Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore

I'll admit first off that I did not read the entirety of this book, but for 1 hour explored thoroughly the introduction, beginnings of several chapters and the close. Speed reading! While this is not a Christian book it was written by a former Catholic monk of 12 years with degrees in philosophy, psychology, musicology, and theology. He provides a secular philosophical perspective on cura animarum, the care or charge of the soul. Although not necessarily a novice topic or idea-- after all, it is a form of self-help-- I found some tidbits in the book poignant and would like to share a few lines:

"The great malady of the 20th century implicated in all of our troubles and affecting us individually and socially is loss of soul. When soul is neglected, it doesn't just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence and loss of meaning." -p. i

Definition is an intellectual enterprise; the soul prefers to imagine." -p. i

"Humility in the artist in his frank acceptance to of all experiences, just as Love in the artist is simply that sense of Beauty that reveals to the worlds its body and soul." -Oscar Wilde, p. 266

"We care for the soul solely by honoring its expressions, by giving it time and opportunity to reveal itself, and by living life in a way that fosters the depth; interiority, and quality in which it flourishes. Soul is its own purpose and end." -p. 304

I think the author is missing that we ourselves cannot save our own souls, even though we might be able to take "charge" of them. While he speaks truth in Western society's loss of interest and recognition of soul, I do not believe true satisfaction can be attained merely through self expression and honoring self-truth.

Eat, Pray, Love

I have a slightly embarrassing confession: I just finished my first New York Times Bestseller, Eat, Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I liked it. Actually, kind of a lot. Don’t judge me. My English professor had recommended it to me, so hey that gives it/me some credibility, right?

As suggested in the title, Gilbert tells her story of traveling to Italy (Eat), India (Pray), and Indonesia (Love) as a form of life and identity recovery after a messy divorce. Drama, silliness, and cheesy one-liners ensue, and in the end she comes out of the other end a new and more fulfilled person. Not exactly surprising. But oh so entertaining for a long plane ride.

What I found most interesting throughout the book was the author’s intense and deep desire for God. Early in her book, she describes an “ah-ha” moment, where she first cries out and hears from God crying on her bathroom floor before her divorce. From then on, she begins her search for God/god in the form of yoga, meditation, chanting, praying, journaling, adopting a guru, etc. While this soul searching is nothing new and very human, I have never really heard someone describe the desire to find/have/be in a relationship with God they way she did. Furthermore, as a Christian, I have never seen/read this kind of longing in a non-Christian before (while she claims God—monotheistic, capital G—her beliefs are very much a mix of religions and philosophies, and she clearly states she does not mean God just in the Judeo-Christian sense). It was beautiful and inspiring to me to feel her yearning, because so often, unless in desperate times, I forgot what this yearning is like.

“I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play inside my bloodstream the way the sun amuses itself on water.”

-Pg. 176

But then, I was also confused. When she talks about God, His love, her relationship to him, I am in such agreement with her. Perhaps it is my ignorance, but it is not common for me to find such a deep connection to words describing a God other than my own. The way she speaks of God is so very Christian, so Biblical to me, yet she not speaking of the same Biblical God I know.

“God is, ‘L’amour che move il sole e l’ature stele…’ The love that moves the sun and the stars.’”

-Pg. 46, cited from Dante’s Divine Comedy

“Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine.”

-Pg. 177

“YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW STRONG MY LOVE IS!”

–Pg. 158, what God told her

“Our whole business therefore in this life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby which God may be seen.”

-Pg. 123, quoted from St. Augustine (ok yes, he’s a Christian)

I believe that God uses anything and everything to teach you, bring you closer to Him, and this is just another example of God using something rather silly on the surface—a guilty pleasure memoir—to challenge my faith and ideas about Him. I learned a lot from this book! So even if I don’t agree theologically with Gilbert, I still take away strong inspiration for my own walk with God. It left me wanting to bring more prayer, mediation, and passion into my faith.

Which led me to my next book, the complete opposite of this book—The Celebration of Discipline (thanks Tarah!). Ha! 

And to finish with this thought:

“There are only 2 questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history: “How much do you love me?” And, “Who’s in charge?”

-P. 157, quoted from an old lady

On Travel...

I recently finished at book called The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton. Unlike many travel memoirs, this book is divided into sections (Departure, Motives, Landscape, Art, Return), and goes chapter by chapter inspired by varying artists (or "Guides" like Van Gough, Edward Hopper, Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Flaubert, Alexander von Humboldt and more), and place they traveled. An interesting compilation of essays by Botton, complete with pictures of the paintings, photographs, writings of the artists and pictures of the places they loved.

Some excerpts to share:



"Unexpectedly poetic travelling places--airport terminals, harbours, train stations and motels."
"It always seems to me that I'll be well where I am not, and this question of moving is one that I'm forever entertaining with my soul." -Charles Baudelaire

"Baudelaire honored reveries of travel as a mark of those noble, questioning soulds he described as 'poets,' who could not be satisfied witht he horizons of home even as they appreciated the limits of other lands, whose temperaments oscillated between hope and despaire, childlike idealism and cynicism. It was the fate of poets, like Christian pilgrims, to live in a falled world while refusing to surrender their vision of an alternative, less compromised realm."
"Carriage, take me with you! Ship, steal me away from here! Take me far, far away. Here the mud is made of our tears!" -Baudelaire

"What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home."

