Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Meet the man behind the weather report



"Nature's Messenger: Memoirs of a Prophetic Meteorologist,"

by Craig Edwards

Craig Edwards was the man behind the scenes for our weather in Minnesota and the rest of the Upper Midwest.

As the Twin Cities area chief meteorologist for the National Weather Service, the St. Hubert, Chanhassen parishioner recently finished a 34-year career warning people about storms, tornadoes, blizzards -- you name it.

It's from that experience of watching the weather patterns and witnessing scientifically the dramatically visible changes we see and feel that Edwards moves from telling his life story to almost a self-appointed role as prophet about climate change and global warming.

Edwards, who upon retirement from the weather bureau in 2007 took a job in the weather department for Minnesota Public Radio, religiously -- pun intended -- writes about his Catholic upbringing in Illinois and his fascination with the weather from an early age.

Readers of a certain age are going to see parallels with their own youthful years, I'm sure, and I didn't find much of that part of "Nature's Messenger" compelling reading.

But when you get to page 56 of this paperback, that's where the good stuff starts.

Come behind the curtain

Edwards takes readers on a lengthy behind-the-scenes tour of operations at several Weather Service locations around the Midwest, into the personnel issues, how and why the government got behind commercial television stations in working with new technologies like Doppler radar.

If you're old enough you'll be able to relive some of the major weather events of the past 34 years, including record snowstorms, tornadoes and of course the Red River Valley floods. Edwards calls the central part of North America "the world's greatest playground for the forces of nature," and thus a prime spot for weather people to work in.

All along the way in this life story of a man with an interesting job he works in what's going on with his family life and especially his faith life, including his finding blessing in Eucharistic Adoration and teaching in his parish confirmation program.

Interesting, too, is this comment about the parallels between life and weather: "There are a large number of days when things are just simply partly cloudy."

A man on a bigger mission

There's a good bit of preachiness here about the importance of striving for excellence in one's career without having to be pushed by outside forces, but Edwards doesn't over-do it. His writing style like his leadership style is more of collaborating, mentoring and preaching with his actions.

But when he starts laying out his thoughts about climate change, Edwards preaches a tough-love homily. "The planet is more vulnerable than ever before," he claims, and we humans have brought it on ourselves.

He sees the evidence of global warming as disrespecting God's creation, and he drives home with paragraph after paragraph of evidence the fact that we ignore all the warnings at our peril.

The answer lies in "a substantial sacrificial response and personal accountability," Edwards said. "All God's people have an inherent purpose to preserve the goodness of the earth."

Edwards does speaking engagements on the topics he writes about in "Nature's Messenger," an iUniverse title. Reach him at www.naturesmessenger.com. -- bz

Friday, December 12, 2008

Do you know where you came from?


"Disguise,"

by Hugo Hamilton


What's your earliest memory?

You've heard from parents and extended family stories from that part of your life for which you have no memory because you were just too young to remember.

But what if you discovered that maybe you hadn't been told the complete truth about those early years?

What if there was evidence that the people who call themselves your parents may not be your parents at all?

Hugo Hamilton gets inside the mind of a character in that very scenario. It's a novel that traps you into reading to the end.


Who are we, really?

The setting is Germany, and the story starts during World War II and flips back and forth between the generations and decades after the war and 50 some years later. Hamilton offers us a wonderful sense of place in every one of the locales he takes us to.

And as much as "Disguise" offers plot as a main device, it's really character that is in the spotlight, and not just for the family whose story is drawing us in.

How is who we are and where we come from -- and who we come from -- important to what we become?

What impact is there on our psyche in knowing our ancestry, or, more to the point, of not knowing? What does it do to you when you can't trust -- or don't know if you can trust -- your own parents? If you don't belong in a place, where do you belong?

How do you know when you're home?


No formulaic ending

"Disguise" isn't a book I'd jump up and down to recommend. By grade, maybe it's a "B+" thanks to the absolute beauty of the prose.

But I do recommend this Harper title (www.HarperCollins.com).

We need to read literature that doesn't have the formulaic endings of best-selling novels where you know before you start that the hero will conquer evil. -- bz

Monday, December 1, 2008

Most useful and used gift book you could buy this Christmas is about, of all things, the Rosary


"The Rosary: A Journey to the Beloved,"

by Gary Jansen


It's one of those small, easy-to-handle books, only 100 pages or so, and the pages are of the 5 inch by 7 inch variety, but "The Rosary" may be one of the most useful gifts you wrap this Christmas.

Gary Jansen, a book editor by trade, rediscovered the Rosary as a prayer of transformation, a prayer of peace and a prayer of hope, and his little book will help others do the same. As he explains about his own "dark night of the soul," "God had not abandoned me; I just hadn't been listening."

He wrote "The Rosary" as a short introduction on how to listen to God's words in day-to-day life and as a reminder that we are never alone.

There's some introductory pages that offer down-to-earth questions you may have asked yourself at one time or another, like: How long have Catholics been praying the Rosary? What's the point of repeating Hail Mary's over and over? What's behind the "mysteries" of the Rosary?

Jansen offers this simple way to look at the Rosary:

See the Rosary as sitting with Mary and paging through a scrapbook of Jesus' life; it will let you know Jesus on a whole new level, an emotional one, a loving one, and a familiar one.

But can we ever just sit and take the time to do the Rosary?

We 21st century people may have to re-learn how to reflect, not "just do it." Just the opposite of doing, Jansen encourages praying the Rosary as a way to sit with the stories in each of the four mysteries -- Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious:
  • See them as the high points in the life of Jesus;

  • Think about their meaning;

  • Become a character in the scene (for example, a waiter in the gospel story of the Wedding Feast at Cana), and ask yourself how you might have reacted, what you would be thinking were you there at the time, what you might have done in response.

Don't know thing one about the Rosary? There's an easy to use how-to section.

After you've read those introductory pages, though, you'll find Jansen's work useful time after time as you pray The Rosary. Just pick up at Page 39.

You'll see the opening prayers, and then a scripture passage and beautiful painting that goes with each of the 20 mysteries to help you focus on that aspect of Jesus' life story. None is more than one page, most very short, and the simplicity is perfect for helping target your attention.

Art buffs will appreciate the credits in the back that identify each of the paintings and their artists.

All will appreciate this Faith Words imprint (www.faithwords.com). -- bz

Monday, November 24, 2008

Come look inside John Paul II's Vatican


"Pope John Paul II: An Intimate Life,"

by Caroline Pigozzi


One thing you have to say for Caroline Pigozzi: She's got guts.

The French journalist talked her way into getting behind the scenes at the Vatican to observe the late Pope John Paul II in his day-to-day rituals inside St. Peter's, inside the offices of the Holy See, and inside the papal apartment.

Once she gets her toe in the Vatican door, she meets and befriends the right people who open yet more doors, and her persistence at documenting what she see and what she hears makes -- surprisingly for me -- interesting reading.

As I was, you may be poped-out on John Paul by now, but this very different, detailed look at the life of a pope isn't so much about what the pope said or did as it is about how the pope lived: what he enjoyed, whose company he relished, how he operated as the leader of a world-wide church. With the "ski" at the end of my name, it was interesting for me to read about the special treatment Polish clergy and seminarians received and about the "parallel curia" of Poles that some accused the former Karol Wojtyla of building at the Vatican. Fair warning: Pigozzi as an author is pretty much a hero-worshiper, so you're not going to read about the dark side of John Paul (if there is one) in this book published under the Faith Words imprint (http://www.faithwords.com/).

You don't have to read this book to feel that you know what John Paul II stood for, but if you want to know more about the man and how he lived, Pigozzi has detail after detail -- some as innocuous as who polished the pope's shoes -- that give insight into the whole man. -bz

Friday, November 7, 2008

Don't fear reading memoir of life with the mentally challenged



"Walking on a Rolling Deck: Life on the Ark,"


by Kathleen C. Berken




Some people can flat out write.


Kathy Berken is one of those people.


