Vol XVII. No. 10
Archive - Dec 2009 - Oct 2019
GLOBAL AND ECUMENICAL IN SCOPE
CANADIAN IN PERSPECTIVE
CANADIAN THANKSGIVING EDITION
Wayne A. Holst, Editor
My E-Mail Address: waholst@telus.net
This email is sent only to a voluntary subscriber list.
If you no longer wish to receive these weekly columns,
write to me personally at - waholst@telus.net
*****
Dear Friends:
Philip Yancey has been a favourite author of mine for
many years, and - in this issue of Colleagues List - I am
happy to introduce his memoir "Where the Light Fell".
Please enjoy thanksgiving reflections and other special
pieces this weekend.
Wayne
PLEASE NOTE - If a link below, seems to be dead, cut and
paste it into the address bar at the top of your web page
and it should work.
*****
SPECIAL ITEM
Book Notice -
WHERE THE LIGHT FELL
A Memoir, by Philip Yancey
Random House Canada
Convergent Books, New York
First Edition, October 5th, 2021, 302 pages.
$35.70 CAD Hardcover. Kindle $16.99 CAD
ISBN #978-0593-238509.
Publisher's Promo:
Raised by an impoverished widow who earned room and board as a Bible teacher in 1950s Atlanta, Philip Yancey and his brother, Marshall, found ways to venture out beyond the confines of their eight-foot-wide trailer. But when Yancey was in college, he uncovered a shocking secret about his father’s death—a secret that began to illuminate the motivations that drove his mother to extreme, often hostile religious convictions and a belief that her sons had been ordained for a divine cause.
Searching for answers, Yancey dives into his family origins, taking us on an evocative journey from the backwoods of the Bible Belt to the bustling streets of Philadelphia; from trailer parks to church sanctuaries; from family oddballs to fire-and-brimstone preachers and childhood awakenings through nature, music, and literature. In time, the weight of religious and family pressure sent both sons on opposite paths—one toward healing from the impact of what he calls a “toxic faith,” the other into a self-destructive spiral.
Where the Light Fell is a gripping family narrative set against a turbulent time in post–World War II America, shaped by the collision of Southern fundamentalism with the mounting pressures of the civil rights movement and Sixties-era forces of social change. In piecing together his fragmented personal history and his search for redemption, Yancey gives testament to the enduring power of our hunger for truth and the possibility of faith rooted in grace instead of fear.
“I truly believe this is the one book I was put on earth to write,” says Yancey. “So many of the strands from my childhood—racial hostility, political division, culture wars—have resurfaced in modern form. Looking back points me forward.”
--
Author's Words:
“God wants us to choose to love him freely, even when that choice involves pain, because we are committed to him, not to our own good feelings and rewards. He wants us to cleave to him, as Job did, even when we have every reason to deny him hotly. That, I believe, is the central message of Job. Satan had taunted God with the accusation that humans are not truly free. Was Job being faithful simply because God had allowed him a prosperous life? Job's fiery trials proved the answer beyond doubt. Job clung to God's justice when he was the best example in history of God's apparent injustice. He did not seek the Giver because of his gifts; when all gifts were removed he still sought the Giver.”
-
“Having spent time around "sinners" and also around purported saints, I have a hunch why Jesus spent so much time with the former group: I think he preferred their company. Because the sinners were honest about themselves and had no pretense, Jesus could deal with them. In contrast, the saints put on airs, judged him, and sought to catch him in a moral trap. In the end it was the saints, not the sinners, who arrested Jesus.”
-
Here are two Yancey quotes I want to share widely:
“Sometimes I feel like the most liberal person among conservatives, and sometimes like the most conservative among liberals.” (and)
"I truly believe that this book Where the Light Fell is the one book I was put on earth to write. So many strands from my childhood - racial hostility, political division, culture wars - have surfaced in modern form. Looking back points me forward."
--
Author's Bio:
Philip Yancey is the author of twenty-five books, including The Jesus I Never Knew, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, and Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church. Yancey’s books have garnered thirteen Gold Medallion Book Awards from Christian publishers and booksellers. He currently has more than seventeen million books in print and has been published in over fifty languages worldwide. Yancey worked as a journalist in Chicago for some twenty years, editing the youth magazine Campus Life while also writing for a wide variety of publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Christianity Today. In 1992, he and his wife, Janet, moved to the foothills of Colorado, where they live now.
--
My Thoughts:
In the almost two decades that Colleagues List has appeared, one of my standard resources have been the writings of Philip Yancey. Yancey bears witness to the focused quest for truth. He is committed to bearing witness to the grace, and not the fear of God.
Yancey emerges from a background in the fundamentalist American South, but since his earliest years as an evangelical Christian journalist, he has always followed where the truth would lead him. Sometimes, I agree with the results, and sometimes not, but always I respect what he has to say.
Many of us are saddened by the growing connection between evangelical Christianity in the USA and the Republican Party. Yancey has avoided that chasm and would that many American evangelical spokespersons would follow his example and advice.
How did Yancey come to this place in his spiritual life? This book will help many of us to find the answer to that.
I would like to thank colleague and publicist Shona Cook for sending this review copy. For those who find the hardcover edition a bit pricy, I suspect it will soon appear in a paperback edition.
Keep Where the Light Fell in your mind and on your accessible book shelf.
______
Buy the book from Amazon.ca:
******
COLLEAGUE CONTRIBUTIONS
Mark Whittall,
Ottawa, ON.
Sermons and Blog,
October 8th, 2021
"The Miracle Drug" (Thanksgiving, 2021)
--
Elfrieda Schroeder,
Winnipeg, MB.