"I'm obsessed with inventing stories for people I come across."
"I think I must have been transplanted by the winds to this land of mud; surely I was born elsewhere-- I've always had what seem to be memories or intutions of perfumed shores and blue seas." -Gustave Flaubert

"I am a soul brother to everything that lives, to the giraffe and to the crocodile as much as to man." -Flaubert

When asked where he came from, Socrates said not 'from Athens' but 'from the world.'"
"L'infinie immensité des espaces que j'ignore et qui m'ignorent." -Pascal
"The night is even more richly colored than the day.." -Vincent Van Gough

"The most effective means of pursuing this conscious understanding was by attempting to describe beautiful places through art, by writing about or drawing them, irrespective of whether one happened to have any talent for doing so."


Ah, the words are so tasty to gobble whole.

Don't Waste Your Life

"I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 1998 Reader's Digest: A couple 'took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells...' Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgement: 'Look, Lord. See my shells.' That is a tragedy."

I just finished the book Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper, which all the FH interns are reading before our briefing in 2 weeks. What an awesome book! 

The first chapters are all about our life's purpose (suiting, considering I just finished a philosophy class entitled "The Meaning of Life," where I was quite challenged by a Christian's fundamental purpose on this earth).  Key quotes worthy of mad highlighting, underlining and exclamation-pointing in my notes:

"Because I was created by God and for His glory, I will magnify Him as I respond to His great love. My desire to is make knowing and enjoying God the passionate pursuit of my life."  

"We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the job of all people through Jesus Christ."

"Every pleasure in the world becomes a blood-brough evidence of Christ's love, and an occasion of boasting in the cross."

Piper is consisently refrencing Paul's words on "boasting in the cross" as our single goal for life as Christians. I never understood when Paul would say this. Boast in the cross? Meaning boast in the electric chair, the lynching rope, the lethal injection, as Piper says? This seems wierd. Also, this is to be our only goal for life? Boasting? Well, boasting = rejoicing. The crucifixion of Christ and the results of his death is the example of God's grace and love for us as sinners. God does not owe us anything but death and condemnation, yet thanks to the cross, we are saved from these things (if we chose to accept it). Thus, "Every breath we take, eery time our heart beats, every day the sun rises, every moment we see with our eyes or speak with our mouths or walk with our legs is, for how, a free and undeserved gift to sinners who deserve only judgement." And for this we must be ever-grateful. 

But what does this look like in everything in life? Well, I am asking God to show me this. The book gives some examples (why not go pick it up yourself and check it? hehe), but I am convicted to apply it to my personal life, beginning now, this summer. So I will keep you updated on what God teaches me :)

Ok. Now the last part of the book was equally as jaw-dropping for me as the first 3. Chapter 5 is all about risk for Christ, and chapter 9 is all about missions. Key quotes:

"Risk is woven into the fabric of our finite lives. We cannot avoid risk even if we want to... One of my aims is to explode the myth of safetey and to deliver you from the enchantment of security. Because it's a mirage. [Security] doesn't exist. Every direction you turn there are unknowns beyond your control."

"[We] have 2 choices: waste life of live with risk."

I am especially inspired by the story of Esther (see the book of Esther in the Old Testament) and her response to risk:

"If I perish, I perish."

She lived by the words of Paul long before they were recorded:

"To live is Christ and to die is gain." -Philippians 1:21

What can the world take away from us? What can separate us from the love of Christ? For if we die, we only satisfy the deep longings of our hearts: we are unified with God in a perfect state! So for those concerned with my safety in an unstable developing country, I would love nothing more than to die fulfilling my purpose in life to spread the gospel. Yes this is a bit dramatic, but even as I visited Tijuana, Mexico recently and received severe warning not to go due to the violence and swine flu, I was feeling this exact way: If I perish, I perish! We will all die anyway, and what a better way to leave this earth? "To live is Christ and to die is gain!"

"Christ's love for us does not spare us from these sufferings. Risk is real. The Christian life is a  painful life. Not joyless. But not painless either."

"Obedience is risk."

And on the subject of missions:

"You dare not chose between the motives to love people and glorify Christ. They are not separate motives. Acting on one includes acting on the other. Thus if you love people, you will lay down your life to make them eternally glad in God."

The condition of our world, which is encouraging and convicting, and contrary to our often ethnocentric beliefs! 

"Already today the largest Chrisitan communities on the planet are to be found in Africa and Latin America. If we want to visualize a 'typical' contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela (ghetto). As Kenyan scholar John Mbiti has observed, 'the centers of the church's universality [are] no longer in Geneva, Rome, Athens, Paris, London, New York, but in Kinshasa, Buenos Aires, Addis Ababa, and Manila. Whatever Europeans or North Americans may believe, Christianity is doing very well indeed in the global South-- not just surviving but expanding."  

"About 20% of the world's population are unevangelized; 47% are non-Christians living where they are likely to be evangelized; and 33% are professing Christians."

Finally, this section made me think of all of my support team:

"It is crucial that millions of Christians fulfill their life calling in secular jobs, just as it is crucial that during wartime the entire fabric of life and culture not unravel. But during wartime, even the millions of civilians love to get news from the frontlines. They love to hear the triumphs of the troops. They dream about the day the war will be no more. So it is with Christians. All of us should dream about this. We love to hear how the advance of King Jesus is fairing. We love to hear the gospel triumphs as Christ plants His church among people held for centuries by alien powers of darkness."

Thus as the metaphor goes, you are the civilian supporters and I the soldier off in war. Thank you for supporting me.

I will keep you updated on news from the frontlines.