by Robert Siegel---$13.00
The traveling Eighth Day bookstore heads to Waco, TX, for the Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture. Philosophers, physicians, scientists, and theologians such as Gilbert Mielaender, Paul Griffiths, and Jeff Levin will consider the complicated issues of public policy, the ethics of medical research, and the delivery of medical care in regard to the dignity of the human person. Attend the conference or just stop by and browse our book table.
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The movement of the train rocked me like a lullaby. I closed my eyes to the dusty countryside and imagined the sign I knew only from stories. The one just outside of town with big blue letters: MANIFEST: A TOWN WITH A RICH PAST AND A BRIGHT FUTURE. I thought about my daddy, Gideon Tucker. He does his best talking in stories, but in recent weeks, those had become few and far between. So on the occasion when he'd say to me, "Abilene, did I ever tell you 'bout the time...?" I'd get all quiet and listen real hard. Mostly he'd tell stories about Manifest, the town where he'd lived once upon a time. His words drew pictures of brightly painted storefronts and bustling townsfolk. Hearing Gideon tell about it was like sucking on butterscotch. Smooth and sweet. And when he'd go back to not saying much, I'd try recalling what it tasted like. Maybe that was how I found comfort just then, even with him being so far away. By remembering the flavor of his words.
HILL COUNTRY INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIANITY
Newman University's History Speaker Series hosts Joshua Greene --- speaker, filmmaker, and author of Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison. A scholar of topics ranging from the Holocaust to eastern religion, Greene met Harrison in London in 1969 at a recording studio and interacted with him for many years while both explored aspects of eastern religion. Green's talk at Newman will focus on Harrison and the 1960s. We'll be there to sell books.
(2010-11-03)
Spend over $100, save 10%.
Spend over $200, save 15%.
All orders over $50, FREE SHIPPING.
(And be advised, this sale also applies to Gift Certificates.)
Merry Christmas, Holy Theophany and Holy Epiphany.
Thank you for your patronage this year and in the one to come.
MARCH 19 through MARCH 28, GET 15% off ALL BOOKS.
The Sale's on, but almost over.
Enter the code LENT2011 at check-out. It's as simple as that.
Read our Lenten blog entries for suggestions or choose any book on our site. We firmly believe that any good reading is good Lenten practice.
(2011-03-16)
Enter the code LENT2011 at check-out. It's as simple as that.
Read our Lenten blog entries for suggestions or choose any book on our site. We firmly believe that any good reading is good Lenten practice.
(
15% off your entire order, plus FREE domestic Media shipping, with no minimum. No need to enter a promo code--just find some books and we'll take care of the math.
We're working hard to put the finishing touches on Catalog 22 (due out next month), and new book reviews are being added to our site regularly (look for the Eighth Day View tab). Here are a few worth thinking about (check out our homepage for more):
The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse by Gene Logsdon
Giver of Life: The Holy Spirit in Orthodox Tradition by John Oliver
Ten Way to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child by Anthony Esolen
Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto by Mark Helprin
And don't forgot to register on our website. We'll add you to our email list, and you'll be the first to hear about upcoming sales and events.
"As far as a theological interpretation of man is concerned," writes the Swedish theologian Gustaf Wingren, "it would be difficult to find anyone to surpass Irenaeus." A scholar of Martin Luther, Wingren points out that neither the New Testament nor Luther speaks directly enough about man to provide anything approaching a comprehensive anthropology. Irenaeus lived through the apex of Gnostic influence and was forced to craft the Church's anthropological position clearly, drawing from the Old and New Testaments for his doctrine of man. Wingren sticks to the central problem of theology as Irenaeus sees it: man and the becoming man, which is to say, man and the Incarnation. "From Life to Death" outlines the progress of man from his creation by God to his defeat by (and bondage to) the Devil. The second section, "Christ," is a portrait of the Son of God become man, the manifestation of man as he was created to be. "From Death to Life" returns to the subject of man in bondage but deals in the possibility of man's transformation. According to Irenaus (via Wingren) man carries within himself his destiny—"when he becomes like Christ he becomes completely man." Man's metamorphosis is realized within the Church, Christ's Body, through which he comprehends his origin and achieves the purpose of his creation. Through his careful repudiation of the Gnostic belief that some men could be saved while others were incapable of receiving the message of salvation, Irenaeus becomes the first theologian to assert that salvation is offered to all and that the Incarnation has the "unique position of being the locus of God's entering into the world of man" (Wingren). Maybe most startling—that man is actually sought by God.
“If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.” This quotation from Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning expresses the perspective Hinshaw adopts in this study of the true meaning of “care for the sick.” After exploring the ancient Christian tradition with regard to healthcare and then surveying how “care for the sick” has largely given way to a concern for “curing the disease,” he embarks on a study of what it truly means to care for those who are suffering during illness. Part one asks “what is suffering, and is its significance?” Defining suffering as a “threat to the unity of the person,” Hinshaw illuminates, through both theological reflection and qualitative research, what patients and their loved ones experience as they undergo suffering on multiple levels. The second part focuses specifically on the encounter of a patient with those trying to help, asking what constitutes a therapeutic relationship and how the patient’s pain should be viewed in that context. Third, Hinshaw proposes that some measure of healing can be achieved even when the patient’s suffering is to end in death. He gathers wisdom from secular psychology and recent trends in the spirituality of palliative care, and then offers a distinctly Christian perspective on suffering and death, including the roles played by reconciliation, gratitude, and communion in the “transformation of suffering into victory,” even at the end of life.
Eighth Day turns 22 this fall, and a lot has changed since the store opened in the first floor of a small house close to downtown Wichita. As the times have changed, so have we (albeit sometimes slowly and not entirely willingly). This year we finally completed the monumental task of getting our entire inventory online, launching our new website in the process. In that same vein, this blog is our newest endeavor to keep our online store fresh and up-to-date. We'll be posting new finds, important calendar events like book signings and traveling Eighth Day bookstore stops (our cross-country exploits always make for a good story), and even the occasional ponderation marking an important day in literary history or a remarkable passage we've come across in our own reading. It may take us awhile to get in the swing of things, but we hope to make this an important vehicle of communication with you--our esteemed readers and buyers. Thank you for reading and shopping with us.
(2010-11-03)
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Originally published in the online newsletter for The Circe Institute (an organization dedicated to classical education), this fine review by Eighth Day associate Joshua Sturgill faithfully relays the pleasure in working through Robinson's complex discussion of science's relationship with the life of the mind.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Marilynne Robinson has earned our respect and attention as the author of such superb fiction as Gilead and Housekeeping, and of incisive yet compassionate criticism as in The Death of Adam. Her latest offering issues a challenge to “new atheists,” to politicians, to psychologists, to all who campaign against morality, religion and the extraordinary inner life of human beings through the misapplication of science.
The reader should pay special attention to Robinson’s use of the aptly descriptive word “parascientific.” Through the genre of the parascientific, Robinson unveils a whole body of literature that claims the authority of science or scientific findings, but does not have the objectivity (or discipline) of science. Parascientific literature claims to find in science support for opinions which science itself could not prove or even deduce.
Quite a range of well-know authors produce parascientific works – from Darwin to Dawkins – and Robinson recognizes that while they all propose pan-explanations of human origins and existence, these explanations are, in fact, mutually exclusive. For example: if culture is driven by Freudian psychosexuality, then Marxist economic theory is drastically flawed. Or, take these two parascientific understandings of human conflict: “Conflict is natural and unavoidable to us as evolved animals” vs. “Conflict is caused by religion, therefore religion is inherently destructive.” Obviously, the statements are incompatible. Robinson notes that “rationalist arguments are not harmonious with one another – except in their conclusion, which clearly exists in anticipation of their various justifications.”
What parascientific worldviews do have in common, what they commonly conclude, is a disregard for or discredit of the vast internal experience of being human. While appearing to rely on reason (which they say is a faculty dependent on the mind), parascientific writers, in their campaign against human religious life, share a denigration (or complete denial) of the human mind.
That the human brain is the “most complex object know to exist in the universe” and that the brain far overshoots the necessity anticipated by parascientific theories is rarely if ever taken into account. Of course not just the physical brain, marvel though it certainly is, but our seemingly limitless capacity for inner life and experience is a whole universe left unexplored, abandoned as a hopelessly unfashionable metaphysics. Parascientific thought must deny the reality of phenomena it cannot accommodate (here, the human mind) or “scold the phenomena for their irksome presence.”
Because of her high opinion of the capacity of the human mind, Robinson is free to take seriously the influence of culture and philosophy (products of the mind) on the lives of her opponents. Her placing of Freud in the context of early twentieth century Vienna is delightful, and her chapter “The Strange History of Altruism” demonstrates how the presence of the mind in the human person explains our behavior far better than any materialist behaviorism. She sees hope and purpose where her opponents see only necessity and confusion.
A note about her style: Robinson is thrifty with words, delineating terms and diagnosing key characters in such a short space that Absence of Mind becomes almost frustratingly concise. But a small platform can command a wide view if given sufficient elevation. The thoughts as well as the writing achieve such elevation, so a slow pace is recommended for the reader to absorb the full impact of her argument.(
Counsels on the Spiritual Life: Volumes One and Two
The Moral Imagination: From Edmund Burke to Lionel Trilling
Happy compiling! And thank you for supporting us with your business during this most hectic and beautiful season of the year.
