We began in January with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird - and Matt Rawle came and engaged in terrific conversation about it, which I'd commend to you! It's on YouTube.
My
goal isn’t to “endorse” a book or its viewpoint, and the goal isn’t to say “reading
this will get you straightaway closer to Jesus.” It’s trying to read things that will stretch
us, or to read books others in our culture are reading and ask about the
implications for us in the church.
For
the “Pastor’s Book Club” this month, I wanted to read something related to
race, reconciliation – and also taking note of Black History Month. There have been so many books thoughtful,
provocative books out in just the past several months, which I’ve read and
tried to absorb – and I might have chosen any of them: Michelle Alexander, The
New Jim Crow; Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between
the World and Me; Jim Wallis, America’s
Original Sin; Bryan Stevenson, Just
Mercy; Michael Eric Dyson, Tears
We Cannot Stop; Debby Irving, Waking
Up White; even Jodi Picoult’s novel, Small
Great Things – and so many more.
We’ve
also had quite a few films that are eye-opening, and that achieve that old “afflict
the comfortable” – like like 13th (a
must-see documentary), the rekindling of The Birth of a Nation
as the story of Nat Turner’s rebellion, and the inspiring Hidden Figures.
Finally
I settled on James Baldwin’s short and thoughtful The
Fire Next Time, the 1963 classic of the Civil Rights movement, which
expresses, among many other things, remarkable compassion on white people. So interesting… I read it years ago, and have quoted it many times. I look forward to rereading it now, along with those of you who are interested and able.
My choice of this book coincided with the
release of a provocative film, I Am Not Your Negro – based on
Baldwin’s reflections on the assassinations of three of his close friends,
Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X. It's playing at two locations in Charlotte right now.
We
have Toussaint Romain, a local attorney, community advocate, and spellbinding
speaker, coming on Wednesday, March 8, 7pm, to talk with us about Baldwin’s book and whatever else he’d
like to share with us about race, religion and our city.
Next
month! (we’re a couple of weeks out of sync, sorry about that…), as we are
inviting our church family into a season of thinking about and growing in
prayer, I thought we might read a devotional classic together - one you might continue to read through the balance of the year. There are so many terrific books... I could list dozens and dozens.
So to pick a great one: we will read the devotional classic by Oswald Chambers: MyUtmost for His Highest. You could
actually get the book today and begin the daily readings!
I got more interested in this one when the Wall
Street Journal and then later that same week the New
York Times had reviews of a new book by Macy Halford’s My
Utmost: A Devotional Memoir.
She
tells how she was given her grandmother’s copy of this great book, but ignored
it for a long time. Finally she picked
it back up, began reading and learning also about Chambers himself. It’s a thoughtful book about a thoughtful
book. I like that.
I’m
working it out to have a grandmother and her granddaughter, both of whom I know
well, coming to share their very intergenerational perspective on this
wonderful daily devotional guide: what
it means to read a book over and over, year after year, and then to bequeath
such a book to the next generation.
Details shortly…
Thanks
for reading with me!
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