Archive | books RSS feed for this section

In which “Jesus Feminist” has an official cover!

May 15, 2013

This is it! The official, real, final, yes-that-is-my-name-on-there, someone-please-pinch-me cover for Jesus Feminist!

What do you think, friends??

Also, if you missed it last week, I let it slip on Facebook and Twitter that I received my first “official” endorsement.

“I love writers who are insightful enough to be cynical but choose not to be. I love books that help me see things I’d never noticed before—in life, in myself, in others, in the Bible, in Jesus. I love writing that makes reading enjoyable and easy, because I know how hard it is to write that way. For these reasons and more, I love Jesus Feminist. It’s not ‘just a woman’s book.’ In fact, it’s the kind of book that will help both women and men see how unhelpful that distinction is.”

– Brian D. McLaren, author, speaker, activist

I’m beyond honoured that my dear friend, Rachel Held Evans, has written the Foreword for the book. Someone once told me they think of Rachel as the logical and rational teacher Jesus feminist, and I’m the soft squishy mama-heart Jesus Feminist – and so together we complement each other nicely (<insert joke about how we make wonderful complementarians>) in these discussions. I wrote a post about R achel when her own wonderful book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, came out last fall if you would like to understand why Rachel’s Foreword – and friendship – means so much to me.

My husband always makes fun of the guy celebrating and dancing in the end zone for football after a touchdown. He says, “Act like you’ve been there before, buddy, and act like you’ll be there again.”

I want to play it cool, I do.

But you know what? I haven’t ever been here before and I don’t know if I’ll be here again and so I’m just going to let myself be happy and dorky about the fact that my name is on the cover of a book and I wrote that book and I love that book so much and I’m excited about people actually reading it. So there may be more flailing freak-outs along the way, avert your eyes if you must.

P.S. Preorder info is here.

Read full story · books, Jesus Feminist, writing · Comments { 73 }

In which I share my favourite books for Jesus Feminists

May 8, 2013

I often hear from men and women who are struggling with their traditional teachings on women in the Church, callings, vocation, and particularly the complementarian view of marriage. I don’t engage in debates online anymore because, well, they are exhausting and usually unhelpful plus it’s pretty time-consuming. But many people are genuinely searching because their marriage or their experience or their reading of Scripture does not line up with the narrow and tiny box they’ve been offered in their tradition, particularly when it comes to these issues. So they are searching.

Often our heart (or I would even argue, the Holy Spirit) leads us with our questions and our struggles, and then, as the proverb says, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. My teachers are often hidden in the pages of books.

I did a tremendous amount of research for Jesus Feminist – which means I read a rainforest’s worth of books. Some of the books were good, some of them were not. Some of them were supporting my position, some of them thought my position made me a heretic and disqualified me from “true” womanhood and delivered me to the flames of eternal conscious punishment. I read feminist books from people who hate Christians, and I read books from Christians who hate feminists. And I read a lot of blogs and websites and I underlined and dog-eared pages and scribbled notes until my kitchen table resembled something out of that movie A Beautiful Mind.

Every word of Jesus Feminist has purposeful thought and intention behind it but, as is my habit here, I often work through theology with story or prose, as an invitation and conversation, instead of in a traditional scholarly fashion. (There are other works which inform my underlying theology ranging from N.T. Wright to Walter Brueggemann, Jurgen Moltmann to Eugene Peterson to Stanley Haurwas, and probably a bit too much Barth for some of you, but I didn’t include those works as they are more foundational to me, and less focussed specifically on this issue.) I also have not included online websites and resources here but hope to gather those up for you soon, as well.

So here are my top books for becoming a Jesus Feminist. These books are a mix of story-telling, journalism, theology, and academics. (P.S. They are in alphabetical order because a ranking was impossible for me.)

A Woman Called: Piecing Together the Ministry Puzzle by Sara Gaston Barton (Leafwood Publishers: 2012.)

A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master” by Rachel Held Evans (Thomas Nelson: 2012.)

Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender: Why Both Sides Are Wrong – and Right by John G. Stackhouse Jr. (Baker Academic: 2005.)

Half the Church: Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women by Carolyn Custis James (Zondervan: 2010.)

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Vintage: 2010.)

How I Changed My Mind about Women in Leadership: Compelling Stories from Prominent Evangelicals edited by Alan F. Johnson (featuring essays from Stuart and Jill Briscoe, John Ortberg, Tony Campolo, Bill and Lynne Hybels, and many others) (Zondervan: 2010.)

The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight. (Zondervan: 2008.)

Junia Is Not Alone by Scot McKnight (Patheos Press: 2012.)

Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Gospel & Our Culture) by Darrell L. Guder, Editor. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: 1998.)

Theology for the Community of God by Stanley J. Grenz (Wm. B. Eerdmans: 2000.)

Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (American Society of Missiology) by David Jacobus Bosch (Orbis Books: 2011.)

Why Not Women : A Biblical Study of Women in Missions, Ministry, and Leadership by Loren Cunningham and David Joel Hamilton with Janice Rogers (YWAM Publishing: 2000.)

Women in the Church: A Biblical Theology of Women in Ministry by Dr. Stanley J. Grenz with Denise Muir Kjesbo (IVP Academic: 1995.)

Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis by William J. Webb (Intervarsity Press: 2001.)

Lastly, my heart and thinking is always rooted in Scripture, and so, of course, the Bible.

And in a bit more book news, I should have the final official cover ready to announce soon! I’m excited to share it with you. (The one online is just a place-holder draft.) November feels really far away because I can’t wait to give this book to you. It feels very precious and sacred to me right now. You can find info about preordering – and my first “official” endorsement! – here.

P.S. My full reading lists are here.

image source, Creative Commons

Read full story · 10 Books A Day For a Week, books, faith, Jesus Feminist · Comments { 28 }

In which it is beautiful (a bit of poetry + a giveaway)

April 25, 2013

Out of Nothing

The ruts in our gravel road
weren’t there from the start.
When first laid, the road
was long, flat, and straight,
a mixture of awkward
and often sharp river rock
at the base, with finer pebbles
on top, to even out the surface.

But little stones yield easily
to the tires of trucks and cars.
They spray onto the weedy edges
and thread their way between
stray spears of roadside grass —
leaving a furrowed wake
to mark the frequent passage
of our wheels.

As I drove down it again today,
my tires slipping into these tracks,
it struck me that my mind
operates in the same way —
my thoughts incline along
a certain route, and with time
and repetition, grind out grooves
that direct my mental course.

And what if, little by little,
I have wired my neural paths
to join the well-worn causeway
of a belief that is really a lie?
I see the self-delusions of others
all around me — common as the grit
of our road, seeping in the cracks
between the bulkier stones —

yet it’s much harder
to name them in my own psyche.
Sometimes it takes a collision
of my habitual patterns of thought
with the solid wall of what really is —
to curb my harebrained trailblazing
through the wasteland
of what isn’t.

I hit this wall recently,
and faced a lie my mind had made —
only it wasn’t like a grain of sand
to be dusted off my feet at the door.
It was a deep channel through which
all my mental circuitry flowed,
diverted from a former panoply
of paths.

What a variety of ways exist
to unravel yarn caught in a knot!
But I’d come to trust in the quick fix:
just buy a new skein.
An efficient form of problem-solving,
to purchase a solution —
ready to apply to my predicament,
ready to make me happy again.

I’d look at any hindrance
and imagine how money could step in
and collar it, bludgeon it into silence.
I’d survey all my wants and wounds,
and conclude that money, like a salve,
could remedy them all —
filling every hole —
down to the smallest pock.

It may be correct
that money greases hinges —
and who doesn’t want all doors
to open without protest?
But there are times when it seems
as if the doors ahead are stuck fast,
and there’s not a dime in sight
to help pry them wide.

That’s when, at last,
I see it for the lie that it is.
I still have to get from here to there —
but not through that door,
nor by those ruts in the road.
I feel my brain stretch and flex:
I will park the car
and walk into the woods,

let the path of my thoughts
splinter down unused trails
marked by sweat and ingenuity;
I’ll take up the sacrament of elbow grease,
and I’ll pray —
not to the god of mammon,
but to the one who likes to make
something out of nothing.

Sarah Dunning Park, 2013

Sarah Dunning Park is an artist and poet living in rural Virginia.

And her slim volume of poetry for mothers of small children was one of my favourite books of 2012. I like to read it when the tinies are in the bathtub, splashing, because she’s singing my life with her words. Each poem is makes me smile and cry, because sometimes it’s just so nice to have someone else say out loud the underwhelming and utterly normal and yet beautiful moments of this season of life. This book isn’t a wallow and it isn’t an ecstasy, it’s poetry about the beautiful realities and hard dreams of mothering.

Sarah wrote:

I love when a poem reaches in and grabs my life by the throat, and says, “Pay attention! There’s this thing in your world, and it’s called beauty. You’re not even noticing!”

But I also dislike the complicated world of Poetry-with-a-capital-P: the kind you need a degree to appreciate or that seems like it’s just out to appall you.

