages as well:

You can’t skim through a boring part.
If your attention wavers or you need to go back and refresh your memory about a person or incident, it’s harder to flip back through to the part you need. The app I use does have a button to go back 30 seconds or go back to the beginning of the chapter, but I can’t always get to it if I am driving or cooking.
I miss the tactile sensation of holding a book and knowing about where physically a favorite part is.
Audiobooks often do not include the acknowledgments page or author’s afterword.

Personally I feel the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Many Audible books work in sync with Kindle version of the book, and often if you buy one, you can get the other for a discounted price. With classics you can often get a free or very inexpensive Kindle version, and if you leave off at a place in the audiobook, you can pick up at the same place in the Kindle version and vice verse. If I don’t have a Kindle version, sometimes I’ll get the print version from the library just so I can mark places (though the Audible app does have a way to bookmark certain spots) or go back through a passage I feel I need to go over again to understand better.

I don’t think I could get much from a nonfiction audiobook that is not a story or biography: with those books I underline, mark places, and place sticky tabs all through and still feel sometimes like I haven’t quite grasped the whole thing.

I’ve mentioned Audible.com because that is primarily what I use (I am not affiliated with them and will not receive compensation from them for mentioning them). The monthly charge is $14.95 a month for one credit, which usually equals one book. That might sound high, but a longer classic runs 20-30 hours, and there is not much else I could do for $14.95 that will give me that many hours of use and pleasure (especially comparing it to the price of going to see a 2-hour film with someone). But in addition to the monthly credit, they have sales for members throughout the year where I have gotten books for $1.95 to $6.95. They also release a free book around Christmastime (past free books have included A Christmas Carol, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Snow Queen, and The Wizard of Oz). They have an app that makes it very easy to buy, download, and listen to a book. I also like that you can play decent sized samples of the book before buying: sometimes they’ll have several editions of a book with different narrators, and I’ll listen to several before choosing which one I like best. Narrators can really make or break the listening experience, especially since you’ll be spending so much time listening to one and they shape the way you experience the book. In over four years of listening to audiobooks, I’ve found only a small handful of truly bad or just flat narrators, but it is worth the time to decide between the okay or good narrators and the best.

But there are a few places where one can get free or inexpensive audiobooks. Some public libraries have them. A few other places are LibriVox (free) and ChristianAudio.com (discounted). Audiobooks.com is the same price as Audible.com. ITunes has some as well. LearnOutLoud.com is a subscription service as well with different prices for different types of subscription but they do have some free selections. GoBible.com does not charge a monthly subscription, but the few books I looked at on their front page were quite a bit more expensive. I think they offer one free audiobook download per month – at least they used to. I haven’t gotten their mailings in a while. Sync offers a free young adult or classic audiobook once a week, I believe, from May through the summer. I got my first Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place book through them and got subsequently hooked not only on the stories but also on Katherine Kellgren’s narration. I have used a couple of these but don’t remember which ones other than Sync. Others I have read of but have not tried are AudiobooksForFree and OpenCulture.

You do have to be watchful when buying or downloading an audiobook to make sure you’re getting the unabridged version rather than an abridged or “dramatization” (unless that’s what you want). Dramatizations are usually cut down like movies are, but they have the advantage of different actors for the different characters, so it is a little more like listening to an old-time radio drama. You won’t get all the nuances of the book, but for a longer classic that you might not otherwise delve into because of the older styles of language or writing, an abridged or dramatized version might give you the basic idea of the story.

On a practical note, I am not a big fan of ear buds, but I do use them when listening while walking. In the car I have an adapter that plugs into my iPhone and then into the tape player (yes, my car is old enough that it only plays cassette tapes) so that the sound comes through the speakers; my youngest son’s newer car has a built-in plug-in for phones that does the same thing. Otherwise I listen with the phone on the counter or in my pocket.

What is your experience with audiobooks? Do you enjoy them? What are your sources?

Why Read Biographies?

Finding Time to Read.

(Sharing with Booking Through Thursday.)

Book Review: Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God. A Broken Mother’s Search for Hope

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Barbara Harper

I’ve been wanting to read Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God. A Broken Mother’s Search for Hope by Christopher and Angela Yuan ever since seeing it recommended by Tim Challies, and I am glad to have finally done so. I’m predicting it will be one of my top ten books of the year.