You might be the kind of reader who shies away from stories about the mentally challenged, adults with Down’s syndrome, the cognitively disabled, because Berken’s book is a memoir of her time serving God’s children who fit those categories. If you do you’ll be missing a truly remarkable piece of literature.


“Walking on a Rolling Deck” has drama, empathy, irony, humor and insight into the human character of every one of us. Developed from her journal during nine years at The Arch, the L’Arche (rhymes with “marsh”) community in Clinton, Iowa, Berken's short book -- published by Liturgical Press in Collegeville, Minn. (http://www.litpress.org/) -- opens her life to us, and in doing so touches ours.


And, Lord, can she write.


Page after page she paints word pictures that will have those who love good writing going back to re-read and re-read again. Finding a link with Mother Teresa’s admitted dark night of the soul, Berken writes:
“The serpent of loneliness can and will slither up the tree of despair and hiss in your ear words of doubt that burrow deep into your soul.”


She describes her years there as both growth-filled and as scary. There’s wiping butts and brushing teeth, and heart-warming, sacred moments. A spiritual person, she seeks God in all she does, and sometimes she finds him. If Kathy Berken is anything, she’s honest. She writes not about a sugar-coated experience but about real life with real people.
She puts it this ways:
“Living in a L’Arche community isn’t always like taking a vacation with your lover God to an idyllic Caribbean beach. Some days it’s more like climbing to the top of Mount Everest with God as your Sherpa, with times of feeling that the Sherpa has wandered off.”



Apt maritime metaphor


Berken plays on the translation of L’Arche as an ark, and she uses that sea-going metaphor well to describe the reality of life in a home with four people who need help with many of life’s tasks, who have a variety of pathological issues, and who have the strength of an adult but the mental ability of a four-year-old. But she says it so much better than I:
“When I came her I had this fantastically idealistic notion that God sent me to live for a while on this ark, and I had an image in my head of people like me walking up the gangplank, meeting God at the top, and being given a clipboard with the day’s assignment on it. . . . That’s a wonderful fantasy – to be the cruise director with a loveboat smile pasted on my face – but I can’t live it because the ark I’m on is rolling and heaving and I’m sick to my stomach, not to mention sad and lonely. I feel like the galley slave, the grunt who swabs the deck, the second to last to go down with the ship.”

Berken writes conversationally, like your best friend telling you all about her day but in brief, well-edited chapters that are never more than a few pages.

You’ll love the poignant story about being served Christmas breakfast by one of the people whom she served everyday.

You wonder how she ever stayed nine years – and how she survived, to be frank – when she learned first that she had breast cancer and later when a core member (that’s what L’Arche calls the mentally challenged) turns violent.

Read “Walking on a Rolling Deck” to find out.

And to be inspired by a great story well told. -- bz

Monday, October 27, 2008

What if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one?


"for one more day,"

by Mitch Albom


"Tuesdays with Morrie" and "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" have made Mitch Albom a best-selling writer, and it's a modifier he deserves.


Albom has an ear for dialogue, a knack for description and a grasp of real life that all ring true in his prose.


Readers won't have to be dragged kicking and screaming into investing themselves in this fictional piece that explores a man's relationship with his parents. It's a story well told, and one with you may find steals bits and pieces from your own family relationships.


How much of "for one more day" is autobiographical for Albom is a question that gnawed at me from beginning to end. But we don't have to know the answer to appreciate where Albom takes us as we follow along with his character's "one more day."


While main character Chick Benetto's father definitely plays a role in the drama, it's Benetto's relationship with his mother that takes center stage, and that makes this book unique.


The best parts? The interludes when Chick tells about the times when he "stood up for" his mother, and those times when he didn't.


How much can a mother's love make up for the latter? Read "for more more day" and find out. -- bz


Thursday, October 16, 2008

Peter Kreeft passes pearls of wisdom to next generation





"before i go,"
by Peter Kreeft



Oft-quoted in Catholic circles, Boston College prof Peter Kreeft has compiled 162 -- what, statements? pearls of wisdom? life's lessons? -- in a tiny-yet-thick Sheed & Ward book subtitled, "Letters to Our Children about What Really Matters."

I can say there area 162 of them -- whatever you want to call them -- because each is numbered.

Few are longer than one page. Most are just a paragraph or three or four.

And the book's concept is excellent. How many of us have had that thought that we'd like to get down on paper things we'd like our children to know?

Not 162 great thoughts

I usually love this kind of work, because I can pick it up and read for just the bit of time I might have at that moment and grab a great thought to wrestle with. There are a number of those great thoughts in "before i go," but there aren't 162.
And, after hitting a few too many trite ideas among those numbers, I came close to crossing out a few and doing a recount.

I mean, "Stop and smell the roses?" Bet that didn't take too long to come up with.

"Each day is a gift from God?" I think Sister Jude covered that pretty well in the first grade in 1957.

Tossing out the banal bunch and eliminating some of the really dumb statements would make Kreeft's work very valuable for personal reflection. The man has a knack for putting ideas in concise, memorable sentences. It's a real gift. Here are just a few examples:

"It's better to be happy than to be right."

"Be good, but be you."

"All life is liturgy. All words are creeds. All times are Sabbaths. All places are churches."

Advice worth sharing

And there is great advice, too.

Instead of complaining about how busy you are, simplify reasons for doing anything to three things: because it's morally good, because its a practical necessity, or because it makes you happy.

Take seven minutes each day to thank God for seven specific things.

"Forgive everyone. Forgive everything. Forgive always. Forgive everywhere."

Kreeft gives readers a really good explanation of grace, has a great message on how to respond when we fail -- and we all do and will -- and this wonderful take on the Beatitudes:

"If the poor are blessed, then let's stop envying the rich."

However...

The world isn't black and white

At times I found Kreeft to be polarizing and divisive. My world just isn't as black and white as Kreeft's, and I sure don't have all the answers, as Kreeft's writing implies he does.

Although he writes the self-righteous prose of an expert, he takes a cheap shot by demonizing "experts," for example. And in some of his thoughts he comes off as a prig, making unproven generalizations such as, "they don't teach the lives of the saints in religion classes anymore."

That's pure B.S., and just the kind of false statements that get repeated and repeated until zealots believe them to be true. That's one statement Kreeft should be ashamed of making.

I like the technique of making lists, to a point, but the list thing gets old after a while. Sometimes, too, others did it better years ago. Take his 10 points of "What is 'A Good Person?'" The Boy Scouts nailed that concept in their 12-point creed -- trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent-- a list that sounds suspiciously like Kreeft's 10 thoughts.

It boils down, though, to you gotta take the bad with the good.

You go from No. 105 where the bad Kreeft is saying something as dumb as God is a comedian because he invented dog farts, to the very next page where he suggests we practice everyday what you do and don't want so say and do on the last day of your life.

Dog farts? I expect better than that. But I forgive him. -- bz

Monday, October 6, 2008

If God hired an ad agency...


"The Happy Soul Industry,"
by Steffan Postaer

"People are not responding to the message anymore," God tells an angel named David. The old stuff -- burning bushes, parting waters, changing water into wine -- aren't working anymore. God's looking for a new and different approach.

"In order to inspire goodness we've got to improve our image," God says. "We need better copy!"

Her answer (yes, God is a she in this novel): Hire an advertising agency.

With that as a great jumping off point for the plot, author Steffan Postaer mines his knowledge of the ad biz to create a fairly interesting story with characters that readers will care about.

That is, if readers can get past the soft-porn.

David the angel gets sent down to earth to find an ad agency to "market heaven," bumps into a beautiful woman and has sex with her the very first evening. (Is this really the way "dating" happens today? Is it art reflecting life, or does art justify -- give permission to -- dismissal of the virtuous life?)

And although the sex is admittedly an element of the plot, the scene does get pornographic. As do other scenes later on. They're unnecessary and offensive. Some, too, will be offended by the language. I'm sure the crude language does reflect reality, though, and it shouldn't be a deal breaker.

What just happen here?

