Archive by Author | Sherry

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

Apr24

Someone, I can’t remember who, recommended this author to me. And I chose Firefly Lane to read because it looked to me as if it was her “break-out book,” the one that made her a best-selling author. I also found hat a lot of the book was set during the same time period when I grew up, so I was familiar with all of the pop culture references, and that fact made the reading a lot of fun for me.

Kate Mularkey and Tully Hart met in 1974 when the two girls were in eighth grade. (I was in eighth grade in 1970, so I’m only a few years older than these two friends.) The book chronicles the ups and down of their friendship over the years. Of course, their lives go in opposite directions, but they manage to stay friends through thick and thin. Well, almost. They remain friends until self-centered and impetuous Tully does something so outrageous and hurtful that Kate can’t bring herself to forgive or forget.

I’m pretty much with Kate on this one. I can’t believe that someone as insensitive as Tully is in the book would be able to sustain a friendship with anyone, or that anyone could be as understanding as Kate is throughout the book until the straw finally breaks the proverbial camel’s back. So my first question to you is a serious one: what would it take to break up a lifelong friendship? Do you have such a girlfriend relationship in your life? I don’t, and I’m sorry. I have some old friends that I’ve reconnected with via Facebook, but no one has been my “best friend” since high school or junior high or even college. I don’t really make friends easily, and even when I do, I have found that most of my close friendships have remained intense for several years until the two of us grew apart and moved on to other places and interests. If I really had a friend in my life who had been my close confidante since childhood, I suppose it would take a lot of betrayal to break that friendship. However, the stunt that Tully pulls in the book would do it. Curious?

Second question, which of these songs, Tully and Kate’s Soundtrack of Life, are songs that you recognize? For how many of them could you sing the lyrics from memory? I found this list at Kristin Hannah’s website, and I did think it was fun to revisit the musical past, both as I read and through this list.

Dancing Queen
Daydream Believer
Stairway to Heaven
Taking Care of Business
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road–Elton John. One of my daughters really likes Elton John. I can’t decide if that’s good or disturbing
American Pie– Don Maclean. I once spent a goodly part of a summer analyzing the lyrics of this song with my friend, Julia.
Don’t Give Up on Us – David Soul. Wow, that’s a blast from the past. Does anyone remember David Soul as Hutch? Or even before that as one of the brothers along with Bobby Sherman on Here Come the Brides? I’m really dating myself, but my friend and I used to play Here Come the Brides and argue over who got to marry Bobby Sherman.
Thank God I’m a Country Boy – John Denver–I loved John Denver, and I can still listen to him if I’m in the right mood.
Shout!
Brick House
Twistin’ the Night Away
Louie, Louie Hate this song.
Here we start getting into the 80’s and the disco era, I’m guessing. I quit listening to pop music in about 1980.
Love is a Battlefield
Jessie’s Girl
Purple Rain– Prince
You Can’t Always Get What You Want– Rolling Stones. Everyone knows the Rolling Stones, even if they’re not to my taste.
Call Me– Blondie
Sweet Dreams (are made of this)
Do You Really Want to Hurt Me
Here Comes the Bride
Crazy for You– Madonna
I’m Every Woman– Whitney Houston
Hey Little Girl is Your Daddy Home– Springsteen
Desperado– Eagles This one seems out of place. Desperado is vintage 70’s, and the eagles were another favorite band of mine as a teen and as a college student. I can sing every word of this song.
A Moment Like This– Kelly Clarkson
Didn’t We Almost Have it All – Whitney Houston. I remember this one, but don’t know why.
Papa Don’t Preach– Madonna. No Madonna in my life ever, ever, ever.
Bohemian Rhapsody– Queen. I only know this song because my children were introduced to it via Glee.
Linda Ronstadt. Who didn’t listen to Linda Ronstadt back in the day?
You’ve Got a Friend James Taylor, of course. Sweet baby James. And Carly Simon. And Carole King. Those were the days.
One Sweet Day

In spite of some incidents in the book of sexual promiscuity (Tully, of course) that I could have done without, I liked the story well enough that I may try another of Ms. Hannah’s books someday. It’s chick lit, but not bad for a beach read or a spring fling.

Resurrection Sunday: He Is Risen Indeed!

Apr23

I thought I had already linked to or embedded this video from Easter last year, but I don’t see it anywhere. Enjoy, and celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

On April 4, 2010, over 1,300 young people, all of them members of Faith Church celebrated Resurrection Sunday in Budapest, Hungary.

