books

Book List 2013

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The tally:

5 fiction
1 biography
3 theology/Christian life
6 nonfiction (mostly education/parenting related)
15 total

This year I also did a lot of reference reading in garden books and commentaries on Luke and Acts (part of a Bible study).

Persuasion (Jane Austen)
Phantastes (George MacDonald)
The Hurried Child (David Elkind)
Desperate (Sarah Mae & Sally Clarkson)
Lillian’s Story (Lillian Kristensen & Jessie Chapin)
Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (Anthony Esolen)
Casti Connubii: Encyclical on Christian Marriage (Pope Pius XI)
Boys  Adrift (Leonard Sax)
The Well-Trained Mind (Susan Wise-Bauer & Jessie Wise)
The Kalahari Typewriter School for Men (Alexander McCall Smith)
The Wanderings of Odysseus (Rosemary Sutcliff)
Why Gender Matters (Leonard Sax)
The Well-Educated Mind (Susan Wise Bauer)
The Ministry of Motherhood (Sally Clarkson)
A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L’Engle)
In progress: Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
Most influential: Les Miserables, though I haven’t finished it yet! (Around 700 pages in.) This for a combination of style, story and substance – it’s a classic for a reason. It’s fiction, it’s history, but also theology. The life of the Bishop of Digne alone is a weighty challenge to embody Christ’s love in the world. 
On the wish list for this year…
Jane Austen – either Emma or Northanger Abbey
More fiction! Any suggestions?
~lg
Christmas/joy

In defense of feasting

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O holy, riotous joy that wakes with Christmas morn, the blazing sun of a world made new, the Word made flesh! All of this waiting rewarded with the cry of a babe, the shout of the heavenly armies, the farmers turned heralds and drudges turned dancers! 

Strike up the band, strike the matches and light up the world with leagues of torches, and bring one yourself, come quickly and run! Christ is born – tell the folk of the village! The Light of the World has come!
O for a thousand tongues to sing this joy, a thousand bells to ring this birth announcement, a thousand jigs and reels to play our winged feet to the manger! 
Prepare the feast and break the fast! Empty the pantry and fill up the tables! The hunger is over, the famine banished, and now to revel in the lavish spread prepared! 
Let heaven and nature sing, all creatures great and small, let everything with breath bring praise,  and crown Him Lord of all! 
~lg
hard things

Wilderness walker

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In the wilderness, the pillar, the cloud.

In the wilderness, the mount of revelation.
In the wilderness, the daily bread.
In the wilderness, the covenant.
Not by chance, not even our choice, but His choosing.
The only path to glory that we know is through the nail holes. The only way to life through the birth canal.  
The road from Jericho to Jerusalem is filled with bandits and thieves, but we may yet meet our Saviour, not in the holy robes but in the outcast’s embrace, or perhaps even in the bloodied man himself.
Our God, He is a wilderness walker, a burning bush talker. He draws a crossroads in the sand, and we can choose –
Do we walk with Him?

~lg
Advent

These Advent days

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We live between His comings, lighting our candles, thankful for the fire given, longing for a day when darkness is dispelled finally.

Day and night repeat their arms-length dance, and we try to keep in step, keep in rhythm with the moments given, the tasks at hand, the rising and setting of heavenly lights.

We look for flickers of peace, flashes of joy, smiling across the table in the hopeful glow, knowing that love is a strike anywhere match, and we must keep igniting in the dark or else perish.

We look and long and live and love, and this is the light of these Advent days.

~lg