Saturday, January 17, 2015

Books Recently Read and Favorite Music

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning by Rene Girard.  Read perhaps five years ago and needed to reread to help it soak in better.  Brian McLaren and Michael Hardin discussed it in YouTube Videos and that reminded me about it.

The Age of Spirit: How the Ghost of an Ancient Controversy is Shaping the Church  by Phyllis Tickle and Jon Sweeney.  This one is excellent history about the development of the concept of the Holy Spirit.  Does not spend much time on what the Holy Spirit is doing now and how it is viewed at the moment.  The ancient church made so much about the proper interpretation and the fine distinctions they made between each of then.  It can make you head hurt.

Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry by Owen Barfield. This one was pretty difficult going.  I'll need to go through it again.  Main thesis is that the consciousness of medieval people and before was different from we moderns and it would be helpful to us to learn from that.

How (Not) To Be Secular by James K. A. Smith  Excellent at summarizing Charles Taylor's tome. Maybe I'll address this later.  Taylor as interpreted by Smith says that most thinkers view the secular as what happens when faith is subtracted from a person's life.  As related by Smith, Taylor claims that there were several junctures on the way to secularity and that what happened was not inevitable but could have gone otherwise.  The social imaginary and the buffered self who experiences cross pressures are important concepts.

What We Mean When We Talk About God by Rob Bell.  I liked the first half.  He begins in process theology mode.  Starting with physics and evolution.  Gets to the Hebrew Bible and makes a jump I could not quite follow.  That is where I wanted something filled in.


Discovered Nicholas Jaar about 9 months ago.  I listen to this "Live at Sonar" several times a week.  Every chord, screech, trill, and sonic flourish is perfectly placed.

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