In Transit Blog
October 2nd, 2021
"You're a Small Thing
and You Must Learn to Fight"
--
Isabel Gibson,
Ottawa, ON.
Traditional Iconoclast
Sept. 29th, 2021
"Changing Altitude"
--
Jim Taylor,
Okanagan,BC
Personal Weblog,
September 26th, 2021
"What Makes a Religion Legitimate?"
--
Ron Rolheiser,
San Antonio, TX
Personal Website,
October 4th, 2021
"Do We Have Guardian Angels?"
*****
NET NOTES
SUNDAY MOURNINGS No Such Thing as a Return to Normalcy
Sightings,
October 7th, 2021
--
DIGITAL CHURCH IS HERE TO STAY
British Study Likely to Apply Here
Christian News
September 29th, 2021
--
THE MEANING BEHIND ORANGE SHIRTS
Truth and Reconciliation Demonstrated
Broadview,
June 21s,t 2021
--
THE WORLD IS FULL OF GOD'S GRANDEUR In Algonquin Park, Surrounded by Beauty
Catholic Register, Toronto
October 3rd, 2021
--
MURAL OF SOUTH AFRICA'S DESMOND TUTU
Fixed for His 90th Birthday at Rainbow Academy
Religion News Service
October 7th, 2021
REPORT ESTIMATES 330,000 CHILDREN
ABUSED IN FRENCH RC CHURCH SINCE 1950s
Both Clergy and Laypeople Involved in Abuse
Catholic Register,
October 6th, 2021
--
CANADIAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS REMORSE
SETS STAGE FOR PAPAL APOLOGY
"A Bit of a Long Time in Coming"
Catholic Register, Toronto
September 29th, 2021
--
FAITH OR POLITICS?
TRUMP SUPPORTERS SWELL
AMERICAN EVANGELICAL PEWS
Christian Science Monitor,
October, 2021
--
PAT ROBERTSON STEPS DOWN
AS HEAD OF THE "700 CLUB"
He Led the Group for 60 Years
Religion News Service,
October 1st, 2021
--
ROBERTSON TURNED CHRISTIAN TV
INTO A POLITICAL POWER
It Also Contained Wacky Prophecy
Religion News Service,
October 4th, 2021
*****
WISDOM OF THE WEEK
From Sojourners and the Bruderhof online:
We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
--
It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.
- Audre Lorde
--
There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at critical points to create a power that governments cannot suppress.
- Howard Zinn
--
You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials ‘for the sake of humanity,’ and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.
- C.S. Lewis
--
We speak about “having hope” as if it were a substance one could possess, but after working in the cemetery, I think of it as space, a field to be cultivated. That field holds the treasure of eternal life; it’s the same one the merchant sells all he owns to purchase (Matt. 13:44). That field grants us the ability to accommodate all we encounter: the sorrow, the doubt, the suffering, the pain we inevitably face no matter who we are, where we live.
- Ann Thomas
Rabbi Barukh’s grandson, Yehiel, was once playing hide-and-seek with another boy. He hid himself well and waited for his playmate to find him. When he had waited for a long time, he came out of his hiding place, but the other was nowhere to be seen. Now Yehiel realized that his friend had not looked for him from the very beginning. This made him cry, and crying he ran to his grandfather and complained of his faithless friend. The tears brimmed in Rabbi Barukh’s eyes and he said: “God says the same thing: ‘I hide, but no one wants to seek me.’
- Martin Buber
--
There is no such thing as the right place, the right job, the right calling or ministry. I can be happy or unhappy in all situations. I am sure of it, because I have been. I have felt distraught and joyful in situations of abundance as well as poverty, in situations of popularity and anonymity, in situations of success and failure. The difference was never based on the situation itself, but always on my state of mind and heart. When I knew I was walking with God, I always felt happy and at peace. When I was entangled in my own complaints and emotional needs, I always felt restless and divided.
- Henri J.M. Nouwen
--
The whole of Christianity is paradox. At its heart, it’s rooted in paradox. That God can become man, that death can become life, everything about it is paradoxical. But in historical terms, the paradox is that a faith that puts at its center “the first shall be last, the last shall be first” – the story of exodus, of the slaves being the favorites of God, or of course the crucifixion and the resurrection, that the cross becomes the emblem of triumph over worldly empire – this faith in itself ends up becoming the most globally hegemonic way of explaining what humanity is here for.
And there is obviously an incredible tension there between the power that Christianity has come to exert and the nagging sense that actually it’s in powerlessness that God’s favors are to be found.
- Tom Holland
CLOSING THOUFHT - Julian of Norwich
Deeds are done which appear so evil to us and people suffer such terrible evils that it does not seem as though any good will ever come of them; and we consider this, sorrowing and grieving over it so that we cannot find peace in the blessed contemplation of God as we should do, and this is why: our reasoning powers are so blind now, so humble and so simple, that we cannot know the high, marvelous wisdom, the might and the goodness of the Holy Trinity. And this is what he means where he says, “You shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well”, as if he said, “Pay attention to this now, faithfully and confidently, and at the end of time you will truly see it in the fullness of joy.”
(end)
*****
For Those Interested -
ACTS MINISTRY AUTUMN STUDIES AT ST.DAVID'S UNITED:
Monday Night Book Study - Sept. 20th - Nov. 29th 7-8:30 PM Zoom (10 weeks)
(no class on Thanksgiving Monday, October 11th)
Book Theme: "Starlight" by Richard Wagamese
**
Thursday Morning Bible Study - Sept. 23 - Nov. 25 10-11 AM
Zoom (10 weeks)
Bible Theme - "First Isaiah" (Isaiah chapters 1-39)
If you have questions, contact me at waholst@telus.net
(end)
******
No comments:
Post a Comment