What is a deal breaker, though, is that Postaer develops a handful of characters, gets us involved with them, works them into the plot and subplots, and then you find yourself asking, hey, what just happened there?

The ad exec with the overactive libido suddenly gets transformed into a caring, sensitive male. His ex-wife turns from witch to a do-gooder. The creative genius at the ad agency goes from workaholic to father-of-the-year.

But we never find out why. And Postaer never quite brings all the subplot elements together. Still, he does a pretty good job of leading us to what looks like it'll be an engaging final scene.

I won't ruin the ending for you, but the Greeks who invented "deus ex machina" have nothing on Steffan Postaer.

Greek tragedies aside, "The Happy Soul Industry" has worthwhile lessons to share about life and faith and virtue and marketing -- if you choose to get past the offensive passages. And Postaer, a successful ad copywriter who runs Euro RSCG Chicago now, has a thought-provoking idea for an ad campaign to promote goodness to the American people. Think this would work? Picture billboards at bus stops and train platforms with messages like:


"These days, everybody's skipping prayer.

So, how's everybody doing?"

The insider peek into the advertising world is worked in creatively, and Postaer has a great touch with humor. It's good writing and good reading. The pity is that this could have been a really good novel with just a bit more work on the ending and a tad less bowing to the convention that sex sells. But I guess we know where that comes from. -- bz

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

It's okay, Catholics, we can laugh


"The Book of Catholic Jokes,"

by Deacon Tom Sheridan


Did you know that they had automobiles in Jesus' time?

Yes, the Bible says that the disciples were all of one Accord.


Yeah, you may have heard some of them before.

And yes, Tom Sheridan admits that some of these may have been jokes to which a Catholic angle has been added to make them churchy.


But Sheridan, who was a writer and editor for the Chicago Sun-Times before he was a deacon, has nicely selected jokes that folks with decent moral standards can tell in polite company, and Acta Publications has packaged them well as a handy little and inexpensive paperback.


Did you hear the one about the man who opened a dry-cleaning business next door to the convent? He knocked on the door and asked the Mother Superior if she had any dirty habits.


To be sure there are some clinkers in the bunch, and some moldy oldies. And I don't know why every priest in a joke has to have an Irish surname; hell0 -- you don't have to be Irish to be a priest, or to be funny.


With most of the quips you don't have to be an "insider," so to speak, although I'm not sure the jokes that take off on the differences between, say, the Franciscans and the Jesuits, aren't going to have some Catholics scratching their heads. But maybe not.


For the most part the collection is good stuff -- good enough to make you crack a smile even though you may have heard them before.


There's at least one great priest golf joke, a cute one about a rabbi and a priest, a funny Pope Benedict XVI joke and a clever atheist joke. And as someone who can rarely remember a joke, what a good resource; I'm sure "The Book of Catholic Jokes" will end up on a number of reference shelves in rectories. -- bz


One Sunday morning a priest saw a little boy staring intently at the large plaque on the church wall. The plaque was covered with names, and flags hung on either side of it.

"Father," asked the boy, "what's this?"

He replied, "It's a memorial to all the men and women who died in the service."

They stood together in silence for a moment. Finally, the boy asked with genuine concern: "Was it at the eight or the ten-thirty Mass?"



Monday, September 29, 2008

'The Shack': Interesting novel/catechism turns hateful


'The Shack,'

by Wm. Paul Young


Wm. Paul Young had me for 178 pages.


Through 178 pages the author of this New York Times bestseller offered a creative approach to teaching readers about all kinds of elements of Christian faith.


In the paperback version of this "catechism-as-dramatic-novel/fantasy," the first 178 pages are a painless way to be forced to think about our -- yours and mine -- relationship with God.


Through a hurting father's meeting with the triune God, the first 178 pages of "The Shack" present convincing explanations about the concept of free will, unconditional love, good and evil, human frailties, the Trinity and more.


For 178 pages Young, the child of missionary parents, makes us reflect about our image and understanding of God, reinforcing the idea that God is always with us, always loves us, even as we stumble and fall.


Then comes page 179.


Religion one of 'trinity of terrors'?


That's where Young's Jesus starts a diatribe against organized religion, using the kind of language Catholics used to see only in the hate pamphlets that carried drawings of the pope as the devil -- horns and tail included.


The character of Jesus who inhabits Young's fanciful "shack" says he's "not too big on religion," and lumps religion in with politics and economics in a way most Christians would describe as, well, unchristian.


Religion, politics and economics, this Jesus claims, "are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about. What mental turmoil and anxiety does any human face that is not related to one of those three?"


But there's more.


Young's Jesus says, "Put simply, these terrors are tools that many use to prop up their illusions of security and control. People are afraid of uncertainty, afraid of the future. These institutions, these structures and ideologies, are all a vain effort to create some sense of certainty and security where there isn't any. It's all false!"


But wait, there's more.


Two pages later it is all the world's systems that are the problem. Jesus of "The Shack" says,


"Institutions, systems, ideologies, and all the vain, futile efforts of humanity that go with them are everywhere, and interaction with all of it is unavoidable. But I can give you freedom to overcome any system of power in which you find yourself, be it religious, economic, social, or political. You will grow in the freedom to be inside or outside all kinds of systems and to move freely between and among them. Together, you and I can be in it and not of it."


So, none of what humanity -- created in the image and likeness of God -- has developed through the centuries does any good? It's "well-intentioned" but evil? Hard to believe. And, if you're like me, those last couple of sentences in the quote above sound similar to the Catholic Church's advice that its members are to be counter cultural, in the world but not of it, part of society but not caught up in its less noble pursuits. But you don't hear Young's Jesus acknowledging that.


Now who's being judgmental?


Perhaps the attack on organized religion wouldn't come off as so hypocritical if it hadn't come after a whole chapter in which Mackenzie -- the book's main character -- goes through an agonizing trial that teaches him not to be judgmental.


Far be it for any Catholic to ignore the failings of our church -- its members and its leaders -- throughout history and even to the present day. But any author does readers an enormous disservice by ignoring the positive motives, positive actions and positive results that organized religions have brought to the world throughout history and continue to bring today.


Our churches -- of many denominations -- deserve credit for upholding moral standards that easily go by the wayside in a laissez-faire society.


The Catholic Church in particular has earned the admiration of many for creating the concept of higher education.


People -- organized through their church affiliations -- feed the hungry, care for the sick, shelter the homeless -- in a better way when they do so in organized ways.


The list could go on. Sadly, Wm. Paul Young has chosen to ignore the good and instead judge others in a way he tells his readers not to.


Sad, too, is that it took 179 pages for him to show his true colors. -- bz

Monday, September 15, 2008

Sex and a 17th century pope? More innuendo than facts, but lots of interesting facts, too


"MISTRESS OF THE VATICAN,"
by Eleanor Herman

When I'm at the bookstore or library I tend to pick up anything that has "Vatican" in the title, so I couldn't pass up something as titillating as "Mistress of the Vatican" when publisher William Morrow offered a review copy.

The jacket cover suggested hanky-panky with the bare-shouldered portrait of a beautiful woman with a painting of St. Peter's Basilica and Square covering her, uh, feminine charms, and a subtitle, "The True Story of Olimpia Maidalchini: The Secret Female Pope."

The adage that you can't judge a book by its cover still applies.

Author Eleanor Herman offers no real evidence that 17th century Pope Innocent X had a sexual relationship with Olimpia, his sister-in-law, as the term "mistress" would suggest.

She offers no facts that Olimpia was pope, although she apparently was extremely influential in papal decisions.

Even the cover artwork is misleading: You'd think that the beautiful woman depicted is Olimpia, but no; the jacket painting is of "Venus at the Mirror," by Tiziano.

Despite that, this book was hard to put down.

She's done the research

Herman has culled the diaries and papers of Vatican officials of the period and the works of commentators during the mid 1600s, and what she's come up with are some things about our church at the time that today we'd consider unthinkable. The nepotism, the bribery, the selling of church offices, the misuse of church funds -- they saturate these 419 pages, and that's without the bibliography and index.

