In the days before we adopted our son I asked those of you book-loving parents to chime in with your reading tips.  I was particularly interested in how you find time to read with the (wonderful) addition of children.  You had some great suggestions and as we near the seven month mark as parents I’m happy to report that books continue to be read in the Swanson home.  Some of these books represent a genre previously unrepresented on our bookshelves: kids books of all kinds and sizes.  And while some of you might appreciate Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!, here are a few recent reads more suited to adult tastes.

Maggie brought home Marilynne Robinson’s most recent novel, Home, for me a couple weeks back.  Home is loosely intertwined with Robinson’s previous novel (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Gilead, though each work can easily stand alone.  It’s a testimony to the author that backwater towns, old preachers, downtrodden families, and the occasional theological reflection are turned into such captivating and humane stories.  I’ll reread both Gilead and Home one day and discover all sorts of treasure missed the first time.  (As an aside, a good friend whose taste in books I trust, gave Gilead a try and didn’t make it even halfway.  A reminder that all suggestions are subjective.)

I was sent a copy of Barbara Ehrenriech’s latest non-fiction, a book with a bright yellow cover and long name: Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promostion of Positive Thinking Has Underminded America.  Ehrenriech is probably best known for her 2002 book about America’s working poor: Nickel and Dimed.  I’ve written a full review of Bright-Sided to be published elsewhere, but I’ll say that this book surprised me.  The author does a fantastic job showing how prevalent the positive thinking movement is in America.  You can probably tell from the title that she doesn’t think this bodes well for our country.  After reading this book I’d agree and, as a Christian, also lament the impact the  movement has had on many individual churches and the collective Christian witness.

I’m also dipping into a collection of essays by Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonders, written in the days following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.  I’m most impressed by the author’s ability to ask big questions and make long observation at a time when most had a hard time seeing the forest for the trees.

I heard professor Charles Marsh speak movingly about Dr Martin Luther King’s understanding of “beloved community” a couple of years ago and have his book, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice from the Civil Rights Movement to Today, on my night stand.

Finally, I’ve mentioned Welcoming the Stranger a few times on this blog.  Rather than write a standard review of a book I hope many of you might read, I’ve emailed a few questions to one of the authors that I’ll post on the blog.  Stay tuned.

How about you?  Any noteworthy books on your night stand?

Where do you go to buy your music?  OK, that question assumes a few things.  A) You buy rather than steal (or whatever the appropriate euphemism is) your music.  B) You remain interested enough in new music to purchase the occasional album.  C) You’re old-school enough to buy a non-digitally downloaded album now and then, the kind you must actually unwrap from it’s almost impenetrable plastic wrapping.

Original photo from hydeparkrecords.net.

Our new home is located dangerously close to Hyde Park Records, a small storefront that smells of old records.  I’ve poked my head in the shop a few times since we moved and on Tuesday made my first purchase, The Low Anthem’s Oh My God, Charlie Darwin.*  They didn’t have the album last week but gladly ordered it.  There was something oddly satisfying about the delayed gratification, knowing the eventual purchase went to the shop around the corner.

I know the siren call of Amazon’s cheap music, so I’ll not get preachy about the merits of shopping locally.  I’m also well aware that there are few independent music stores (and books stores and…) left so I’m delighted that we have Hyde Park Records as an option.

Do you have a favorite record store?  Book store?  Would you shop local if you had the chance?

Should you ever visit Hyde Park, it will be my pleasure to introduce you to our record store.  It may not be as cheap or efficient as iTunes, but I bet you’ll find an album or two that will remind you why the local record shop is worth keeping around.

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*I Reviewed this album earlier this week over at rednoW.com.

A week ago Sunday we had our second training event for the New Community Bronzeville Launch Team.  This is the team of people who have come together to pray and work for the launch of our new church in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood.  It’s amazing and encouraging to look at these photos and realize the individuals and families who have come together to form this team.

Click through to see all six photos (even more can be found here), though you’ll have to agree that the last one is the best.  Thanks to Tony of Gavan Creative for these excellent shots.

Our next event is on Sunday evening, 12/13 and will be focused on inviting our friends and family who are spiritually seeking and/or disconnected from a church.  Want to join us?

My most recent post for Out of Ur went up yesterday.  The audience on that blog tends to be those with an interest in or experience with church ministry.  Frankly, I’m not sure most of the readers here at Signs of Life would find the content all that intriguing, but it’s certainly a blog I appreciate watching and learning from.

My latest post is a bit of a rant about my fatigue with the amount of time spent over the past few years debating the merits or pitfalls of multi-site models of church.  Believe me, if you’re unaware of this conversation you’re not missing much.  I’ve become frustrated with this conversation because 1) it’s not all that relevant to the majority of folks in ministry and 2) it can distract from the legitimate and unique challenges faced by churches, challenges that demand solid theological thinking and creative responses within their local context.