Music: Ferenc Balogh Jr.
Lyrics: Shelly Matos, based on the Hungarian text by Tamas Pajor (Tompage)
Producer: Ákos Nemes
Art Producer: Tamás Pajor (Tompage)

After the Leaves Fall by Nicole Baart

Apr22

I began to exist in a tension between wanting and not wanting–waiting for something I couldn’t even pin down in my most naked and honest moments. Waiting for a balance where I neither ached nor forgot, regretted nor accepted. Waiting for my heart to be light again yet fearing the implications of that same lightness. I suppose I waited for peace–an end to my own personal warfare. . . . Grandma and I stood hand in hand until the graveyard was empty and the rain had all but ceased to fall. Her lips moved faintly, and I knew she was whispering prayers for me. I couldn’t join her –I had forgotten how; the ability to pray had slipped out of my soul like the dirt had tumbled from my fingers. I wasn’t angry at God or anything–that would have been far too cliched. He just seemed irrelevant.

The narrator of this novel makes this self-observation in the aftermath of her father’s death, and in fact, our protagonist/narrator, Julia, is not only self-observant, but also somewhat self-absorbed. She has excuses: her mother was completely selfish and deserted the family emotionally long before she left them physically. Her beloved father dies after a long, painful illness at the beginning of the novel when Julia is only fifteen years old. Julia feels abandoned and rejected. However, she has a loving grandmother who picks up the slack and prays for her and teaches her to love God. So why is Julia such a mess?

She sees God as irrelevant. There’s an epidemic of that attitude going around. Is God irrelevant? Unconnected? Peripheral to my life and decisions at best? Sometimes I would have to admit that I, too, see God as an afterthought, or more accurately don’t see Him as central, vital, the source of all that makes life worthwhile.

By the end of the book, Julia has sown her wild oats, made some serious mistakes, looked for love in all the wrong places, and she’s in need of a God who loves and forgives and gives second chances. The resolution isn’t neat and tidy; Julia doesn’t have a Damascus road, five-star, turn-around conversion experience. It’s more as if the prodigal daughter comes home and realizes that her grandmother has always loved her and that God may not be so irrelevant after all.

Tough Questions and Real Life Stories

Apr22

This weekend, Easter weekend, a lot of people are thinking about Jesus, and Christianity, and Truth. I followed a link in a John Piper tweet and found this website out of the U.K. called Christianity Explored. The site includes a section called Tough Questions in which real people give preliminary answers for questions such as:

You can’t trust the Bible, can you?
Wasn’t Jesus just a great teacher?
Doesn’t becoming a Christian mean becoming boring?
Hasn’t science shown that Christianity is wrong?
If there is a God, why does He allow suffering?
Why bother with church?
Isn’t believing in the resurrection ridiculous?
How can a loving God send anyone to hell?
Why are Christians so old-fashioned about sex?
Aren’t all religions essentially the same?

I say “preliminary answers” because for each of the above questions there is four minute video of a Christian giving a real introduction to the Christian response to that particular issue. Of course, four minutes isn’t a lot of time to answer most of the complicated and serious questions that people have, so the website goes on to provide further resources, reading suggestions, and more in-depth answers to the questions. Also, the website, Christianity Explored, has a series of short stories of real life Christians telling about how they came to believe in Jesus Christ. And there’s a course that you can sign up for called (no surprise) Christianity Explored, and you can also read the book of Mark, one of the first biographies of Jesus, for yourself.

At the risk of sounding totally frivolous about a serious subject, I must say that you should be careful about watching these videos. Many of the speakers are British, and anything presented with that kind of oh-so-English accent is bound to sound erudite and indisputable. Just sayin’.

I can’t think of a better way to spend at least part of your Easter weekend than to explore the claims of Christ and of his followers. And if you’re an easily impressed American like me, enjoy the accents.

Christians Meet the World: Adventuring in Faith

Apr20

I’ve been reading a string of adventure, world travel, conversion memoirs in which common themes of caring for orphans, reuniting and dividing families, and surviving tragedy, kept reiterating.

