Posts Tagged ‘books’
Lab Girl (2016) by Hope Jahren
I found Lab Girl (by Hope Jahren) helpful for understanding the experience of academics in the sciences, both graduate students and faculty, especially those involved in labs. I wasn’t sure, though, what to make of the interspersed chapters on plant biology, as fascinating as they were. They did provide a metaphor for understanding the rest of…
Read MoreDifficult conversations
Conversations that matter are often difficult. Stone, Patton, and Heen do a good job of explaining what makes a conversation difficult: “Anytime we feel vulnerable or our self-esteem is implicated, when the issues at stake are important and the outcome uncertain, when we care deeply about what is being discussed or about the people with…
Read MoreGod who cannot be seen, known, or spoken about properly
Our discussions on Lauren Winner’s Wearing God and who God is have led us to recognize that despite being the God who sees us (and who we see), we can never see God fully. It is like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle where “the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can…
Read MoreGod and laughter
Winner in Wearing God sees God’s laughter as intimately connected to justice: “the laughter of God is inseparable from God’s justice. In the here and now, the kind of laughter that friends of God pursue is laughter that is proleptic – laughter that hints at, or partakes of, the world to come. The best laughter now…
Read MoreAre our big spiritual questions intellectual or something else?
Kerry Egan, in her book On living describes the big spiritual questions of human existence as relating primarily to community. She argues: “We don’t live our lives in our heads, in theology and theories. We live our lives in our families: the families we are born into, the families we create, the families we make through the…
Read MoreAll of the Ideas Living in my Head by Don Everts (2009)
If you are in search of an entertaining, enlightening, and quick yet potent read, then consider picking up All of the Ideas Living in my Head, or any of the books from this series by Don Everts on a similar, yet distinct, character living in your head. I read these books nearly two years ago,…
Read MoreJane Eyre’s Sisters: How women live and write the heroine’s story by Jody Gentian Bower (2015)
Jane Eyre’s Sisters is not only for those who enjoyed watching Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice films; rather, it is an invitation to consider how women lead heroic lives of bravery, creativity, and rebirth. The author uses multiple classic works, such as Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice, to draw an archetypal journey that…
Read MorePastrix by Nadia Bolz-Weber (2014)
Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran pastor for a congregation in Denver, CO. She is a witty, honest author and speaker who is challenging the Church to be more honest, bold, and loving to all people. Pastrix was easy to read because the chapters seemed to be short sermons that began with a personal story and…
Read MoreHow Dante can save your life by Rod Dreher (2015)
A friend recommended this book to me, and I am so grateful! Somehow, I have (nearly) made it through a graduate degree without reading Dante, but this book served as an accessible entry into one man’s life-giving interpretation of Dante’s poetry. In How Dante can save your life, Dreher (blogger at the American Conservative) narrates…
Read MoreThe Ignatian Adventure by Kevin O’Brien (2011)
The Ignatian Adventure has been my roadmap for the past 15 weeks, and it will continue to guide me through the Ignatian Exercises through May of this year. In short, the Ignatian Exercises are a historic journey of “four weeks” (broken down into smaller bite-sized pieces to stretch over 8 months in the 19th edition)…
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