Your friends at Eighth Day Books
John Granger, called the "dean of Harry Potter scholars" by TIME magazine, will be giving the keynote talk for the first Eighth Day Symposium, hosted by the Eighth Day Institute and St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral. If you have ever wondered what to think about the Potter and Twilight phenomena, you don't want to miss Granger's exposition of their spiritual and literary meaning (he finds their popularity indicative of our secular culture's hunger for the transcendent rather than an interest in the occult or a fascination with vampires). Breakout sessions discussing classical education and the role literature plays in spiritual formation will follow.
And the following month don't miss the Patristics Symposium:
ON THE TREE OF THE CROSS: THE PATRISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT
Saturday, February 12, 2011, from 7:30 am to 4:00 pm, Friends University
(Registration soon to follow)
Co-sponsored by the Fr. Georges Florovsky Orthodox Christian Theological Society and the School of Christian Vocation at Princeton Theological Seminary, this symposium will examine the doctrine of atonement as understood in and/or by the New Testament, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, St. Gregory the Theologian, and the Ascetic Fathers. Speakers include Fr. George Dragas, Fr. John Behr, Dr. Alexis Torrance, Fr. John McGuckin, Dr. George Parsenios, and Matthew Baker. Eighth Day Institute will be broadcasting the event live via internet feed from Friends University in Wichita, Kansas.
ONE FINAL NOTE: To clear up any confusion, here's a little background on the Institute and its relationship with Eighth Day Books.
Born from a shared mission of "renewing culture through faith and learning," the not-for-profit
Eighth Day Institute (located next door to Eighth Day Books) seeks to accomplish what Eighth Day Books does as a for-profit business: connect people to classics which shed light on ultimate questions and expose people to the teachings of the Fathers of the Christian Church. While the two organizations share similar roots, vision, and mission, the Eighth Day Institute (formerly known as the St. John of Damascus Institute) and Eighth Day Books have no formal affiliation or financial relationship. That said, their support for each other is mutual and enthusiastic.
C.S. Lewis was born this week, November 29, 1898. A native of Ireland, the young Lewis was sent off to England for boarding school and "conceived a hatred for England which took many years to heal" (his words). Lewis was a critic, and so it's easy for me to imagine him as a rather recalcitrant, difficult person. Curmudgeonly even. Rather than detracting from the luminous quality of his writing, this image is helpful in seeing him as a genuine, human person. The following passage from Reflections on the Psalms seems especially fitting as we've passed through Thanksgiving and head into the time of Nativity and Christmas. Lewis is writing about praise, about love, about friendship, about true enjoyment. I guess even this post is our own practice of praise for a man and his work we just can't say enough about.
"I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . .
If it were possible for a created soul fully . . . to 'appreciate,' that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude . . . To see what the doctrine really means, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God – drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy is no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him."
Take this one sentence from O Pioneers: "I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do." Or this bit from Death Comes for the Archbishop: "The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still, — and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one's feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!" (And she's not afraid to get a little goofy about it.)
In that same vein, Cather's human characters are often realizations of the landscape. Rather than the land being an embodiment of human virtue or vice, it is the humans---by living and struggling and dying---who are embodied. Antonia, from My Antonia, is probably the most obvious and lovely example:
Antonia lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true. I had not been mistaken. She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions...It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.
But Cather isn't all about landscape. Almost every novel asks some profound or bracing question about art, often entwined with a spiritual insight that brings ones attentions to the world at hand. And with that, we'll leave you with another quote from Death Comes for the Archbishop. That and an exhortation to read something (anything) by Willa Cather in the very near future.
The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.
The Divine Sense: The Intellect in Patristic Theology
Pavel Florensky: A Quiet Genius--The Tragic and Extraordinary Life of Russia's Unknown da Vinci by Avril Pyman; foreword by Geoffrey Hosking
To T.W. Higginson
You inquire my Books--For Poets--I have Keats--and Mr and Mrs Browning. For Prose--Mr Ruskin--Sir Thomas Browne--and the Revelations. I went to school--but in your manner of the phrase--had no education. When a little Girl, I had a friend, who taught me Immortality--but venturing too near, himself--he never returned--Soon after, my Tutor, died--and for several years, my Lexicon--was my only companion--Then I found one more--but he was not contented I be his scholar--so he left the Land.
You ask of my Companions Hills--Sir--and the Sundown--and a Dog--large as myself, that my Father bought me--They are better than Beings--because they know--but do not tell--and the noise in the Pool, at Noon--excels my Piano. I have a Brother and Sister--My Mother does not care for thought--and Father, too busy with his Briefs--to notice what we do--He buys me many Books--but begs me not to read them--because he fears they joggle the Mind.
To Louise and Frances Norcross
Dear Children, I think the bluebirds do their work exactly like me. They dart around just so, with little dodging feet, and look so agitated. I really feel for them, they seem to be so tired. The mud is very deep--up to the wagons' stomachs--arbutus making pink clothes, and everything alive...
To Mrs. J.G. Holland
So long as that remains, we must all whisper.
With that sublime exception I had no clandestineness.
It was lovely to see you and I hope it may happen again.
We are by September and yet my flowers are bold as June.
To shut our eyes is Travel.
To T.W. Higginson
First we recognise that the object is one integral thing, then we recognise that it is an organised composite structure, a thing in fact: finally, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we recognise that it is that thing which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany.
In his collection, Dubliners, Joyce uses the idea of epiphany as a literary device. Each story revolves around a protagonist coming to a sudden recognition that fundamentally changes his way of understanding himself or his social situation. And from Joyce, we'd like to piggy-back to one of our newer finds, a book of philosophy and poetry by John Lysaker titled You Must Change Your Life: Poetry, Philosophy, and the Birth of Sense. Lysaker asserts that certain poems have the power to radically transform our sense of what is, incarnating the epiphany, if you will, through words and images that essentially change our being. It's a good literary read in these weeks after Nativity and Epiphany, before we undergo the life-altering work that Lent can ultimately (if slowly) bring.
You Must Change Your Life: Poetry, Philosophy, and the Birth of Sense
The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years
Cezanne was known for his deep attraction and devotion to nature, once commenting, "The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it." Whether painting a landscape, a portrait, or a bowl of peaches on a table, he was able to get to a thing's essence--in theologian Paul Tillich's terminology, its Gehalt, or Ground of Being. Cezanne again: "People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day." Happy Birthday Cezanne, and thank you.
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier
Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible
You cannot be too gentle, too kind.
Shun even to appear harsh in your treatment of each other.
Joy, radiant joy, streams from the face of him who gives
and kindles joy in the heart of him who receives.
All condemnation is from the devil.
Never condemn each other…
Instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace.
Keep silent, refrain from judgment.This will raise you above the deadly arrows
of slander, insult, and outrage and will shield
your glowing hearts against all evil.
--St. Seraphim of Sarov
The Melody of Faith: Theology in an Orthodox Key
by Vigen Guroian
(This review first appeared on The Circe Institute website.)
A friend once commented that the Classics are the books everyone knows but no one has read. This seems especially the case with classic stories that become part of popular culture through cinematic adaptation. “Disneyfication” can describe many things, but applied to literature, it is a metamorphosis from pedagogy to sentimental entertainment. Examples crowd the marquee of any local movie theater.
In an era of both instant information and increasing illiteracy, few take the trouble to return to the sources. We are content with the processed crumbs that fall to us and seldom taste the banquet of unique creativity that is any great book. Real information should form us (an thus can never be instant), and many “literate” people choose useless or even destructive reading (if they choose to read at all). Perhaps a new word is needed—dysliteracy: abnormal or impaired literacy.
I finished Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books with these thoughts in mind. I knew the cartoon version from childhood and was expecting the same simplicity and lighthearted mood. My dysliteracy was corrected in delightful fashion.
Disney’s 1967 animated film is based on three of 15 stories from the two books. And though the music is delightful—everyone knows “Bare Necessities” —the literary quality of Kipling’s 1894 original is almost completely lost, and simultaneously, his stories’ moral value. In The Jungle Books, virtue (perseverance, courage, innocence) is everywhere promoted. Evil is recognized and punished. Goodness means successful but difficult struggle against prejudice and adversity. The characters are serious, rarely comic. Disney’s jungle is playful and foolish. Kipling’s jungle is full of danger and wisdom.
Mowgli, the boy raised by wolves, is certainly the most famous of the characters that populate Kipling’s stories. His intelligence and love for his friends make him a model of masculine leadership. But Mowgli’s adventures comprise only half of the tales, so the surprise for anyone encountering The Jungle Books for the first time is the cache of great stories not re-told in movies or abridgements. Of these, Toomai of the Elephants, The Miracle of Purun Bhagat and The King’s Ankus delighted me as much for the beauty of the storytelling as for their being unexpected.
Kipling begins and ends each tale with poetry—lyrical poetry that adds new layers of meaning to the prose. The prose itself is delightful and often timelessly wise. One such memorable and useful quotation: “Money is that thing which passes from hand to hand yet never grows warm.” The characters, their conversation and the mysterious depths of colonial India make every story vivid and memorable.
Similarly with Pinocchio and other children’s classics I’ve discovered as an adult, I felt myself wanting to take long pauses between Kipling’s tales. The images he left in my imagination were so beautiful I did not want to replace them too quickly. Images are akin to experience. Which is why providing the soul with nourishing images from great literature is the cure for Disneyfication and dysliteracy.
There are two kinds of books an avid reader doesn’t want to finish. Books not worth the time are recognized and put down immediately. But the classic is the book we want to begin again after the last perfect word. I would have added The Jungle Books to my litany of yearly reading long ago, but, along with the friend I quoted above, I assumed I already knew them.
Oh hear the Call! Good hunting all! That keep the Jungle Law!