First, I read Mary Beth Chapman’s Choosing To See, about the commitment of her and her husband, singer Steven Curtis Chapman, to adopt three girls from China, and also about the tragic death of one of those girls, Maria, in a car accident. Ms. Chapman is about as real as I would imagine anyone could be in writing about her battles with clinical depression, even before the adoptions, and about her struggle to make some kind of sense or gain some peace in the midst of a seemingly senseless tragedy. the story itself is powerful enough to overcome any deficiencies in the writing, and I was amazed and heartened to see God at work in the Chapmans’ story in spite of the suffering that they have endured. The foundation that the Chapmans started, Show Hope, is involved with orphan care and adoption aid around the world.

Next, I read a very different sort of book, set in a very different part of the world: Son of Hamas by Mosab Hasan Yousef. The Middle East, and the Palestinian Authority in particular, are very difficult parts of the world, and it makes sense that a memoir set in that violent and conflict-ridden area would leave some questions in my mind as I read it. Son of Hamas is the story of the oldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the founders of the Palestinian/Muslim organization, Hamas. Over the course of events in the book, Mosab Yousef becomes his father’s bodyguard and security detail while at the same time working for the Israeli security service, Shin Bet. He rationalizes this double life by telling himself that he is saving lives by informing on the terrorist activities and secrets that he is privy to knowing, but the strain becomes too much as he is also involved in a Christian Bible study and becomes convinced of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

While I was able to rejoice in Mr. Yousef’s conversion to Christianity and his eventual resignation from both Hamas activities and from his spying assignments for the Israeli Shin bet, I also took seriously Yousef’s admonition in the afterword of his book:

“So if you meet me on the street, please don’t ask for advice or what I think this or that scripture verse means, because you’re probably already way ahead of me. Instead of looking at me as a spiritual trophy, pray for me, that I will grow in my faith and that I won’t step on too many toes as I learn to dance with the bridegroom.”

The third memoir I read has a very different feel to it. Little Princes by Conor Grennan is the story of Nepalese children in an orphanage in Katmandu who were thought to be orphans but who were discovered to be mostly children who had been taken from their parents under false pretenses and abandoned or enslaved in the capital city of Katmandu. Grennan tells the story from his (American) point of view and shares some personal details of his own life, but he keeps the focus on the children. After stumbling into his work with the orphanage with less than pure motives (he wants to impress the women with his altruism), Grennan learns to care about the children and begins an organization dedicated to the goal of reuniting the trafficked children of Nepal with their families. You can read more about Conor Grennan’s non-profit organization Next Generation Nepal at the website.

Sad to say, although I believe after reading the books that all three of these authors are sincere in their beliefs and truthful in telling their respective stories, I can’t vouch for any of them personally. And in light of the recent revelations about Greg Mortenson and his immensely popular book Three Cups of Tea an the organization that he directs, Central Asia Institute, any book of this sort, especially Grennan’s which takes place in the same general area of the world, is bound to come under some scrutiny. Such scrutiny and due diligence is good, but a lack of compassion and charitable giving and general skepticism used to justify stinginess and apathy are not good and not right. We must give our money and our compassion wisely, but also generously.

Further information and links related to these books and to Mortenson’s CAI:
60 Minutes report on inaccuracies in Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea
Central Asia Institute website
Greg Mortenson’s response to 60 Minutes’ questions
John Krakauer: Three Cups of Deceit, How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way
Conor Grennan’s non-profit organization Next Generation Nepal.
Conor Grennan’s blog
Conor Grennan on Condemning Greg Mortenson and a Thousand Little Girls
Son of Hamas blog
Son of Hamas book website
Show Hope foundation
Maria’s Big House of Hope Orphan Care center
Mary Beth Chapman’s website
Steven Curtis Chapman official site

By the way, by grouping these reviews and links together, I don’t mean to imply in any way that all or any of the books are inaccurate or filled with lies just because one book, Three Cups of Tea, has been accused of containing falsehoods. I read these books in succession, and then I read the news reports on the issues with Mortenson’s story. And I, of course, wondered. The fiasco surrounding Three Cups of Tea and Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute should be a strong warning to all memoirists, especially those involved in fund-raising, to be scrupulously honest in their story-telling. Mr. Mortenson’s looseness with the truth has hurt more people than just himself and more organizations than just CAI.

Why Jesus?

Apr19

I was talking to a young man of my acquaintance last week, and we were discussing a friend of his who was dealing with lots of problems, mostly of her own making. I said something like, “Well, you know that ultimately she needs Jesus.” I knew that this young man says he believes in a Creator God, and he prays sometimes. However, he says he’s just not convinced that he has any need for or any faith in “all that Christian stuff.”

