Except...

Information I gleaned from field trips to the Smithsonian museums didn't really mesh against what I was taught in private school, church, and in my Bob Jones-breed Christian home. Answers from my childhood "experts" seemed flippant, curt, and imminently unsatisfying.

Years later, I met and grew to love my parents-in-law (and before them, my brilliant, well-read, think-outside-the-box husband!). The whole family valued independent thinking and had the utmost respect for science's contributions to our understanding of our existence. They all encouraged me to explore and test different ways of thinking, much to my growth and amazement. Science, and three people who deeply loved me, quietly tugged at my heart.

But, the icing on the cake came when my pastor preached a sermon titled "Isn't Creation Just a Myth?", a clear assault on all that Darwin stood for. You see, my pastor, whom we still greatly respect and study under, called Darwin's theory of evolution "a religious system" that is "full of lies" on that fateful Sunday. Was my husband angry! For weeks afterwards, I listened to his diatribes. Eventually, he went to talk to our pastor one-one one, and eventually came to some kind of resolution in his own heart and mind on this volatile issue. I had only seen that kind of passion in hard-core fundamentalists before!

So when I saw Giberson's Saving Darwin at the bookstore, I was chomping at the bit. I longed to resolve the obvious tension playing out in my intellectual and personal life. Besides, the search for Truth should never intimidate us, especially as Christ-followers!

Saving Darwin covers a lot of ground. Giberson begins with an honest assessment of Charles Darwin's paradigms and the ultimate break in his faith (which had absolutely nothing to do with his brand of science). He then moves comprehensively to an in-depth look at evolution's dark side, its abuses and extremes (think genocide) and slips easily into an anecdotal recount of the Scopes "Monkey Trial". In the blink of an eye, he leads us though a systematic dismantling of The Genesis Flood, a fundamentalist's "science" book, co-authored by one my home-town's Biblical heroes, John C. Whitcomb. Giberson clearly demonstrates that the creation/evolution argument is a culture, rather than an academic war, for evolution bears out its scientific validity in a number of disciplines including biology, geology, genetics, and paleontology. On the other hand, young-earth creationists have virtually no support from mainstream scientists and in fact, find themselves a bit isolated (and conveniently academically myopic), with a small, but fiercely dedicated army of anti-evolutionists.

Few books have challenged my faith, my core beliefs, and my intellect more than this one. Many times, I found myself nodding with a clear understanding of Giberson's science, immediately accompanied by stabs of fundamentalist offense and guilt. In the end, however, I could find nothing in this work that contradicted Jesus' story of redemption for His fallen people. (That being said, I don't know that I could find much in this work that disagrees with any of the world's three major religions.) Giberson repeatedly warns both "sides" of the creation/evolution battle that the existing dichotomy between their theories is "wrong" and that the current polarized positions "are not the only two options". He compels his readers to re-work their understanding of God's creativity and our place in the universe to match what can be empirically studied. And he warns against twisting the Bible's ancient wisdom "to speak to a modern issue it never intended to address."

On a minor note, Giberson never fully engages his reader on an emotional level, other than his brushes with wry humor. This man is clearly a scholar, not a salesman. He does take one brief rabbit trail into his own personal belief system. He writes, "As a purely practical matter, I have compelling reasons to believe in God." He then describes his parents as "deeply committed Christians", his wife and children as "believing in God", most of his friends as "believers", and his job that he loves at "a Christian college". His relationship with our Creator never reaches much beyond his summation that "abandoning belief in God would be disruptive, sending my life completely off the rails." That's all? That is the basis for his faith? I wanted more.

In his conclusion, Giberson offers the book's powerful redemption, an admission that won me over: "Perhaps the unfolding of history includes a steady infusion of divine creativity under the scientific radar. Perhaps the meaning we encounter in so many different places and so many different ways is not simply an accident of our biology, but a hint that the universe is more than particles and their interactions." My belief in Jesus' plan for our universe's reconciliation and the wonder and mystery of His methods remain fully in tact, but will be, hereafter, combined with a respect for modern academia and science's advances.

Saving Darwin will make a great gift for my dear father-in-law; he will find it brilliant and engaging. I probably won't, however, buy it for my dear pastor. On second thought... it might be just the challenge he needs.

As always, Driscoll generously sprinkles his explanations with hundreds of specific Bible references. This author is passionate about Truth and has a gift for bringing Christ's work alive in poignantly relevant stories. His letters, each an independent chapter, address issues such as child abuse, terminal illness and even spiritual complacency through a lens which allows the reader to uniquely see how Jesus answers, with His death and resurrection, their specific concerns.

In this work, Driscoll and Breshears offer an easy-to-understand theology on meaty doctrines such as expiation, justification, and revelation. For example, in a letter to his friend "Thomas", a man driven by sexual addictions, Driscoll draws from I John and II Peter clearly demonstrating his friend's slavery to physical cravings, lust and pride. He then shows Thomas the beautiful power of the cross to redeem us from the curse of the law, the power of Satan, our sinful flesh, and being dead to God. The author brilliantly moves on to show us how Jesus redeemed us to life in Heaven with God, Jesus' return, and a resurrected body.

One of my favorite chapters was Driscoll's letter to his 18-month-old son, a convincing discourse on "unlimited limited atonement". In this letter, Driscoll skillfully weaves his unique perspective on atonement, a combination of Calvinist and Arminian views. Driscoll and Breshears challenge their readers to take a look at free will and God's election, in harmony: "Jesus' death was sufficient to save anyone and, subjectively, efficient only to save those who repent of their sin and trust in him."

Death by Love quite possibly contains the clearest, most understandable, explanations I've ever read on all that Christ's death and resurrection accomplished. These authors are able to explain the cure to our modern-day sins and show us the ultimate example of Love with the unchanging Truth of the cross. Death by Love infused me with fresh hope in Jesus' promise that He has already defeated Satan and death!

Campbell starts his memoir speeding through his childhood in rural Mississippi noting how distinct racial lines were for a white boy and their incongruence with what it meant to be Christian. In navigating his own questions, he points out that, "For the first time in Southern history, white support was not essential for the success of a movement for racial justice." He wonders, then, what is the reason and role of a white man in such a momentous moment in time, something I've often wondered myself as more and more progress is made regardless of my involvement. It's a question to consider in the diminishing whiteness of an even more multi-racial America than there was in Campbell's time.

My grade school was a racially integrated, but mostly white, school. My understanding of "black as different" wasn't really made known to me until a school camping trip. I was one of two white kids in a cabin full of black kids. The first morning I was asked by Roderick, "Yo, Kendall, you got a rake?" In my naivety I asked him what a "rake" was. The guy next to him said, "He ain't gonna have no rake cause he's white. He ain't got no afro." Which, when I look at it now, I am not so sure Roderick knew the difference in black and white either, until then. As we grew up the space between us would grow, insurmountable walls were built all because of the color of our skin. Where did we get those notions? They came from the adults around us, those same adults that grew up during Campbell's time.

A recurring voice in Campbell's memoir is T.J. Eaves, a black preacher from Alabama and Will Campbell's closest friend. He keeps Will and the reader on their toes, shaking things up just when one might feel self-important for not being like other white folks. In a debate about how much good black or white preachers are doing and God's role in Civil Rights, T.J. says:

I'm in civil rights trying to get my rights. God didn't keep them away from me. Man does that...There's a big difference between civil rights and God rights. God gave me the same rights He gave you. You take some of them away from me and that's your problem. That's between you and Him... there's something pretty selfish about trying so hard to get my rights. Maybe the Christian thing to be doing is to be handing over the rights I have... Brother Jesus is asking us to give up power.