Voices from the Gulag
translated from the Russian and with an introduction and notes by Kenneth Lantz
The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation
Whatever may happen in the future, I know that I have learned three things which will remain forever convictions of my heart as well as my mind. Life, even the hardest life, is the most beautiful, wonderful, and miraculous treasure in the world. Fulfillment of duty is another marvelous thing making life happy. This is my second conviction. And my third is that cruelty, hatred, violence, and injustice never can and never will be able to create a mental, moral, or material millennium. The only way toward it is the royal road of all-giving creative love, not only preached but consistently practiced.
Pitirim A. Sorokin, from The Ways and Power of Love
Highlights include (but are not limited to):
C3: Christ: Church: Culture Conference (Nashville, TN) February 24-26
Walter Brueggemann at St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church (Kansas City, KS) February 27
Houston Baptist University Bioethics Conference, "Health Care in a Secular Culture: The Conscience of Physicians & Nurses at Risk," April 29-30
CIVA Biennial Conference: "Matter and Spirit: Art and Belief in a Digital Age" (Biola College, Los Angeles, CA) June 16-19
The Glen Workshop East (Mt. Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA) June 12-19
The Glen Workshop West (Santa Fe, NM) July 31-August 7
CiRCE Conference, "What is Man? A Contemplation of the Divine Image" (Arlington, TX) July 20-23
AND IF YOU'RE IN THE WICHITA AREA:
Newman University Literary Festival (Wichita, KS) March 31-April 1
Clare Vanderpool, 2011 Newbery Award Winner (Eighth Day Books) March 19
Earlier he remarks,
Anyone who has, be it only once, taken part in that night which is "brighter than the day," who has tasted of that unique joy, knows it. On Easter we celebrate Christ’s Resurrection as something that happened and still happens to us. For each one of us received the gift of that new life and the power to accept it and live by it. . . Is it not our daily experience, however, that this faith is very seldom ours, that all the time we lose and betray the “new life” which we received as a gift, and that in fact we live as if Christ did not rise from the dead, as if that unique event had no meaning whatsoever for us? We simply forget all this — so busy are we, so immersed in our daily preoccupations — and because we forget, we fail. And through this forgetfulness, failure, and sin, our life becomes “old” again — petty, dark, and ultimately meaningless — a meaningless journey toward a meaningless end.
Paradoxically, Easter necessitates Lent. "For we may then understand," says Fr. Schmemann, "that the liturgical traditions of the Church, all its cycles and services, exist, first of all, in order to help us recover the vision and the taste of that new life which we so easily lose and betray, so that we may repent and return to it."
What better way to start the journey than with a book?
A few years back we came up with a semi-comprehensive list of lenten reading, divided into five basic categories: Books on Lent; Books on Prayer; Books on Fasting; Books on Almsgiving; and finally, Just Books. We'll be reposting these lists on the blog and creating a Lenten Reading category you can access on our homepage.
The night may be dark and long, but all along the way a mysterious and radiant dawn seems to shine on the horizon. “Do not deprive us of our expectation, O Lover of man!”-Fr. Alexander Schmemann
Great Lent by Alexander Schmemann
An exploration and explanation of the liturgical services, fasts, symbols, and prayers of the Lenten season. Unfortunately, it's currently out of stock at the publisher. All the same, we can't help but leave it at the top of the list.
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers
translated by Benedicta Ward
Always relevant, the desert fathers speak directly to the human condition and also the human desire to seek after God.
The Ladder of Divine Ascent (Holy Transfiguration cloth edition)
The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life
By Way of Grace: Moving from Faithfulness to Holiness
The Year of Grace of the Lord
Monk of the Eastern Church
A devotional look at the seasons of the church.
The Seven Perennial Sins and Their Offspring
Confession: Doorway to Forgiveness
by Jim Forest
An Orthodox Christain examines the communal nature of sin and forgiveness.
Ladder of the Beatitudes
Jim Forest
An anecdotal exploration of the extraordinary dimensions of the Kingdom.
The Beatitudes: Soundings in Christian Tradition
by Simon Tugwell
A Biblical and devotional stirring of the moral imagination.
The Return of the Prodigal Son
by Henri Nouwen
A luminous meditation on the parable in regard to Rembrandt’s painting.
Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
by Henri Nouwen
The Arena
by Ignatius Brianchaninov
A manual on the inner life and outward conduct of the monk.
Thoughts Matter: The Practice of the Spiritual Life
Tools Matter for Practicing the Spiritual Life
by Mary Margaret Funk
Notable manuals for keeping us awake to that ‘’still, small voice.’’
Back to Virtue
by Peter Kreeft
Ethics without virtue is illusion.
Unseen Warfare
Cyril of Jerusalem: Works, Volume 1 (Fathers of the Church Series)
Cyril of Jerusalem: Works, Volume 2 (Fathers of the Church Series)
by St. Cyril of Jerusalem
Includes the Catechetical Lectures, one of the earliest known catechisms of the Christian Church.
That said, here are our picks (among the myriad available) on prayer...
Orthodox Prayer Life: The Interior Way
by Matthew the Poor
A contemporary Egyptian monastic points the way to those who desire, and are willing to sacrifice for, an existence formed by the practice of unceasing prayer.
Beginning to Pray
by Anthony Bloom
"The day when God is absent, when He is silent - that is the beginning of prayer."
Earthen Vessels: The Practice of Personal Prayer According to the Patristic Tradition
by Gabriel Bunge, O.S.B.
Written by a Benedictine monk and patristic scholar, this book belongs in the hands of anyone who seriously desires a life of prayer.
Prayer for Beginners
by Peter Kreeft
A clear and eminently reasonable approach to prayer for people not very good at praying.
Clinging: The Experience of Prayer
by Emilie Griffin
First Fruits of Prayer
A fine exposition of the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete.
Prayer: Living With God
by Simon Tugwell
Focuses on our relationship with God and ways we can learn to enjoy and appreciate that relationship through prayer.
Prayer in Practice
by Simon Tugwell
An unblinkingly honest and even humorous treatise on different forms of prayer.
Three Prayers
by Olivier Clement
A meditation on three of the most essential prayers of the Christian tradition.
On the Prayer of Jesus
by Ignatius Brianchaninov
Blunt and trustworthy advice about the right and wrong ways to approach the practice of the Jesus Prayer.
When You Fast
Celebration of Discipline
by Richard Foster
Foster’s chapter on fasting is excellent, like nearly everything he writes regarding spiritual discipline.
The Spirit of Food: Thirty-four Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God
edited by Leslie Leyland Fields
Tools Matter for Practicing the Spiritual Life
by Mary Margaret Funk
Like Foster, Funk’s thoughts on fasting are not to be missed. The teachings of John Cassian and other desert masters are palpable throughout.
Great Lent: Journey to Pascha
Especially helpful is the section titled “The Two Meanings of Fasting.” Unfortunately, it's currently out of stock at the publisher. All the same, we can't help but leave it on the list with hopes it will return soon.
Knowing the commandments of the Lord, let this be our way of life:
Let us feed the hungry, let us give the thirsty drink,
Let us clothe the naked, let us welcome the stranger,
Let us visit those in prison and the sick...
On Repentance and Almsgiving (Fathers of the Church Series)
by St. John Chrysostom
The "Golden Mouth" lends substantial thought to the relationship between repentance and almsgiving.
Wealth and Poverty in the Teachings of the Church Fathers
by James Thornton
A study of almsgiving in Byzantium - its failures and triumphs.
On Social Justice
by St. Basil the Great
On Wealth and Poverty
by St. John Chrysostom
Addresses the questions of wealth and poverty with clarity, insight, compassion and judgment.
On Living Simply: The Golden Voice of John Chrysostom
by St. John Chrysostom
A selection of excerpts from the eloquent saint on the discipline of simplicity.
Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire
by Peter Brown
Brown discusses the role of the Christian Church in revolutionizing the social imagination with the incarnational hope of social cohesion.
And You Welcomed Me: A Sourcebook on Hospitality in Early Christianity
edited by Amy G. Oden
A collection of excerpts from early Christian documents toward a theology of hospitality.
The Rise of Christianity
by Rodney Stark
Stark shows how the moral precepts of the early Christians became “liberating and effective social organizations.”
The Orphans of Byzantium: Child Welfare in the Christian Empire
by Timothy S. Miller
A history of orphans and the systems that cared for them. Modern forms of welfare, take heed.
The Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine Empire
by Timothy S. Miller
An excellent synthesis of the way in which Hellenic culture, the Christian church, monasticism, Roman law, and the medical profession participated in the formation and development of Byzantine hospitals.
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life
Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath
Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wife
A masterpiece of historical fiction set in medieval Norway, replete with some of the most unforgettable and full-blooded characters in literature. We (strongly) recommend reading the award-winning translation of Tiina Nunnally above all others.
The Story of Jumping Mouse
by John Steptoe
The World of Silence
The End of Suffering
by Scott Cairns
The Power and the Glory
Father Arseny, 1893-1973: Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father: Being the Narratives Compiled
Click HERE to go to her blog.
Self-Portrait as Wind
It’s always like this. Or it isn’t.
Moon or its influence under cloud. The pull
of dirt into the center. The drop
in temperature that glides open
the ground, the spark, the disappearance
of light. All of this and me
or none of it. But give me a palate
of grass, or the shimmering coiled tops
of trees. Give me rain or heat,
the slice of space between skyscrapers,
the way wings make me, and I make wings,
weather too. Give me nothing
and I’ll use it. Give me weight
and I’ll drop it. The whish of a
mare’s tail. The buzz of a confused wasp.
