Books – Page 4

November 29, 2017November 28, 2017

A Book I’m Writing That I Haven’t Told You About Yet

There’s a book I’m writing that I haven’t told you much about. I don’t know if I’m allowed to tell you the title yet, so I’ll keep quiet on that for now (although I love the title Revell came up with). This book comes out next fall (about four months after the release of The Edge of Over There). It’s a book I wrestled with writing – whether or not I should do it, and, once I decided to do it, how exactly to go about it. It’s a book about the friendship that’s formed between me and a man named Mohammad.

Here’s a quick peek at a very rough draft of a section I’ve been working on, a simple retelling of a conversation the two of us had not too long ago. Shhh. This is top secret.

* * * * *

When I first met Mohammad, there were things I never could have guessed about him, things I never could have imagined. The stories of other people are always hidden from us at first, waiting in the shadows. They are tentative, skittish things, these hidden stories. They are frightened of what might become of them if they step out into the light.

A man rides his motorcycle through the Syrian countryside, his wife and four sons somehow balanced on the bike with him. He has received a tip that his village will soon be bombed. Their combined weight wobbles the motorcycle from side to side, and he shouts at them to hold still, hold still.

A man sits quietly on a friend’s porch, drinking very dark coffee, watching bombs rain down on his village miles away. ‘That was your house,” he says, then, ten minutes later, “I think that one hit my house.” He takes another sip of coffee. His children play in the yard.

A man walks through the pitch black Syrian wilderness, his family in a line behind him. He can feel the tension in his wife, the fear in his older boys. Someone ahead shouts, “Get down!” and they all collapse into the dust, holding their breath, trying to keep the baby quiet. ‘Abba,’ his boys whimper. ‘Abba.’

There are things I never could have imagined about him.

* * * * *

“You know,” he says, “in Syria, we are always having coffee together. Almost every day, I go to a friend’s house and we sit for two hours, for three hours, drinking coffee together, talking about things. Why you not do that here? Everyone stays here, here, here,” he frowns and jabs at the air, pointing at our individuality. “No one knows their neighbors. No one has coffee.”

“You’re right,” I say. “You’re right.”

“I tell this to Muradi,” he says, smiling a reluctant smile. “I tell my wife I will start having coffee with people. Soon, everyone will come to my house and we will all know each other and talk together. She says, ‘Mohammad, Americans do not want this! They do not want!’ But I tell her I will show her. I will start. We will meet here, there. Maybe at a coffee house. It is good this way, for us to drink coffee together.”

He laughs. I laugh, too, but the truth of what he says reaches me. We are, as Americans, very good at being independent. I struggle to think of the last time I needed someone, truly needed someone. We are so busy. Too busy. There is very little time for that kind of community, where we meet together regularly, not rushed, to simply drink coffee.

“When you find a house out here in the country,” Mohammad says again. “Find me a house, too. We will live beside each other, and we will drink coffee together. We can invite all the neighbors!” He laughs again, grinning that boyish grin of his, and I can’t help but be amazed at what these refugees have to offer us, if we will only reach out our hands and accept it.

* * * * *

Mohammad is a Syrian refugee, and together we are telling the story of his journey here, the story of my journey in meeting him, and the story of our friendship. This is not a story of how I helped him – this is more a story of how a man from halfway around the world taught me more about being a friend than anyone else I know. I can’t wait for you to get to know him. He and his wife and his boys are amazing.

If you’re looking for a gift for a young (or young at heart) reader in your life, consider my book The Day the Angels Fell, described by Anne Bogel at Modern Mrs. Darcy as, “Neil Gaiman meets Madeleine L’Engle.” It’s a book that asks the question “Could it be possible that death is a gift?”

November 14, 2017

A Bed on the Couch: The Grace of Rest

Today’s post is brought to you by my good friend Andi Cumbo-Floyd in celebration of the release of her book, Love Letters to Writers.

When I would get sick as a child, Mom would make a bed for me on the couch: my pillow, my favorite blanket, a rare treat of clear soda nearby, a bowl just in case. Then, she’d turn on the TV – which was never on in our house during the day – and leave me to doze and watch Bob Barker.

Every once in a while, she’d come over and lay her long, cool fingers against my forehead to see how my fever was. Sometimes, I’d be half-asleep, but I’d feel her hand on my face and instantly slide deeper. Her skin bore comfort.