For all the good that may or may not be achieved, white or black, T.J. is unwilling to let Christians push Jesus out of the center of the Movement. Later, T.J. says to Will, "I never did think of Jews as being white people. What I mean is, if Jesus had been white, he never would have been crucified... I mean we always prayed like Jesus was one of us." It makes one stop. Think.

During an exchange between Campbell and Jim Lawson - a prominent figure in the nonviolence aspect of the Civil Rights Movement - Lawson says: "There's more to the wrong than slavery." Campbell started the conversation mulling over something John Ross, the first elected leader of the Cherokee Nation, said: ''The perpetrator of a wrong never forgives his victims.'" Campbell then asks, "Is that what makes white folks behave like white folks? We can't forgive them for what we've done to them?" This might very well be the source of white-man's guilt. It, also, might be why so many white folks in America can't seem to understand why having a Black President is significant. To try and understand might mean looking at what being white in America has done to their humanity.

Campbell goes on, "Jim Lawson told me later that his ancestors were never slaves, and I told him that none of my ancestors ever owned any." So who then is responsible for forgiveness? Being that much of my ancestry is based in the South, I could bet that some of them owned slaves. What then is my part? Campbell goes on to make a point to Lawson: "By accident of birth, I can't forgive you for a wrong I never did to you...and you have to forgive me for not forgiving you for something you don't need forgiving for." I know, it gets confusing. Maybe this is part of the reason things move so slowly. Without saying it, Campbell shows that it is in relationship that these questions are answered.

These are just some of the moments in Campbell's book that take a hard honest look at many of the issues and questions we keep to ourselves. The answers aren't easy either, nor clear cut and simple. Most do seem to be found in relationships be it of any color. Regardless of how you feel, having a black man as President changes the landscape of America, and can't help but beg the question: where do we need to come clean with our past so we can move more fully into our future as a country, as a people?

Some of the last words Campbell writes consider what has and has not been gained in the Movement:

"The civil rights gains we have made are largely cosmetic," my old friend Kelly Miller Smith told me just before he died...I protested with a roll call of the improvements he had presided over..."But they still don't respect us," he said sadly. "Look at the television shows. Listen to the rhetoric on the streets. They still don't respect us."...Freedom is reconciliation. "They still don't love me." That was what my dying friend was telling me. Freedom is love... The Civil Rights Movement may be over for black people. It is far from over for whites.

But it's true, each morning as I drove through town on my way to work my head turned in the direction of every white haired, well dressed older man who happened to be walking about. I couldn't help myself. John Updike lived less than a mile from our apartment and I wanted to meet him.

I first read John Updike when I was a freshman in high school. The often anthologized "A&P" was the story. I like to tell people that it is the story that made me want to write stories. It appealed to me then because it was immediately relatable. I was working at a grocery store called Johnny's Foodmaster, my first job. And although I wasn't a cashier as the main character in the story is, I did often use my bagging station as a perch from which to steal glimpses of the few young girls that would come in to pick up milk or eggs for their mothers. And I certainly shared the main characters' tendency toward delusions of grandeur.

My appreciation for that story matured as I did, and it served as a gateway into the rest of Updike's writing. I can very nearly trace decisions in my life that led toward my development as a writer to many of Updike's stories and essays that I encountered over the years. I decided that short fiction was my genre of choice, for example, when I read "Leaves" from 1967's The Music School. Later, after reading Hugging the Shore, first published in 1983, I turned my attention to non-fiction. Since those early days a plethora of other influences have arisen as I worked to find my own voice, but that initial connection to Updike's writing remains.

It wasn't until I was a sophomore at Gordon College that I learned of our geographic connection. There it was widely known that the same John Updike that we read in our literature anthologies was a neighbor of the college. It was also known that despite his close proximity, Mr. Updike would not be visiting Gordon anytime soon. The explanation however was less clear. There were rumors of a disagreement between a member of the faculty, or administration, and Updike. Whatever the reason, though we still read his stories in literature and creative writing courses, he would never be speaking in a classroom or at convocation. I don't have any confirmation that this rumor is true aside from the fact that in my time at Gordon as a student, and later as an adjunct professor, John Updike never visited campus.

Of course there are many other Updike stories floating around the North Shore of Boston. Another such account has a Gordon professor rear-ending John Updike's car somewhere in Beverly. In the rendition I heard, an interesting conversation sprung up between them and they discussed writing over the exchanging of insurance information.

I have a friend of a friend who did landscaping at the Updike home and actually saw his Pulitzer Prize and another friend who used to deliver pizzas to the Updikes. The owner of a local used book store, Manchester by the Book, explained to me one day as I was browsing that every so often he has to drive over to Updike's house to pick up the books that he chooses not to read of those that are sent to his house with the hope that he will review them. Even while workshopping this essay, a good friend and fellow writer prefaced his critique with a story about meeting Updike in The Book Shop, a small bookstore here in Beverly Farms. That's the same shop from which my mother-in-law bought me a signed copy of Updike's newest novel Terrorist; he apparently signs all of the hard cover editions of his books that they sell there.

And yet I never saw him around town, let alone met him. From my office in our old apartment I could look out the window across to the library where his name is inscribed above the windows among other literary Farms' residents. I would often peer out that same window down onto the street to see if he happened to be window shopping below, but to no avail.

So why did I want so badly to meet John Updike? What would I have said to him?
It's not as if I'm an adoring fan who wanted an autograph; anyway, as I mentioned, I already have one. I didn't necessarily have a manuscript that I wanted him to read. (Though I'm sure I could have throw one together pretty quickly, if asked.) I didn't want to approach John Updike as a fan, or an admirer, and I was certainly not a colleague. I wanted to meet him as a skeptic; a young person who doesn't quite believe that the writing life can actually be a life. I wanted to meet him as someone who knows plenty of books but very few authors. I wanted to know how the words that I have spent my young life storing inside me could have originated inside someone else, another human being.

When I sit down to write I have the sense that although I am alone physically, I am also in great company in that I am surrounded by a chorus of writers' words rising up from everywhere, including from inside. I try to keep this connection before me at all times so that I don't feel like I'm on my own island, writing my own thoughts, to be shared with no one beside me. But I need a physical reminder of this community as well. Therefore, scattered over my desk are my favorite books from the writers I rely on the most, always within arms' reach should I need encouragement or inspiration or simply diversion.

But at some point a writer realizes that more community than this is necessary, that while the words still live inside the computer, on the white plain that is made to look like real, physical paper, they don't actually exist yet. And it's hard to make the connection between the words in the books around me, the physical books, and their origins, potentially on similar digital "paper." Harder to imagine still is the connection between these words, existing in invisible space, the words between book covers, and the man or woman who has watched the process progress from bodiless words to physical pages. And I find it nearly impossible to connect the names on the spines of the books on the shelf next to me with the person pictured on the dust cover and just as hard to connect that two-dimensional person in black and white with the real, three-dimensional full color, living, breathing human being.

But I want to meet that human being. I want to know someone who knows that these words can actually become physical things. And I have come to believe that John Updike could have helped me make this connection. I believed this because I know that he too struggled with this disconnect. In a short piece called "Updike and I" found in the last section of More Matters he concocts a monologue by "I" about the other, "Updike." It is written in the model of Jorge Luis Borges' essay "Borges and I" published in 1964. Updike's piece is enlightening not only because it actually describes how "Updike and I," both, react to meeting an admirer, but it illuminates the space between writer and real person. Even John Updike felt some disconnect between the writer of the same name. Even he couldn't quite see how the person who spends time in front of the word processor can possibly be the same person who reads the newspaper with breakfast in the morning. It is as if the words that one takes in and the words that one sends out pass each other somewhere inside of a person but the two identities rarely meet.

Still, this small comfort, this modest assurance that even established authors question their relationship to their own writing and that of others comes from the same place it always has, words on a page. I know from reading Updike that he, the man, could never have offered me that same comfort in person. He probably would have felt as awkward as I, eyes dashing to corners of the room falling on anything inanimate, anything safe. Because the inanimate objects, the heavy books, and the light ones too, are the things we trust the most, even when the living beings are what we want the books to help us understand.

I never did meet Updike. Not on the street, nor in the library, the bookstore nor the beach. I can't say what it is like to shake hands with the man who brought to life countless characters in all those short stories and novels or who penned so many brilliant essays and reviews. But I'll always have those characters and essays to remember and to help move forward. At some point over the last several years Updike's position, entrenched with modernity, has become less attractive to me. Yet, somehow, his persona has not. Knowing that he existed, and for a time, in such proximity to where I lived is still comforting and empowers me to offer back the little I can. In this case it is these words, in black and white, inanimate as they may be, as a means of commiseration, of understanding.

If you're anything like me, you have to forgive the initial impulse to belt out Journey when seeing the cover. But if you can get past that, I think you'll find one of the most graceful and informed critics of the Emergent church yet on the market. Wittmer is a seminary professor in Grand Rapids, which means he is in an uberconservative Christian culture with an enigmatic emergent crowd among Rob Bell disciples. That's not to be critical of Rob Bell disciples; I have a bit of a man-crush on the prophet of G-Rap myself. I'm just saying when Wittmer writes about emerging(ent) church, it's because he's swimming up to his eyeballs in the tension of it all.

Wittmer's book is structured around a series of issues on which Wittmer thinks we need to land a middle road between theological Conservatives and Postmodern Innovators (or PI; his catch-all term for emergent, emerging, neo-progressive, etc.). I felt that latter term failed in some spots since PIs often articulate a position far older than Conservatives (who tend to date the early church back to 1517AD). I'll be the first to confess that there were times where I wanted to reach through the book and punch Wittmer in the face for blatant inaccuracies (or so I thought at first), but he had a knack for bringing me back with a wealth of extra information by the end of the chapter to where I could see his perspective and generally agree. He covered most of the major hot topics: necessity of cognitive belief for salvation, original sin, homosexuality, atonement, existence of hell, epistemology, inerrancy/infallibility of Scripture, and more. I don't think there was a single chapter where I completely lined up with his conclusions, but he was informing, challenging, and persuasive nonetheless.

I particularly liked his chapter on atonement. He is the first conservative voice I've heard in the contemporary conversation who admits that Penal Substitution Atonement (the idea that Christ died as the result of God literally taking the punishment for sin in order to preserve both God's justice and His love) is a construct of the late medieval and early Reformation periods rather than a doctrine dating back to the early church. Nonetheless, he sees PSA as the primary model for the Gospel, describing a Christus Victor/PSA synthesis as his middle way between Conservatives and PIs. It was helpful. I still say it's incomplete, because I think the Gospel has got to be bigger than something described by any and all atonement models, much less just two, but then again, I have no solid position on the exact workings atonement anyways.

Like I said, there were moments when I wanted to toss my beliefs about nonviolence (I wish he had addressed that), particularly when Willmer states it's obvious "that the Bible says that homosexual acts are sin." I don't have my mind made up on this subject, but I tend to agree with him. But if you've researched this issue at all, you know it's nowhere near perfectly clear what the Biblical position on homosexuality should be, because there are legitimate arguments on each side. Wittmer does quickly concede this fact while still remaining hardline on his orthodoxy. So I ended up siding fairly close to him on the issue of homosexuality.

I can't say the same for Hell. Researching the history of ideas about Hell and its (non?)appearance in Scripture has been a bit of a pet project of mine over the past couple years. The chapter on Hell largely centers around Brian McLaren's work in The Last Word and the Word After That (which I highly recommend). My advice for anti-emergents is this: if you want to bash emergent church, don't write against whole doctrines by knocking on McLaren. McLaren is a pastor, not a theologian. He is a base emergents start from, not the sum total of theological construct. And please, quit using the "Jesus talked about Hell, so we should believe in it" line. If that was a legitimate argument, then it would have settled the issue of Hell and saved us 2000 years of debate. As with most vicissitudes into the debate of Hell, there were too many stones left unturned. I was left with this oft-occurring feeling that I, with no firm belief in a literal Hell, could craft a better argument for the existence of Hell than most anti-emergents do.

Looking back through this review, it seems harsh. In case you glazed over the former half, I truly did find this book both informative and a challenge. If you are emergent, read it. It's a quick read from a sharp prof who actually understands the point of view emergents take - rare in Christian media. Regardless of how sure I am in my opinions, I haven't devoted my meager 22 years to studying theology, so what do I know? So far as I can tell, Michael Wittmer is a thinker, and while he defaults to feeling safe on the side of theological conservatism (as I subconsciously do), he synthesizes a massive amount of authors and materials I've never seen before to bear his arguments. So as a theological whore, I'll always appreciate hearing a different perspective, whether conservative or postmodern and innovative.

If dysfunctional is just a modern way to describe the effects of sin, then we all grew up in dysfunctional families. Chances are you didn't realize it as a child - Mom just liked to cry, Dad was just a loner, and you were just the Fun Sibling who kept everyone in stitches. But then you got out of the house, took your first college psych class, and came back home for Christmas. Remember the first time you had that aha? "Oh crap! Mom has a martyr complex. Dad is a Borderline. And I'm not fun - I'm the Family Jester appointed to steer the conversation away from Real Issues at all costs!" Later you became a parent and realized impossible it is to be totally functional, if functional is just a modern way to say sinless. Or else you landed in a 12-step program where they told you what the you read in the Bible long ago. You have to forgive. It's the only way to find peace. Still, no matter how much you've grown or come to accept your family with the Love Of The Lord, just try spending 48 hours with them without reverting to your Childhood Role. Dare ya.

Well there is hope! Catheryn J. Brockett an actress and comedienne, has written a terrific book that's part-fun, part-therapy, and completely-entertaining. The Dysfunctional Family Funbook: Games and Activities to Keep You Sane Your Whole Trip Home.

I've known Catheryn for ten years now, and remember when she started putting this book together. I asked her a series of questions about the book and process.

SI: Your book title alone would make anyone ask, 'Why hasn't anyone thought of this up til now?' It was begging to be written. How did you come up with the idea?

CJB: Well, I really love my family, but after I moved to the West Coast my relationship with them became more and more uncomfortable in a weird, vague way. I began to dread visiting them. Then my Grandmother died. I thought we'd have a funeral where we'd get together as a family, tell stories, eat a lot, drink a lot, and grieve. But my family decided it would be best for everyone just to not do anything - they had strange justifications for it: Grandma had donated her body to science, so there was no cadaver. But the truth was they'd just rather not deal with anything emotional or difficult, and they expected me to do the same. By then I'd had enough therapy to realize that 1) this was not healthy, and 2) I had been doing this for years - pretending nothing ever affected me, hurt me, scared me. That trip home sent me into a tailspin - I had to break up with my family.

That is when I began seeing the first game, Match the Emotion to the Correct Expression. It looks like a kid's game from Highlight Magazine and says, 'match the correct emotion with the correct expression.' Except all the faces are EXACTLY THE SAME...

SI: That's my favorite game!! It's snarky, but it's poignant for anyone who grew up not being allowed to say express how they felt. Very crafty, your book: it looks like some game book you could buy in an airport. But it's not for say, a third-grader or a committed alcoholic. How much therapy would a reader have to have to get all the jokes?

CJB: Anybody could have fun with it. Some of it is just silly - nostalgic games, recipes - and I think silly is highly underrated: I truly believe it is cathartic to take yourself out of the frustration and drama and well, make fun of it. One of my favorite quotes is from Martin Luther King who said, "Laughter molds a creative optimism." I heard it on NPR radio and almost drove off the road trying to write it on the back of a receipt. Probably with lip liner or something. While trying not to spill my latte ... What? I live in L.A...