The rush of a man running against me
into me trying to make time. I make
the opposite of time. Fortunes just paper,
and you know what I do to that.
Blinds unbound. Geese scattered
over the next hill of air, everything falling back
into my large hands, me who can’t
hold onto a thing.
© Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
The incarnate element involved in reading has nearly disappeared, and our nature as composite beings of flesh and spirit—this nature for which Christ took flesh—are left strangely starved. Our physical natures, yearning for incarnate spiritual experience, are considered irrelevant. There is no longer a sense of journey or pilgrimage through a story, as anyone who’s read with delight or arduous sweat a long text knows. The e-text floats in a boundless sea of nearly identical pages, and any sense of beginning, middle, and end has fled away. (Warren Farha, "Why Bother with Books?")
Read the entire paper HERE.
The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future by Robert Darnton
The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) by Mark Bauerlein
For the Life of the World by Alexander Schmemann
George Washington by Ingri d'Aulaire and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire
The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age by Sven Birkerts
Is The Internet Changing the Way You Think? The Net’s Impact on our Minds and Future edited by John Brockman
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brainsby Nicholas Carr
The Shape of the Liturgyby Gregory Dix
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technologyby Neil Postman
Sure, poetry can be intimidating, or at the very least, puzzling. When faced with a multitude of practicalities, it may even seem irrelevant. But as T.S. Eliot wrote, "Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood." He also remarked that “Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.”
So pick up a poem. Put one in your pocket. Look at it throughout the day, or over the course of a week. See what happens. Maybe nothing, but maybe you'll discover a window or a door. A way of seeing, or at least a sense of recognition. Whether you identify more with Robert Frost, who wrote that "Poetry is what gets lost in translation," or Charles Simic, who maintains that "Poetry is what survives translation," maybe you'll find something you didn't know you were missing.
Check out the links below to a get a little more poetry in your life:
Poem-A-Day, from the Academy of American Poets
The Writer's Almanac
Poetry 180: A Poem a Day for American High Schools
Poetry Daily
Favorite Poem Project
Famous Poets and Poems
"The Secrets of Poetryland," an article in Slate
150 Kansas Poems
Poem App for iPhones
Though we're publishing it six months later than usual, Volume 22 of the Eighth Day Books Catalog will soon be available. We're currently in the midst of layout and design, so gear up for some heady and bright summer reading. Watch this blog for updates as publication draws nigh. To whet your appetite, we'll be featuring new additions to the catalog on our home page. (Photograph, © pathlost)
If you hadn't guessed, the same person who maintains the Eighth Day Blog is madly working to finish the Eighth Day Catalog. Of course, the catalog is a collective work---and with half of our staff currently On the Road across the entirety of this country (California/Massachusetts/Louisiana), communicating and coordinating Catalog 22's completion is a study in perseverance. Some have even taken to calling it the Never Ending Catalog. Please be patient with us. It will come.
In the meantime, take a look at our homepage. We recently updated it with new catalog titles in the hope of piquing your interest until Catalog 22 is in hand. And don't forget to scroll over the calendar to your right to keep on top of where we're traveling in relationship to where you are.
Born Anna Andreevna Gorenko in 1889 (she later took her grandmother's name, Akhmatova), the poet survived some of the most brutal years of Russian history, but not without massive loss. Her first husband was shot for conspiring against the state. Another died in the Gulag on similar charges. Her son was repeatedly arrested, released, rearrested and ultimately freed due to Akhmatova's perseverance (this period was the only time she wrote propagandist poetry for the state). The philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote of Akhmatova:
"The widespread worship of her memory in Soviet Union today, both as an artist and as an unsurrendering human being, has, so far as I know, no parallel. The legend of her life and unyielding passive resistance to what she regarded as unworthy of her country and herself, transformed her into a figure [...] not merely in Russian literature, but in Russian history in [the Twentieth] century."
Akhmatova's work was revolutionary in its time, "composed of short fragments of simple speech that do not form a logical coherent pattern. Instead, they reflect the way we actually think, the links between the images are emotional, and simple everyday objects are charged with psychological associations. Like Alexander Pushkin, who was her model in many ways, Akhmatova was intent on conveying worlds of meaning through precise details" (Roberta Reeder).
The following poem was written in March of 1944 and is part of a larger sequence entitled "Death." It exemplifies Akhmatova's attention to detail and scene-setting, and like the best of literature, is universal, by nature of its specificity.
When the moon lies like a slice of Chardush melon
On the windowsill and it's hard to breathe,
When the door is shut and the house bewitched
By an airy branch of blue wisteria,
And there is cool water in the clay cup,
And a snow-white towel, and the wax candle
Is burning, as in my childhood, attracting moths,
The silence roars, not hearing my words--
Then from corners black as Rembrandt's
Something rears and hides itself again,
But I won't rouse myself, won't even take fright...
Here loneliness has caught me in its net.
The landlady's black cat stares like the eye of centuries,
And the double in the mirror doesn't want to help me.
I will sleep sweetly. Good night, night.
Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer
The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future
by Robert Darnton
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
by Nicholas Carr
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
by Jaron Lanier
The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)
by Mark Bauerlein
Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto
by Mark Helprin
Devices of the Soul: Battling for Ourselves in an Age of Machines
by Steve Talbott
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
There's something in Henry David Thoreau that carries the stamp of the Desert Fathers. Both have a word to speak on simplicity and poverty. And though H.D.T. is universally more well-known (it's his birthday today, in fact), I can't help but think he was somehow informed by the Fathers who not only spoke (often quite unwillingly) to a life of poverty, solitude, and prayer, but most importantly worked to live that life.
from Walden:
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town’s poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.
from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers:
Someone asked Abba Anthony, "What must one do in order to please God?" The old man replied, "pay attention to what I tell you: whoever you may be always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the holy Scriptures; in whatever place you lie, do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts and you will be saved."
Abba Benjamin said, "We went to an old man who detained us for a meal and he offered us the oil of horseradish. We said to him, 'Father, give us rather a little good oil.' At these words he crossed himself and said, 'I didn't know there was any other kind.'"
Abba Poemen said, "Teach your mouth to say that which you have in your heart."
He [Abba Poemen] also said, "Do not give your heart to that which does not satisfy your heart."
Abba Poemen said, "Because of our need to eat and to sleep, we do not see the simple things."
He [Paul] used to collect palm fronds and always exact a day's labor from himself just as if this were his means of support. And when his cave was filled with a whole year's work, he would burn up what he had so carefully toiled over each year.
Cassian notes this practice aided the monk in "purging his heart, firming his thoughts, persevering in his cell, and conquering and driving out acedia." Norris proceeds to enlighten us with a page-long history of the word (acedia), which has gone in and out of use over the last five centuries, suggesting it to be "the lexicon's version of a mole, working on us while hidden from view. It may even be that the word has a significance that stands in inverse proportion to its obscurity." Seems like a spot on description of sin's insidious nature, as a matter of course.
Norris has a knack for making words come alive, most often through her study of their roots and origins. She fleshes out their complexity, revealing dual natures and paradoxical meanings. Can you tell we're big fans?---just this close to screaming out YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK! Here's another passage from the end of her first chapter, a weave of Henri Nouwen and the Greek lexicon on the idea of prayer:
Henri Nouwen tells us that "the literal translation of the words 'pray always' is 'come to rest.' The Greek word for rest," he adds, "is 'hesychia,' and 'hesychasm' is a term which refers to the spirituality of the desert." The "rest" that the monk is seeking is not an easy one, and as Nouwen writes, it "has little to do with the absence of conflict or pain. It is a rest in God in the midst of a very intense daily struggle." Acedia is the monk's temptation because, in a demanding life of prayer, it offers the ease of indifference. Yet I have come to believe that acedia can strike anyone whose work requires self-motivation and solitude, anyone who remains married "for better for worse," anyone who is determined to stay true to a commitment that is sorely tested in everyday life. When I complained to a Benedictine friend that for me, acedia was no longer a noontime demon but seemed like a twenty-four-hour proposition, he replied, "Well, we are speaking of cosmic time. And it is always noon somewhere."
When I first visit a great bookstore–say Eighth Day Books in Wichita or Blackwell’s in Oxford–I am exhilarated. So many of the books I have always yearned to read are there. What a joy! But before I leave, a mild form of despair creeps over me. I will never have the time. (p. 171)
Another excerpt from the post follows, for which we thank Brad for his kind and eloquent words. We're grateful to be part of his hometown rediscovery and to share his obvious love of books and appreciation of home.
I cannot communicate to you here the smells of books upon books mixed with old paper and a bit of coffee, or the soft sounds of string music playing in the background as the visitor indulges in the space and experience that is Eighth Day, but perhaps a few more images...will give you some sense of the richness of this place that not only holds so many stories of magical realms, but could belong in them in the role of home: that place of comfort and refreshment to which characters in the midst of uncertain journeys so long to return.
You can link to his entire post here.
I'll admit it: I'm all for brevity. I recently read a book review in the New York Times of Christopher Johnson's Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little. The reviewer quotes Ben Jonson early on, commenting: "Now that our fingers hover constantly over keyboards—it’s never been more true: “Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee.” And while Christopher Johnson seems to make a relatively good case for concision (I haven't actually read the book), I found myself thinking about those writers who definitely don't go the less-is-more route (see list above and list below).