Even those of us who love our church ought to know that at times in the past some pretty ridiculous things have been done in the name of our faith. Herman points out the silliness of some of the practices surrounding relics, for one thing. An Italian church claimed to have preserved the umbilical cord of Jesus, another drops of the Virgin Mary's breast milk.

What gets tiresome, though, is the author's tendency to slip into extended "filler" -- background information that seemingly has little or nothing to do with the story of Donna Olimpia and her brother-in-law the pope.

Early on she extrapolates the cultural mores of the era and presumes much. While there is no factual evidence that Olimpia did this or that, women of the times did things this way, so Olimpia must have as well, she posits. It's a bit too much innudendo for my taste.

Evidence shows Olimpia's influence

There seems to be little doubt, though, that the widow of Pope Innocent X's brother was extremely influential in day-to-day decisions concerning the Papal States. The evidence author Herman brings to light shows that Olimpia's fingerprints are on the appointments of cardinals, on the finances of the church, on the church's relationship with the governments and royalty of nations such as France and Spain, among others, and much, much more.

Be ready to read a boatload of language pointing out how anti-woman the Catholic Church is and has been through the ages. And the author uses some misleading descriptions that makes you wonder if she made this stuff up or is actually quoting some 17th century theologian or document.

Take Holy Orders: She writes that priestly ordination was "a sacrament that was thought to tattoo the human soul with an invisible but ineradicable seal that prevented marriage."

Tattoo the soul?

I hadn't heard that one before. But then, I really hadn't been up on some of the less-flattering history of our church, like the regular elevation of papal nephews to rank of cardinal although they might still be in their teens, the regular practice of popes to appoint their relatives to jobs in the Vatican, the fawning of European royalty to curry the pope's favor with expensive gifts, etc.

The saving grace is that at some point Innocent did have a crisis of conscience and put the dignity and integrity of the church first, and that many of the laughable practices of those times are long gone.

So read this. It's not sexy. It promises one thing and delivers another, but it's still a good read. -- bz

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Will the Pope survive terrorists shooting up St. Peter's?

"The Messenger,"
by Daniel Silva

Will Israeli super-spy Gabriel Allon be able to save the life of the Holy Father and get revenge on the Islamist extremist who planned attacking the Vatican? And what and who might be other targets for the terrorists?

The pope is a draw in this page-turner of a novel, but concerns about the pontiff and St. Peter's really is the cookie part of the Oreo. The creamy filling is how the Israeli and American spy guys infiltrate a Saudi billionaire to get to the terrorist they've targeted.

Silva has a good thing going as he takes advantage of post-9/11 fears and anti-Arab sentiments rampant in the West.

He's also milking his creation of the character Allon, who restores paintings to their original glory when he's not putting away bad guys. He's a hero we can't help but support, and Silva is taking advantage of his protagonist's popularity now with a fistful of novels.

All are good international thrillers, and "The Messenger" joins the rest as worth your time because it's a good premise and a good plot.

But know there's a definite slant to his work, and a message Silva is not shy about: There is evil out there, and the world needs to be more attuned to the threat posed by those who hate capitalism, Christianity and democracy. - bz

Monday, July 28, 2008

Irish humor lives in the global village

"THE DEPORTEES AND OTHER STORIES,"
by Roddy Doyle

Ireland has changed.

The Ireland that for so many years forced its native population to leave has in recent times, seen a booming economy, so people struggling in other parts of the world are flocking to this new land of opportunity, Ireland.

Thank God Roddy Doyle is alive and well and writing to capture the turn around, and doing it in the manner that causes laugh-out-loud reading.

As always with Doyle, the humor percolates from human nature. His fiction takes advantage of the typically funny way the Irish have of dealing with life. He celebrates the joys in understated ways, but more often Doyle taps the embarrassing moments, exposing those insecurities that anyone human might laugh at, getting the largest chuckles from the instances when bigotry is revealed for what it is, when his characters realize the foot they've put into their own mouths, when David bests Goliath because of the big oaf's self-righteousness.

"The Deportees" is the longest of the eight short stories, and arguably the richest. Doyle revives Jimmy Rabbitte, the main character of "The Commitments," his story about a young Irish lad who loves soul music and puts together a soul band.

Rabbitte is grown up now, but he still loves music enough to name his children -- besides Jimmy Two -- Mahalia and Marvin, and wants to name the one his wife is carrying Aretha if its a girl, Smokey if it's a boy.

He gets the idea for a band composed of members from around the globe who have come to call Ireland home, and the fun gets going big time as Jimmy opens auditions.

In all the stories, "The Deportees" included, the hard edge of dealing with racial and national prejudice rides right along side the humor.

In "57% Irish," Doyle takes on the idea of how Irish you have to be considered one, and in "Black Hoodie" he's crafted a combination of "Black Like Me" and "Ferris Bueler's Day Off" that points a finger at many of our biases -- and you don't have to live on the Emerald Isle to see them in our own society and in ourselves.

He also has the wonderful ability to put himself into his characters and let them speak about their situation. And, if we learn a little bit about what a refugee to Ireland sees and feels, maybe -- just maybe -- we'll be a bit more sympathetic to the immigrants who've come to our own land and our own communities in search of work, safety and freedom.

Fair warning: Some of the human is earthy and sexual; this is a book for mature audiences. -- bz

Friday, July 18, 2008

Good tools for passing on the faith

"Learning Centers for Advent and Lent,"
by Doris Murphy

Doris Murphy is doing her best to make it painless for families to grow in their Catholic faith.

From her experience as Director of Faith Formation at St. Bridget Parish in River Falls, Wis., Murphy has gathered easy projects that parents can work on with their children, projects that will help these "first teachers" of their young ones develop the foundation for a life enriched by the knowledge and traditions of Catholicism.

As she has for First Reconciliation, First Eucharist and the Whole Community in earlier books put out by Twenty-Third Publications, Murphy utilizes the learning center approach to enable parents to be those first teachers of the faith that they are called to be for the seasons of Advent and Lent, too. In the learning center methodology, the parish gathers needed material and instructions, then invites parents to use age-appropriate activities that have hands-on tasks, that invite talking with their children about their faith, all the time reinforcing material the children may be learning in their faith formation textbooks and classes.

It's handing on the faith through example, through family rituals and through conversation. As important as the projects' purposes are, maybe even more important is the time a parent spends with a child around something of a religious nature: It enables adults -- the most influential people in a child's life -- to both tell and show a child that their own faith is important to them and that it's a faith full of meaning and history, something to be greatly valued, remembered and cherished.

For Advent and Lent, Murphy's workbook of just over 100 pages offers fun, easy, purposeful ideas that any parish, any director of faith formation, any catechist or any parent will find helpful.

It's a how-to book from the word go, full of practical projects and turn-key materials, and DREs might find these ideas are worth a try. If they work in River Falls, Wis., maybe they'll work for you. -- bz

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Have Yourself a Bloody Little Christmas

"The Spy Who Came for Christmas,"
by David Morrell

Think Rambo having a Christmas Eve change of heart -- well, in part at least.

Think a geopolitical way to look at the biblical story of Christ's birth.

Think terrorism on a snowy stage on the holiest night of the year.

"The Spy Who Came for Christmas" is all of the above. When a planted American spy decides he can't go along with the latest assignment the Russian Mafia has called on him to carry out -- to kidnap a baby, a baby that's suppose to be a symbol of world peace -- the action goes at a pretty crisp pace, for the most part.

There's Arab bad guys and spousal abuse and alcoholism and Soviet Communism and religion all mixed together in a story that teeter-totters between Christian principles and graphic violence. When this is made into a film -- maybe a made-for-TV one at least -- there will be blood all over the screen.

The only slow part is when the good-guy spy tells a way-out version of the Journey of the Magi; they become spies for Persia intent of causing disruption of Herod's rule. Interesting -- but gosh does it take a long time to tell.