I think of those couch beds, the plastic cups of Sprite, and Mom’s hands often, especially when life feels like it’s infecting me with the illness of over-busy and too much to do. At this moment in my life, I feel that infection sliding into my lungs as I finish up book revisions for a publisher and launch my new book, Love Letters to Writers. Some days, I just want Mom to give me permission to lay on the couch with my pillow and doze through the hours.

But Mom died 7 years ago, and so she is not here to give me that permission or to lay a cool hand of grace on my forehead when the fever of doing becomes too much. Instead, I have had to learn to give myself permission to rest, to step back, to step out.

This lesson of rest, perhaps more than any other I’ve learned in my writing life, is the hardest because there’s always more to do. Always another way to promote. Always another guest blog post I could write. Always another idea I could explore. Always another book to draft.

The further I get into years of living life as a writer the more I realize that this is steady quest, not a quick sprint. What I give to frenzy and frantic, I do not have to give to play and questions. So I have learned to slow down, to write some words every day but not all day, to set out a few things to try for a book launch but not everything, to trust that in the end the balance of rest and work will come anew each day.

I ache to feel my mother’s hands on my forehead again, but until the day I can, I give thanks that she taught me to rest and heal in a world that most often recommends a never-ending hurtle toward forever.

Andi Cumbo-Floyd is a writer, editor, and farmer, who lives at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains with her husband, four dogs, four cats, six goats, three rabbits, and thirty-six chickens. Her newest book Love Letters to Writers: Accountability, Encouragement, and Truth-Telling has just been released.

October 31, 2017October 31, 2017

Glory

I love introducing you to my writer friends who are bringing beautiful, important books into the world. This book is by my friend Kaitlin Curtice, and it’s one you’ll want to check out. Kaitlin is a fantastic writer and a wonderful person, and I’m honored to have her writing here at the blog today – please feel free to ask her a question about the book in the comments.

As children, our worlds revolve around what we can do with our imaginations.

As we get older, we lose that ability little by little.

We begin to see the darker side of things, the broken side. We begin to wonder what’s good and what’s bad.

And by the time we’re adults, we’ve forgotten what it means to let the wonders of the world call us back to themselves again, back to glory.

My book, Glory Happening: Finding the Divine in Everyday Places is out November 7^th.

I’ve thought and dreamt a lot about what this book will give to the world, what I want its legacy to be years down the road.

What I know right now is that we have plenty of things to worry about. We have plenty of brokenness around us—in our nation, in our world—and it’s not possible to always hold on to that childlikeness. It’s not possible to shut out the news, not completely, and so we carry with us the whole world, it seems.

So I want this book to enter the world as a breath.

The definition of glory is something that is extremely beautiful, and in Glory Happening I share eight ways that glory has shown itself in my life.

I believe this is what we need today, in the midst of everything. We need space to breathe and we need to tether ourselves to everyday goodness. Glory.

Even in the midst of pain, we find it. We find it in our labors, in our regrets, in our stretching and waiting and searching. We find it in small moments and in momentous ones.

One of my favorite stories in the book is about a woman my five-year-old son introduced me to at the market. She was an older Muslim woman from India who wore a hijab around her hair. When my son complimented her, she decided to offer a hijab to me, his mother.

A week or two later, I had a brand new hijab and bracelet to match. It hangs in my dining room today, to remind us that everyone is welcome and expected to be welcomed to our table.

The prayer that goes along with this story is one said by someone who wants to remember these kinds of spaces, who wants to sit in glory because it literally tethers us to God in a world that is tired and desperately trying to find God:

O God,
In these corners of our lives, speak.
These days, govern and pour
out the gift of your truth
over our daily lives,
so that when this
is over and done with,
we are still there with you,
still surrounded by Christ-grace
and Spirit-breath
and God-provision.
Hallelujah, for where we are now
and where we’ll be tomorrow.

Amen.

You can pre-order my book now, and I hope that you do. I hope that you make space for my stories to enter your home, your workplace, the coffee shop that you frequent. I hope you let my stories call your own stories to the surface, so that together we can say that in all of the chaos that was yesterday and is today and will be tomorrow, we are tethered here– together.

Hallelujah and Amen.

Preorders are super important to helping a book get off to a good start, so if you’re remotely interested in finding out more about Kaitlin’s book, please preorder it today!

September 5, 2017September 4, 2017

Twelve Books (Besides Mine) You Should Be Reading

Today is the day. My novel, The Day the Angels Fell, officially releases to the world. You will probably find me in my study today, alternating between elated, anxious, happy, sick to my stomach, and hopeful. Or all at the same time.

