My review of Marcus Goodyear’s book of poetry Barbies at Communion is published in the most recent edition of the Englewood Review of Books. An excerpt: What strikes the reader most about Marcus Goodyear’s poetry is the immediate action of the poetry. The action is simultaneous with the writng, as if Goodyear was dictating the [...]
My review of Richard O. Moore’s new book of poetry, Writing the Silences, is published in The Englewood Review of Books featured review section. Go check it out!
Like my post The Five Novels You Should Read, I want to share the poets that I think should be read, especially if you haven’t heard of them before. Wendell Berry: he’s well known as an essayist and novelist, but his poetry is brilliant and the foundation of the thoughts he puts down in prose. [...]
Last night I taught my freshman writing class how to write about poetry. The conversation was very brief, as it needed to be, so I wanted to get a wide variety of poetry for the class to read aloud and think about…and then write an in class essay on! As I was preparing the packet [...]
Chuck Colson wrote a very interesting piece on how Iraq is a very difficult place for Christians, yet no one has really stepped up to the plate to do anything about it.
Colson is wise enough to observe that without any direct intervention in the Christian minorities lives "a Christian community that survived invasions by the Persians, Muslims,
Mongols and Ottomans, might not survive the American liberation of
Iraq. They certainly will not survive our indifference."
Remember we are a kingdom, people! Apathy or indifference is typical of any nation bent on its own interests before a religious minority, but it is not the characteristic of one body, which is Christ.
My initial assumptions concerning Novena in Time of War: Soul-Searching Prayers & Meditations were that it would be a strictly pacifist book, a book that lead one to consider the horrors of war and pushed one into praying that war would cease.
Jim
Melchiorre’s thought provoking prayers and meditation do push you to consider the irrationality and awfulness of war, yet what Melchiorre does best is push his prayer-minded audience to consider the "other," which for most of those who pray through this book are Iraqis,
Afghanis, foreign soldiers, and "terrorists."
Melchiorre refuses to cave in to tribalism, and this is the defining theme that weaves itself through the nine sets of prayers and meditations (for those who do not know, a novena is a collection of nine prayers and devotions on a certain theme—it’s okay, I didn’t know either until I googled the term). Melchiorre pulls together the strands of thought and prayer on war, violence, patriotism, tribalism, hatred, the "other," in his final meditation, "Hating War, Not Warriors."
As I have grown into a strict pacifism over the past few years I believe I have hated the warrior as an instrument of war—like a missile or bomb. Melchiorre, as both a pacifist and a veteran, refuses to confuse warriors (here soldiers, freedom fighters, and "insurgents") with
weapons or war.
The final three parts of my five part review of Everything Must Change will deal more with the application of McLaren’s theories to our contemporary world and how McLaren’s thinking changes our Christian perspective of global crises by changing our interpretation from a modernist/capitalist/American narrative into a King Jesus/Kingdom of God narrative.
For McLaren, the security system is the foundation of the global system and framing story because it allows the other two systems: prosperity and equity, to develop and grow in "peace."