SI: So do I, but ... Say, is this a book you need to hide when you're visiting family?

CJB: I thought of providing fake book jackets like, Chicken Soup for the Delightful Family Soul, or Good Investment Strategies for Happy Adult Children. But part of the fun of this book is being subversive. For some of us, family doesn't feel like a safe place. So my motto is, "save yourself."

SI: How did you work with the illustrator? Did you come up with game ideas and then they fleshed it out, or did you do mock-ups and then they went from there?

CJB: I didn't really know what I was doing, so I made an entire mock up of the book - complete with clip art and my really lame drawings (BTW, whoever said you can't use an electric drill on paper was entirely wrong). I also gave the publisher the classic Highlights For Children that had inspired me. Some came from my stand up, some from my solo show about having brain surgery (yes), and some from watching other people's families. Some of the original draft was dark - like a story problem with an implied reference to incest, maybe there was an abortion reference. Um, a bit too dark.

SI: Um, a bit too.

CJB: Well the book is selling at Target and Walmart (online), they were right to cut those. But if you look at the statistics of families who suffer those unspeakable kinds of things, maybe we shouldn't consider it taboo. When we bury things and stop talking about them - that is when I think we are truly in danger. In my own experience, I pretty much never spoke up for myself - I was always trying to figure out how everyone else needed me to feel - after a while I didn't even know what I felt - I didn't even realize that was dysfunctional - I just thought that was how families were. You grow up you develop a disorder or addiction and you move on - it's the middle-class circle of life - right?

SI: What sorts of games and contortions did you go through, before you realized that's what you were doing?

CJB: Mostly the world of pretend: some psychologists refer to it as 'the trance:" everyone pretending not to notice someone is drunk or that someone is being insensitive or mean. It seriously took me until my Grandma's funeral to understand how damaging that is - I was kinda like a canary in a coal mine that took thirty years to keel over.

SI: Do you have a favorite puzzle that has a more serious application? One that can save one's sanity or dignity when home with family?

CJB: Family can push your buttons like nobody can; and a messed-up up family has a lot invested in keeping you in the role you've learned to play; so being subversive, happy and healthy usually doesn't fly. I was the Peacemaker, the Problem Solver - the Perfect One. Everyone in my family is an adult and should be responsible for their own dramas; yet it is still hard for me to stop thinking I need to save them. So my favorite game in the book is the 'Just Deal' game. It's a series of cards that say things like '"That must have been difficult for you," and "It certainly sounds like you had your hands full," or my favorite: the card just says, "Oh."

SI: So you don't have to fix their problems; you can just say "Oh." Very nice.

CJB: Now if I find myself in the middle of a family drama, I'm not actually going to deal them one of these cards - but cracks me up to imagine it. The book also has a lot of fun coping activities - things to get you out of your house; or if you can't, then at least out of your head.

SI: How has your family reacted to the book?

CJB: My Mom is so on board. She wanted to give a copy away at the church spaghetti dinner! My Dad refuses to talk about it. We were on the phone talking about his new iPod and the weather and I said, "I've been really busy Dad because the book I wrote is coming out October 6th." He replied, 'have you been working out? I've got a new trainer, a gal, she's real good." I thought well, I'll choose my battles. If he doesn't want to deal with it, I can't make him. I only have a PSp.

SI: A pSp?

CJB: Professional smarty pants. As Rob Reiner said, "Everybody talks about wanting to change things and help and fix, but ultimately all you can do is fix yourself." That's a lot, because if you can fix yourself, it has a ripple effect."

SI: (I should mention that the book is chocked full of these great quotes.) When you do visit your family, do you find yourself thinking of new games for the sequel?

CJB: Are you kidding? That's why I visit my family now. No - I am kidding. The weird thing is, I've created a bit of dialogue and open communication with my family. I've learned to establish who I am separate from the family structure - which wasn't easy. And I try to take my own advice - realize the absurdity of what is getting me so frustrated and find something funny about it.

Catheryn Brockett is a writer, actor and comedienne, appeared on TV and starred in dozens of commercials, advertising everything from vacuum cleaners to Icelandic banks. She is way funny.

The Dysfunctional Family Funbook is available at retail bookstores (Go Powells!) and online, i.e. Amazon.

Add your crazy home for the holidays story in the comments. The winner will get a free copy of DFFB.

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The Burnside Writers Collective fundraising campaign has begun. If you can donate a few bucks, we'd be grateful. Here are a few ways we want to say thank you:

Donations under $35: A Burnside sticker.

$35-$59: A copy of Donald Miller's upcoming book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and a Burnside sticker. The book is due out in 2009. We may or may not be able to get copies before they hit the stores. Regardless, you'll get when we get it.

$60-$99: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, a book of your choice penned by one of our contributors* (list of options below) and a Burnside sticker.

$100-$199: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, two books penned by our contributors, a Burnside t-shirt and a Burnside sticker.

$200 or more: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, all five books penned by Burnside contributors, a Burnside t-shirt, a Burnside sticker and your name listed as a Burnside Patron on the new site.

McKibben is famous for his global warming activism, but, at heart, he seems to me a nature writer. His intense love of the natural world around him, and specifically for his home in the Adirondack mountains, permeates every piece in this collection. He also often contemplates what it means to limit ourselves willingly, before we're forced to do so, and his writing forces the reader to ask many of the same questions McKibben has already asked himself.

I've read McKibben over the years, just in brief snippets here and there, so I was surprised, in reading The Reader that McKibben is a practicing Christian - a self-proclaimed Sunday school teacher. Echoing Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne or Jim Wallis in his piece in the August 2005 edition of Harper's titled "The Christian Paradox", McKibben writes, "How nice it would be if Jesus had declared that our income was ours to keep, instead of insisting that we had to share. How satisfying it would be if we were supposed to hate our enemies." For McKibben, his Christian worldview informs his advocacy on behalf of the environment. His hope is that American Christianity embrace the opportunity to "rescue itself from the smothering embrace of a culture fixated on economic growth, on individual abundance. A new chance to emerge as the countercultural force that the Gospels clearly envisioned."

In reflecting on the pieces in this collection, I'm reminded again of how God connects all things together. The issues that we should care about as Christians don't belong in separate, black-and-white buckets. Rather, they're intrinsically connected. Christ calls us to care for the poor and marginalized of our society. Not only does that mean providing them with food and shelter, it also means confronting the systems of injustice that may have led to their destitution, it means limiting our consumption so that there is enough to go around, it means defining progress differently. McKibben's essays helped me to see more clearly the interconnectedness of all things, and it helped me to recognize how my choices impact those in my community and my future children's community.

The Bill McKibben Reader is an especially salient read during the current economic times. Economists, politicians, professors, analysts and executives are all arguing over what we need to do to confront this financial crisis. While I won't claim to know enough about the situation to make broad judgments about what should and should not be done, I do think that some of those "experts" reading a little McKibben would be a good start. McKibben's answer, evidenced in his writing throughout his career, would be to discuss and contemplate what we should not be doing, rather than arguing over what "must" be done. McKibben would steer the conversation toward talking about what we should be sacrificing as individuals and as a nation in light of the financial and environmental crisis. McKibben would remind us that our materialistic, consumer-obsessed culture could not go on forever and that we need to return to the values of family, faith and community in order to save ourselves and one another.

Bill McKibben is one of the leading environmental voices of our time, but he is also a prophet speaking to the excesses of our society and the ramifications of our actions - as individuals, communities, and nations.

* * *

The Burnside Writers Collective fundraising campaign has begun. If you can donate a few bucks, we'd be grateful. Here are a few ways we want to say thank you:

Donations under $35: A Burnside sticker.