In any case, I hope you’ll take the time today to purchase the book and tell your friends about it. Here are a few places you can find it:

Aaron’s Books in Lititz, PA (preorder it from Aaron’s, come out to the store on September 8th, and I’ll sign it for you in person)

Amazon (in hardback, Audible, or Kindle)

Barnes and Noble (in hardback or Nook)

Christianbook.com

But, to be honest, I’ve grown a little weary of shouting the news of my book from the rooftops for the last few months. I am not a natural self-promoter – it’s all rather exhausting. So, I wanted to take a moment today and point you to some other wonderful books I’ve been reading. Please consider supporting these fine writers and treating yourself to another great read:

It’s always been my dream to write a Newberry Award-winning book, so it’s partially out of jealousy that I picked up The Girl Who Drank the Moon. It’s a beautifully-written, intriguing book that I can’t wait to finish.

The writing pulls on your heart. The illustrations are breathtaking. I cannot recommend enough this children’s book by Matthew Paul Turner. (Also, a perfect baby-shower gift.)

Whole, a nonfiction book by Steve Wiens, came to me at just the right time, when I needed to slow down and breathe, seek the peace of God. This is quiet book, but it brings the quiet in a kind, firm way.

Anne Bogel (you might know her as Modern Mrs. Darcy) is insightful and funny, and I can’t wait to read her new book! It just arrived on my doorstep a few days ago, but it’s quickly moved to the top of my TBR list.

Seth’s book Coming Clean isn’t hot off the press, but it’s a poignant read, and September is recovery month, so what better time to sit back, take a look at your life, and think about how your own addictions are running the show? After all, we’re all addicted to something.

Andi’s voice is a quiet, encouraging influence in a world – and I’m talking specifically writers’ self-help world – that includes far too many snake-oil salesmen and get-rich-quick classes. Never bossy or illusory, Andi offers a book that will guide you along your path of writerly self-discovery.

Ed is a pastor and mentor to writers, and in Flee, Be Silent, Pray, he offers up what I think is his most compelling nonfiction work to date, in which he explores the importance of contemplative prayer. Christian or not, you will find this book a welcome challenge to our culture’s current devotion to busyness and noise.

I haven’t yet read Kelly Nikondeha’s book Adopted, but I find the premise so compelling, and her online voice so important, that I had to include her book here. Check it out. You’ll be glad you did.

This one doesn’t come out for a little while, but I’ve enjoyed crossing paths with Jen Fulwiler, and her voice is so relevant and endearing. I’m looking forward to her book, releasing April, 2018. (In the mean time, I’ll be on her radio show on 9/5, so come listen to us chat on SiriusXM channel 129 at 2pm.)

Deidra speaks with a calm, authoritative voice into a culture that seems to thrive on discord and disagreement. I respect her presence and way of being in the world, and this book is a beautiful reflection of her.

This is one of the novels on my current to-be-read stack. I met Kelly at a writers’ conference a little over a year ago, and I’ve been anticipating this book for quite some time. “After a tragic Fourth of July weekend, one upper-crust American family learns that some secrets never stay hidden, no matter how deeply you bury them…”

Last but certainly not least, Caleb Wilde’s long-anticipated memoir, Confessions of a Funeral Director, releases in about a month. Preorder it now! You won’t want to miss this one.

July 10, 2017

Exit Through the Wilderness

Check out this guest post by my friend Zach Hoag, and then go buy his book, The Light is Winning, a book “for anyone who is anxious about the future of the church and their place in it.”

* * * * *

In 2008, my wife and I took the plunge that many others like us were taking at the time, immersed as we were in literature and media about “the emerging church.” It required a great deal of sacrifice; it was an all-or-nothing proposition. We mortgaged our lives on an exciting new venture, all for the sake of the kingdom of God.

Namely, we planted a church.

And for a time, it was healthy and growing and effective. I had a ministry background, but the experience was still something new for all of us involved – it was a process, an unfolding. A thrilling one, at that.

And it was a process for me individually and internally too. Towards the beginning of the plant, I broke with the Gospel-Centered New Calvinism that had dominated my thinking for almost a decade. And throughout the church-planting years, new thoughts about the nature and character of God, the meaning of salvation, the work and mission of the church, and the cultural lines of exclusion in my evangelical context rose to the surface. I was captivated by this process and these new revelations, excited for how they might shape and reshape my ministry to our little church and our beloved city of Burlington, VT.

