Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch

I thought I was going to really like this book. The first few chapters were so interesting; I have them all marked up, but then somewhere along the line it lost its punch. I do very much like the idea of being creators of culture instead of merely explainers or analyzers. Everyone is called to create in some sense.

The basic idea of the book centers on the fact that ones WORLDVIEW may not be as powerful and defining as is often thought, especially a Christian worldview. According to several authors, "the world seems strangely unaffected by the "transforming vision" or our worldview. We may not, in fact, actually embody the values of our worldview; we may just hold it, compartmentalized in our brain somewhere.

"What is wrong? The problem is an ineffectual, "disembodied Christianity, one that makes little difference in culture or even, all too often, in the life choices of its adherents. Yet this is subtly rewritten into a fundamentally intellectual problem, that of insufficient attention to or perception of the Christian worldview."

What is the [supposed] remedy? The remedy is further explication of, and sometimes defense of, the truth of the Christian worldview."[NOT.]

"..seminars, worldview books...these may have some real value if they help us understand the horizons that our culture shapes, but they cannot substitute for the creation of real cultural goods. . . . the culture is not changed simply by thinking." [emphasis mine]

"the academic fallacy is that once you have understood something--analyzed and critiqued it--you have changed it."

"The only way to change culture is to create more of it."

"The greatest danger of copying culture, as a posture, is that it may well become all too successful. We end up creating an entire subcultural world within which Christians comfortably move and have their being without ever encountering the broader cultural world they are imitating. We breed a generation that prefers facsimile to reality, simplicity to complexity (for cultural copying, almost by definition, ends up sanding off the rough and surprising edges of any cultural good it appropriates), and familiarity to novelty. Not only is this a generation incapable of genuine creative participation in the ongoing drama of human culture making, it is dangerously detached from a God who is anything but predictable and safe."

"And when they consume, cultivators and creators do so without becoming mere consumers. They do not derive their identity from what they consume but what they create."

"...to prevent Adam and Eve from living eternally in the futility of their vain attempt to "be like God, knowing good and evil," not realizing that knowing good and evil was very different from being able to choose good and reject evil."

Good stuff.

Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr

I read this book for another reading group and enjoyed it very much; it is a bit circular, but that is the nature of the subject matter.  Anyway, it is a good book with wonderful insights. From the inside cover:

In the first half of life, we are naturally and rightly preoccupied with establishing our identity--climbing, achieving, and performing. But those concerns will not serve us as we grow older and begin to embark on a further journey, one that involves challenges, mistakes, loss of control, broader horizons, and necessary suffering that actually shocks us out of our prior comfort zone. Eventually, we need to see ourselves in a different and more life-giving way. This message of "falling down"--that is in fact moving upward--is the most resisted and counterintuitive of messages in the world's religions  including and most especially Christianity.

p. 42: ". . . want to circle the wagons around their imagined secure and superior group; who seem preoccupied with clothing, titles, perks, and externals of religion; and frankly have little use for the world beyond their own control or explanation. Ecumenism, interfaith dialogue, and social justice are dead issues for them."

First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God! -Lady Julian

Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis

This books was on the list for my church reading group. I was not particularly looking forward to it. I mean the title doesn't exactly grab you.

But the book is one of the most remarkable and mind-blowing stories I have read. It just does not add up. Katie was the senior class president and homecoming queen at her high school in the wealthy suburbs of Nashville. She went on a short mission trip to Uganda at Christmas break of her senior year. And her heart never left. Against the hopes and desires of her parents and friends and boyfriend, she returned to Uganda after graduation, promising that she would come back in a year and go to school

Well she never really returned in spirit. She started out teaching school in Uganda but ended up adopting 13 children--probably more by now--and starting a ministry. I can't tell you how unexpected this story is.