$35-$59: A copy of Donald Miller's upcoming book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and a Burnside sticker. The book is due out in 2009. We may or may not be able to get copies before they hit the stores. Regardless, you'll get when we get it.

$60-$99: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, a book of your choice penned by one of our contributors* (list of options below) and a Burnside sticker.

$100-$199: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, two books penned by our contributors, a Burnside t-shirt and a Burnside sticker.

$200 or more: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, all five books penned by Burnside contributors, a Burnside t-shirt, a Burnside sticker and your name listed as a Burnside Patron on the new site.

The story of their success begins with humble origins in Liverpool, England. There were broken homes and middle-class upbringings. John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison found each other, formed a band, and were later joined by Ringo Starr. Their strange combination of personalities and gifts fused into an unstoppable juggernaut, rising them to the tops of the charts. For ten years, they created some of the greatest music that's ever existed.

But there's far more to it than that.

In researching the secret of success, Malcolm Gladwell sought to find the truth behind how the Beatles became the Beatles, how Bill Gates became the richest man in the world, and why a disproportionate amount of Canada's junior hockey players are born in January, February and March.

According to Gladwell, attaining success is based on a myriad of factors.

To be successful, a person must be born at the right time, have the right upbringing, be part of the right culture and community. Success also depends on a series of coincidences which open up opportunities which then provide more time to practice a trade.

There is only one factor, Gladwell claims, which the individual controls: how hard they practice.

So the concept of American individualism is false. Are we really that surprised?

Gladwell, in essence, illustrates the old maxim "the right place at the right time".

Fortunately, he does so in the most entertaining way possible. Chapter after chapter, Gladwell presents the fascinating tales of outliers and statistical anomalies. It's not difficult to see why Malcolm Gladwell is himself an outlier...his ability to weave true stories over a broader theme made The Tipping Point and Blink New York Times bestsellers.

But even those books lagged at times, points where it felt like Gladwell was just making the same point over and over again. With Outliers, Gladwell shows the growth of a writer. Not only is his subject fascinating, he coaxes his allegories to life with a deft hand and finding extraordinary illustrations for each factor of success. Even if you're an elder in the Church of Ayn Rand, the stories will keep you hooked.

There's only one element missing.

Outliers is about a very narrow definition of success, one separate from morality or kindness. The question arises most often during Gladwell's analysis of child-raising, particularly in the question of concerted cultivation versus natural growth. Concerted cultivation, Gladwell claims, instills a sense of entitlement, which he argues is not a bad thing. Concerted cultivation is more likely to develop a child's ability to negotiate and deal with adults, while natural growth children will be more submissive and less-likely to challenge their elders. The children raised with a sense of entitlement, then, are more likely to succeed as adults, because they are more likely to stand up for themselves.

That's all well and good, but there's a reason a healthy sense of entitlement is looked down upon in our culture. Gladwell admits children raised by natural growth methods are "better behaved, less whiny, more creative in making use of their time and had a better sense of independence". But, you know, they aren't becoming CEOs or anything.

One of the primary focuses of Outliers is to dismiss our culture's dependence on natural skill, and Gladwell brings up excellent refuting our status quo of programs directed at the talented and gifted. IQ does not equal success. But, at the same time, should we throw out natural ability altogether? After all, a basketball prospect can't work or luck his way into growing from 5'8" to 6'6". Why should intellectual or artistic pursuits be any different?

Possibly because of his age and more limited education and experience, or because he was the first in the recent war waged on religious tolerance, Sam Harris endured a large share of criticism. Even though his original book was directed to people of all faiths, his critics came mostly from the Christian ranks. As a rebuttal to this criticism, Harris published a much more succinct version of his first book, called Letter to a Christian Nation. In this short, 114-page, wide-margined literary nugget, Harris narrows its target audience down to his most vehement critics, American Christians, while scaling down his protectorate from the civilization of the world, to mainly that of the United States alone. Banking on popular sentiments of patriotism, and a wider, less scholarly American readership (that does not typically have the time or inclination to read long books) Harris was once again able to achieve staggering sales. Reaching #7 on the NYT bestseller list only a month after it was published, Letter to a Christian Nation became a huge success and has secured Harris an established audience as well as speaking engagements that could easily fill the rest of his career.

Letter to a Christian Nation is, not surprisingly, written as a letter; but not to a "Christian nation" so much as to a lone "Christian". It is written in the second person as if Harris is talking directly to a single reader. His tone is sometimes calm, yet patiently exasperated, as one a father would have who can't believe he has to explain to his child why he shouldn't juggle kitchen knives. At other times he sounds angry and ashamed at America, a nation that he says is perceived by the rest of the developed world as "a lumbering, bellicose, dim-witted giant." Our unwillingness to let go of "irrational belief," according to Harris, is greatly hindering the well-being of the world. His cathartic outbursts, as well as his eloquent wit and powerfully convincing style make the book a real attention-getter. In almost as many pages, he walks us through reason after reason why 240 million believing Americans should completely separate themselves from "ancient ignorance" and "sectarian superstition". Religious moderates and the religiously tolerant receive just as much heat, as their attitudes keep an "unrestrained and honest discourse" of the validity of religion from ever happening.

Harris starts with the Bible itself as he launches in on a rather extensive list of Christian offenses. The Bible seems to not only provide justification for horrific violations of basic human rights, but also enslaves people to needless fear of future retribution in the afterlife. Church history shows the faithful have continued to be just as violent. "Venerated patriarchs of the church" like St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and John Calvin all advocated either torture or murder of heretics, apostates, Jews and witches for seemingly insignificant reasons.

The notion of evidence for intelligent design, according to Harris, is equally perplexing. The natural world shows extraordinary complexity, but not much in the way of "optimal design." Bewildering inefficiencies are found everywhere like flightless birds, nonfunctional eyes of certain species of fish, and human embryos that produce tails, gill sacks and apelike hair only to loose them all before birth. These observations seem to discredit the idea of a perfect designer.

Despite these glaring imperfections, the majority of America still believes in a "perfect architect of all there is," and that his son Jesus will soon return and "orchestrate the end of the world with his magical powers." Beliefs like these make it hard for the rational to motivate people to protect the world we live in and preserve the fate of civilization.

Harris concludes the only hope for our society is the eradication of religion, but he remains pessimistic about this happening in his lifetime. His ultimate wish is religion will go the way of slavery, in that we will someday see it as a destructive habit we can finally let go of and recall with embarrassment.

Despite the liberating effect these arguments have on those of us seeking justification for our own wrongdoing, they also have a deeper effect of leaving one feeling much as Frederick Nietzsche did, when he described the resultant vacuum left in the absence of God as "straying as through an infinite nothing." "Is there any up or down left?" Nietzsche says as he contemplates the void without reference. But Sam Harris insists there is a reference point. "Questions of morality are questions about happiness and suffering," he says. He elaborates, "To the degree that our actions can affect the experience of other creatures positively or negatively, questions of morality apply." This is his self-appointed standard that is used to judge all action, and by which he finds Christianity guilty beyond recourse. We have to agree with Harris if we accept his moral standard. A lot less suffering would have been endured throughout history if it weren't for the continued influence of the Bible, as well as other holy books. In fact, an omnipotent God, by definition, has the power to obliterate all suffering. Any suffering that happens automatically makes him guilty, under these terms, and we cannot insist on his perfect love.

But...is this guide to morality really self-evident? What leads us to believe suffering is bad and happiness good? Can there be cases where the opposite might be true? Is there another standard that suffering and happiness themselves are judged against? Unfortunately, Harris does nothing to answer these obvious questions. Once his formula is declared, it becomes the standard for his critique of Christianity throughout the rest of the book. This leaves his chain of reasoning unattached to anything solid right from the beginning.