Christopher and Angela take turns with the chapters, describing events from their different points of view. They open the book with Chris’s coming out to his parents that he was gay. Angela did not object on Biblical grounds: she was an atheist who hated Christians. I don’t think the book ever explains just why she was against his homosexuality, except that they had hoped he would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a dentist, and patients would probably avoid a dentist who had the potential to be HIV positive. Maybe it just didn’t fit in with her idea of a perfect family, but it was devastating to her.

Angela had come from an unhappy home and had put great stock into having a good family. But over the years her husband grew cold and distant, her oldest son rebelled, and now Christopher was going in a direction completely unacceptable to her. She gave him an ultimatum between his family and his homosexuality, and, believing he had no choice in his orientation, he left home to be with friends who would accept him as he was. Angela crumpled to the ground in despair, feeling she had nothing left to live for. She made plans to end her own life, but wanted to talk to a minister first. Though he was kind, nothing really changed in her heart. He gave her a booklet which she later read, and her eyes were opened to the truth that her lifelong desire for belonging could be fulfilled in belonging to God. It was even a relief to know and admit that she was a sinner, that though she was far from perfect, God still loved her. “I had not been seeking God, but I was found by him” (p. 19).

Chris, for his part, was glad to get away from the “Chinese-mother guilt-trip drama” (p. 8). Coming out to one’s parents and the inevitable negative reaction was a rite of passage among his friends. He finally felt free to live as he wanted to. He “started going to gay clubs and began tending bar” (p. 23) at night while attending dental school during the day. Eventually the party scene took over his life. While feeling low after a broken relationship, he accepted someone’s offer of the drug Ecstasy, and within a very short time started selling drugs to support his own habit, then became a popular and leading seller in his area and even across the country. His schooling suffered to the point that he was eventually expelled, but it no longer mattered since he was making money hand over fist and enjoying life and popularity.

Until he was arrested.

During this time Angela had been growing in her own faith and her husband Leon had come to the Lord as well. At first she tried various things to get through to Chris but finally realized that she could not “fix” him. She could only fast, pray, show him love, and not shield him from the consequences of his actions. She and her husband did not intervene when Chris was threatened with expulsion from school and after he was arrested asked the judge to give him a sentence just long enough to bring him to God. Once after reading Psalm 46:1, “Be still, and know that I am God,” she knew “as hard as it was, I knew I had to quit striving and trying to make things work my way. But rather, I had to let God do things his way and in his timing” (p. 73). “It may have just been easier for us to give up on our son, but God said, Wait! He gave us faith to hope against all the evidence we saw and to trust he had a plan, Leon and I committed to focus not on hopelessness but on the promises of God” (p. 109). She “prayed specifically that God would do whatever it took to bring our son to him — not to us, not out of drugs, not out of homosexuality…but to the Father” (p. 159).

With Christopher’s arrest, his popularity vanished. None of his “friends” wanted any more to do with him. One day in prison, he saw a Gideon’s New Testament on top of some trash, and he took it back to his cell and began to read mainly just as a way to pass the time. Over time, both with reading the Bible on his own and studying it with others, Chris came to believe on Christ.

Being in prison had taken care of getting Chris off drugs and out of the party scene, and he came to admit they were both wrong and he needed to stay away from them once he got out. When he talked with a chaplain about his homosexuality, he was told that the Bible did not condemn homosexuality and gave Chris a book explaining that view. That sounded wonderful to Chris, but as he read the book and then studied the Bible, he felt the book did not line up with what the Bible taught. He did discover that in “Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 — passages normally used to condemns gays and lesbians…God didn’t call lesbians and gay men abominations. He called it an abomination. What God condemned was the act, not the person. For so long, I had gotten the message from the Christian protestors at gay-pride parades that the God of the Bible hated people like me, because we were abominations. But after reading these passages, I saw that God didn’t hate me; nor was he condemning me to an inescapable destiny of torment. But rather, it was the sex he condemned, and yet he still wanted an intimate relationship with me” (p. 186). Being gay had been a major part of his identity, but as he continued to study the Scriptures, he “began to ask myself a different question: Who am I apart from my sexuality?” (p. 187). He details his thought processes and conclusions in a chapter called “Holy Sexuality.” One conclusion was:

God’s faithfulness is proved not by the elimination of hardships but by carrying us through them. Change is not the absence of struggles; change is the freedom to choose holiness in the midst of our struggles. I realized that the ultimate issue has to be that I yearn after God in total surrender and complete obedience (pp. 168-169).

This book touched me on so many levels. What a joy to see the journey of how God brought both Christopher and his parents to Himself.

Christopher’s testimony from a documentary is here: