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12. The Voice of Luke: Not Even Sandals by Brian McLaren

This book is part of a larger project called The Voice, a collaboration of Christian scholars, pastors, writers, musicians, poets, and other artists. It is basically the gospel of Luke, retold in a smooth narrative, with cultural commentary. My friend Jeff loaned it to me, and he said, “I know it’s just Luke, but I think reading it made me more liberal. Jesus is obsessed with the poor and oppressed.” McLaren (*loves*) did a great job of drawing out Luke’s fascination and concern with oppressed peoples and their liberation that Jesus came to bring.

13. Insecure at Last: Losing it in our Security Obsessed World by Eve Ensler

“All this striving for security has in fact made you much more insecure. Because now you have to watch out all the time.”

“Is it possible to live surrendering to the reality of insecurity, embracing it, allowing it to open us and transform us and be our teacher?”

“I am proposing that we reconceive the dream. That we consider what would happen is security were not the point of our existence. That we find freedom, aliveness, and power not from what contains, locates, or protects us but from what dissolves, reveals, and expands us.”

“My need to analyze, interpret, even create art out of these war atrocities stemmed from my real inability to be with people, to be with their suffering, to listen, to feel, to be lost in the mess.”

“I could not sit there icy and objective, absorbing. I had to be present. I had to be in dialogue. I had to be insecure. I could no longer protect myself, stand outside the stories I was hearing. I had to allow myself to feel the sadness, torture, fear, loss, and particularly the courage and strength of the women I was meeting. War was not natural.”

“I looked around and I realized a lot of us were crying, sweating, melting. In that moment I loved these Bosnians completely…I loved that they had survived and their hearts were intact and their kindness was so deeply present even now after everything…And in the center of this…I found an odd, perfect strength. It is the strength that comes from surrender, from dissolving.”

She is an amazing writer. I don’t know why this surprised me. I just wanted to quote the whole book. She refers to a lot of her experiences as her undoing and her release. Her experiences taught her how to be in community. “My experience has led me to believe that only by wholly entering, wholly feeling, wholly inhabiting other people and experiences, are we brought to any happiness and security.”

“We have all been wrongly manipulated, misguided to believe we are longing for security, when really it is kindness we are after.”

14. Dear Diary by Lesley Arfin

This was a quick read. She tracked her diary from adolescence to the age of 25, commented on it, and looked significant people from her past up and interviewed them. A lot of it had to do with sex and drugs and father issues, but it was mostly about the horrors of being a teenage girl. It’s also hilarious and full of hope. I think every parent of teens should read it. It would scare the shit out of them, but it would also put those minor rebellions that seem so incredibly annoying into perspective.

15. This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women, edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman

This is a collection of essays written by various people – some well-known, some not – who took the time to write down, in a couple hundred words, the credo that guides their lives. As a response, I tried to do the same. I haven’t narrowed it down yet. I suppose now I’ll have to include something about an appreciation for details, because it is loooonnnng. So I’ll have to get back to you on that one. In the mean time, I can say that reading this book at this time was not an accident – just reading the essays was very healing to me. The chapters flowed into each other perfectly (e.g., the chapter about appreciating those who came before was followed directly by and essay written by a member of the Creek nation, the part of my heritage that I most closely relate to). I loved the whole book.

Isabel Allende – “I still lust for life, I am still ferociously independent, I still crave justice, and I fall madly in love easily.”

Leonard Bernstein – “..one human being who meets with injustice can render invalid the entire system which has dispensed it.”

Albert Einstein – “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious – the knowledge of the existence of something unfathomable to us, the manifestation of the most profound reason coupled with the most brilliant beauty.”

Jane Hamill – “I consider myself a feminist, and I feel like a moron admitting it, but it’s true: I believe in Barbie.”

Oscar Hammerstein II (from the 1950s version of the book) – “It is a modern tragedy that despair has so many spokesmen, and hope so few.”

Deidre Sullivan – “The most human, powerful, and humbling thing I’ve ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.”

www.thisibelieve.org – If you don’t have access to the book, and you want to just read a few stories, there are so many just on this website. You can search by theme, by person, etc. I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read some and taking a small while to write your own.

16. How the Water Feels to the Fishes by Dave Eggers

These are the shortest stories I’ve ever seen in a short story collection. Some of them were no more than five sentences long. But I enjoyed them. They were just snapshots of people; it was like reading a picture album. My favorites were Old Enough, The Horror, On Making Him a Good Man by Calling Him a Good Man, and How the Air Feels to the Birds (my most favorite of all).

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