To be fair, Harris puts a bit more effort in his earlier book, The End of Faith, to describe how we can have a sense of morality without God. There we find a whole chapter dedicated to how scientists hypothesize our moral intuition has evolved over time as part of our survival instinct. What becomes "moral" is what allows our species to survive longer. But how can the longevity of our species itself be determined to be a good thing? Longevity of the human race only allows for more suffering, so we can't just assume it is good based on Harris' original formula. We have to find other reasons to assert the value of longevity.

Scientists agree there is an eventual end awaiting the absurd efforts of mankind to add a few years to the "accident" of life. Where did we get this haunting appetite for meaning and purpose if there ultimately isn't any? Most of humanity isn't satisfied with the "answers" of science. The miracle of irrational faith remains mysteriously more convincing, and is going to take more than a letter to eliminate.

* * *

The Burnside Writers Collective fundraising campaign has begun. If you can donate a few bucks, we'd be grateful. Here are a few ways we want to say thank you:

Donations under $35: A Burnside sticker.

$35-$59: A copy of Donald Miller's upcoming book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and a Burnside sticker. The book is due out in 2009. We may or may not be able to get copies before they hit the stores. Regardless, you'll get when we get it.

$60-$99: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, a book of your choice penned by one of our contributors* (list of options below) and a Burnside sticker.

$100-$199: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, two books penned by our contributors, a Burnside t-shirt and a Burnside sticker.

$200 or more: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, all five books penned by Burnside contributors, a Burnside t-shirt, a Burnside sticker and your name listed as a Burnside Patron on the new site.

The thesis of McKnight's book, which he works out in the large case study on women in ministry, is that:

A) We recognize we read the Bible through our own particular lens...or, we are all pickers and choosers, and we must accept this as fact.

B) We need to read the Bible with tradition, not through tradition.

The first part of McKnight's thesis is why he wrote the book, because he believes
many of us want to know why we pick and choose. Even more importantly, many of us want to know how to do this in a way that honors God and embraces the Bible as God's Word for all times.

The second part of McKnight's thesis is what makes this an ancient-future book and not a paleo-orthodox book or a book praising theological nostalgia. McKnight desires that we stop thinking of tension as a bad thing, and when we see and read blue parakeets in the Scriptures, we should not ignore them or distort them or cage them within our traditions. Instead, McKnight desires we live in the tension and wrestle with the blue parakeets. We are to have a deep love and respect for church tradition, according to McKnight, but sometimes, because of the biases or particular lens of the church fathers and mothers, tradition has gotten it wrong, and thus we must move from ancient to future, which are our own interpretations and living-out of blue parakeet passages. Like in A Community Called Atonement, where McKnight uses the analogy of a golf bag with many clubs that all serve a purpose as a metaphor for how we should look to the many different definitions of Christ's atonement as a mosaic "both/and" and not as a divisive "either/or," Blue Parakeet is a book which demands we recognize the difficulty of biblical interpretation and have the humility to recognize our personalities and church cultures play a role in interpretation. And with that humility, we must come alongside tradition and wrestle through issues in interpretation from the early church to the present. Most importantly, McKnight give license for differing with Christian tradition when the blue parakeets come to be seen in a different cultural context.

McKnight is not straying into liberal "la-la" land here---he is being highly critical and humble in the case study on "Women in Church Ministries Today" presented at the end of the book. In making a case for "Women in Ministry", McKnight is presenting a balanced perspective for cultural criticism and the Spirit's role in interpretation with tradition and not through tradition. In order to engage in this broadened hermeneutic, McKnight stresses we must not read the Bible as system but instead as a Story made up of stories (wiki-stories, in McKnight's parlance). The re-orientation from the Bible as systematic theology to the Bible as Story made up of little-stories encourages us to approach the Bible orally, and not textually. Instead of analyzing the Bible, we should listen to the Bible and discern wisely from it. The Bible is not to be analyzed for data but to be critiqued and applied as a Story of stories that enriches and informs how we live out our personal story. This narrative theology McKnight espouses is both topical (connecting the stories of women throughout the Bible to inform our hermeneutic and application of the Story to ecclesiology) and canonical (viewing books of the Bible as wiki-stories of the authors, i.e. reading John's works together and Paul's works together).

The book is a quick read, and McKnight writes in a pastoral and conversational tone that invites the less nuanced or "learned" reader into complex theological and hermeneutical discussions without all the jargon (jargon I have been using in this review!). The accessibility of this book, along with its even-keel approach to interpretation as a humble act of navigating the waters of tradition, culture, individual, and the Spirit, makes it a must read for those of us who are wondering what to do with all those blue parakeets, and when McKnight tells us we cannot do much but try and be happy in trying, we can find the contentment of living in a Story that informs our own stories which are still being written.

* * *

The Burnside Writers Collective fundraising campaign has begun. If you can donate a few bucks, we'd be grateful. Here are a few ways we want to say thank you:

Donations under $35: A Burnside sticker.

$35-$59: A copy of Donald Miller's upcoming book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and a Burnside sticker. The book is due out in 2009. We may or may not be able to get copies before they hit the stores. Regardless, you'll get when we get it.

$60-$99: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, a book of your choice penned by one of our contributors* (list of options below) and a Burnside sticker.

$100-$199: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, two books penned by our contributors, a Burnside t-shirt and a Burnside sticker.

$200 or more: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, all five books penned by Burnside contributors, a Burnside t-shirt, a Burnside sticker and your name listed as a Burnside Patron on the new site.

When author Matthew Paul Turner wrote Churched, he had no intention of making fundamentalism fun, but he sure makes it funny, as well as cringeworthy and at times tragic. But that's the point of Churched: how one boy survived a fundamentalist childhood.

There's a rule in comedy: "Never make fun of a group of which you are not a member." Turner was a member, alright: he attended a fundamentalist church, fundamentalist high school, and even went door-to-door trying to save the most souls from hell (and win a box of sea monkeys). He's also got writing credibility: editor of the now-defunct CCM magazine, author of numerous books including How To Ruin Your Dating Life, The Christian Culture Survival Guide, and the What You Didn't Learn from Your Parents About _____ series (sex, politics, money, etc).

Turner's story begins at age five when his parents leave their Methodist church for the Independent Baptist Bible Church. From that point on, young Matthew is subjected to the dark side of devotion: a pastor who screams all his sermons, buzz haircuts (because Pastor said long hair made Jesus look like a homo); and a Sunday School teacher who burns a Barbie to show kids the horrors of hell. Fear is big in Fundamentalism, because fear sells. Just ask anyone in advertising. The story ends when Matthew graduates from his all-Christian high school, slightly ambivalent about God yet fervent enough to pray Jesus wouldn't return until Matthew had the chance to get married and have sex.

What keeps Turner's book from becoming a bitter expose is his loving portrayal of his parents who, after all, became fundamentalists out of an earnest desire to serve God. While Dad may have called the Easter Bunny "Satan's plush toy," he also showed common sense - dissuading Matthew from going biblically voodoo over the number seven; and grace - loving his non-Christian employees as Dad might be the only Christian they'd ever meet. Turner also willingly outs his own fanaticism, coercing strangers into the Sinner's Prayer and kissing his Bible in hopes it would induce a miracle. "While everybody I knew read the Bible, I was the only one who made out with it."

Turner recounts early childhood conversations with so much detail I wondered if he was having me on: like his parents' long discussion of their pastor's lack of a neck. But when I interviewed Turner, he averred that all those stories really happened, even if he did fill in a few of the details. Besides, Turner's sarcasm is a refreshing change to the overly reverential tone that's historically characterized Christian publishing.

In fact, many passages are laugh out loud funny, like his description of the only Jesus-picture his pastor approved wherein a short-haired Jesus looked like "Tom Selleck in a Hilton Suites bathrobe." Or turning 12, the age of accountability: "old enough to receive eternal punishment but too young to drink Mountain Dew."