And, sure enough, he asked me: “Why Jesus?” Why can’t we just get by with a belief in a Higher Power or God or whatever you want to call Him without having to believe everything that the Bible says about Him? Why do we need to bring Jesus and all the Christian baggage into the equation?

Now I have answers to that question, and I gave the young man a brief response, which was all he wanted or was ready to hear. However, I’ve been thinking about his query, and I thought I’d ask some people I trust or admire to answer in their own words. It’s not a bad question to contemplate as we approach Resurrection Sunday and the celebration of the culmination of Jesus’ ministry and work here on earth.

I asked: If someone asked you, why Jesus? Why isn’t it enough to just believe in God? Why are Christianity and Jesus necessary? How would you answer?

Jared Wilson, pastor and author: God reveals himself to us in Christ (John 14). So to reject Christ is to reject God. God is triune; any denial is acceptance of not-God.

Mitali Perkins, author: A loving God doesn’t make sense in a suffering world without the cross.

Martin Luther: “Either sin is with you, lying on your shoulders, or it is lying on Christ, the Lamb of God. Now if it is lying on your back, you are lost; but if it is resting on Christ, you are free, and you will be saved.”

R.C. Sproul, pastor and teacher: “There is a God who is altogether holy, who is perfectly just, and who declares that he is going to judge the world and hold every human being accountable for their life. As a perfectly holy and just God, he requires from each one of us a life of perfect obedience and of perfect justness. If there is such a God and if you have lived a life of perfect justness and obedience—that is, if you’re perfect — then you certainly don’t need Jesus. You don’t need a Savior because only unjust people have a problem.”

I would add: Apart from Christ, how do you know what God you are praying to or acknowledging? Who is your God? A remote implacable Muslim God? Or a capricious and fallible Zeus? An impersonal “watchmaker” god? The unknown God (Acts 17:23)? Jesus is God’s final and highest revelation of Himself to a fallen, but beloved world. For God, the true one God revealed in Christ, so loved the world, you and me, that He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus, that whosoever believes, trusts, has faith in, Him shall not die but have everlasting, forever, abundant, quality life.

Today and every day as we live toward the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection and eventually toward His second coming to judge the world, I wish you Jesus.

If you have answers or questions to add to this discussion, please feel free to comment.

Sunday Salon: Prequels and Sequels and Films, Oh, My!

Apr16

Frank Cottrell Boyce will be writing a trilogy based on Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: “The new story is about a family where the father has been made redundant and sets about trying to reconstruct a VW Camper Van. He unwittingly uses the original Chitty Chitty Bang Bang engine for the camper van, which has its own agenda, to restore itself.”

Newbery Award winner Patricia MacLachlan has signed up with Albert Whitman & Company to write a prequel for Gertrude Chandler Warner‘s popular series, The Boxcar Children. I hope her prequel is better than the awful sequels/series extenders (over 100 of them) that were written and published starting in the 1990’s. Only the first nineteen books in the series were written by Gertrude Chandler Warner, and only those nineteen are worth the time as far as I’m concerned.

Walden Media announced that they will adapt The Magician’s Nephew next in the film adaptation of the Narnia series. I don’t know why they’re skipping over The SIlver Chair, but I would imagine that The Horse and His Boy, with its vaguely Arabic-culture villains would be way too controversial.

And Peter Jackson has finally started filming on his version of The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. I say, “Hooray for The Hobbit! Long live Bilbo Baggins!”

The King’s Speech, the account of King George VI’s stuttering problem that won the Academy Award for best picture, is coming out in a PG-13 version in April. The original was rated R because of a scene in which the struggling king uses some crude and profane language to try to overcome his stammering. I thought, despite the language which is mostly confined to that one scene, the movie was wonderful, and it would quite inspiring for Christian young people to see the persistence and character exemplified in this story.

Some tips on How to Read a Classic (Novel) at A Library Is a Hospital for the Mind. Sarah makes these suggestions in relation to reading Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, but her ideas are adaptable for most classic novels. Good stuff. Challenge yourself.

We’ve been watching mostly TV shows on Netflix here at the Semicolon household: Larkrise to Candleford and Psych. That’s an interesting combination.