I'm thinking along these lines for two reasons primarily: 1) I just finished George Eliot's Middlemarch and must include it (for the time being) in the list of my top ten all-favorite books; and 2) I just read a column by the author/music critic Nick Hornby (collected in a book titled The Polysyllabic Spree) in which he holds forth on the virtues of superfluity (he just finished reading David Copperfield). And here I must quote Hornby, who is routinely hilarious:
Last month, I ended by saying that I was in need of some Dickensian nutrition, and maybe it's because I've been sucking on the bones of pared-down writing for too long. Where would David Copperfield be if Dickens had gone to writing classes? Probably about seventy minor characters short, is where. (Did you know that Dickens is estimated to have invented thirteen thousand characters? Thirteen thousand! The population of a small town! If you want to talk about books in terms of back-breaking labor, then maybe we should think about how hard it is to write a lot--long books, teeming with exuberance and energy and life and comedy. I'm sorry if that seems obvious, but it can't always be true that writing a couple of hundred pages is harder than writing a thousand.)
So here's to giving the big ones a chance. They definitely take commitment; find a friend to tackle one with you (I wouldn't have gotten deep enough into Middlemarch to get sufficiently hooked without my good friend who got hooked first). Below is a list of our favorites, including our favorite translations. May you get lost in a meaty new world.
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy; translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky
The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky; translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky
David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
The Iliad and The Odyssey, by Homer
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset; translated by Tiina Nunnally
Middlemarch, by George Eliot
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy; translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky
Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck's Cognitive Therapy: A Meeting of Minds
With Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy: A Meeting of Minds, Fr. Alexios Trader has offered us a rich and even lavish feast of ideas and spiritual counsel in a very modest package, just as one might expect for an Athonite monk whose practice of humility over many years has become embedded in his writing style. Ostensibly, this is an admirably thorough exposition of cognitive therapy—which many readers will be delighted to find has largely replaced the far more reductionistic practice of behavioral therapy as the can-do, default approach to counseling and therapy—together with a point-by-point comparison of this very modern approach to mental healing with the highly developed ascetic theology of the Ancient Fathers. Although it is rock-solid academically, Ancient Christian Wisdom is much more than a scholarly treatise. The first two chapters feature a brilliant reflection on how traditional Christian thought can deal with the fruits of modern culture, without compromising itself or the contemporary ideas with which it engages—a stimulating and inspiring reflection that should be read both by the suspicious and agonistic Tertullians of our age (who wish to barricade themselves against modernity) as well as by our own, motley varieties of Gnostics (who like Valentius in the second century, think that Christianity is most palatable in a soluble form, i.e. when it is fully dissolved into the inviting libations of the present age). Similar praise is due for its extended discussions of childhood development and education. And since Fr. Alexios quotes the Fathers directly from the Greek and Latin, there is a great deal of patristic material presented that has never before been translated into English—itself reason enough for owning the book!
Above all, this is a remarkable exploration of spiritual and psychological health, brimming with practical insights and useful techniques. In fact, it may be one of the most solid and useful “self-help” books of our time, because it draws discerningly upon both the proven methods of cognitive therapy (which follows from the ancient Stoic insight that it is not events that make us happy or unhappy, but our interpretations of them) as well as upon the ancient wisdom of two thousand years of spiritual practice, enriched and refined not in the research library or classroom, but in the monastic cell, the true laboratory of the human soul. Moreover, Fr. Alexios has not only intellectually mastered the psychological and spiritual material, he has fully lived it, both as a monk for many years on Mt. Athos and more recently as one of the most highly sought-after confessors and spiritual fathers in Northern Greece. He writes from the rare position of knowing not just the ways in which modern therapeutic techniques may or may not be compatible with the Christian life, but of being able to skillfully place them into the context of the great task of theosis (union with God), that for traditional Christians represents the eternal path of salvation itself—a knowledge he has gained from his careful reading of the ascetic Fathers, from his own spiritual practice, and from helping others as a spiritual father. Of course, the notion that the tradition of ancient Christian asceticism, and Orthodox spirituality in particular, can be comprehended as a kind of psychotherapy is not by itself completely new: it was argued generally by Fr. John Romanides, who saw the Church as a “spiritual hospital”; worked out in theory by Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos in his classic, Orthodox Psychotherapy; and explicated in tantalizing tidbits by Archbishop Athanasios of Limassol (Fr. Maximos) in Kyriakos Markides’ very popular Mountain of Silence. The latter comes closest to articulating these practices and insights in a way that contemporary, non-monastic readers can appropriate them, though Markides’ presentation is not particularly systematic or comprehensive. Fr. Alexios’s book, in contrast, offers all the wealth of detail for which many readers of the latter two books have long been waiting, along with much more that will certainly exceed their expectations.
For the spiritual seeker, then, this book has the potential to serve as the vessel for a great voyage of spiritual discovery. Since it appeals to a therapeutic approach that deals largely with watchfulness (nepsis) over the current of thoughts (logismoi) in which we are immersed much of the time, its insights are relatively safe to be practiced on ones own, although the guidance of a competent spiritual guide would no doubt enhance spiritual growth. In truth, Ancient Christian Wisdom has the potential to become something of an underground classic, appropriated by individual readers who have little or no interest in the practices for which it was overtly intended: pastoral counseling, the growing practice of Christian counseling, and the use of secular therapists respectful of their Christian patients’ spiritual integrity. For these audiences, the book will serve as a masterful handbook of spiritual and psychological counsel. Happily, it is beautifully and solidly bound, well-built to last many years of regular use. Over the course of many years, this reviewer has become acquainted with hundreds of books on psychological and spiritual counsel and has found Fr. Alexios’ manual to be the best and most useful by far. Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy has the power to transform lives, and deserves to become a classic of spiritual reading.
Bruce (Seraphim) Foltz
The Eighth Day Institute will be hosting several Table Talks over the course of September and October. Read below to learn more or click through HERE to access EDI's website.
The Poetics of Architecture:
SEPTEMBER 13, 20, 27
7:30-9:00 p.m. at the Ladder
Tony Jacobs, a licensed architect and tonsured reader at St. Mary Orthodox Church, will lead a discussion on Heidegger's "Building Dwelling Thinking," selections from Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space, and Owen Barfield's Poetic Diction.
REGISTER HERE for The Poetics of Architecture
The Architecture of Poetics:OCTOBER 4, 11
7:30-9:00 p.m. at the Ladder
Jeanine Hathaway, Professor Emerita of Creative Writing at Wichita State University and 2001 Vassar Miller Prize for poetry winner, will discuss poetic formalism through the specific forms of the sonnet and the villanelle, with digressions on the value of expectation, corsetry, and ritual.
If you want to read more:
How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, by Edward Hirsch
A Poetry Handbook, by Mary Oliver
The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, edited by Phyllis Levin
On Beauty and Being Just, by Elaine Scarry
REGISTER HERE for The Architecture of Poetics
In my last post, I discussed my involvement with Alexandros Papadiamandis’s stories, and the study of his theological vision encapsulated in them that I translated from Greek, the recently published Greece’s Dostoevsky: The Theological Vision of Alexandros Papadiamandis. In this post, I wanted to delve a bit deeper into Papadiamandis’s biography and work: who was Papadiamandis, and why does he matter?
Highly regarded as both a theologian and a writer of fiction, Papadiamandis wrote stories that are entertaining, moving, and profoundly theological. That said, his stories are not simple parables, they are not simply an excuse for making theological points. Rather, like Dostoevsky, Papadiamandis shows that theology is not something abstract, detached from the “real world.” Theology is lived and living…it is knit into the fabric of life.
Alexandros Papadiamandis was born on 4 March, 1851 on the island of Skiathos (which, interestingly enough, means “the shadow of Athos,” according to the folk tradition that the rising sun casts a shadow from Athos that, apparently, reaches this island). Although the folk tradition regarding the origin of the island’s name stretches the bounds of possibility, as a metaphor it is completely true: the Skiathos of Papadiamandis’s childhood was one that was influenced by the spiritual life of Mount Athos. Monks from Athos had established a vibrant monastery on Skiathos, which had a profound effect on the spiritual life of the islanders. Papadiamandis’s father, Adamantios Immanuel, was a priest and from an early age Papadiamandis would accompany him on his priestly duties. Papadiamandis learned to chant and spent his childhood serving in church, and visiting monasteries.
Late nineteenth century Greece was an economically impoverished world, and Papadiamandis’s stories recount the tragic lives of many of his neighbors. While championing the plight of the poor and oppressed (particularly that of women and children), Papadiamandis was always confident in the inevitable redemption of suffering through the victory of Christ’s resurrection.
The ending of his story, “Without a Wedding Crown,” (the story is included in our book!) is characteristic. After recounting the tragic (and morally vague) situation of “Christina the Teacher,” he ends confident in God’s goodness: “But He, who had arisen ‘on behalf of the suffering of the poor and of the lamentations of those in need,’ who accepted the myrrh and tears of the woman in sin and the ‘Remember me’ of the thief, would also accept the repentance of this poor one, and would give her a space and a place of refreshing, and healing and rest in His eternal kingdom.”
One of the main tasks assigned to Adam, and consequently to all men (and especially to Christians) is to bring God’s healing to creation. The task of the artist (especially if he/she is a Christian!) is to convey this healing through art.
Papadiamandis is important for the same reason that Dostoevsky is important: he is able to sincerely consider and address Western philosophy’s “problem of evil,” to empathize with those who are suffering, and still rest in the ultimate goodness and love of God. Through his art, Papadiamandis follows in the path of Christ in embracing human suffering (and thus, embracing suffering humans), and ends, not with the crucifixion, but with the resurrected Christ.
