Friday, June 15, 2012

Summer Reading 2012

My wife Emma and I are about to spend a week in the mountains near Keystone, Colorado, thanks to a generous cabin loan from some longtime friends.  So, it's time to begin the summer reading in earnest.  This is the first summer that I do not have to do specific class readings for courses in Chicago, so I have the luxury of choosing my own summer reading.

This summer I'd like to begin with Marilynne Robinson's latest book of essays, When I Was a Child I Read Books:



Then I'd like to erase a deficit in my classic repertoire by reading Crime & Punishment:



In honor of the ongoing 150th anniversary of the U.S. Civil War, another one of my goals is to read through the events of the summer of 1862 by following Shelby Foote's epic Civil War narrative:


This year's Western National Leadership Training event in Jackson, Wyoming, sponsored by the Synod of the Rocky Mountains of the Presbyterian Church (USA) will be partly based on Rex Miller's book The Millenium Matrix.  I don't think I'll be able to attend WNLT, but I would like to be able to join the follow-up conversations about the kind of leadership that will be required to lead the church forward:



Finally, I'd like read Tom Long's latest book What Shall We Say?  Evil, Suffering, and The Crisis of Faith, partly in the hopes that it will give me some fodder for an October sermon series on the Book of Job:


What about you?  What will you be reading and feasting upon this summer?






Why Church? What a congregation is for . . .

One more entry in the Why Church? discussion.  Here's a reflection from Lutheran pastor and blogger Diane Roth:

http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2012-06/what-congregation