Maybe you’re with me on this—and maybe, like me, you still want to find what’s poetic about your life and your kitchen sink filled with dirty dishes and old bread crusts.

To be entered to win your own copy of What It Is Is Beautiful: Honest Poems for Mothers of Small Children by Sarah Dunning Park, just leave a comment on this post sharing your own favourite poet or poem (along with an email address in case you win).

image source

Read full story · book review, books, giveaway, poetry · Comments { 60 }

In which we invite you to a dinner party for Bread & Wine

April 7, 2013

Well, hi there! I’m in charge of the main dish for our little progressive virtual dinner party. We’re celebrating Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes the wonderful new book from Shauna Niequist.

I love Shauna’s writing. Love. And this book might be my favourite yet. I didn’t think she could top Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way but here we are. Each essay in Bread & Wine is sympathetic, wise, and witty. Like most good conversations around the table, it makes sense to talk about everything from shame to work, community to faith, birth and grieving, and all points between.

Her words about the female shame connected to hunger were nothing short of revelatory. Giving others the freedom and permission to say, as a woman, I’m hungry! is a a gift, particularly to those of us still untangling a few lies in that area.

Food-wise, I have a weakness: Cheese. (I’m as bad as Wallace from Wallace & Gromit.) As I read through all of the recipes at the end of each chapter of Shauna’s beautifully written book, I dog-eared the recipes with cheese.

And so, of course, for our little party here, I volunteered to make Annette’s Enchiladas. The ingredients reminded me of enchiladas verde from my days in south Texas but of the comfort-food eating variety. And I love comfort food almost as much as I love (and miss) Tex-Mex. (All I need now is for someone to teach this long-deprived Canadian woman how to make margaritas like Paloma Blanca in San Antonio.)

However, I hit my first snag early in the process: green enchilada sauce. As in, I could not find green enchilada sauce for love or money. I dragged all three tinies to nearly every grocery store in this city and I could only find a dusty can of mild red sauce on a bottom shelf at a dodgy Safeway. I gave up in despair. But Brian would not be deterred (of course not: enchiladas were on the line) and he drove to the United States to buy green enchilada sauce. He even got the right brand.

Clearly, Brian was also excited about Annette’s Enchiladas.

Annette’s Enchiladas is more of a lasagna-style layered dish. So maybe not authentic but hey, cheese! I’m easily consoled. Shauna mentions in this chapter that she had these enchiladas after the births of her boys, and she distincly remembers standing over the stove, destroying an entire pan.

The woman is not lying.

This enchilada dish looks like a hot mess but, trust me, it is a delicious hot mess. I took a few pictures but I won’t include them because this is a dish to be admired while you are chowing, it does not sit pretty on a plate. This is a straight out of the pan satisfier. (The difference maker is the fresh cilantro scattered on the top.)

And here is the real sign of a delicious meal: I ate all of the left-overs. (I never eat left-overs. It’s one of Brian’s biggest pet peeves.)

And a quick thank you to my two kitchen sous-chefs, Joseph and Evelynn. My eldest was off at school for this little cooking session, so it was just Joe and Evelynn to witness me gobbling.

Annette’s Enchiladas

(recipe shared with permission)

1 cup sour cream

1 – 28 oz can of green enchilada sauce (Las Palmas is best)

2 – 4 oz cans of diced green chiles

3 cups cooked chicken, shredded or diced

2 cups Monterey Jack cheese, shredded

12 corn tortillas

1 cup chicken broth

cilantro

Instructions

Mix green sauce with chilies and sour cream.
Smooth 1 spoonful fo the sauce mixture around the bottom of a 9 by 13 pan.
simmer the chicken broth in a skillet, and before placing each tortilla in the 9 by 13 pan, use tongs to pass the tortillas through the broth for just a few seconds. If you leave the tortillas in the broth for too long, they’ll fall apart so just dip each one in for a few seconds to soften it before putting it in the enchilada pan.
Layer 4 tortillas over the first layer of sauce.
After tortillas, add half the chicken, then one-third of the sauce, then one-third of the cheese.
Repeat so there are 2 full layers.
Finish with a layer of 4 more tortillas, the remaining third of the sauce, and the remaining third of the cheese.
Bake at 350 degrees until warmed through and the cheese is melted, about 30-35 minutes.
Let sit at least 15 minutes before cutting. Top with chopped cilantro.

Be sure to taste each course of our virtually progressive dinner party.

Blog-hop to a new table for every course, meet new friends and pick up a delicious recipe from Shauna Niequist’s new book, Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes, at every stop. we’d like to send you home with the gift of Shauna’s words, so be sure to enter the giveaway at the end of the party!