Calling "The Spy Who Came for Christmas" a page-turner would be a bit of a stretch, and it's an admittedly okay yarn. But Morrell's name and Christmas in the title is sure to be a winner in the marketplace. -- bz

Monday, July 14, 2008

Know D-Day like never before

"THE STEEL WAVE,"
by Jeff Shaara

You'll feel like you're in on the planning of the Normandy invasion with Ike and Monty.
You'll ride the landing craft with the foot soldiers as they near Omaha Beach.
You'll drop from the sky with the paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne.
And you be there as so many of the men who landed in France on June 6, 1944 died in order to free the world from tyranny.

The middle novel of Jeff Shaara's three-part World War II saga rivals the film "Saving Private Ryan" for realism. War is hell, as we've heard, but Shaara pounds in the point.

His reader-gripping fiction puts you right in the violence of the battles, the mental strain of those leading the attack that started the end of Hitler's Third Reich, the political hurdles that challenged Eisenhower and his foe across the English Channel, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.

So much has been written about D-Day, so much known through film, that Shaara's work in a couple of instances seemed less than original. In fact, when they made those great war epics, good screen writers may have been using some of the same source material that Shaara did for "The Steel Wave." Insight into Rommel may be the most enlightening chapters.

But where this book is at its best is jumping from the plane and walking in the boot steps of Sgt. Jesse Adams, a real-life soldier whose ordeal leading a platoon as it fights its way across the hedgerow country of France is what brings drama and punch to "The Steel Wave." Finding out what happens to Sgt. Adams and many of the other players in the Normandy invasion is a fitting end to a very nice read. -- bz

Thursday, July 3, 2008

'To forgive, divine'

"The Forgiveness Book,"
by Alice Camille & Paul Boudreau

and

"The Power of Forgiveness,"
by Kenneth Briggs

Two very different approaches tackling the same subject isn't unique. Two very different books tackling the same subject happens frequently.

But that authors tackle the same subject for the same reason -- that a book on forgiveness has never been more needed -- maybe that's a message that the subject is not just interesting but vital.

Just over 100 pages long -- counting the useful and worthwhile appendix -- "The Forgiveness Book" is an easy read that offers countless good reasons for making a "divine" response when others err.

Camille, an award-winning writer and Father Boudreau, an oft-published priest-columnist, come at the rationale for forgiveness from an admittedly Catholic perspective. This is a little book laced with down-to-earth reasoning that explains significant theology in simple, easily understood language.

Alternatives no bargain
They acknowledge that forgiveness is "an ugly job," but that "the alternative to forgiveness is far uglier: hardened hearts, broken relationships, memories full of shrapnel, and families or communities paralyzed and divided."

If we don't choose to forgive, we get trapped in the addictive pattern of condemnation, blaming, open hostility, self-righteousness, hidden resentment, cold anger, cynicism -- the list goes on and on -- and the one we do the most damage to is ourselves, because not to forgive "weighs us down, saps our energy, hurts our bodies and leaves us weary."

There is a platitude or two of advice here, but most helpful is a brief, seven-point list of what forgiveness is -- and what it is not. Importantly, the authors aren't afraid to address the concept of sin, and do so in the healthy express of "missing the mark" in what we ought to be aiming at in our actions, decisions and relationships.

They stress that forgiveness is a choice, and the Sacrament of Reconciliation gets high marks as a structure that makes that choice easier.

Camille and Boudreau summarize their work well:

"Forgiveness is not just a thing nice people do. It's not a tactic we might consider for personal improvement or to tidy up our spiritual lives. As the world we live in spirals toward greater feats of injustice, greed, violence and bigotry, the reasons to forgive mount astronomically. The cost of unforgiveness, too, becomes ever more apparent. . . . The human race must learn to forgive, to practice forgiveness, to choose it, to seek it, to value it, and to want it. That means each of us individually must do the same, because the whole world begins in the human heart."

From film to print
Kenneth Briggs' "The Power of Forgiveness" is based on a film by Martin Doblmeier and delves into the topic by looking at specific instances of forgiveness and analyzing them, then going several steps deeper.

The most recent, the murder spree that left five Amish schoolchildren dead and five wounded in a Pennsylvania classroom, is the opening to view forgiveness from the religious perspective. The most interesting portion of this was Briggs' parsing of the idea that the Amish' forgiveness of the madman murderer was "a spiritual reflex," something the Amish learn "by watching parents and neighbors forgive and by looking at the example of Jesus."

Several of the world's religions get a similar analysis.

A section on the sociological perspective wonders if those who forgive may be healthier than those who don't. Another chapter discusses how very difficult -- even impossible -- forgiveness can seem. There's brief mention of the death penalty debate and the film "Dead Man Walking," plus the complex grief of a mother of a New York City firefighter who died on 9/11, and even a few paragraphs that touch upon the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.

The most interesting quote from that latter part?

"Somehow a refusal to pardon guilty priests provides a balance to years of having forgiven them too much. . . . For most lawyers fighting for huge cash settlements, forgiveness is unthinkable, even laughable."

There's much more, but let me recommend this book by quoting from one quoted in it, author and lecturer Marianne Williamson:

"At a time when we see so much evil, we are called upon . . . to stand for the possibility of human redemption that turns even the hardest of hearts." -- bz

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Can you live like a monk? To create a better world, maybe we all should!

"Finding the Monk Within: Great Monastic Values for Today,"
by Edward C. Sellner

We would live more fulfilling lives -- and our 21st-Century society would be a better off -- if we were to adopt the values lived by monks and monastic communities through the ages.

That's the message Ed Sellner delivers as he shares the wise ways of holy people who lived the ascetic life in various ways since the times of the early church. He summarizes it so well with his perceptive concept that every person today needs "to live simply, to pray often, and to choose well," but there's so much more that adds practical, concrete approaches that anyone can take up -- and not have to move to a monastery to do so.

Sellner, who teaches at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, has really done yeoman's work here in this HiddenSpring publication by Paulist Press. The 272-page book -- minus notes -- takes readers on a journey through the lives of a handful of monastic "celebrities," if you will.

Chapters include the likes of Athanasius of Alexandria, Antony of Egypt, Martin of Tours, Hilary of Poitiers, Augustine and Monica, Brigit of Kildare, Gregory the Great, Benedict and Scholastica, and Bernard of Clairvaux, among others. Sellner shows how the monastic tradition grew and developed from the Third Century in the Middle East to Europe in the Middle Ages as monastics learned from their elders and added charisms that were needed at their time in history.

The stories of these saintly folks aren't always compelling reading, but there are enough passages of interesting details in their lives that will keep a reader moving through the pages. The gift of this work, though, is that Sellner consistently brings the reader back to the values these ancient folks practiced and why those values are important for those of us currently on the planet.

Which holy figures teach what values?
  • Athanasius: Sharing stories, "and that one does not have to be a monk in a monastery to live out monastic values today."
  • Antony: Silence and solitude, and how they can foster discernment, the ability to begin to see differences between right and wrong.
  • Hilary of Poitiers and Martin of Tours: faith, and its participative and communal dimension.
  • Augustine and Monica: friendship.
  • Jerome, Paula and Eustochium: the need for qualified spiritual mentors.
  • John Cassian and Germanus: the value of disclosing our secrets, plus dedication to inner work.
  • Brigit and other Irish monastics: compassion, and including lay people in monastic communities and women in decision-making and leadership positions.
  • Gregory the Great: contemplation.
  • Benedict and Scholastica: stability and love.
  • Bernard of Clairvaux: learning to read the "book of experience," the book of our lives, as well as the book of our hearts.
Why would anyone wish to follow in the footsteps of the monastic headliners?

To both develop an interior life and to make a difference in the world, according to Sellner. To do so one needs to identify the values the monastics lived and incorporate them into their own deeper selves.

"These are not only monastic values," he writes, "but values of the soul -- and they apply to everyone, regardless of gender, occupation, material status, or place of residence."