Our church plant, as “cutting edge” as it sometimes seemed to be, was firmly located within the evangelical world. And because of that, some of my emerging perspectives made our more conservative core members uneasy, if not upset. It’s not that I was trying to fool anyone or be a theological rogue; it’s just that I was beginning to see everything differently. And that can pose a problem for folks who want things to stay the same.

More than anything else, I felt a fierce determination to stay on the mission of being a church for our progressive, post-Christian city, not merely in a superficial sense of staying relevant but in an increasingly deeper sense of discerning how to do theology in the midst of God’s mission in our neighborhood, outside the church walls. Part of that process was deconstructive: identifying some of the ways those of us with churched backgrounds might be build- ing barriers in our theology and practice without even knowing it. I was looking for a way to embody acceptance and inclusion, so that our friends and neighbors might experience God and meet Jesus. I didn’t want us to just do superficial outreach or create a program to condescendingly engage “those people.” I wanted those people to be our people. I wanted them to be us.

But then things went south. And as conflicts and decline hit our growing but small and fragile congregation, it only took about a year for it to unravel completely. In the end, when it all came crashing down, this thing I had committed my whole life to—I was completely devastated.

One of the sermon series I preached during the last year of our church was called “Exit through the Wilderness,” a survey of the book of Exodus with a nod to the Banksy documentary Exit through the Gift Shop—because who brilliantly critiques the empire better than Banksy? A sweeping Exodus theology emerges when we see the Scriptures as a story of God liberating all of creation from the effects of human empire—liberation from both the power and control out there, and the power and control tempting our hearts to break bad. Yes, the empire you will always have with you. And prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.

The process of moving from one perspective to another that was underway in my life accelerated to the moment of impact in the end of our church. And that end laid waste to not only the faith-structures around me but those within me too. I had no idea what wilderness awaited me when I preached about the Israelites being liberated from the Egyptian Empire only to feel lost in the sojourn that followed. I didn’t know that my necessary suffering would parallel my preaching, that my ego would have to die even as I identified empire business all around me. I was unaware of how deeply I would soon descend into the desert of the real.

Father Richard Rohr talks about the difference between the true self and the false self. The false self is bound up in our outward identity—title, achievement, success, image. But our true self goes back much farther; it is who we really are, who God has made us to be, our bedrock of belovedness, which cannot be changed or taken away. The false self, Rohr says, “will and must die in exact correlation to how much you want the Real.”

In one of my final sermons to our dwindling church plant, I talked a little bit about grace:

Grace is surrender.

Grace, really, is giving up.

It’s giving up on self, and it’s giving up on striving. It’s giving up plans and dreams and hopes. It’s giving up your vision. It’s giving up on the purpose and direction that you hold dear and precious, like Paul did when he experienced insults and hardships and persecutions that rudely interrupted his purpose and direction.

Grace is that kind of giving up.

Grace is often the death of what is most dear. Sometimes, grace is the death of your life’s work. The death of the thing that you have poured every waking moment into, for years. The thing that has caused you to stay awake for countless sleepless nights. The thing that you dedicated every ounce of who you are to build, every drop of blood in your heart expended until you have nothing left. Grace is watching that work fall apart, assailed and attacked until it comes crumbling down bit by bit, stone by stone.

Grace is the very soft place of defeat and death.

Our church had to die for deeper health to come to those involved, including myself and my little family. And while it has taken a good deal of devastation, darkness, and deconstruction for my heart to accept the words I shared that day, I finally have accepted them, and I feel free.

At the bottom of it all, I was meant to discover my own belovedness. And who I really am. Through this experience of death, I was meant to finally choose life and start living.

* * * * *

You can find out more about Zach at his website (where you can get a free chapter of The Light is Winning) or find out more about the book HERE.

July 6, 2017July 5, 2017

Glimpses of Eden at a Funeral

There are a few really good souls in this world, and Caleb Wilde is one of them. We met a few years ago when he won a writing contest I held on my blog and, in lieu of the reward, he asked for coffee with me. Nice guy, right? I think he was at least 30 minutes late for that first coffee, but since then he’s become a good friend. Caleb does what few of us would be able to do for a living: he deals with death. And he manages to do it, day after day, with care and kindness and more than a sprinkling of humor.

Caleb has a book coming out this fall called Confessions of a Funeral Director. Take some time to read this post by Caleb, and then preorder his book. You won’t regret it.

