For some reason, I haven't been doing much book reading lately. I've been busy on the internet, with blogs and other articles (particularly journal items related to medicine and medical ethics).
So I decided to become more intentional about reading of things other than electronic. (No, I don't have a Kindle account.)
The challenge is that I rarely read fiction. I always think there's more interesting and important reading to do. But that's life when you're a Bear.
• Only One Way Left. This is a re-read of a book by the founder of the renewed, rebuilt Iona Community, George McLeod. Celtic Christian insights into everyday life.
• Living with Chronic Illness: Days of Patience and Passion. Cheri Register's book talks about what the title says. It's based on her experience, and the experience of other living with chronic illness.
• A History of Wales. John Davies book, originally entitled Hanes Cymru in Welsh, begins with data from pre-historic times, and ends with material from about 1990. A lot has happened in Wales since, but to understand the present, one needs to know something of the past.
• The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Journey to Wholeness. The book, by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, focuses on our ordinary life, with all it's imperfections — which they say are the norm. It's learning to live with those imperfections which helps us. Quite a bit of material from Alcoholics Anonymous is included.
• God Hates Religion: How the Gospels Condemn False Religious Practice. Christopher Levan, retired Principal of a Canadian theological college, tackles the contemporary frustrations of church people and others, who are seeking a wholesome, lived Christianity in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. (I'm wondering if it might be a commentary applicable to the "Christian Right" in both Canada and the U.S.)
Hmmm. Well, that'll keep me going for a while. If I miss your blog, you'll know what I've been reading other things, and haven't got to you. Yet.
Blessings and (gentle) Bear hugs, friends!
FOOTNOTE:
On my Bears Noting blog I have included some notes from Saturday's funeral for Jack Layton.
It was a week or so ago that I wrote about the experience of feeling "diminished" by all the "editing" we are doing in our lives, and our life together. All because we are moving into an apartment which has about half the size of our house, and has little storage space.
A lot of things are going to Village Green (our Mennonite-operated thrift or "goodwill" shop). A lot of paper is being recycled. All of this is good.
It also means I'm engaged in a process of sorting out what is important.
What do I really want to do in this last stage of my life (my "psychosocial development"), where the virtue is wisdom, and the options are integrity (i.e., wholeness) or despair? (This, according to psychologist Erik Erikson.)
In addition to my personal introspection, I'll continue to work (in one way or another) on ethical projects. Those include health care and animal welfare. But they will also include a closer involvement in issues of poverty, hunger, and homelessness. I may not be able to walk as much at rallies, but my fingers move quickly, and my thoughts can be sharp. (Such things happen when you combine a journalist and an ethicist.)
I'm not changing my commitment to life, and to others around me. To change would mean betraying who and what I have been, and am. What is changing is the manner in which I live out my commitment. But I'm not changing that commitment.
I was reading the latest version of The Globe and Mail on-line, and got a very significant shock.
There was a poll about the the effect of religion. The question: "Is religion a force for good in the world"?
Of the 7,500-plus respondents, only 230 said, "Yes." That's a whopping three (3) per cent. The rest, 97 per cent, said, "No."
It is, of course, not a statistically significant poll, in terms of involving the proper balance of participants. It is simply a "straw vote" among the participants in the poll — the readers of the newspaper.
Given, however, that The Globe and Mail is a major, national newspaper in Canada, the results important to consider. Simply because of the sheer imbalance in those numbers.
The poll was done in relation to a recent debate between Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchins at the University of Toronto's interdisciplinary Munk Centre for Global Affairs.
Blair, the son of a "militant atheist" (in his owns words), an Anglican turned Roman Catholic, feels religion is a force for good. Hitchins, a "outspoken atheist," is dying of cancer in the throat, but is rediscovering his own Jewish roots, while claiming that religion is a source of social ills.
It would have made a very interesting debate. Not being in Toronto, I didn't get to see it.
For me, three issues stand out. First, the sheer numbers on the poll, which I have already mentioned.
Second, the short-sightedness of our social view of religion, at least in Canada.
To consider Christianity for example, the "religious" have been the prime promoters of both health care and education. In the earliest centuries of this historic era, Christians were caring for poor, sick, and hungry, regardless of their religious persuasion. (In that time, the primary religion would have been the worship of the Roman gods.) That emphasis went with Christianity, wherever it moved.
Likewise, when Robert Raikes began his "Sunday Schools" in the mid-1700s, the emphasis was on working with children in the slums of England, teaching them to read and write. By the 1830s, about 1.25 million children were involved in such schools — about 25 per cent of the people of Great Britain. Out of that movement the English public school system grew.
Third, Christianity in particular, and other religions in general, have sometimes been co-opted —used — as a source of division, and even war. This s often in direct opposition to their major beliefs. On the other hand, Christians have also led the process of peace-making in the world.
Where this current debate is likely to end is not something I could possibly guess. But the process, including its inherent lack of social and historic understanding, will be both interesting and challenging.