Sellner puts it well in his conclusion:

"What our study of monasticism reveals is that to affirm and nurture the growth of the true inner self a 'new monk' must develop an asceticism of loving. This form of asceticism, so much need today, presumes that to love well a person needs discipline, the setting of limits, the investment of time and energy in relationships and work that reflect at least some of the values discussed here.

"Such an asceticism of living involves a commitment to growth in self-knowledge, self-discipline, and self-love, all based upon the profound conviction, so difficult at times to believe, that God created us for a purpose, that God loved us first. To discover this and make this a daily, lived experience, one must learn to listen to the heartbeat of God." -- bz

Monday, June 16, 2008

Conflict boils over in novel about post-Vatican II parish life

"Waiting for Mozart,"
by Charles Pilon


A page-turning novel because of the drama in the conflict, yet not exactly bestseller quality?

Interesting characters, but sometimes quasi-believable stereotypes?

Spot-on lessons for life, yet propaganda-filled
?

The questions were the aftertaste from furiously reading Chuck Pilon’s “Waiting for Mozart.”

It’s a good novel, if you judge by the fact that you just have to keep reading to find out how the conflict is going to end between the pastor and the parish council at fictional St. Mary Parish in fictional Mapleton, Minn.

But the getting there isn’t smooth.

I’m certain there is a parish somewhere where disagreements are unknown, but I’ll bet everyone who has ever been involved with a parish council – or run up against seemingly unreasonable leadership in any setting – will both recognize and empathize with the people caught up in St. Mary’s tempest.

Pilon’s captured the flavor of some of that in the post-Vatican Council II church. Since he formerly served as a priest, I’m sure that he’s writing in part from real-life experiences.

Yet the jagged edges of the writing, the dialogue that just doesn’t sound like any real person speaks, are distracting, from a literary critique point of view. I’d have loved to have read this book after a tougher editor got a hold of the text.

For contrast, think of the crisp repartee in the play “Mass Appeal,” for example, superb writing on a similar subject matter.

As delicately as it is worded, there’s propaganda on these pages, and maybe enough to anger Catholics on several sides of the celibate male priesthood concept. Pilon has an archbishop character predict that, “When the time is right, the Holy Father will make the change in a way that will re-introduce the idea and the practice of having a married clergy. Eventually that will include women.”

That kind of statement would surely earn the darts of one segment of the church, but then the character quickly adds, “That’s my opinion. I think it’s coming, but the Church isn’t ready for it. The people aren’t ready.” And that will just as surely tick off another segment. The permanent diaconate takes a shot as well.

But this is a novel, after all, and it deserves to be read as a novel. The propaganda isn’t hidden, it’s right out there in the open.

And the lessons Pilon shares are worth absorbing, such as:

  • "Sometimes the wrapping is as important as what's in the package....Commitment and being right aren't the only important things. You've got to reach the listener. It's possible to always be right and never be heard."
  • "We've got to keep in mind that the really crucial issues, even in today's church, are few in number. Not many that a guy would want to die for. I don't have to have an answer for everything."
  • "The only day worth living is the day I do something to bring people together."
  • "Be hard on the problem, go easy on the people involved."
  • "When you're in the heat of things, it's hard to remember that war almost never brings peace. You forget that you can't be a reformer if you think in terms of them and us. That way, everyone loses; nobody finds the Grail. You get fixed on final, forever-like answers. You write the last chapters when the story is still unfolding."

So, despite it's lack of perfection, "Waiting for Mozart" is worthy of print and worthy of reading both by the leaders of the church and the People of God, if only so that some of the novel's lessons enter into those contentious times in church life. -- bz

Friday, May 23, 2008

Lovers of the written word will love "The Florist's Daughter"

THE FLORIST'S DAUGHTER,
by Patricia Hampl

Scanning through radio stations while driving, I happened upon Patricia Hampl reading from her latest memoir. The life she brought to the words she read instantly made me stop the scan function, and for the next I don't know how many minutes I was mesmerized by her storytelling.
I knew I had to get the book.

"The Florist's Daughter" proved even better as a read.

The woman can flat out write.

Details of her life growing up in St. Paul, Minn. after World War II serve as the structure for Hampl to tell us what she really wants us to know, and that's who her parents were and what her relationship was with them.

She does that so well that you feel you know her chain-smoking Irish-American mother and her handsome, reserved Czech father -- the florist of the title -- well enough that you could write their obituaries if asked to. In fact, maybe that's what Hampl has done -- at book length.

So much of the book is about what the author was thinking during the events of those growing-up years, how she reacted to the events of life that her family lived, and especially how she both remained the same and yet grew.

How many adult children might empathize with Hampl when she writes about agreeing out of a sense of duty to travel with her elderly mother to Ireland -- to "offer it up," as she inserts -- only to acknowledge afterward that her mother turned out to be the best travel companion ever.

Can't you just picture a middle-aged woman sneaking a bottle of chardonnay and a pack of Merit 100s into the senior living center so her mother can enjoy those forbidden pleasures?

Later on she tells of visiting her mother on her death bed this way: "She would hang by her fingernails from the ledge of life."

Hampl makes it ease to picture the flooded streets of St. Paul's old Italian levee neighborhood by describing them as "suddenly Venetian." Minnesota itself, she writes, is situated "at the nosebleed north of the country."

During car trips in the family Ford, she and her brother would be "enacting the turf wars of the backseat."

Catholics will be teased throughout as memories of religious practice float through the text, and -- because she grew up in its shadow, the Cathedral of St. Paul almost takes on the role of a character as Hampl crafts this wonderful story out of, to use her phrase, "the delicate scrim of daily life."

There is a sense of place that this University of Minnesota professor has preserved for us, first for the very Catholic hometown of her childhood, perhaps best explained with this quote from the book:
"Ours was a pre-freeway St. Paul, a time-place where it was possible to spend an entire lifetime without straying over the Minneapolis line where the Scandinavians went about their Lutheran business."

But there is another sense of place Hampl brings us to, the place of a daughter, the roles that fall to daughters, and maybe this paragraph sums it up:
"I sit with my mother, as has been destined since time began because a daughter is a daughter all her life. We stay like this, hand in hand. We have all the time in the world -- world without end, amen. Words we recite by heart when she asks me to say the Rosary with her, the last phrase of the Gloria, the little prayer at the end that puts to rest all the Hail Marys."

Thanks, Patricia. -- bz

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Everybody thinks they have a book in them

It must be part of modern culture that everyone who ever received a B+ or better on a high school essay has a gut feeling that they could write a book someday.

Whether prompted by illusions of penning the great American novel, delusions that a lot of other people will care about your life story or sincere conviction that others will benefit by knowing your take on a topic, the urge to write can be overwhelming.

Also overwhelmed, in turn, are book reviewers.

Write a few reviews and the hopeful of the literary world beat a path to your in box.

That's okay, though. Keep 'em coming.

As I crack the spines of new deliveries that appear with the request for reviews, a question that regularly comes to mind is this: Who does the person who wrote this think will be interested in this?

That may be a valid question, but others, and a better ones are: Might there be people out there who would get something out of reading this? Are there gems in here that make this worthwhile?
Let me give you a couple of examples.

Ready for your coffee table?

Judy McCabe, who lives in Minnetonka, put together some of her thoughts of home with photos -- some good, some just ordinary -- to create a well-design, coffee table book titled, um, "Thoughts of Home."

McCabe, a member of St. Patrick in Edina, has moved around the country, and she wrote, "What I really want to do with the book is open a dialog for people who are relocated or transferred." Could viewing scene of normal, every-day life around homes of various kinds inspire fond memories and help people appreciate home life?

To be perfectly honest -- and I told McCabe this -- the book didn't do anything for me. I did like the book's design, and I think it works as a coffee table book to browse through. The ordinariness of the home life she describes, though, doesn't compel me to give a ringing endorsement of "Thoughts of Home," but McCabe deserves at the very least a pat on the back for not letting her creative urge lie inert.
Find out more about McCabe and her work at http://www.thoughtsofhome-judymccabe.com/.

