Book List 2009

Here it is, a list of the books I got around to reading in 2009:

The Shack – William Paul Young
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. IV
A Tangled Web – L.M. Montgomery
Heaven’s Calling – Leanne Payne
Listening Prayer – Leanne Payne
The Book of Negroes – Lawrence Hill
Speak – Laurie Halse Anderson
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. V
The Scarlet Thread – Francine Rivers
Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings – Mary Henley Rubio
The Practice of the Presence of God – Brother Lawrence
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins
Mrs. Mike – Benedict & Nancy Freedman
Evangeline – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Secret Garden* – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Late Nights on Air – Elizabeth Hay
After Many Days – L.M. Montgomery
No Great Mischief – Alistair Macleod
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
Her Fearful Symmetry – Audrey Niffenegger
Surprised by Hope – N.T. Wright
A Highland Christmas – M.C. Beaton
Anne of Green Gables* – L.M. Montgomery
Advent Readings from Iona

* books I re-read for fun

25 in all. Of course, there were many others I started and never finished, or have started and mean to finish in 2010! I tried to read more fiction this year, simply because I haven’t read it in a long time. My theology count is a little low (recovery from MTS mode?), but there are many theological books I’ve skipped around in. Maybe I’ll make a theological hopscotch list later.

~lg

kyrie eleison

I prayed, Lord have mercy.

And mercy came in common ways.

It came in a brand new pair of binoculars, opened before Christmas and remembered for the trip. It came in the winter stillness of tiny Ajax Forest Park. It came in tracking a grey squirrel to its nest. It came in the discovery of a white breasted nuthatch, high in a tree. It came in hearing “Bring a Torch Jeanette Isabella” by the UBC Singers on CBC radio.

It came in a well-worn hymnbook, and in the soaring harmonies of “O Holy Night.” It came in half an hour’s pleasant conversation with family. It came in a gentle snowfall on the first day of the year. It came in a plain white envelope, in a perfect pot of gravy, in the dark mesmerizing fury of a winter storm.

God moves in merciful ways, half hidden in the snow, but nonetheless accessible to listening ears, open eyes. His ways are higher. Yet he leaves a trail through the park for us to follow, graceful footprints in the snow.

~lg

Sing Till Sundown

~Eileen Spinelli

Sing till sundown, hum your joy
dress in starlight, girl and boy.
Man and woman climb the hill,
warmed beyond December’s chill,
reeling, clapping, touch the air,
is that fragrant music there?
Come the glory, gone the gloom:
in a wondrous huddled room.
Christ the Word we’ve longed to know
calls us dancing through the snow.

Gladness deepens into grace,
weaves its light on every face.
Let us wake the sleeping earth,
celebrate the sweetest birth,
pierce the night with festive cry,
bloom in colours of the sky.
Bring the flute, the tambourine,
wave the branch of evergreen.
Lost we were a grief ago,
now we’re dancing through the snow.

~