Greece’s Dostoevsky: The Theological Vision of Alexandros Papadiamandis looks at the theology hidden within Papadiamandis’s stories. It also considers the exceptional artistry he uses in subtly conveying Christian truth through story. For those interested in the relationship between art and faith Alexandros Papadiamandis, Greece’s Dostoevsky, is a Christian artist worthy of study.
In my next post, I'll go into more depth regarding some of the specific topics that Dr. Keselopoulos addresses in Greece’s Dostoevsky.
[Learn more about Greece’s Dostoevsky: The Theological Vision of Alexandros Papadiamandis.]
Posting Schedule:
Post #1: September 30th, Byzantine, TX
Post #3: October 6th, Bombaxo
Post #4: October 11th, Mystagogy
The Poetry of Luci Shaw
Turn it all backwards. Turn time.
Unravel the half-knit sweater in
the knitting bag. Remove the spilled
wine from the rug, return the color of dark cream
to its fibers and take them back and back
to the sheep's back before shearing...
Make me innocent. Sluice me of
infractions. Give me soft
pink skin and a soul so fresh that
I may love my mother again.
Taken from her poem, "In Reverse," these lines from poet Luci Shaw's What the Light Was Like, typify her work: droll yet urgent and grounded in a corporeality that leans into the Otherness of God, testing the Spirit's give-and-take. Shaw has written ten volumes of poetry in the course of forty years. She was a charter member of the Chrysostom Society (whose original members included Richard Foster, Calvin Miller, Madeleine L'Engle, Harold Fickett and Philip Yancey, among others) and since 1988 has been a writer-in-residence at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada. A remarkable number of those ten volumes are still in print. Representing a broad swath of her earliest work, Polishing the Petoskey Stone includes selections from Listen to the Green, The Secret Trees, The Sighting, and Postcard from the Shore. The title poem is a fine rendering of a material revelation that achieves translucency—an event in and of itself and something else entirely: "As I buff it / smooth, the print rises to the surface— / the silk stone honeycombed with / eyes opening from a long sleep / between lashes of fine spines. Born / eons ago in a warm sea..." Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation is a selection of Christ poems written over the course of forty years and arranged by Shaw to reflect the chronological order of the life of Jesus. She calls them "hints and guesses"; many feel eucharistic—"See how he spills, hot, light, / his oceans glowing like wine, / flooding all the fjords among the bones of our continents." Published the same year, What the Light Was Like is very much a response to the natural world, infused with the geographies of quotidian life. "I begin to think / how everything wears its other down. How / this sidewalk smoothes my rubber soles. / How stomachs slick their food, waves / burnish shattered bottles to sea glass...My silence wears your chatter like a suit; / your charity unravels my reproach." Luci Shaw's newest book, Harvesting Fog, is heavy with December and feels something like an homage to the passing and accumulation of years. There are still questions, but she does not weary of listening for a reply: "When my fingers / know better than I / as they hover over / the keyboard, then type / a word that is not / the word I wanted but / a better word—what is that / but an answer."
Polishing the Petoskey Stone: Selected Poems
Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation
What the Light Was Like: Poems
Harvesting Fog: Poems
Eighth Day Books is celebrating its 23rd Anniversary with an Open House and three author appearances October 20-22.
WSU professor emerita Jeanine Hathaway will read from and sign her new book, The Ex-Nun Poems, on Thursday October 20.
Gordon Houser, associate editor of the The Mennonite, will read from Present Tense: A Mennonite Spirituality on Friday October 21.
On Saturday October 22, former Wichita resident John Estes, now Director of Creative Writing at Malone University in Canton, Ohio, will return to Wichita to read from his new collection of poems, Kingdom Come.
All readings will begin at 7:00 p.m.
And let us not forget the books. Every book in the store will be on sale from Thursday at 6 p.m. through Saturday night. New books will be 20% off and used books 33% off. The usual delightful refreshments will be provided by Chris Farha, and the store will be open until late.
And now, a little more about those writers...
The two local writers reading are well-known and respected authors. Jeanine Hathaway is the author of Motherhouse (1992), an autobiographical novel, and The Self as Constellation (2002) which won the Vassar Miller Prize for Poetry. As the title of her new book suggests, Hathaway was a nun as a young woman, and Ex-Nun Poems collects poems about that experience. Albert Goldbarth has said “Jeanine Hathaway is a poet wise, witty, and wistful, and complexities of her life's journey are balanced by a disarming (and charming) surface lucidity. Ex-nun she may be...but also ex-traordinary.”
Gordon Houser lives in Newton, and his new book explores the spiritual practices within Mennonite communities, described by one reviewer as “patient following, peaceful reconciling, political integrity, playful relating, prayerful thinking, perfect imperfection and celebrating the present.”
John Estes left the Wichita area in 2004 to pursue doctoral study at the University of Missouri and has lived in Canton since 2010. His chapbook, Swerve, won a National Chapbook Fellowship from the Poetry Society of America. Of Kingdom Come, which explores the tensions of art, family and housekeeping, one reviewer wrote that Estes “illustrate[s] a magical ability to balance three, four, even five impulses simultaneously.” An Eighth Day staff review says that in the book “life's disparate possibilities crumble and reunite again to form a tenuous harmony, an ironic, unexpected joy."
Anne Overstreet: The Way a Word Sits in the Mouth
by Glynn Young
In June, poet Anne Overstreet published her first collection of poems, entitled Delicate Machinery Suspended: Poems. It is about memory and faith, affection and love, work done and work done well, and even playfulness. The poems are about a life observed, but also a life to come. It’s a beautiful work.
Anne’s poems have been published in the Asheville Poetry Review, Radix, DMQ Review, Relief, Talking River Review and several other publications. She is a Soapstone Resident and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. She’s conducted a number of workshops, and her poetry has appeared as part of the Cody Center Exhibition “Pairings” at Laity Lodge in Texas. She lives near Seattle with her husband, author and film critic Jeffrey Overstreet.
We talked with Anne about her poetry, her background and experiences, and the influences on her writing.
How did you come to write poetry?
Writing evolved out of a voracious reading habit my entire family shares in varying degrees. My father read Longfellow and Coleridge to us as bedtime stories and my mother read The Horse and His Boy, The Silver Trumpet, The Hobbit, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, that sort of thing, for hours as we drove up into the Blue Ridge Mountains to camp or headed to Monticello for the day. I still hear stories in her voice sometimes. I was drawn to languages in school: math, French, music. Later, I found myself in an Independent Studies poetry class taught by Nicholas Barker, and had an aha moment. Poetry has more of a taste to me than any other genre; I find I can get distracted by the way a word sits in the mouth.
You've had some interesting (and unusual) jobs, like human organ transporter, and the experiences come right through the poems (including the line that is the volume's title). How has work, your work, affected your poetry?
My slew of jobs—phlebotomist, sandwich maker, paralegal, medical courier, camera woman for the local evening news, albeit briefly, etc.—has allowed me to hear stories about the thousand and one ways people are in the world, how they make do, what they obsess about. It’s the off-the-radar, peculiar stories that grab me. We aren’t really normal or completely knowable, are we, any of us? Yet we recognize each other in our creations, in our words. The details of language provide a connecting point.
I once worked with a sailor who was reluctant to finish tours because he had to leave behind the ocean under its star-thronged sky. Disciplined, spine-straight guy, but, oh, he knew the constellations in the western hemisphere. Tom M. kept bees even as he began to lose his eyesight. I imagined how he might experience moving among the hives with impaired vision. He also showed me the stained-glass intricacies of damaged cells under a microscope. Best job I ever had, working in that cytology lab because of the way he taught and saw.
Working at the hospital reinforced the habit of naming and knowing the nature of things that my parents taught us all. My time working at my father’s laboratory and working as a medical courier made those anatomy textbook pictures concrete, made them tactile, chemical smelling. Working as aphlebotomist once required holding the hand of a brain-dead teenager while my colleague drew blood to type for organ donation. The body had stopped but not been allowed to fail, yet something had departed. In creation, outside of man, the design makes a kind of provision for death. I suppose“Whalefall” (one of the poems in the collection) is also me watching that process and finding it oddly beautiful and comforting.
Reading these poems, I almost wanted to subtitle them "A Life Observed." The close attention to details, and small details, suggest much about life and larger events. I'm thinking here of poems like "Rental" "Preparing for Market" and the pairing of two poems, "Immolation" and "Icarus' Gift.” And especially "Day of the Dead." What is it about details that are so powerful?
Quite frankly, particularities are often what catch my attention; as R. L. Stevenson put it “the world is so full of a number of things.” I pick a thing, a thread and pull it and follow it to what I want to say.
Specifics also support the poem’s intention, I hope. They provide a sense of place when that’s relevant, which it often is in my work, and they establish a tone. Our own minds select and sort details in order to frame an experience. What is concrete in a piece may strike a chord, enable a reader to come closest to reproducing what the writer has experienced. It at least provides a hook, allows the reader to enter the same room as the poet and to make it his or her own.
And of course, it’s the scrape of bark against a palm, the texture of a perfectly cooked dumpling, the sharp wintergreen scent of the hard candies great grandmother kept in her purse, the sensory details, that anchor memory.
You can read a review of Delicate Machinery Suspended: Poems at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Anne Overstreet: Influences and Faith
Your “home place” — New Mexico — plays an important role in your poems. Can you tell us a little about your background and growing up there?
We actually relocated to Roswell when I was 12 and I remember driving cross-country in the yellow Oldsmobile, muttering under my breath that I was going to hate it hate it hate it there. Now I can’t imagine feeling as connected to any other place the same way. You’re walking on the skin of the earth, moving through the heavens where it touches down. I imagine God breathing and this place is that held space between inhalation and exhalation. Such subtle beauty—you have to be alert to catch spring slipping quietly along the rivers, spilling green across the plains. I used to lie on the ground at Salt Creek and could swear I felt the earth turning. There’s no place like it.