Life story of interest?

Then there's Bill Mori. Mori is a member of St. Paul in Ham Lake who pulled together his memories of growing up in Fort Dodge, Iowa, during the 1950s.
"East End Italian" is a series of brief chapters that, for the most part, aren't unique. Life in Fort Dodge and at Holy Rosary Parish there isn't much different from life elsewhere in the country that I could see. Yet....

There are slices of small town life that Mori has preserved by being willing to try this authorship thing. My favorite concerns his job at the local mom-and-pop grocers, a holdout to the supermarkets of the day. Customers came in to Brechwald's with a list of items, and schoolboys like Mori ran through the aisles to "fetch" them, as he writes. Never heard of that before.

Mori's got some funny, funny anecdotes. There's a great story about being fascinated with airplanes, writing away to obtain photos from the manufacturers like Lockheed, Boeing and McDonald Douglas, only to have the government agents show up at their door, wanting to question a certain William Mori who was so curious about the latest military aircraft.

If you want to know more, contact the author at bmori@comcast.net.

Spiritual poetry, anyone?

Margaret Peterson has been rhyming for years, and now her poems are collected in her first book, "The Pearl of Great Price: Spiritual Poetry to Life the Soul."

My guess is that poetry experts might judge her work as syrupy, Pollyannish maybe, and definitely old fashioned, as if that's a crime. But I liked it. It wore on me.

Yeah, it's a bit on the sweet side, but I'm going to bet Peterson is sweet, too. This is a lady who has taught 4th grade faith formation at her parish, St. Bonaventure in Bloomington, for more than 20 years, and just loves doing it, we hear.

There is surely simplicity in some of her poems, but others carry wisdom -- and do so with great economy. Two samples:

Mirrors
A mirror reflects
Whatever it views
We reflect
The paths we choose.
The Pearl of Great Price
God is the pearl
In the ocean of life;
Will we love Him or cast Him aside...
And spend our lives searching
For something unknown
To ease the longing inside?
Find out more by looking her up at http://www.margaretpetersonpoetry.com.

Courage counts

These are just three examples of local people who have yielded to the urge and tried their hand at the book world. Their work may or may not be your cup of tea or may have value for just a small number of readers.

But if wholesale endorsement of a work isn't in the cards, anyone with the courage to work hard at getting a book out of their system deserves applause for at least that effort. And who know when the next author of bestsellers might be one of those folks brave enough to put words on paper. -- bz

Friday, May 2, 2008

History worth knowing about link between capitalism and religion

"GOD AND GOLD,"
by Walter Russell Mead

Capitalism’s ability to raise the standard of living in the English-speaking world – and to spread British and American social and economic culture around the globe – owes no small part of its success to a religious element, perhaps even a religious foundation.
And religion can continue to play a role in humanity’s pursuit of peace and development.
That’s a key take-away from the reading of “God and Gold,” a compelling book that’s worth a slow, reflective read.
Author Walter Russell Mead, a U.S. foreign policy expert, forces readers to view the past 300 years of history from both an inward looking perspective and that of an outsider, forcing us to see how others see us.
Mead’s premise is that the rise of first British then American capitalism is the most important development in the history of the modern world, and that the capitalistic culture that the United States leads today may be an enduring one, unlike fallen empires of old.
He backs up his hypothesis with hundreds of pages of historical evidence, but maybe more important is his work to help us understand the challenges that our country faces today, especially from some of the Muslim faith who also champion a religious fervor but who – tied down by refusals to change and to be open and tolerant – have failed to take advantage of capitalism’s fruits.
Mead moves readers from the importance of domination of the seas – ala England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada and the U.S. efforts to protect the oil markets of the Persian Gulf – to the importance of the willingness to try new methods and technologies, to continually adapt and move on, and to be tolerant and accepting of various expressions of religious faith.
Societies that insist on the domination of one religious sect or persuasion and societies that are unaccepting of ethnic diversity have proven unable to utilize the gifts of immigrants and those of other faiths that have so enriched more tolerant cultures.
That spirituality plays such a large role in economic and societal success is a pivotal slice of American pie, just as important as it had been for the Brits before.
“Since the 17th century,” Mead notes, “the English-speaking world or at least significant chunks of it have believed that embracing and even furthering and accelerating change – economic change, social change, cultural change, political change – fulfills their religious destiny.”
As successful as English speakers have been the past 300 years, the religious fervor that plays such a positive role also lends a dark side. Leaders from Cromwell through Roosevelt, Reagan and Bush II demonize the enemies of their states – and if they do so with lies, so be it. The Soviet Union isn’t merely an aggressive if brutal competitor during the Cold War years, it is labeled an “evil empire.”
Fulfilling the destiny of the British and Americans sometime led to sinful trampling on and even annihilation of native peoples, a concern that rarely troubled people of faith at the time yet something that is embarrassing to think of today.
Today, Mead sees Evangelical Protestantism as the one social movement with the power to sway public opinion, and that is a cause for concern in his mind.
Diplomacy with other cultures is paramount to peace and development around the globe – and continuation of American social and economic dominance – yet “Evangelical America is often considered – as it has often been – the section of the population most committed to uncritical flag waving, to simplistic understanding of foreign peoples and culture, and resistant to complex and nuanced discussions of the international issues facing the United States.”
A saving grace?
Common opposition to abortion and a common desire to defend the place of religion in American society are connecting evangelicals and Catholics, and Mead finds this a positive.
“The encounter with Catholicism, both at a personal and at an intellectual level, has also exposed many evangelicals to a much richer and more complex body of Christian thought and social reflection than they have previously known.”

QUOTES FROM “GOD AND GOLD”

“Since the seventeenth century, the English-speaking world or at least significant chunks of it have believed that embracing and even furthering and accelerating change – economic change, social change, cultural change, political change – fulfills their religious destiny.”

“The idea that the world is built (or guided by God) in such a way that unrestricted free play creates an ordered and higher form of society is found in virtually all fields and at virtually all levels of the Anglo-Saxon world.”

“Foreign opinion is often bemused by the way in which the Anglo-Saxon powers are so frequently troubled by the existence of conditions that are almost as old as humanity and likely to be just as long-lived. Bribery, protectionism, cruelty to animals, smoking, sexual harassment in the workplace, the excessive use of saturated fats in cooking, unkind verbal epithets for low-status social groups, ethnic cleansing: in much of the world things like these are deplored, but a vigorous and puritanical attempt to suppress them altogether is viewed, not entirely unreasonably, as a cure that can be worse than the disease.”

“An open, dynamic, and capitalistic society generated innovations in finance, technology, marketing, and communications. These innovations offered the open society enormous advantages in world trade. The wealth gained in this way provided the basis for military power that could withstand the largest and mightiest rival empires of the day.”

“The ability of the overseas English-speaking societies to welcome and assimilate vast numbers of immigrants from all over the world remains a key factor in the continuing strength of the United States (and other countries) to the present day.”

“The power of mass consumption, harnessed by flexible markets to the economic interest of the talented, may be the most revolutionary human discovery since the taming of fire.”

“The rise of new classes to unprecedented affluence, the changed world created by emergent technologies and media, the opportunities for self-expression in a culture largely free of political (though never of cultural or moral) censorship: these helped create the popular culture of the English-speaking world that has horrified and hypnotized foreigners ever since.”

“A St. Francis of Assisi, A St. Catherine of Siena, A Martin Luther, A St. Ignatius Loyola, or a Martin Luther King Jr. is seized by a vision of a new way to live and, under its influence, goes on to live a different kind of human life than any seen before. One woman or one man experiences the vision directly or subjectively, but the power of the ideal is so strong that others, seeing it second- or third-hand or reading about i8t in books, feel the power and are inspired to live this way themselves. They permanently enrich and deepen the world’s perception of what it is to be human, and they give the rest of us new choices and new possibilities.”