While Churched doesn't claim to cover more than Turner's fundamentalist childhood, I was left feeling slightly short-changed. I wanted to know how he reached adulthood, revitalized his faith, became a writer for a rock music magazine (sure, Christian, but the devil's music nonetheless!), and how he kept his incisive wit. Turner attempts to shore up that gap in the epilogue, but I was left with too many questions - questions I hope he answers in a sequel. Still, Churched is a wonderfully snarky/sweet slice of fundamentalist Americana. And I'm waiting for Part Two: Matthew Paul Turner, the Lost Years.

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Attention Readers! Free Book Contest!

Matthew Paul Turner has given us a free copy of Churched to give away to one very special Burnside Reader! So here's the deal: Sign on to the comments. Tell us your most embarrassing/horrific/funny fundamentalist church experience (without stretching the boundaries of believability). We'll choose our favorite and that person will win the free copy of Churched!

The Burnside Writers Collective fundraising campaign has begun. If you can donate a few bucks, we'd be grateful. Here are a few ways we want to say thank you:

Donations under $35: A Burnside sticker.

$35-$59: A copy of Donald Miller's upcoming book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and a Burnside sticker. The book is due out in 2009. We may or may not be able to get copies before they hit the stores. Regardless, you'll get when we get it.

$60-$99: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, a book of your choice penned by one of our contributors* (list of options below) and a Burnside sticker.

$100-$199: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, two books penned by our contributors, a Burnside t-shirt and a Burnside sticker.

$200 or more: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, all five books penned by Burnside contributors, a Burnside t-shirt, a Burnside sticker and your name listed as a Burnside Patron on the new site.

Foster Wallace's writing (primarily his non-fiction material) was always deeply inspiring to me, especially as he wrestled with the ideas of identity and meaning in an irony saturated society obsessed with flooding itself with media. I picked up Infinite Jest after reading Foster Wallace's work in the now defunct Might magazine and tried and tried to get through the dense narrative to no avail on several occasions, but the following year's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again changed everything for me. All of a sudden, there was a world of possibility opened up in non-fiction, where the writer could be creative, funny, and post-modern while remaining informative and interesting. Since my first obsessive read with the book, I've had my eyes opened to a number of writers able to pull that delicate balance off, but every year or so, I return to A Supposedly Fun Thing... and pour through the stories and their innumerable footnotes, amazed each time. This week, while spending time trying to figure out whether to go to grad school and where, I remembered that Foster Wallace got his MFA from the University of Arizona in my hometown of Tucson, which led me to think that if I ended up there, maybe something would rub off. To say the least, finding out Wallace couldn't find a way to cope with this world, in whatever manifestation did him in, is distressing.

Still, he left behind an incredible body of work. Foster Wallace gave the commencement speech to graduates of Hunter College in 2005, and while the section of the address referencing a method of suicide is heartbreaking, it's still a great read, and, at least to me, thought-provoking. My favorite line, and something I try to consider while making decisions sometimes: "The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day."

Thanks for everything, David Foster Wallace.

EDIT: Most of DFW's non-fiction work is collected into books and not immediately available online, but I did come across a PDF of his article on Roger Federer for the New York Times in 2006, which is complex, strange and brilliant.

The Burnside Writers Collective fundraising campaign has begun. If you can donate a few bucks, we'd be grateful. Here are a few ways we want to say thank you:

Donations under $35: A Burnside sticker.

$35-$59: A copy of Donald Miller's upcoming book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and a Burnside sticker. The book is due out in 2009. We may or may not be able to get copies before they hit the stores. Regardless, you'll get when we get it.

$60-$99: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, a book of your choice penned by one of our contributors* (list of options below) and a Burnside sticker.

$100-$199: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, two books penned by our contributors, a Burnside t-shirt and a Burnside sticker.

$200 or more: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, all five books penned by Burnside contributors, a Burnside t-shirt, a Burnside sticker and your name listed as a Burnside Patron on the new site.

Commonly regarded as the young woman's answer to J.D. Salinger's highly praised The Catcher in the Rye, the book opens as Esther Greenwood begins a summer internship with a prominent women's magazine in New York City, along with eleven other college girls from across the country (Plath herself interned with Mademoiselle in the summer of 1953). Bookish and awkward-bodied, Esther admires the glamour of the other girls, but cannot fully understand them. She is not awed by fashion, insufferably attracted to men, or craving a quiet country life in gingham with husband and family. She wants to be a Poet, but a Poet is a thing with no safety net. She considers the fact that she cannot cook. Cannot dance or sing or ride a horse. Cannot speak German. "For the first time in my life...I felt dreadfully inadequate. The trouble was, I'd been dreadfully inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it." Concluding that the only accomplishments she can claim are scholarships and writing prizes, she begins a dark whirl into disillusionment. Then apathy. Then despair. At nineteen, her careful world starts a slow dissolve. The universal beauty of youth--Possibility, becomes both gift and problem, especially if one is prone to paralysis, as Plath describes in this paragraph:

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet, and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose...as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

For, we must remember, as a young woman in 1953, all of these possible futures seemed mutually exclusive. It is easy today for some to dismiss the anxiety of it, but I believe it is still an issue that women can collide with in the 21st century--especially any striving for poetic achievements. Expressing her desire to be independent of needing men, she notes, "That's one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket." Perhaps all of the figs turn to black because she can't quite decide which one (in a country hyper-advertising the well-worth of happy housewives) will lead to such fireworks. But I admire her spunk.

And yet, dissolution. By the time dear Esther boards the train to go back to her mother's house for the remaining weeks of summer, she is wearing someone else's clothes (her own, she tossed to the streets from the roof of the girls' hotel), and someone else's dried blood on her cheek that she refuses to wash away--the result of a nasty altercation with a very nasty man.

Upon returning to her suburban home, the true madness sets in. She stays awake for weeks, unable to sleep. A failed electroshock treatment conducted by a vapid psychiatrist traumatizes further, and so deciding to end her life, she crawls into small hole beneath her house, swallows an awful lot of pills, and remains unseen for days; her highly publicized disappearance monsters into tabloid fodder.

Found alive, but barely, she is taken to a hospital to recover, then a residential hospital for women with mental illnesses, where she eventually recovers over a long (often rocky) sixth month stay. Presumably, as the book ends, she is released from the home, given permission to return to school. Her life still blooms before her, unknown. Plath, however, must have had an idea of Esther's ending and in the years between her own hospitalization and the summer of 1962, when the manuscript for The Bell Jar was concluded, she managed to pluck several of those purple figs off the tree--becoming a Fulbright scholar, teacher, poet, author, wife and mother.

Yet, the redemption and recovery of Esther at the book's conclusion is overwhelmingly, inevitably overshadowed by the horror-knowledge of Plath's second suicide attempt, less than a year after she'd finished the book. When Plath died at age 30, her name was still mere whisper among publishers and readers. The poems written in the months, weeks and days before her death, collected as Ariel, would eventually stun the modern American poetic conscience. Sharp, fiercely stubborn and independent, and so beautifully (but trouble-)minded, Plath remains a towering figure among both female and male poets. Upon first reading her words, I was elated to finally find a voice with whom I could so well-relate. Up until then, I'd read much of most mostly male authors with predominately male protagonists. I had not yet discovered Virginia Woolf's Clarissa Dalloway, or even Salinger's Franny Glass and Henry James' Isabel Archer. And though I now hold these female characters close to my heart, it will always be Esther with whom I most relate and love for her struggle and brilliant renewal. Esther's and Sylvia Plath's story serves as both affirmation and warning for other young women (and men) fighting desperately the existential nausea and life-paralysis of fledgling adulthood.

The Burnside Writers Collective fundraising campaign has begun. If you can donate a few bucks, we'd be grateful. Here are a few ways we want to say thank you:

Donations under $35: A Burnside sticker.