Prior to New Mexico, we moved a fair bit because my dad was in the Army when we were young. Mostly parts of Virginia. Certain rituals provided continuity across the states and into Roswell, where my parents still live. Reading as a family was one. Camping in the mountains. Sundays were for church and feeding people.
In the Acknowledgements, you cite Luci Shaw and several others for helping you be a better writer. How did they do that?
Luci advocates for confidence in one’s work, one’s own voice. I’d say she was my poetic fairy godmother, but I’m not sure godmothers have tattoos and sport leather jackets. Linda has one of the clearest senses of vision I’ve ever encountered and has leant me her eye when I needed it. Stacey listens. Then she tells me what she’s heard, how she experiences what I’ve written. She doesn’t read a lot of poetry—she’s in my sci-fi/fantasy cohort— and she has a fresh ear. Plus, she’s a mean cook. And everyone needs someone who helps make room for you to get your work done, who protects that space. She does that. Derek has been a mentor and a teacher for years. I learn from his work every time I encounter it. There is a balance to every piece he writes that I’d like to achieve. He also sets the bar high for intelligent critique, something I hope I have learned from, and he never hesitates to give his support any time it is asked for.
Who are some of your favorite writers and poets?
Oh that’s an extensive list that is perpetually expanding! Annie Dillard—everything. I will also read anything Kathleen Norris writes. Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale is at the top of the list, as is much of Guy Gavriel Kay’s work, Patricia McKillip’s novels, and the Auralia’s Thread books (yep, I’m a fan of Jeffrey’s work). I’m a big fantasy and fairy tale buff and these authors write gorgeous prose, lyrical and surprising. The kind that stuns you, pulls you under and out into a different state of being.
Poetry, hmm, Pattiann Rogers, Maxine Kumin, Jane Hirschfield, Zbiegneiw Herbert, Adam Zagejewski (I particularly like the Polish poets of that period), to begin with. Rogers does this exquisite blending of the divine and science that celebrates fact and design, and yet holds something wild in it. Two of my northwest favorites are Derek Sheffield, whose work is keen, swift, and well-balanced, and Kevin Miller, who, though he has only a few collections out, does place so well. There is a reverence too for the holiness of the ordinary in his poems. These are writers I am in conversation with, at least on page, who I learn from, whose work elicits a response or a question every time I encounter it.
Many of the poems read like a movie camera filming a scene, then shifting to another scene, and then another, effectively (very effectively) combining three or four scenes into a cohesive whole, like in “If It Doesn’t Rain Soon.” Is film/movies an influence here?
You’d expect me to say yes, since my husband Jeffrey is a film critic. And the films I am most drawn to are often image heavy. However, I do think that is a consequence, not a cause or influence. As an undergraduate I studied history and loved reading various texts on one subject, looking at the event from differing perspectives to apprehend the whole. I think I still do that in my poetry.
Faith plays a strong role in your poetry, even when it’s subtle and understated. It’s straightforward in poems like “The Logic of Prayer Rising” and “Annunciation: Triptych” (two of my favorites in the collection) and “The Bearded Lady, Asleep,” but it’s present throughout the poems, which seem to suggest a belief in the order and purpose of things. How would you describe it?
It informs the way I see. Because of it, it is clear to me that we move through a designed world. Moreover, the designer seems so obviously to delight in artistry and variation, in evolutionary innovation. Scientists have recently discovered a shark whose underbelly mimics patterns of light falling through water so that it is virtually invisible from below. How cool is that? We keep discovering. Creation keeps unfolding. God continues to speak it into being, a proper artist.
My faith also gives me permission to ask questions. Scott Cairns talks about poetry being a continuing conversation, a response or reaction perhaps to the poetic tradition. Writing’s my way of engaging with my faith tradition. What do we do with apparent anomalies, like a person who appears to be both male and female, as in “The Bearded Lady”? How could Mary be the same after having been overshadowed by the same spirit that overshadowed the waters and drew the land masses up out of the deep? That sort of thing.
Maybe I am not entitled to answers, but I am free to ask. And ask and ask. Job is a favorite text, as are some of the Psalms. I think we’re supposed to raise questions as part of the conversation, even in the face of doubt, perhaps especially in the face of silence.
Related:
At Faith, Fiction, Friends, Anne discusses some of the specific poems in the collection.
You can read a review of Delicate Machinery Suspended: Poems at TweetSpeak Poetry.
But let's be completely upfront: we are here to sell books. It's a blessing to be able to throw your life into a thing you love and believe in it wholeheartedly, but a living must be made. It's a pretty simple equation, really, though keeping the thing afloat can require gargantuan effort and problem solving skills. This blog exists to inform and to praise good writing, but hey, even it's here to sell books.
Ann Patchett, best-selling author of The Patron Saint of Liars, Bel Canto, and the memoir Truth & Beauty: A Friendship, told the New York Times, “I have no interest in retail; I have no interest in opening a bookstore. But I also have no interest in living in a city without a bookstore.” So she and a partner are opening Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee. Ms. Patchett is pragmatic about the endeavor: “This is not a showroom, this is not where you come in to scan your barcode. If you like this thing, it’s your responsibility to keep this thing alive.” You can read the entire article HERE.
We admire her frankness. So consider this post a kind of reminder, or maybe better said, a prompt. We aren't begging for your business, but like any good relationship, reciprocity is essential. We delight in bringing you good books---a curated selection. And we work hard to get difficult-to-find books from across the country and across the sea. To quote from the About Us page on our website:
From the beginning, we have not been a typical independent bookstore; we eschew the trendy, and do not carry books solely based on their salability. Instead, we're selective, offering an eccentric community of books based on this organizing principle: if a book---be it literary, scientific, historical, or theological---sheds light on ultimate questions in an excellent way, then it's a worthy candidate for inclusion in our catalog.We do our best to create and sustain this community of books, and if you find value in our endeavor, we hope you will intentionally set out to support it---a community of readers and writers bent on bringing you the best. To quote the Patchett article a final time, "Buy books at independent stores, or the stores will go away."
Reality doesn't divide itself into "religious" and "literary" and "secular" spheres, so we don't either. We're convinced that all truths are related and every truth, if we pay attention rightly, directs our gaze toward God. One of our customers found us "eclectic but orthodox." We like that.
We also resonate with St. Justin Martyr in his Second Apology (paraphrased a bit): that which is true, is ours.
All that to say, after 23 years, we're still here. And so is Catalog 22, available to ORDER* through our website. Ships free.
*(Due to significantly increased printing and postage costs, we are now asking a nominal fee for the Catalog. We beg your understanding.)
We’ve been reading a book called Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives, about a certain Elder Thaddeus of Serbia (1914-2002). What a quietly beautiful book, a combination of third-person narrative and spiritual instructions and reminiscences from its subject. A winsome early passage tells us that when Elder Thaddeus’ spiritual father died, he “spent many years in sorrow and pain,” that his “soul was torn asunder by sadness.” The (anonymous) narrator continues: “In an attempt to heal his soul, he would take up his accordion and go into the hills where he would spend hours in solitude playing music. ‘I had always loved music and this brought me comfort.’ He also sought consolation from other elders, but his soul could not be comforted. Just when all hope abandoned him, God sent him consolation through a copy of The Path to Salvation by St. Theophan the Recluse. Thus, the experience of the Holy Fathers was confirmed once more” in the life of Thaddeus, as he testifies, “When there is no human being that can bring us comfort, then God comes and brings us joy through a book.”
Though the image of the young monk sitting on a hillside with his accordion might evoke a smile, we would bet our lives that the near-miracle of being brought joy through a book is widespread---in fact, we have bet our lives on that being the case. We hope that among the 1300+ titles in this catalog, some might bring comfort or consolation, joy or delight to you. Even grace. In an increasingly discarnate digital world, we believe that books—some of these particular books—might be, in their way, such sacramental objects.
We hope you enjoy the catalog. Among its offerings, count as one Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: The Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica (212 pp. paper $18.00). Please read on...
Eighth Day owner and founder Warren Farha speaks meaningfully to the import of the man and his work. The following is a short talk delivered in 2000. If you want to read more, browse our many titles by, and about, C.S. Lewis (and his friends) HERE.
How can we characterize the apologetics of C.S. Lewis? Books have been written on this topic, but I have not read them; I mostly just read Lewis himself. So let me give you a few impressions as to why Lewis was and is such an extraordinarily effective apologist for our times.
I have always been struck by Lewis’s honesty, which is another way of saying his humility. It is an honesty that is clearly not an affectation or a false modesty. It appears to us from his frequent use of his own experience to establish an identification with his listener and reader. It is an honesty that is compellingly winsome and disarming. I could (but won’t) give a dozen examples. Here are a few.
In his Introduction to a later edition of The Screwtape Letters, Lewis makes this disclaimer: “Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Letters were the ripe fruit of many years’ study in moral and ascetic theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works. ‘My heart’—I need no other’s— ‘showeth me the wickedness of the ungodly.’” In recounting his movement from atheism to faith, his renewed awareness of serious and culpable moral defect, Lewis describes his inner man: “Really, a young atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side. You must not do, you must not even try to do, the will of the Father unless you are prepared to ‘know of the doctrine.’ All my acts, desires, and thoughts were to be brought into harmony with universal Spirit. For the first time I examined myself with a seriously practical purpose. And there I found what appalled me; a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds. My name was legion” [Surprised by Joy, p. 226].