So what could we be talking about instead of multi-site models of church?

I can think of a few things I’d prefer that we were talking about. How about articulating a theology that addresses the plight of millions of uninsured Americans? What about expressing the intrinsic worth of the undocumented immigrants who live in the shadows of our multi-site churches but never enter to see our impressive hi-def video preachers. What about a global conversation about ways the Majority World can influence evangelism in our increasingly post-Christian nation? One day someone will look back at our movement in the early 2000s and judge our priorities. I doubt they will find our current infatuation with sites and venues will all that important.

The entire post can be read at Out of Ur.

I prefer to stay away from the arguments that so often characterize  blog-world; don’t we get enough of that in real life?  However, on occasion there are disagreements of substance worth pointing out, ones that have the capacity to teach.

Yesterday Dr Soong-Chan Rah (whose book and blog I’ve recommended before) wrote about a new book by Mike Foster and Jud Wilhite, Deadly Viper Character Assassins: A Kung Fu Survival Guide for Life and Leadership, whose cover and promotional materials he finds offensive.

So the “Kung Fu” part got my attention, as well as the dragon on the cover and the Chinese characters. I guess I was hoping against hope that it was the story of an Asian-American Christian rather than another example of Asian culture being pimped out to sell products.

In a more recent post Dr Rah shares his email exchange with one of the authors.  There’s no need to recap that dialogue here but it does raise an observation.  Rather than defend themselves to Dr Rah and other Asian Americans who’ve taken issue with their use of stereotype and characture, couldn’t the authors listen to the concerns, frustration, and anger that is being expressed?  One friend put it this way on Facebook,

Why do these authors (both are white) feel the need to use a bizarre amalgam of Asian cultures as a means to sell more books? Do they realize how many people (myself included) have been mocked and ridiculed by very similar caricatures and stereotypes that make up the premise of this book?

There are moments like this one when those of us who are white have the chance to learn something about the experience and perspective of those who haven’t shared our privilege.  I probably miss most of those chances because of my defensive instinct, but during those times when my mouth has stayed shut there has always been much to learn.  It would be a pleasant surprise if this turned out to be one of those moments for these authors and some of their readers.

Keep an eye on Dr Rah’s blog for more updates as this story develops.

One final thought.  Stories like these are poignant reminders to those of us committed to the reconciling implications of the Gospel of how gritty the work can be.  How grateful we are that with God all things are possible.

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Update, 11/5

Since first posting this a few days ago there has been a lot of conversation online and, apparently, in person.  This morning Dr Rah posted a nice summary of what sounds to have been a very productive phone conversation between the book’s authors and a few Asian American Christian leaders.  After some initial missteps it appears as though this thing is moving in a redemptive direction.

I’m hoping that a friend will be posting some of his reflections about this here on the blog within the next day or so.  Check back soon.

How can a song be so beautiful and utterly sad?  Such is the case, in my opinion, with Charlie Darwin by The Low Anthem.   Here’s the new video; the lyrics are below.

Charlie Darwin by The Low Anthem

Set the sails I feel the winds a’stirring
Toward the bright horizon set the way
Cast your wreckless dreams upon our Mayflower
Haven from the world and her decay

And who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
Fighting for a system built to fail
Spooning water from their broken vessels
As far as I can see there is no land

Oh my god, the water’s all around us
Oh my god, it’s all around

And who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
The lords of war just profit from decay
And trade their children’s promise for the jingle
The way we trade our hard earned time for pay

Oh my god, the water’s cold and shapeless
Oh my god, it’s all around
Oh my god, life is cold and formless
Oh my god, it’s all around

Last week I drove out to some friends’ vacation home for a few days of study, reflection and prayer.  It was a restful and productive time despite missing Maggie and Eliot.  The number of films I’ve seen this year has dropped off since we welcomed Eliot in April so during this time away I enjoyed watching three excellent films that had been on my “to see” list.

I don’t have time to write much about any of these films- Goodbye Solo, The Band’s Visit, and The Visitor- but I wanted to point them out to this blog’s readers.  Have you seen any of these?

The Band’s Visit is the most humorous of the three and tells the story of an Egyptian police band’s unplanned encounter with the residents of a small Israeli settlement.  The director, Eran Kolirin, explores the nature of relationships between those who are not meant to like each other.  While the setting and characters could have bordered on cliche (Israelis and Egyptians!  Jews and Muslims!), these elements are downplayed in favor of intimate moments both awkward and tender.