One of the biggest takeaways for me was the story of the mother whose culture told her that it was not her responsibility to care for her husband's child by an earlier marriage. The birth mother had died and the father and new wife nearly emotionally and physically starved the boy to death. Katie took him to her home (in Uganda) to wash his sores and diseases and give him food. He was skin and bones, listless, and covered in sores and filth. Eventually, after several attempts of returning the child to his home and then bringing him back to her house to clean and feed, the woman and father began taking care of him. Truly an amazing story that makes you wonder what your own culture has told you is acceptable. We are very blind to what our culture teaches us. Like fish in water, we just don't see it until someone or something shows us a higher reality.

Book Review: Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking by Susan Cain

Book Review: Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking by Susan Cain

Naturally the title of this book caught my attention.

The author, an introvert, as you might suspect, has put together some very interesting research and anecdotes; she has traced some of the rise and fall of the introvert through history and in different cultures from Rosa Parks to Lewis Carroll. (Asian cultures value introversion, whereas the American culture has a definite bias for extroversion.)  In a world where extroversion is the ideal, Cain seeks to balance the story with the wonderful attributes of introverts.

"We make a grave mistake to embrace the Extrovert Ideal so unthinkingly. Some of our greatest ideas, art, and inventions--from the theory of evolution to van Gogh's sunflowers to the personal computer--came from quiet cerebral people...without introverts we would be devoid of:
The theory of gravity, the theory of relativity  W.B. Yeats's "The Second Comping," Chopin's music, Proust's books, Peter Pan, Orwell's books, The Cat in the Hat, Charlie Brown, Schindler's list, Google, Harry Potter."

Susan Cain herself managed to make it as a successful lawyer on Wall Street despite her dislike of the spotlight and of aggression. (Though eventually she left Wall Street because it wasn't a good fit.)

One of the biggest problems of following the extrovert ideal is that people tend to follow extroverts assuming that because they are the loudest and most charismatic they must have the best ideas. But alas tis not so: "He has terrible business sense but great leadership skills, and everyone is following him down the road to ruin."

I read this book over many months so I have forgotten some of the most interesting research and tidbits. I do recommend at least the first half of this book that recounts the studies about introversion and the trends. The second half of the book had a bit too much on encouraging introverted children, etc.

One thing I remember is that introversion is present at birth. One study took infants (or very young children, I can't remember) and played loud noises, balloons, popping sounds, music etc. About a third of the children visibly reacted to the sounds, another third had little reaction. The introverts were the ones sensitive to the disturbance whereas the extroverts could easily cope with whatever the situation--"Hey no big deal!" Extroverts are just not as sensitive to emotional and physical traumas, so they are willing to take more risks in many areas of life. The introversion/extroversion persona continued into adulthood.

Another interesting tidbit was about Eleanor Roosevelt. Usually one thinks of her as a somewhat dowdy, though deeply intelligent, non sexual partner of the president. It was certainly not always that way. Theodore fell very deeply in love with Eleanor. "Many told Eleanor that Franklin wasn't good enough for her. Some saw him as a lightweight, a mediocre scholar, a frivolous man-about-town. . . . Eleanor did not lack for admirers who appreciated her gravitas. Some of her suitors wrote grudging letters of congratulations to Franklin when he won her hand. "I have more respect and admiration for Eleanor than any girl I have ever met," one letter-writer said. "You are might lucky. Your future wife is such as it is the privilege of few men to have," said another.

And of course the book has a bias toward introversion. "It may also help explain why [introverts] are so bored by small talk. If you're thinking in more complicated ways, then talking about the weather or where you went for the holidays is not quite as interesting as talking about values or morality."

One of the funniest things in the book was the description of the Harvard Business School. Truly seemed to be a frightening place with wrong-headed ideas on what makes a good leader being forced on students, who apparently play the part with gusto. I have been planning on going over to the business school when I am visiting Mary just to sit and watch the students to see if they are truly as driven and groomed as the author paints them to be.

Anyway, this is a good read and I recommend it.