February Reading Log

February was a short month, but I made time for plenty of reading: sermons, kids' comics, and postmodernism. Take a look!

3 Articles I Like This Month

"The Will of God" by John Spong, Texas Monthly. 25 minutes.

A tribute to writer John Spong's father Will, an Austin-area Episcopal priest, professor, and grief counselor. A beautiful reflection on pastoring, loss, grief, fathers, and sons. I read the last paragraph through tears.

"Everywhere and Nowhere: A Journey Through Suicide" by Donald Atrim, The New Yorker. 35 minutes.

A gripping and haunting account of mental illness and depression, told from the perspective of someone who was on the verge of suicide numerous times.

"How Cities Make Money By Fining the Poor" by Matthew Shaer, The New York Times. 25 minutes.

In 48 of the 50 states (including Texas), one of the ways city governments keep taxes low, revenues high, and the streets "clean" is through civil and criminal court fees, which results in poor defendants being jailed for inability to pay those fees. In other words, in 2019 in the United States of America, debtors prisons still exist. A fascinating, discouraging article on an issue that the Texas Legislature is looking at this session.

THE CHERRY LOG SERMONS by Fred Craddock

Fred Craddock was the Joe DiMaggio of preaching. I say that not so much because he excelled at what he did, but because he made it look effortless. I've tried preaching in his inductive style several times. Trust me—it's incredibly hard.

The first time you heard a Craddock sermon, you would wonder midway through, "Is this going somewhere? He just telling stories." And that was certainly how it appeared. Weaving between observational humor, anecdotes from everyday life, legends he'd read somewhere, and, of course, the biblical text at hand, he'd bounce not between points, but stories. There was usually a moment where you wondered what this was all about. And without fail, that was the moment when it would all come together in his conclusion, when every story would suddenly coalesce into the Big Idea of the message. And then, with a thunderous whisper, he'd leave you with the last line of his sermon, a line that would leave you begging for more even as you realized he'd given you all you needed.

So yeah, I'm a fan of Fred Craddock. But I've learned not to try and imitate him, because his was a homiletical style honed over decades of preaching and teaching, and it looks a lot easier than it is. So in reading The Cherry Log Sermons, a collection of twenty of his messages, I read purely as a devotional exercise rather than an instructional one. The sermons cover the Old Testament and the New, but (like most preachers) Craddock had a soft spot for the gospels.

There's nothing I can say that will do Craddock's sermons justice. Just pull up a comfortable chair and enjoy the stories—and prepare your heart for the moment they suddenly go from entertainment to edification.

IMAGE AND WORD: REFLECTIONS ON THE STAINED GLASS IN THE PAUL W. POWELL CHAPEL, edited by Todd D. Still and W. Dennis Tucker, Jr.

The chapel at Truett Seminary is one of the most beautiful spaces on the Baylor campus, largely due to the beautiful stained glass windows on the east-facing wall. These seven windows, accompanied by a smaller round window on the back wall and the large stained glass depiction of Christ above the pipe organ, are admirable works of art even if you just glance at them, but a closer look—which I've been known to take during a boring lecture—reveals that each of the windows carries a theme. From service to preaching to counseling, each window calls upon a story from both the Old and New Testaments to illustrate the theme.

So in 2008, nine of Truett's professors preached from the stories on those stained glass windows, reflecting upon the themes they are meant to call to mind. The result is a series of insightful messages, as well as a reminder that, when constructed intentionally, a worship space can help contribute to your theology and your worship; a sanctuary can be more than just a room.

The sermons vary in tone and style (you can tell which professors preach regularly and which devote their energies to research), but all are worth reading. If you only pick one though, go with Hulitt Gloer's message entitled "________," a phenomenal message on what preaching is, why it matters, and who does it. Note: The book is out of print now, but you can find a copy for free on the third floor of the seminary. I'll snag you a copy if you ask nicely ;)

BREAD OF ANGELS  by Barbara Brown Taylor

After starting the month with a collection of Fred Craddock sermons, moving on to a collection of Barbara Brown Taylor sermons was a natural progression. Taylor's style is similar to Craddock's, heavy on the stories and light on the three-point deductive style of many preachers (including me.) Bread of Angels contains 29 different sermons, all short (4-6 pages each) and all valuable.

One of my favorite things about Taylor is her ability to get you to read a biblical text in a way you'd never thought about it before. For example, in talking about Peter's aborted attempt to walk on water toward Jesus, which is typically portrayed as a failure of faith, Taylor looks at it differently. She points out that Peter, before stepping on the water, called out to Jesus, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." As she describes it, Peter was doubting from the get-go—while the other disciples were continuing to fight the wind to row toward Jesus, Peter wanted an exception made for him, to be a spiritual superhero for a moment. So the message then shifts from Peter's incredible but limited faith to one about the disciples' slow and steady faith.

Like with Craddock, I can't adequately describe or praise Taylor's preaching. You'll just have to read for yourself. You'll be glad you did.

THE SAYINGS OF THE DESERT FATHERS

In the fourth century, Christianity experienced a phenomenon of asceticism, with devout Christians following the example of biblical figures like Elijah and John the Baptist (and, for forty days, Christ himself) by retreating the desert for fasting and prayer. While most Christians did not follow this way of life, those who did were held in high regard and have since come to be known as "the desert fathers." This volume collects the proverbs which were passed on to the church, first orally and eventually textually.