Prayer Adventures

Apr15

I’ve been thinking a lot about prayer, and I’ve actually been praying more—ever since I read the book Praying for Strangers by River Jordan. It sounds a little crazy, since I’ve been a Christian for almost fifty years, but I think maybe God is trying to teach me to pray. Really pray. Not just think about praying or talk about prayer or read about prayer, but actually get still and form words and offer them up to Him. So, here’s a sampling of what’s been going on in my mind and heart around this topic of prayer:

I read and appreciated this brief post: Prayer and Goosebumps Yes, I’m praying a lot more short, on the spot, before-I-forget, prayers.

Prayer is not merely an occasional impulse to which we respond when we are in trouble: prayer is a life attitude. ~Walter A. Mueller

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees. ~Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

We must move from asking God to take care of the things that are breaking our hearts, to praying about the things that are breaking His heart. ~Margaret Gibb

Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons, but they are helpless against our prayers. ~Sidlow Baxter

There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God. ~Brother Lawrence

Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work. ~Oswald Chambers

The main lesson about prayer is just this: Do it! Do it! Do it! You want to be taught to pray. My answer is pray and never faint, and then you shall never fail. ~John Laidlaw

Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger

Apr11

I grew up in West Texas, San Angelo, not Odessa, but definitely football country, the era and culture of Friday Night Lights. I learned football sitting in the flute section of the Edison Junior High School band as my band director explained to me first downs and safeties and extra points. I never learned it well, but I knew enough by the time I got to high school that I could get my flute in place to play the fight song when our team made a touchdown.

Friday Night Lights has become a movie and a TV series. I’ve never seen either one. However, I can vouch that the culture and the obsession depicted in the book did exist, and probably still does. I graduated from Central High School in San Angelo in the mid-seventies, and football was a Big Deal. We saw Permian, the school featured in the book, as the school to beat. We detested “Mojo” and all their black and gold trappings. They probably saw us as not so much of a threat since the San Angelo Bobcats have only won two state championships in their history, in 1943 and again in 1966. I think Mr. Bissinger, who is a Yankee from Philadelphia, probably got a a narrow but accurate picture of the place and influence of high school football in a West Texas town, as he spent a year following the fortunes of the Odessa Permian Panthers.

He also made a lot of people mad. In the afterword, written in 2008 ten years after the book was written, Bissinger says he received death threats at the time of publication and that many Odessans still resent and argue with the depiction of their town, their attitudes, and their football team in the book. I’m sure the fictional extension and embellishment of the story in movie and television has done nothing to change the perception that Bissinger misquoted, fictionalized, and sensationalized a narrative that was dear to the people of Odessa. I don’t know. Certainly, football is important, even worshipped, in Odessa and in other towns and high schools and colleges in Texas. I’ve seen it myself. Perhaps Mr. Bissinger could have found many people with a more balanced and rational view of the significance of the Permian Panthers football team and its win/loss record had he tried. However, he wasn’t writing about those balanced people with little or no interest in football; he was writing about the Mojo of Permian High School football and about its effect on a group of young men who found their identity in a series of Friday night football games.

Friday Night Lights is a sad book. It asks the question, “If football is your life, what happens when the season is over?” Win or lose, the answer to that question isn’t pretty. I felt sorry for the boys in the book. How could such a system be good for anyone concerned? And why do we continue to perpetuate such intense pressure on young men to succeed at a game that is essentially meaningless in and of itself? When I read about football mania as practiced in Friday Night Lights, I’m glad we homeschool. And it makes me look carefully at my own life and the expectations I have for my children. Is there anything that I have made into an idol that takes the place of God in the lives of my children? I pray not.

The book is excellent. It deals with both the strengths and weaknesses of a community’s having a cause or a team to unite them. Taking pride and inspiration from the accomplishments of a group of athletes or other successful people is a good thing, in moderation. Loading the hopes and dreams of an entire city on the shoulders of a group of seventeen and eighteen year old boys is a mistake and a perversion of true community.

God’s Trombones by James Weldon Johnson

Apr8

40 Inspirational Classics for Lent

These poems, based on the preaching style of the traditional Black preacher, contain some of the finest images of Biblical truth and of Scriptural exposition that I have read. I posted here a You-tube video of pastor Wintley Phipps performing Johnson’s poem, “Go Down, Death.” Here’s another poem from God’s Trombones, “The Creation”:

But this poem, The Prodigal Son, is my favorite one from the collection. “Young man, your arm’s too short to box with God.” Oh, it is, and thank God that it is and that we can learn to “be still and know that He is God” and that we are not.