Both Goodbye Solo and The Visitor (the film you’ve most likely heard of because of Richard Jenkin’s Oscar nomination last year) observe America’s constantly changing cultural landscape.  In both stories we see the awe and dread of the immigrant experience.  In contrast, these films also include the experiences of men whose mundane and borderline hopeless lives are disrupted by their newly immigrated neighbors.  These stories also avoid the easy cliche and, in both cases, leave the viewer wondering what might happen to these characters in the future.

Perhaps one of these will satisfy your weekend DVD rental needs.  Any other recent overlooked films we should know about?

I really enjoyed The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan when I read it last year and now Maggie is reading that very enlightening and entirely entertaining book.  A couple of days ago I saw that Pollan had solicited people’s food rules, or “personal food policies.”  Pollan’s request, made via the New York Times, stems from our cultural obsession and confusion with what we should eat.  As he points out, this is a rather recent dilemma and one with a solution perhaps based more in culture than science.

How did humans manage to choose foods and stay healthy before there were nutrition experts and food pyramids or breakfast cereals promising to improve your child’s focus or restaurant portions bigger than your head? We relied on culture, which is another way of saying: on the accumulated wisdom of the tribe. (Which is itself another way of saying: on your mom and your friends.) All of us carry around rules of thumb about eating that have been passed down in our families or plucked from the cultural conversation. Think of this body of food knowledge as samizdat nutrition: an informal, unsanctioned way of negotiating our eating lives that becomes indispensable at a time when official modes of talking about food have suffered a serious loss of credibility.

From the more than 2,500 responses he received, Pollan selected his favorite 20 which were then whimsically illustrated by Roger Kent.  Here are two of my favorites.  The first I adhere to quite religiously; the second… not so much.

Be sure to read the original article and then check out all 20 of the personal food rules.

On a slightly related note…

The anxiety about what to eat is downright depressing when we consider the reality of “food deserts” in many of our urban centers.  I’m no expert on this subject, but I’ve often wondered about the connection between the over-abundance of highly processed and heavily subsidized foods and the lack of healthy options for those on the lower end of the economic ladder.  Food as commodity will be found among those with the capacity to buy the most of it; a sad reality that makes the apples purchased from the Bronzeville Community Market taste that much sweeter.

You’ve likely seen this already.  Last week the folks at Marist Poll released their list of the most annoying phrases.  There were five choices respondents could choose from:

• “at the end of the day”
• “it is what it is”
• “you know”
• “whatever”
• “anyway”

If my wife represented the average respondent, than the phrase “it is what it is” would have ranked as the most reviled of phrases.  (Seriously, if you ever want to provoke an audible sigh and possible eye roll from Maggie, just drop the vaguely fatalistic “it is what it is” in conversation with her.)  I’m probably most guilty of the second most annoying phrase, “you know”.  It’s a handy phrase to gauge whether a conversation partner is following a train of thought.  You know?

And the most annoying phrase?  47% of respondents agreed that “whatever” should immediately be dropped from our collective vocabulary.  While I agree and would prefer never again to hear this sarcastic phrase in conversation, what can we actually do about it?  After all, it is what it is.

This morning I finished the very excellent book by Matthew Soerens and Jenny Hwang, Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion, and Truth in the Immigration Debate. I’ll post a more thorough review later, but the following paragraph in the second to last chapter caught my eye and is worth sharing here.

Indeed, there does seem to be a disconnect between the pulpit and the pews on the immigration question: while many prominent evangelicals have endorsed a more generous immigration policy, and very few have vocally opposed such a policy, an April 2006 study found that 63 percent of white evangelicals see immigrants as a threat to U.S. customs and values, and 64 percent consider immigrants a burden on society- higher percentages than any other group surveyed, whether religious or secular.

The study they reference, “Attitudes Toward Immigration: In the Pulpit and the Pew”, comes from the Pew Research Center.  Here are two summary tables from the study that fill in some of the details.  Click the image for a larger view.

What do you make of these numbers?  I’m curious how those of us who fall within the “white evangelical protestant” category might explain our pessimistic view of recent immigrants.  This study reminds me of another recent Pew study regarding how religion impacts a person’s view of torture.  This study found that white evangelicals more than any other group thought the use of torture could be justified.

What is it about us white evangelical folk that leads to such views?  In my more cynical moments I think we have been spiritually formed less by the Bible, Christian tradition, and the Holy Spirit than by a certain political ideology.

The Pew immigration study does conclude with one sign of life.  “[W]ithin each of the three largest religious groups in the U.S., the most religiously committed Americans tend to hold views that are more favorable toward immigrants.”  It appears that those most closely associated with their faith tradition are more likely to form beliefs and perspectives that counter the prevailing opinion.  The faith of these folks actually appears to make a difference in how they think and act.  Now there’s a novel thought!

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