June 30thFive Minutes on Friday #34
This is my offering to you for some summer reading. Enjoy, and let me know what you’re reading too!
FICTION
This Tender Land – William Kent Kruger. In the tradition of Huck Finn, Kruger tells the story of four children on the run from an Indian residential school in the 1930s. An entertaining and compelling read.
Donna Leon – is a writer of crime novels set in Venice where she lived for some thirty years. Her novels featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti all take place in Venice and each case is an opportunity to explore a different aspect of that city with insight and humour! Leon has currently published 31 novels in the series. Great reading for the deck with a cool drink at hand.
Dear Peter, Dear Ulla – Barbara Nickel
Here is an imaginative novel (set in the 1930s) about two cousins who are good friends though they have never met. Ulla lives in Danzig, Poland, a city just invaded by the Nazis, while Peter lives on a farm in Saskatchewan. The novel consists of the letters they write to each other raising questions about war and peace, who is my enemy, the use of violence, bullies on the playground, and helping someone in need.
Nickel, born in Saskatchewan, now lives and writes in B.C.
NON-FICTION
Celebrant’s Flame – Bill Wylie-Kellerman
"Oh, how the mighty have fallen," lamented King David in 2 Samuel 1:27.
On April 30, 2016, Daniel Joseph Berrigan died just ten days short of his ninety-fifth birthday. Berrigan was many things to many people — Jesuit priest, poet (15 volumes), playwright, author of over fifty books, university professor, and peace activist. He spent a long life celebrating the good news of Jesus rather than the bad news of Caesar. Most of all, like Elijah of old, he was a troubler of the modern conscience.
In 1968, he and eight other activists stole 378 draft files of young men who were about to be sent to Vietnam, dumped them into two garbage cans, poured homemade napalm on them, and burned them in the parking lot of the Catonsville, Maryland, draft board.
In 1980, he trespassed into General Electric's nuclear missile plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, poured blood on some warhead nose cones, then hammered away to punctuate his prophetic point.
For these and similar activities, he and his brother Philip spent time on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, not to mention significant time in prison.
Wylie-Kellerman came under Berrigan’s spell at seminary. “Never had I met anyone . . . who thought in [the Bible’s] own idiom. Who read it from the inside out. Who expected to find therein the powers of this world demythologized and exposed, and who took recourse to the Scriptures in hopes of imagining the real world. Who thereby resisted the former and bet his life on the latter.”
In a typical anecdote, Berrigan is hiding at Stringfellow’s Rhode Island home, slicing apples, when the FBI arrives to arrest him. After he’s gone, Stringfellow puts the apples in his freezer. Two years later, Stringfellow prepares a welcome home banquet for Berrigan, concluding with a pie made from those selfsame apples.
Tongue-Tied – Sara Wenger Shenk.
Subtitled ‘Learning the lost art of talking about faith,’ Wenger Shenk in an easy to read, anecdotal format, instructs us on why it is so difficult to ‘speak about our faith’ and offers practical advice on how we can do so.
How to have an Enemy – Melissa Florer-Bixler.
Jesus named and confronted his enemies. In this provocative and insightful book, the author, a Mennonite pastor, challenges readers to get to know and understand enemies. Only then can we respond in a Jesus like way. And in such confrontations we will also learn something about ourselves and our communities.
*MY ‘FIVE MINUTES BLOG’ WILL TAKE A VACATION WITH ME FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL WEEKS.