Review: Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer

Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer by Tyler Staton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Okay, I admit it. I absolutely chose this book because of its title. Anyone who knows me or have read my reviews will know that that choice was simply inevitable. My enthusiasm for monastic spirituality is clear once you look at my list of books, so no one should be surprised I added this one.

However, this is really is an interesting book. If you're trying to figure out where to place this book, I'd say the starting point is in the context of New Monasticism, that lay movement which started picking up speed in the late 90s and which sought to take the wisdom of monastic communities and apply it to the lives of lay people, whether through creating quasi-monastic communities or just encouraging monastic practices.

The other important connection is with the 24-7 prayer movement and, ultimately, the Moravians, especially the influence of Herrnhut and Count von Zinzendorf in the 18th century. That gives really important context because this book is absolutely a book on prayer, but a highly personal and highly emotional prayer style. And I love the passion and the eagerness to contend with the emotions of prayer and how to make it available to all. Staton weaves his discussion about prayer with his own experience as a pastor, which makes the discussion more real and relevant. It grapples with the hard issues with prayer- unanswered prayer, denied prayer, but also maintains the hope that prayer brings us.

So, this is really worth reading, whether you're an experienced pray-er or whether you're stuck or it or it just doesn't make sense.

View all my reviews

Review: The Wisdom of St Benedict: Monastic Spirituality and the Life of the Church

The Wisdom of St Benedict: Monastic Spirituality and the Life of the Church by Luigi Gioia
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I stumbled on this book in much the same way as I find a lot of books, by finding it in my public library's digital books section. Being a sucker for monastic spirituality, how could I not have a look at this. I found the book good, but heavy going at times.

What was good about it was that it really was a thoughtful and careful theological reading of monastic spirituality. It is, I should caution, primarily concerned with the 'inside' view, that is, it is primarily about monastic communities, which limits it direct applicability to someone, like me, who isn't a monastic and not going to be one. That isn't a criticism because I often find the monastic perspective really helpful in living my vowed life of being a husband and father, But it is good to know the primary audience and monastic communities is it. I appreciated the erudition and the honest appraisal of this book and parts of it resonated with me.

However, like many theological works, the discussion can get a little abstract at times. Again, not necessarily a criticism, in the sense that the point of theology is to work out the big stuff in our spirituality, but parts were like stirring concrete with my eyelashes. And I doubt if I understood all of the book. That is, probably, a function of my limitations, but also the difference in audience. There are simply things I didn't understand because they aren't my experience, so no one is at fault with that. My policy in a book like this is to look for what is helpful for me and let go of the things that don't really make sense to my life as is.

So, definitely worth reading, if you're interested in monastic spirituality. Being a monk, I suspect, helps though, but even a middle-aged husband/father with a soft spot for monastic spirituality can get something out of it.

View all my reviews

Review: The Leopard

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is actually a recommendation from an Italian friend of mine, who suggested in in a conversation about our favourite books. I noted it down and was able to hunt out the translation in fairly short order.

Mostly set in the 1860s, when the Risorgimento finally reached Sicily and the unification of Italy was finally realized, the story follows the crucial weeks in which the main chracter, Don Fabrizio, the prince of the aristocratic Salina family grapples with the collapse of the Bourbon kingdom of Sicily and Naples the new allegiance to the new Italian state, unified by the Piedmontese. In the midst of this, Don Fabrizio finds himself contending with the marriage of his favourite, but poor nephew, Tancredi, to the beautiful daughter of the nouveau riche mayor of the town nearest his rural palace, Angelica. The novel really is an exploration of the dying of the old, aristocratic dominated Italy and the birth of a new Italy, turning its back on the old. Don Fabrizio is probably the most sympathetic character, although I think the sympathy that he evokes is that of a man who realizes that he's the last of his kind, rightly so. His world is burdened by the past and he recognizes that there is nothing to save it. So, there is a real melancholy in this book and a human complexity because we realize slowly that the new Italy isn't going to be problem free either.

I'm not sure how I feel about this book. Its reception in the 1950s was controversial as well, infuriating both the right and the left. But I am glad I read it because it is a window to that confusing time when Italy began to reinvent itself.

View all my reviews

Review: The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is another of my gifts from the individual novel project for my English classes over the last year. It has been a perennial selection, for good reason, over the last few years. It is a riveting story and a disturbing one in an altogether good way. It is a coming of age story, but one that admits of the complexities of race in America (and Canada) today.

I'll keep myself from spoilers, but the story centres on Starr Carter, a 16 year old African-American girl who comes from a poor neighbourhood, who attends an affluent and mostly white prep school. Starr finds herself between her two worlds, adapting to fit in at school with some skill, if not always straight-forwardly, but also feeling on the outside in her own community. The precarious balance she's striking at the beginning of the book is shattered when she witnesses the police shooting of her childhood friend. What follows is an exploration of trauma, individual and communal, and of the racial divide as Starr struggles to honour her friend and speak out against the injustice of his death. The result is a painful story, but one that contains real hope, but hope in the struggle.

This book has, of course, been pretty controversial because it confronts the problem of police violence and racism in a way that makes people, especially white people uncomfortable. And, as a middle-aged white guy, I was uncomfortable, but, I think, the right kind of uncomfortable, approaching a world that I have no experience of, but need to learn about. Angie Thomas' book does that and gives a compelling story, with characters which are hard not to love and a hope that, maybe, just maybe, that we'll find a way to heal our divisions.

View all my reviews