new books for the new year

We have new books and materials for the three small groups I've been participating in for the last year or so. In the woman's bible study group we'll be going through Beth Moore's updated and revised Breaking Free. I have several friends who studied the original Breaking Free and every single person had wonderful things to say about the study and just about everyone said they would want to do the study again. I am expecting good things to come from this study on what it means to live free from bondage and strongholds; and it's based in the book of Isaiah, which is one of my favorites.

The Artist's Way group will be using Janice Elsheimer's The Creative Call: An Artist's Response to the Way of the Spirit. I was happy to find this book online after doing some searching for a book like this. I was hoping we could find a book that is similar to Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way but written from the perspective of a Christian artist who liked to reference the Bible whenever possible. The introduction explained that she read and participated in Cameron's book and was greatly helped by it, but felt a calling to write a book like The Artist's Way for Christians. It is her goal to encourage artistic Christians to grow closer to God through their gifts and stresses that our gifts are not from God to us, but from God through us to the world. I do like The Artist's Way and it's helpful to a point, but I kept resisting a lot of what it had to say or I felt as if it only could go so far. The real battle is spiritual anyway. It only makes vague references to "The Creator" or a higher power and she apologizes for using the word God because it might sound Christian. I just felt it was more focused on self-glorification through artistic expression, with the help of some vaguely defined divinity or "The Universe", rather than on how artistic gifts are rightly used to glorify God, not ourselves. I hope this next book works out. It may be written in the wake of The Artist's Way, but I think it may have a much better focus. The title, reface and introduction all seem to be pointed in the right direction.

The Arts and Culture Review group--which we are just starting up or re-starting as an off-shoot of the Mars Hill Audio Journal review group--will be viewing and discussing Kieslowski's Dekalog. "It consists of ten one-hour films, each of which represents one of the Ten Commandments and explores possible meanings of the commandment—often ambiguous or contradictory—within a fictional story set in modern Poland." (The Wikipedia) The first film on the first commandment was excellent so I'm looking forward to the films to come. In addition to this we've found a film series that will be held at UMMA called Dekalog po Dekalogu: the Decalogue after the Decalogue. It is somehow related to or a reinterpretation of the original Dekalog project. I don't know if this will be good. I'll go to the first session and see how it goes.

Other books:

I want to revisit The Beginning of Wisdom at some point, the in-depth commentary on Genesis written by Leon Kass, but I need to be a person who likes to read a lot more than I currently read. The group that met at the Vineyard studied Genesis using this book last winter, but we stopped just before the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 12). It would be great if we could cover at least the next section of Genesis, maybe chapters 12-25. Yes, I know. I have had the book this whole time and I only studied one additional chapter, but it's just not as much fun doing this alone. I studied chapter 12 and didn't have anyone to talk about it with, so I felt unmotivated to continue. the excuses...

Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art and Culture by Makoto Fujimura is such a beautiful book. Every chapter has something beautiful to say about art and faith. I'm slowly working my way through the chapters.

I'd like to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, because I think it would be hilarious, but then I keep thinking there are so many serious books that I should be reading. I should be spending my reading time on more respectable pursuits. There are reports that a film is in the works. Clearly, I need to read the book in preparation for the film. Natalie Portman will star in and produce “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” a film that is based on the bestselling book written by Seth Grahame-Smith and Austen. Lionsgate will finance and distribute. (Variety)

Here's the first few lines of the book. It's just like Pride and Prejudice, but there are zombies.

The books that I buy at airports because I love making impulse literary purchases at airports but then I never actually read more than a chapter or two of them:

The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis: I do want to read this, it just seems to require my brains, which I seem to have lost in the most recent zombie attack at Windemere Park.

I had been thinking about the idea of the weight of glory for awhile and thought maybe C.S. Lewis had something to say about it because it's the title of the book. I also remember the passage from Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis: "The Hebrew word for glory here is kavod, which means weight or significance. The whole earth is full of the weight and significance of who God is. The prophets were deeply influenced by this understanding that the earth is drenched with the presence of God." (p. 78) I always think kavod when people start talking about glory. And I think I felt this in a very real way at a worship event a few months ago when I felt this profound weight all over me when we were singing Glory in the Highest.

The Inferno by Dante Alighieri: I read this in college. I was going to attempt to re-read this but I lost interest or got too busy or was haunted by memories of my UofM Dante class. I had a wonderful professor. She was extremely smart, but also really mean. She graded one of my papers once and she looked at me like I was an idiot as she handed the paper back to me and said something not nice that I can't quite recall at the moment. I think I referenced something from another history class I had at the time that seemed to relate and the class was taught by her husband (not that I said anything about the husband part in the paper)....anyway, she looked at me like I made it all up, like I was nuts. And I got like a C or something. The paper was all marked up in red and she criticized almost all of my prepositions. I was convinced I knew nothing about English prepositions or Dante or how to take a interdisciplinary approach to college. I survived the class, but only because graduate students and zombies did most of the grading.

Books I will never read:

Twilight. I will not read the books or watch the films. I cannot wait for the fad to be over. How good can a love story be with a blood sucking vampire? Ridiculousness. Now a love story with a zombie? That's clearly on another level.