$35-$59: A copy of Donald Miller's upcoming book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and a Burnside sticker. The book is due out in 2009. We may or may not be able to get copies before they hit the stores. Regardless, you'll get when we get it.

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Robert Darden is a funny guy. And he's a tough guy: tough enough to take on just that challenge in his new book Jesus Laughed, published by Abingdon Press.

Full disclosure: I requested a copy of Jesus Laughed to review after the publisher made an open offer to bloggers. I requested it because (a) I enjoy reading about the idea of humor and (2) Darden endorsed both my books, and I wanted to return the favor. This is not an endorsement, however; this is a review, so I'm hoping you'll get the sense of this book--both its achievements and its shortcomings--and go on to support not only the author but the enterprise of reinvigorating the humor of the church.

One further advance confession: I'm an editor by trade, and so my review may be a wee bit wonkish from time to time. I'll be reviewing not only the writing, not only the ideas, but the way the book is organized. I apologize if that becomes laborious; please don't punish the author for the reviewer's peccadilloes.

I've not met Robert Darden, senior editor of the groundbreaking religious satire magazine The Wittenburg Door and professor of journalism at Baylor University in Texas. I imagine, however, that he writes like he talks. This book felt to me like a brisk walk through the multi-storied skyscraper I imagine the Wittenburg Door offices to be. I strain to keep in step as his monologue is punctuated with the dings of elevators and the screeches of photocopier paper jams. As each cubicle and conference room along this power-walk elicits a new thought, I realize that Darden is a busy man, and Jesus Laughed is an interruption in his busy day.

It's an interruption, but a manageable one. Darden's theology of humor is thoroughly integrated into his life: born out of his work and shaped by his ecclesiology and his interpretation of the history of the church. The church and its people have regularly done things that are laughable, sometimes bitterly so, and the Door and its editorial staff have done the church a service in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to confront its earnestness, its selective memory, its conceit. The title Jesus Laughed suggests that this book will prove Jesus' sense of humor and, by extrapolation, God's sense of humor. But the book's real argument is only barely hinted at in the subtitle--"The Redemptive Power of Humor"--and better captured by the title of chapter five, a quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche: "The redeemed ought to look more like it!"

There's a lot to work through before chapter five, however. The Bible is not as funny as Darden wants his readers to acknowledge--at least not as knee-slappingly, deep-breathingly, tear-jerkingly funny. Regardless of how amusing a particular scene from the Bible might be once we step away from it and think about it, in the momemt the Bible rarely causes a person to laugh. It's not surprising, given the way we read the Scriptures, that people have to be reminded that there's humor in it. The Bible is not a collection of Henny Youngman one-liners but a long, long, long story--a slow-cooked joke, like Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" or Andy Griffith's "What It Was, Was Football." I struggled my way through two chapters that function as a concordance of laughter in the Old and New Testaments; had I been the editor, these would have been one digested appendix.

That sounds gross--I apologize. What I meant was that these are two chapters of references with commentary and as such belong in a reference section, not in the discursive flow of the book. Besides, they're beside the point. The point of the book is that people need to be instructed to find the Bible funny because it's not written with the comedic principles we've come to expect. There's one punchline to the Bible--death put to death, the world in a wedding dress--and the incidental humor that appears along the way from "In the beginning" to "Amen; come Lord Jesus" is just that: incidental, tightly knit into its context.

Darden shines in his historical theology (chapters four through six) and his ethics of humor (chapters one and seven). Here, amid a shocking breadth of quoted material, we see the character of Christianity losing its laughter and taking on a sobriety, a severity, that seeds the clouds for a humanist backlash. I'm reminded of the scene in this summer's The Dark Knight, in which the disturbingly tragicomic Joker confronts the humorless Batman: "Why so serious?" Did the latter create the former? Did the church's neglect of the humor of God create the nihilistic ribaldry that passes for humor today? It's hard to say, but Batman acknowledges in the film that his city needs more light and less dark, and Darden ably defends the notion that the church needs to recapture a sense of humor that leans into Julian of Norwich's maxim: "All will be well, all will be well."

That's where the ethic of humor comes in. Darden isn't arguing for the church to be less holy in its effort to be more humorous; he's actually arguing that we emulate the humor of God. God's humor is not abusive, and so our humor should not be directed down toward the vulnerable other but toward the cult of power both above and within each of us. Good humor confronts ego and confesses finiteness. Here's a sample quote that shows Darden's wisdom on the matter:

Just as there is no limit to what can get done in a community when nobody cares who gets the credit, there is no limit to the joy you can spread if you are totally without ego. . . . If, like the tumbler or jester, you'll do or say anything without regard to making yourself look good or justified, then there is no limit to the happiness you can spread. (p. 71)

God's humor turns someone like Sarai's bitter laughter into the joy of Isaac, allows bitter Naomi to laugh at the days to come, turns mourning into dancing. God's humor is itself humorous because it's absurd in the way that miracles are absurd. When we consider humor a function of a redeemed ego, we find a new voice with which to share good news with the world, and we find new hope in the audacious yet common-sensical notion that Jesus, fully human and fully God, might have occasionally laughed.

What happens when a social activist with a knack for literature spends four years writing a semi-autobiographical novel of her native India?

Usually, not much. Unless the author happens to be Arundhati Roy. In 1997, she released The God of Small Things, a coming-of-age story about a pair of twins in backwoods India. Although it was a debut novel by someone with little-to-no literary pedigree, it won the Booker Prize, England's highest award for fiction, and induced a frenzy of lettered hype around the world.

It deserved the accolades. The novel is pure quality.

Ms. Roy masterfully weaves post-modern attention to insignificant details through a entrancing and real narrative about the loss of innocence. Bouncing about time and space, the narrative skips between India, Oxford, and New York, 1969 and 1993. Fraternal twins Estha and Rahel find themselves in the middle of something they cannot understand, in a family that somehow seems to function despite a wealth of dysfunctional characters. Lust, death, racial prejudice, culture conflict and childhood unreality make it a page-turner you don't have to feel guilty about. There is a subtle beauty in the prose which is not fully realized until some time later.

But it is the language that Roy uses which makes the book so special. She invents an idiom seemingly out of thin air that is unique to the work. It isn't just the mixing of English and the local Malayalam tongue which makes it so very exceptional. It's the way she manipulates the languages to create an atmosphere of surrealism. "Lush" is the closest I can come to describing it. It feels as if Ms. Roy spent years constructing each stunning sentence, although it is by no means a dense text. You'll have the read the book to really understand. It is worth it.

The only question left is why did she only write one? Did the muse evaporate? Was it a case of burn-out? Or did she simply feel that the one organic novel was sufficient?

After the book appeared, she returned to her original job promoting social justice, using her new celebrity to bring attention to causes which affect India's poor and working classes. It's been all nonfiction and politics for Roy, who is a vehement critic of globalization, American imperialism, and the nuclear policies of the Indian government. Imagine if Dave Eggers quit writing to picket outside Starbucks. An extremely noble choice, but a massive loss for the literary community.

Maybe it is better this way. No sophomore slump to disappoint us, no sequel to let us down. Nothing to sully or distract from the near-perfection of Small Things.

We'll never know anyway.

Or will we?

So maybe by now you have guessed the reason for this review, more than 10 years after the original publication of The God of Small Things. In 2007, Roy announced she would begin work on a second novel.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/books/an-activist-returns-to-the-novel/2007/03/08/1173166881043.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

There is no release date set, but let us hope that it doesn't take quite four years. Although, it might take that long to requite the excellence of The God of Small Things.

It will be hard to best the first effort. But if there is any justice in literature, we'll soon have another classic from this once-in-a-generation talent.

The God of Small Things at Powell's Books