Mundania 28

-- SJ

Occasionally I have to post a confession to bare my soul and help me move on. Here's another:

I don't like going to the library. It's like going to the dentist: "Okay, how much do I owe and how much will it hurt this time?" I'm also starting to doubt that there really are any other sections besides the children's section. Others talk about "young adult" or "adult fiction," , but I haven't seen them for a long time.

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A couple of months ago, Darren and I saved up enough to buy a carbonator. It was a happy purchase. Happy, as in I drink several glasses of "fizzy water" a day. Happy, as in I'd bathe in the stuff if I could. We're both big fans of carbonated water, a taste not shared by practically anybody else we know. That's fine. More for us.

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So, I thought Darren was Mr. Cleverest Man In the World to come up with our Weekend Goaway. But then my sister came up with a free date. But that's typical of Rose: our friend Becky once told her that the birds sing "Cheap, cheap, cheap!" to her.

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I've read some books lately.

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(I thought that item deserved its own space.)

The book I just finished is "Days of Fire and Glory" by Julia Duin. Considering it's a book about the Episcopalian charismatic revival in the 60s and 70s, that's about as generic a title as you can get. The book itself was a good read. A bit overlong. Duin is a religion journalist who was also on the edges of the charismatic revival, and refreshingly enough she doesn't bother to hide her bias as she writes.

The story centered on Redeemer Church in Houston, where there was an outpouring of gifts in the late 60s. As these stories usually go, the church went from vibrant and miraculous to institutionalized and authoritarian. Meanwhile, the leader forgot his early dedication to the poor and to God, and spent much of his later life living easy and dallying in sexual misconduct. If it were a novel, it would have been rejected as "cliched -- this story has been told hundreds of times."

I'm in the middle of another book entitled "Why We're Not Emergent (by Two Guys Who Should Be)" by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. Darren and I were all dazzle-eyed about the "emergent church" several years ago. We read Robert Webber's "The Younger Evangelicals" and Brian McLaren's "A New Kind of Christian" and Dan Kimball's "The Emergent Church" and then we said, "Well, that was fun. Now let's find somewhere that actually states orthodox beliefs and stands up for them."

The authors are Reformed, which isn't a camp I pitch my tent in, either. So there are times that I agree with the authors, and other times that I agree with the emergents. It's an easy read and one that, overall, I've enjoyed. I have gotten a little tired of Kluck's hip young-guy tone. Also he pastes in email exchanges between himself and friends. I hate email exchanges in books. If I want to read someone else's emails, I'll do so when nobody else is around and I'll choose which subject lines look the most interesting. Otherwise, just turn it into prose, okay?

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Happy 4th of July! Yay flaming gunpowder traveling at high speeds in random directions! Makes me think of home, sigh.