It's not an easy read, and in my opinion not an especially profitable one either. The desert fathers, like other monastic communities, prized holiness and humility as crucial spiritual virtues, to the point of isolating themselves from society. Based on their sayings, however, this sometimes became asceticism for asceticism's sake, fasting and isolation for the sake of punishing yourself instead done to grow closer to God.

The desert fathers have faded into semi-obscurity due to the paucity of their writings and the rise of other monastic orders, especially within the Roman Catholic Church. While the monks of the desert certainly stand as examples of humility and self-sacrifice to this day, their writings indicate to me that we have more to learn from the Franciscan and Benedictine monks than from their Eastern forebears.

UNDERWORLD by Don DeLillo

Postmodernist novels arrive at truth in a nontraditional way—rather than telling a single story, it tells several at once, with those stories often only loosely relating to one another. It is only as you reach the end of the novel that you are able to see how all these strands form a web, not of plot, but of a theme. When done well (e.g. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace) this makes for a challenging reading experience, but one that feels refreshingly like life: multifaceted, complicated, and unable to be tied neatly with a bow. In lesser hands, postmodernist novels become unwieldy beasts which, even after you start to "get it", feel directionless and burdensome. Underworld, often regarded as Don DeLillo's opus and a hallmark of postmodernist fiction, fell into that latter category for me.

Underworld, published in 1997 to critical acclaim, is ostensibly a novel about fear, waste, and uncertainty in the post-Cold War world. Spanning decades, from 1951 to the turn of the 20th century, it tells the stories of a bomb maker, an artist, a teacher, a nun, and others, with cameos from real-life figures of the time, from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to Frank Sinatra to comedian Lenny Bruce. The event which loosely connects all these figures is Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World," the home run he hit off pitcher Ralph Branca that won the pennant for the New York Giants—hit on the exact same day that the Soviets tested their first atomic bomb, the home run ball comes to serve as a symbol of security and exceptionalism throughout the book as it passes through the hands of the characters.

If you're like me, that all sounds pretty interesting. And, to be clear, DeLillo is an excellent writer—for example, the book's prologue, which narrates Thomson's homer through the eyes of various attendees to the game, is a masterclass in storytelling. But over the course of the book's 800+ pages, it's hard to find something to hold onto as you read. The plots don't connect in any sort of especially satisfying way and, more importantly, the characters are not especially compelling. In other reviews I've seen DeLillo accused of having a sterile writing style, and I tend to agree as it regards the portrayal of his characters—the writing is good, but there's just not a lot of blood going to the heart.

I spent most of the month plowing through Underworld, and the truth is that by the end I was compelled more by stubbornness than satisfaction. If postmodernism is your thing (I'm becoming convinced that, when it comes to novels, it's not mine), this is the K2 to Infinite Jest's Everest—just as difficult to climb, with a lesser payoff.

ESSENTIAL RAWHIDE KID by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Don Heck, Dick Ayers, et al.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was more to comics than superheroes—much more, in fact. While Superman and Batman were still selling pretty reliably for DC Comics, the medium contained a cornucopia of genres, from war stories to monster tales to romances. But, mimicking Hollywood, nothing was as popular as westerns.

Marvel's most popular western magazine was Rawhide Kid, of which nineteen issues are collected in this Essential volume. A typical issue contained four stories: two ten-page tales featuring the titular character, one five page short story that often featured a legend of the Old West, and a two page prose story...and all for 12 cents!

The Rawhide Kid himself was a prototypical gunslinger character, a strong and silent type with preposterously good aim—aim so good, in fact, that his bullets suspiciously always seem to hit opponents in the hand or shoulder, ensuring his duels never turn fatal. Turned into an outlaw due to a misunderstanding, the Kid roamed from town to town, righting wrongs in the vein of the Lone Ranger and wooing lovely ladies just in time to leave town (for their own good, of course.)

It all makes for good clean fun, albeit repetitive stories—Stan Lee has admitted that he found writing these stories tedious, and it shows; if you've read five issues of Rawhide Kid, you've basically read them all. I enjoyed these stories more than I expected to, but wouldn't have minded if the volume was half as long either. A nice change of pace from the usual superhero fare, and a chance to see Stan Lee and Jack Kirby collaborating outside their more famous work for Marvel.

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: SUPERMAN VOL. 2

There was a time when comics were for kids. Not adults looking for a hit of nostalgia, not teenagers wanting cheap entertainment, but honest-to-goodness children. Prices reflected the audience, with comics available for a dime apiece, and so did the stories. In such an environment, DC Comics thrived, and their unquestioned star was the Big Blue Boy Scout, Superman.

Showcase Presents: Superman Vol. 2 is my second foray into this period for comics's greatest character, and what I found was more of the same silly, charming, wackiness that was present in the first book. Once again, Lois Lane is Clark Kent's suspicious, sometimes-shrewish love interest, eager to trick Superman into marrying her with schemes straight out of I Love Lucy. Once again, Superman's rogues gallery is made up of would-be world conquerors from Luthor to Brainiac to Bizarro, nearly all of whom are conquered not by his strength but by his wits. And once again, none of it should be taken with more than a grain of salt—even in the realm of comic books, some of the tales within are "imaginary stories."

Red Kryptonite, Bizarro World, the bottle city of Kandor—it all makes for easy, delightful reading, the kind of stories you can put in a six-year old's hands, precisely because that's who they were written for. I wouldn't wish for comics go back to this as the default for its major characters, but I wouldn't mind seeing them takes themselves a little less seriously—if Mr. Mxyptlk, an impish prankster from the 5th dimension, was as frequent a villain as Luthor in the 1960s, maybe comics could stand some silliness today.