“The countries which are in most respects the most thoroughly modernized by any definition that rests on economic and technological progress – Britain of the nineteenth century, the United States today – are significantly more religious than most.”

“Disagreement and controversy are not signs of a decadent society; they are the necessary conditions of spiritual progress.”

“Pluralism, even at the cost of rational consistency, is necessary in a world of change. Countervailing forces and values must content. Reason, scripture, tradition: they all have their uses, but any one of them, unchecked, will go too far. Moreover, without constant disputes, constant controversy, constant competition between rival ideas about how society should look and what it should do, the pace of innovation and change is likely to slow as forces of conservative inertia grow smug and unchallenged.”

“We are always saying goodbye to something we love, always leaving our fathers’ homes for an unknown future. . . . Yet at the same time, there must be room for nostalgia and a resistance to change. There must be religious voices denouncing godless secularism and calling mankind back to eternal principles.”

“Christianity in the American context is less and less a matter of family or ethnic identity, more and more a matter of personal choice. . . . Religion today is increasingly part of a self-constructed, chosen identity for Americans. It is perceived as a response to a call – an inherently dynamic religious orientation, even if the doctrines embraced are venerable.”

“To engage in the struggle for change and reform is not to oppose the religious instinct, but to give it its fullest expression.”

“To abolish war, we must, surely, vanquish the causes of war. Mass poverty can clearly no longer be accepted if war is to be eliminated. . . . Peace is impossible without justice and economic development.”

“Americans . . . generally believe that their country has a covenanted relationship with the power or person who directs the historical process. America is on a mission from God – and the well-being of the United States depends on how faithful Americans are to their mission.”

“It is when we are most confident that we are acting righteously, most sure of the moral ground beneath our feet that we are in the greatest danger.”

“The quest for more scientific and technical knowledge, and for application of the fruits of that knowledge to ordinary human life, is not simply a quest for faster cars and better television reception. It is a quest to fulfill the human instinct for change, arising out of a deep and apparently built-in human belief that through change we encounter the transcendent and the divine. The material and social progress that is such a basic feature of Anglo-American society and of the broader world community gradually taking shape within the framework the Anglo-Americans have constructed ultimately reflects a quest for meaning, not a quest for comfort and wealth. . . . From the Anglo-Saxon point of view, participating in this adventure is not materialist, even if the quest brings material benefits. Abandoning the quest is materialist; to turn aside from this challenge is to embrace a merely material existence and to abandon the spiritual values that make human life truly human.”--
bz

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Book of Prayers from the stars needs less stats and more prayer

"A Book of Prayers: To the Heavens from the Stars,"
by Chuck Spinner

Chuck Spinner knew he didn't have this project exactly right. He says so right up from by acknowledging some weaknesses.

The idea of asking celebrities from the sports and media world their favorite prayer is a good one, and even better is Spinner's introductory remark about the purpose of his book. Actually a quote from former football coach and present 49ers' GM John McVay about the importance of formal prayer, the purpose is to "get us started talking to God."

That's a great measure of success, and to that end, Spinner has been successful.

But I think he could have done better. And I think this could have been a book that really touched folks deeply and done a lot to initiate more conversations with God.

I think readers will find there is a bit too much celebrity biography and not enough prayer.

I'm not sure how many readers will care to know all the years that Ann B. Davis won Emmy's for "The Brady Bunch." Was it crucial to include U.S. Olympic hockey hero Mike Eruzione, telling all his collegiate all-star mentions, when his favorite prayer is the Our Father!

That repetition of prayers is one of the weaknesses of the book that Spinner acknowledges, but after the third time he includes the text of The Lord's Prayer or the Memorare, it's not reinforcing or even interesting, it's plain irritating.

And some celebrities sent in poems, not prayers; they should have been edited out.

There are gems, though, and the salvation of the book comes when you find them.

There's the ending sentence from Olympic softball star Leah O'Brien-Amico's favorite: "Change me from the inside out and make me the person you want me to be."
Pitcher for the old Brooklyn Dodgers Carl Erskine sent in: "Lord, I don't pray for life to be easier, but for you to make me stronger."

All in all, I'm forced to say that this is a use book of prayer. Advice to readers might be, ignore the biographical introductions to all these folks and search for prayers that touch you. Mark them somehow, and return to them when you need a kick start for your own conversations with God. -- bz

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Tragedy that is Brazil plays out in nun's martyrdom

"The Greatest Gift,"
by Binka Le Breton

Read this story about the life of Sister Dorothy Stang and you'll get angry about the evil and the injustice in our world.


Sister Dorothy would look you in the eye and very kindly tell you not to get angry -- do something about it.


This sister with a passion to help the poorest of the poor and a mind all her own about how to that help would tell you that working for justice is difficult but wonderfully rewarding. Unfortunately, Sister Dorothy isn't alive to tell us anything. A pistol was emptied into her in the Amazon jungle in Brazil just three years ago.


Fortunately, because the murder of this petite Sister of Notre Dame de Namur happened not long ago, many who knew and worked with Sister Dorothy are around to tell her story: the poor who strive to eke a living out of Amazonia; other nuns and lay people who shared her work; a bishop who opened his house to her whenever she needed shelter and sanctuary; and even an eyewitness to her murder.


"The Greatest Gift" shares a little of what many will find typical in the early life of Dorothy Mae Stang, daughter of a Dayton, Ohio family. Those early-life chapters may be the only ones in the book that don't deliver eye-opening insight into the violence that is life for so many in the developing world. This is a book that lets us in on what is happening in parts of the planet where "development" equals greed and where law and civic authorities fail in their duty to protect people's rights -- even their right to life. It's a book, too, that explores just what it is that makes a person live and die for a cause, for others.


Initially a teaching nun and then a principal in the United States, Sister Dorothy's work with the migrant community in Arizona earned flattering copy in the Arizona Republic. It was that work with the poor in the Southwest that whet her appetite to work with those who have little or nothing. She asked to be assigned as a missionary, and spent 30 years in Brazil, most of it helping that country's poor stay alive, feed their families, and take steps toward fulfillment -- both temporal and spiritual.


When Sister Dorothy arrived in 1966, the part of Brazil to which she was sent was best described as a feudal state controlled by a few families of landowners and politicians. When the missionaries put religious texts to Brazilian music, the authorities confiscated the song sheets and threw some priests in jail. Their crime? The lyrics said that God created all people equal. Obviously the ruling class couldn't have that.


During Sister Dorothy's three decades in Brazil, the government was encouraging large-scale settlement of the western Amazon. The mantra was "Land for Men for Men Without Land," and the poor and the landless poured into the forest, felling trees and planting crops by the thousands of acres. Sister Dorothy was one of the missionaries who went west with them. She taught people about their rights, helped to establish farm workers' unions, gave literacy classes, built a center to train teachers, started some little stores, a warehouse, a fruit processing plant, a community trading post, a women's association that focused on health care.


It was when she fought for land reform that she ended up on a death list. She stood up for stewardship of the land, conservation and interdependence with nature. She developed a program -- adopted by the government -- that taught people an agriculture method that utilized the forest instead of cutting it down. She travelled to civic offices to secure the paperwork that would verify her people's ownership of the tracts they had settled on and planted only to have corrupt politicians, police and the Brazilian military sit by and watch greedy ranchers send armed men to chase the poor off that same land.


Her best friend, Joan, talks about Sister Dorothy Stang with these words:


"She was a strong woman," Joan said, "but sometimes very obstinate. She had a soft voice that echoed through the halls of government offices and bounced off the giant trees of the forests, the same soft voice that could soothe an aching heart and assure someone that God loved them."



She added, "Dot had a mind that could understand the laws of land reform, the intricacies of sustainable farming, the impact of the destruction of the forest on the world now and in the future, and the hope and conviction that one voice could make a difference."


In June of 2004 the Brazilian Bar Association gave Sister Dorothy the Humanitarian of the Year Award. Nine months later, a paid gunman shot her down on a dirt road in the jungle. More people need to know about this heroine, so that her work continues. -- bz