more on books

Okay, reccomendation: Douglas Coupland's Hey Nostradamus! Although the title looks like a musical about a mideval clairvoyant, it is, in fact, another stunning novel from someone who is quickly becoming one of my favorite novelists.

The novel (and all the other Coupland novels I've read) is heart-wrenching, engaging and relatable. He also manages to include a note of hope and mysterious redemption. To me it feels like a Shakespeare romance but more likely - sad things happen, people aren't very nice, but we all are eligible for forgiveness, hope and redemption.

So that's what I have to say about that one. Douglas Coupland. I might be in love with him.

Reading Things

Merry Christmas everybody. I am enjoying the break so far. It's good to spend time with family and friends and curled up with a book and no deadline and no competing responsibility (although, come to think of it, there are a few other things I need to accomplish.... whatever.)

So what have I been reading? First Blue Like Jazz (thanks Kent for the lender.) I started out skeptical, Miller's voice seemed a little heavy-handed to me, but once I got used to him I became rather fond of him. And I really liked the things he had to say about the role of the church and about community. Miller reminded me of something that seems obvious, but is also profound: being a christian (and being a human, maybe) is not about ME. It's about loving God and loving other people because God loved us first and being authentic about it. In fact, both Miller and McLaren (in my next reading adventure) really care about relationship and authenticity. And those are ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for several years now, but got articulated more fully by these writers.

Now, I've always been a big fan of community. Community is what I love about my churches (both the one I grew up in and the one I choose to attend now) and a lot of what I love about Calvin. I really like the way Donald Miller talks about faith happening in community - we work together to find out more about who God is and how we're supposed to live. I had always sort of thought of community as the place faith gets acted out instead of the place it gets developed, and it is surely both. But the idea of developing your faith through dialogue and discussion and reading books and talking about them or maybe posting about them on your blog is so consonant with the way I actually do develop and learn. This seems fairly obvious to me now that I've typed it, but also important. There's other good and interesting ideas in Blue Like Jazz too, but this is the one on my mind right now.

And it's an idea that shows up in A New Kind of Christian too. Although it's less central to that one. I'll keep on thinking about that book (I just finished it tonight) and maybe grace both of my readers with some thoughts on that soon.

Nostalgia

Well, I've been hit pretty hard this time with semester-end nostalgia. This happens to me every semester, as I realize I've built cameraderie in my classes, loose friendships with people who I never hang out with OUTSIDE of class, but who I like and enjoyed talking to 2 or 3 days a week, even if it only consisted of whining about the class or true confessions of books never read. And since we're not really that close, I realize the I might never see these people again. Which, I mean, I have plenty of friends and I'm not heartbroken, but it's still a little sad.
And this semester, the sentimentalism is particularly bad, because Carol's moving out. My dear, wonderful roommate, source of such verbal joys as "did you talk to the dealy-dude?" "I feel ralphy" "we're staying with the g-rents" and "blinky-blinky in the dinky." I'm glad Carol's going to France and everything - it will be a great experience for her. But after 3 semesters of living together, we're definately going to miss her.
And I'm thinking ahead too. only one more round of calvin classes and it's time for me to move on. Weird. And I'm halfway done with my WA-dom.
and that's what's happening in my head as I try and prepare for my Shakespeare final. Well, that and the sonnet I memorized. That's happening too. I hope some people heard me as I was reciting sonnet while I pumped gas Wednesday. It was awesome.

and now for something completely different

Well, it's always weird to follow something serious with something silly, but here's something silly. I've been following daily dinosaur comics for serveral months now, and I continue to be amused. What's great about this webcomic is the guy uses the same art over and over again, but continues to be funny! It's the freedom imposed by a form, sort of. Like a sonnet.
Anyway, today's comic was particularly innovative, in my opinion.

Poem

Gardening in Advent
(thanks Cindy)

You can’t dig up dahlia bulbs until after the frost
so now I dig as cold air stings my eyes to tears
gloved hands parsing out flower bulbs from hard soil
as I hum a hymn for this first Sunday of advent
O Come O Come Immanuel
and remember my grandmother who gave me these flowers.
They bloomed beautifully until only a few weeks ago
I had to wait until the first frost –
for the time to come for me to dig them out.
And ransom captive Israel
and I think of my friend,
blooming beautifully only a few weeks ago
and now she, too, is in the cold ground
waiting, waiting.
that mourns in lowly exile here
my hands brush dirt from bulbs.
I’ll have to hang Christmas lights soon,
I had been waiting
for this season of waiting to begin.
until the son of God appear
just waiting, with these flowers,
with my grandmother, with so many
Rejoice, rejoice! Immanuel shall come to thee O Israel
waiting for the first frost.