Last week we had a funeral here at the funeral home. I was outside parking cars in the procession line, like I usually do, when a hot rod truck, with yellow racing stripes and a flare-side bed pulled up into the procession line. Our parking lot is laid out in such a manner that the only people who just “pull up” in the procession line are the one’s who have done it before. Although I didn’t recognize the truck, as soon as I saw it pull into the procession line without any need of my direction I was pretty sure I’d recognize the face of the driver since he or she was probably a regular at the funeral home.

It was Donnie Smith. Donnie stepped out of his truck, we shot the bull for about 20 minutes. He told me that his dad (Donnie Sr.) had been running low on health while he’s been running high on the idea that his dad might be needing us in the not too distant future.

There are some people that I know only through funerals, and Donnie’s one of them. We buried his daughter a couple years back, and being that Donnie knows half the people in Chester County, he finds himself at funerals nearly as much as I do. I’d often ask him, “You gonna start having your mail delivered here?”

At this particular funeral– after he was done talking with me — we put him to work as the door tender and he was greeting everybody that came through the front door with his genuine smile and warm presence.

Sunday came along and I saw a note on the desk when I got into work: “Donnie Smith’s body is at the Hospital: not released.” I figured it was Donnie, Sr., being how Donnie Jr. was telling me about his dad being low and being unsure how much time he had left.

When we take a death call, we usually write the age of the deceased on the “first call” sheet and I saw in the upper right hand corner something that confused me: I saw “57.” I thought, “Donnie Sr.’s got to be in his 80s … that ’57′ must refer to something unrelated to the death call.”

I was wrong. The deceased at the Hospital was Donnie Jr., age 57.

No warning, no time for his family to say “good-bye”, no time to tie up loose ends. He told me how he was taking care of his dad, looking out for his dad. Nobody expected this. He didn’t expect it. In life, there are few things that are worse than a loved one leaving without saying “good-bye.”

Today we had the service. Probably close to 300 people came through the church during the viewing.

Before we began the service, we invited the family upfront to the casket to say their good-byes., one of the hardest things you’ll ever do in your life. At this point, I usually stand at the foot of the casket and observe what is often one of the harder moments for a bereaved family to handle: the last moment you have to touch, look at and speak to the deceased. After the family said their goodbyes on a day none of them expected to come so soon, we close the lid.

While this family was still having their final moments around the open casket, I noticed something right in front of me. Sitting in the front pew of the church were two little girls –one a blond, the other a brunette (which is how I’ll distinguish them from here on out) — both about the age of seven. One was wearing what appeared to be her white Easter dress, her hair combed straight and her shinny white dress shoes fitted to feet that were dangling back and forth off the floor. Next to her was a little blond girl, dressed in black pants and a black shirt. I’m guessing they were Donnie’s granddaughters.

As most the adults were crying, the blond reached her arm across the back of the brunette and held her, at which point tears started to roll down the brunette’s porcelain face. They didn’t know I was watching them, and as far as I know I was the only one looking at them, as all the adults were huddled around the casket; but I was taking in this little slice of life like a parched plant taking in the sweetness of a desert rain.

The blond got up, walked back to the second pew and opened an old Phillies cigar box that she was using as a kind of purse. She opened the lid, reached into the box, pulled out a tissue from the stack she had neatly placed in the box and rushed back over to where she had been sitting only seconds before, catching the tears as they ran down the grief-filled face of her friend.

At this point I got emotional. There’s a certain sense of hardness that creeps in after years in this business. And I’ll be the first to admit that few things bother me … few things touch me anymore. Death makes us into altogether different creatures … we can become like rough skinned rhinos who need something incredibly poignant to piece our outer shell.

I watched this compassion from this young girl for a couple minutes and then I saw my grandfather nod my direction, causing me to switch back to my job at hand, which by this time was the task of closing the lid.

Who taught this young child to do such a thing? Sure, she may have learned it from her mom, or maybe from Donnie himself, but nobody told this child to love. She just loved.

I sought the little blond out after the service was over and I asked her if she wanted to take any of the leftover flowers from her grandfather’s funeral back home with her. She pointed to the big casket spray. Being that the florists fill the back of the casket spray with water, I got it for her because it was probably nearly as heavy as she was, and I carried it to the bed of her dad’s truck. I guess when we witness the pure heart of children, it inspires and multiplies kindness.

Because sometimes we see glimpses of Eden through the veil of death.

You won’t want to miss Caleb’s book, Confessions of a Funeral Director. Preorder it HERE today.