Summer Reading, Summer Camp

I have a stack of books I'm presently reading--it is the summer after all. I just picked up The Brothers Karamazov today at the library. I usually try to read one or two classics each year. Last year I read Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick, both on audio book, by the way. With all the driving I do, it is the best way for me. I really enjoyed Melville's description of the pulpit at the sailor's church in the first few chapters of Moby Dick, and also the winding, encyclopedic steeping in all things whale. As to the narrative of that book, it is spellbinding and rich, and equal to the task of keeping the reader engaged over close to 2000 pages. As to Huck Finn, it was great enough that I was lobbying for Huck or Finn to be considered for boy names had Julianna been a boy. (My first choice, Atticus Rex, was gaining some traction I think with the mother shortly before we found out she'd be a she after all.) Mark Twain's characterization of a revival in Arkansas was so funny I found myself literally slapping my knee in the car. The book also had me obsessing over the word "corn pone." The pictures these two greats painted in my mind are treasures to me now.

I'm also in the middle of Eugene Peterson's Christ Plays in 10,000 Places. I've actually already read Eat This Book, but I don't think you have to read any of his Spiritual Theology books in order. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm trying to get that one finished before I'll be sitting at a table with him taking writing suggestions in 3 weeks. I recently read Oliver Sacks's (is that right? Sacks's?) Musicophilia on audio (great reading by the way) to give me some insight for my own writing project. I'm also enjoying Mary Roach's Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. I really enjoyed Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers, and think it is a bit more funny than Spook, but still Spook is thuroughly enjoyable. She tends to use footnotes as I'm prone to do. Speaking of the way I use footnotes, my own chapter contribution to a Chalice Press book, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God: Young Adults Speak about Sexuality and Embodiment in Faith Life is going to be out in January of 2010. I think the editors were going for knee slapping or eye catching or something with that title, but I'm not too thrilled about it. I let them know, but I think it was someone's pet. My chapter title is called Like A Wild Ass at Home in the Wilderness: Sexuality Fidelity in a Hypersexualized, Consumer Driven Culture. That is, if they don't change it to Getting Ass at Home and in the Wilderness or something like that because they think that will appeal to the edgy postmodern type.

Since I'll be deaning Muskogee District Youth Camp at Camp Egan next week, I guess I've also been reading the curriculum for camp and preparing for that. Our plan for the worship services is going to be cool, I think. I'll take photos and post that later. I'm also going to lead a group of teenagers in teh creation of a Cretan labyrinth. We'll have to gather river rocks for it on the Illinois river, and I've scoped out a good spot. I'm looking forward to it, and hope it turns out like or better than I'm envisoning.

I'm also preaching a sermon series this summer on David, so I'll be spending the whole summer in 1 and 2 Samuel. I think this is the first time I've done an extended sermon series solely on a Hebrew Bible text...I think I did one on Isaiah before, but that's a bit easier. So, it will be a storytelling sermon series this summer. I picked up a couple books I thought might be of value in preparing for it, Tales of the Hasidim, by Martin Buber, and Wise Men and Their Tales, by Elie Wiesel. Anyone have any suggestions for good books, either Biblical Study or contextual stuff, on 1 and 2 Samuel and the character David?

Oh, and Wesley has taken a shine to the Berenstein Bears recently, so I've been reading a bunch of them too. :)

Sum

Here's the book I'm reading. I heard the author speak on a Tulsa NPR station and thought it sounded good. It is 40 vignettes on the afterlife that are off the wall, but also probing. The book fits in one hand pretty well--Lara and I both read it while we feed Julianna. It earns a thumbs up from me so far-the dust jacket says the afterlife scenarios are "never previously thought of," but I know I've daydreamed about a couple of them. Perhaps they're something in the collective unconscious. Am I dwelling on the afterlife? It first came to mind when I tried to think of a good question for the Transforming Theology Conference (a few days ago). I also wrote this little bit in my journal.

Almost Four.

When she returned at fifteen minutes till midnight, we sat on the couch with her legs resting on mine—me finding it hard to take my eyes off my little girl—she told me that my father had told her that he remembered his mother. His mother had died when he was three and a half years old. His older sister was five, and their two older brothers were already in their 20s and married.
I had never given my grandmother’s death much thought as an actual event. It was more of a circumstance. My grandmother had died when my dad was almost four and my dad’s dad had died when I was almost four.
The circumstance became more of a event in time for me when my wife mentioned that my dad told her that he remembered his mother’s death. He and his five year old sister were at home alone with her when she had the stroke that killed her. He said that they had just finished eating cherry pie, and for the longest time my dad and his sister thought that if you ate cherry pie you would die.
Hearing this was odd to me. I had never heard this before. Furthermore, just that weekend, while Lara and Julianna were away and Wesley and I were home alone together, I had the terrible daydream that I died while Wesley and I were home alone with each other with Lara away. What would my child do? Would he try to wake me? Would he panic? Would he try to find my cellphone and start punching buttons? My son is almost four. He is now as old as my father was when his mother died. He is now as old as I was when my father’s father died.

Perhaps Lent has really soaked into my bones this year.

Near Death Experiences

I'm listening to a pretty good interview on Studio Tulsa with Sam Barnia, a guy who is a contributor to National Geographic program on the subject airing soon. He's a director of the "mind/body" symposium of researchers, doctors, etc. I suppose anyone who'd living is somewhat interested in what it is like to die--since it's a ride we're all in line for. The descriptions of out of body experiences and traveling toward a light or through a tunnel are intriguing. I read a book called "The Brief History of the Dead," that had a lot of great imagry about the body transforming into the spirit body. I'm also looking forward to reading Spook I really enjoyed her earlier book, Stiff: The Curious lives of human cadavers. Interested in a quircky, good read--well there you go.