There is always the sense in Lewis that you are listening to someone who has faced doubt and despair in their most intense form and is willing to relate the truth of the gospel in light of that experience. In a passage of unforgettable power, here Lewis speaks obliquely through the senior tempter Screwtape to his understudy Wormwood: “Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys” [see Screwtape Letters, Chapter 8].
It is this same stark honesty that provides one of the fundamental principles Lewis explicitly sets forth in his essay on—you guessed it—Christian apologetics. He insists repeatedly that those who proclaim the message of the gospel must do so—not because it is “healthy” or “good for society” or conducive to an individual’s peace of mind—but because it is true.
A second aspect of Lewis’s apologetics—one closely related to his honesty—is his ability to communicate with “everyman” —the common person. Here I must become somewhat autobiographical. I first picked up a book by C.S. Lewis when I was a junior in high school—it was Mere Christianity. I am not a scholar by temperament. I am a worker. My lineage descends through merchants on my father’s side, farmers on my mother’s. I was raised lower to middle middle class. Yet, I opened this little paperback book and was immediately entranced, drawn, provoked, convicted, convinced, and changed forever by it. Reading Lewis inevitably educates, lifts the intellect, opens windows not only onto a more mature understanding of bedrock Christian doctrine, but also to a wide range of other concerns—mythological, literary, philosophical. And perhaps the greatest aspect of this exposure to his incredible variety of interests is that the boundaries between them are fluid, if they exist at all (like reality itself). I have spoken with countless others who have had the same experience. Lewis says in his essay on Christian apologetics, “I have come to the conviction that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts were confused. Power to translate is the test of having really understood one’s own meaning.” Lewis has shown in countless instances his ability to do just that. He has abundantly fulfilled his own definition of what authentic apologetics is all about.
But the most powerful source of Lewis’s success as a Christian apologist is the fact that his apologetics springs from Joy. Lewis understood that Joy lies at the heart of the experience of every man and woman born on the earth, and that it is every man’s and every woman’s most intimate link to God. Joy is immediate, yet infrequent in our experience. It is winsome, yet beautiful to the extent of pain. It is a longing for something that events and phenomena in this world evoke, yet it points to a source other than this world. Lewis’s own words, as usual, are the best way to convey it: “In speaking of this far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name..." [see “The Weight of Glory” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses].
There is no more common link between us than the experience of Joy, and it is this experience that Lewis relies upon more than any other to point to our need to reconnect to God and to His Christ. The experiences that evoke Joy are infinitely varied, but what is common is that they come unbidden, unexpected, and we cannot artificially manufacture them or cause them to be repeated, no matter how we might try. The ultimate apologetic force of this “inconsolable longing” is stated in most concentrated form in Mere Christianity: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world” [Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chapter 10]. In more expanded form, we find the same message in The Problem of Pain: “There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else...It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work...All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever...The thing you long for summons you away from the self. Even the desire for the thing lives only if you abandon it. This is the ultimate law—the seed dies to live, the bread must be cast upon the waters, he that loses his life will save it.”
Why is this news at Eighth Day? Please allow me to quote (from the New York Times): "More than a distributor of books, Mr. Whitman saw himself as patron of a literary haven." As he put it, “I wanted a bookstore because the book business is the business of life.”
That's pretty much how we feel, as we've written before. Inspired by Walt Whitman (who also ran a bookstore), George Whitman (no relation) was led to sell books by the books themselves. And it wasn't just the books he held in high regard, but also the men and women who wrote them. He often "provided food and makeshift beds to young aspiring novelists or writing nomads, often letting them spend a night, a week, or even months living among the crowded shelves and alcoves."
With Christmas fast approaching we want to welcome you again into our own particular business of life and hope you can find within the pages of our Catalog (available to order or download) and website books that bring you consolation and grace, joy and delight. In the words of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, "When there is no human being that can bring us comfort, then God comes and brings us joy through a book."
And with that we want to offer you Free Domestic Shipping on all orders over $50. No coupon code is necessary. If you want your gifts to arrive before Christmas, please call our amicable staff at 1.800.841.2541 to make sure that happens.
We wish you a blessed Christmas feast and all good things in the coming year.
The Staff of Eighth Day Books
Today is the first day of the Nativity Fast, the 40-day season in which the Church looks forward to the feast of Christ’s birth. It is indeed a baby fast, less rigorous than the lenten one to come, but like all fasting in all traditions the purpose of its prescribed renunciations are preparatory, to focus the spiritual parts of our flesh upon what lies beyond—or maybe, in truth, more deeply within—the immediacies of the body.
To enter these seasons within the church year is, like entering the church itself, to enter a mystery. Not an abstract mystery but a spatial one. The fast is not only purgative. The fast is a form, and a way. And like all forms, to comprehend it, it must be begun; it must be completed.
A form, Wendell Berry says, “is an opening, a generosity, toward possibility. The forms acknowledge that good is possible; they hope for it, await it, and prepare its welcome—though they do not dare require it.” To enter the fast, like entering a poem or a marriage (the two forms Berry intends), is to enter a labyrinth. One not only doesn’t know what will happen, one is counting on that unknown. What will be met at the center of the labyrinth, and what toll will the meandering path take along the way? “A walker leaving a labyrinth is not the same person who entered it,” the scholar Hermann Kern observes in comparing the labyrinth to a rite of initiation. To reach the center requires not only attention but endurance, and even then, to have reached that goal and met who-knows-what, one is only halfway done.
Berry continues, “To keep the form is an act of faith in possibility, not of the form, but of the life that is given to it; the form is a question addressed to life and time, which only life and time can answer.” The important thing is not to quit; quitting the form denies us the possibility of knowing what we would have found, had we stayed.
I am not a disciplined faster, and I meet each season with neither the sureness of duty, the novice’s eager concentration, nor the willing resignation of custom. Because I am an all-or-nothing type, it would be (relatively) easier for me to fast entirely, say sunup to sundown, than to scrupulously avoid dairy and oil, wine and meat. Too many high-tech substitutes, too many self-styled exceptions, and then there is that Slavic rule which designates beer a liquid bread. But, as it goes, the struggle is all; to belong to a tradition and its practices, as Woody Allen said, is (at least) 90% just showing up. To fast is to start and keep going. The resolve this takes comes, somehow, from the promise of those who have seen it through---in my case from the saints who show that the end, the way out, radiates in beauty. So I am intrigued by those who follow a hard way, who submit to the teachings of a form and the hopes of its formation. Two poets on this problem:
Kazim Ali:
Fasting is first to abstain and then to embrace emptiness.
Then to give emptiness back.
Frank Bidart:
We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed.
The attraction of the in-between, of an adventurer's faith, is explained (as everything is) on Wikipedia: "Major transformations occur at crossroads and other liminal places, at least partly because liminality—being so unstable—can pave the way for access to esoteric knowledge or understanding of both sides. Liminality is sacred, alluring, and dangerous." But to exist perpetually at the threshold is exhausting, and ultimately unproductive. In avoiding the hazards of the practitioner one loses out on its manifold rewards. While possessing a beginner's mind is zen and all, to literally remain a beginner, always at the door, is to condemn oneself. One should probably enter, even into a winding darkness with no way out but the way in, and go forward, steadily and steadfast.
--John Estes directs the Creative Writing Program at Malone University in Canton, Ohio. His first book, Kingdom Come was published in 2011 by C&R Press, and he is author of two chapbooks: Breakfast with Blake at the Laocoon (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and Swerve (PSA, 2009), which was selected by C.K. Williams for a National Chapbook Fellowship from the Poetry Society of America.
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(9) Herbal care.
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My life is full of joy once again!!!. My name is Mrs Sonia Chloe and i lives in Canada, after nine(9)years of a Broken marriage, my husband left me and our 2 kids because he lost his job and at the same time i put to bed,I felt like my life was about to end, i almost commit suicide several occasions i was emotionally down for a very long time while my kids and i were staying with my mum coping cause i lost my dad during the period. Thanks to a spell caster called "Drsukuju who i met online on one faithful day, as i was surfing through the internet searching for a good spell caster because someone told me about it to solve my problems. I came across allot of testimonies about this great spell caster. Some people testified that he brought their Ex lovers back, some testified that he restores womb,cure cancer, some testified how he made them got new jobs with good salaries/wages, some testified that he can cast a spell to stop divorce, some testified on how he turned their barrenness to fruitfulness, some testified on how they got increase in salaries/wages, some testified on how they gain higher positions in their offices and businesses also came across one particular testimony,it was about a woman called DORCAS who said she was from the USA testified about how "Drsukuju" brought back her Ex lover in less than 4 days and reversed the illness of their little boy Benard and at the end of her testimony she dropped "Drsukuju" e-mail address drsukujuspelltemple@gmail.com After reading all this,I decided to contact "Drsukuju" via his e-mail and i explained my problem to him. In just three(3) my ex husband came back and started begging for forgiveness After i must have followed, obeyed and met the requirement "Drsukuju" 's instructions. He solved our issues and we are even happier than before because "Drsukuju" also helped my husband to secure a well pay job, now my man respect me more than ever before Drsukuju is really a gifted man like he said and i would not stop publishing him because he is a wonderful great spell caster. If you have a problem and you are looking for a real and genuine spell caster to solve all your problems for you contact drsukujuspelltemple@gmail.com he is the answer to your problems and please always remember to publish him after solving your problems is a great spell caster i respect him so much. I advice you contact him via drsukujuspelltemple@gmail.com
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