Carrying Seedlings in a Bucket

Tree Seedlings

Andrew Peterson talks about discovering a poem by Wendell Berry. “Just a few days ago my kind neighbor Tommy gave me permission to harvest a few maple seedlings from his property and I spent an afternoon replanting them around the Warren with these same hopes for the blessing they might be to my children’s children. Once again, the sage words of the Mad Farmer gave me a clear picture of what it means for us to be keepers of his creation, standing amidst a breadth of old beauty that we didn’t ask for and don’t deserve.”

Skipping Around the Bible

Kathy Keller, wife of New York pastor and author Tim Keller, reviews Rachel Held Evans’ new book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master”, asking some hard questions about the book’s intent. Keller writes, “Evans wants to show that everyone who tries to follow biblical norms does so selectively—’cherry picking’ some parts and passing over others. She also says she wants to open a fresh, honest dialogue about biblical interpretation, that is, how to do it rightly and well.” But Evans apparently cherry-picks on her own, some of it for humor’s sake, some of it seriously.

See many positive reviews on Amazon.

The Bounty’s sunset, and Undset



Photo credit: Inverclyde Views

It appears that the first victim of Hurricane Sandy is a sailor from the replica sailing ship Bounty, built in 1960 for the 1962 movie, “Mutiny On the Bounty,” starring Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard. The ship herself, God rest her, went to the bottom off the North Carolina coast. Twelve sailors were rescued by Coast Guard helicopters, and one further missing sailor was found floating in a life jacket, and has been rushed to a hospital.

This is only the beginning of sorrows, as Revelation says, but it’s a particularly bitter one for me. I love those old sailing ships. Viking ships are in a class by themselves, of course, but all the tall ladies move me to the depths of my Scandinavian soul.

At first I assumed this was the ship built for the 1984 Mel Gibson/Anthony Hopkins film, “The Bounty,” my personal favorite of the Bounty movies. But this goes back to the 1962 film. However, it was also used for another movie I love, the Charlton Heston/Christian Bale “Treasure Island” (1990), by far the best dramatization of the story I’ve ever seen. I see by its Wikipedia entry that it was finally released on DVD last year. I’ve got to get a copy.

Anthony Esolen, over at Front Porch, has posted a profound meditation on freedom and despotism, drawing on an obscure book (which I haven’t read, I confess) by the great Sigrid Undset.

TV review: “Elementary”



I ought to dislike the new CBS TV series, “Elementary” more than I do. Conan Doyle’s immortal character has recently been brilliantly updated by the BBC in the series “Sherlock,” which extracted the soul of the character with exacting precision and inlaid him in the 21st Century with barely a seam showing. This American version (starring Jonny Lee Miller) is far more ham-fisted. It takes an attitude to the source material closer to that of the recent Robert Downey films (which I did not like), except for the martial arts stuff, particularly in adding a grunge element which the original Holmes, a fastidious dresser, would have sniffed at. Nevertheless, I think it’s the very crudity of the adaptation that makes it watchable for me. I can never take this character seriously as Holmes, so I can watch him with amusement as a vaguely Holmes-like TV detective.

In this adaptation, the self-possessed, comfortably self-supporting character of the original stories is turned into a desperate drug addict who’d be living in an alley if his wealthy father (a character who never appears in Doyle) hadn’t hired Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) to be his companion and nursemaid in his exile in New York City. He worked as a police consultant in London before his breakdown, and in that capacity met Captain Tobias Gregson of the NYPD, who hires him for the same purpose here.

If you think the idea of casting a woman as Watson is fresh and edgy, well, it’s not. The idea was first bruited by Rex Stout to the Baker Street Irregulars (the foremost Sherlock Holmes fan group) back in the 1940s. It’s been done before too, both on film and on TV. Actually it would be a little surprising if they hadn’t cast a woman in the role. And if you’ve got to have a female Watson, Lucy Liu is always nice to look at.

As far as stories go, based on the two episodes I’ve watched, they seem to be adequate. Last night’s plot concerned bankers, which gave the writers the opportunity to have Holmes spout their favorite Occupy Wall Street talking points for them. But this Holmes is pretty deeply disturbed, so nothing he says not directly related to clues really needs to be taken seriously.

In brief, I don’t consider this Holmes a real Holmes in any meaningful sense. But once you’ve made peace with that, the show is watchable.

Cold day, cold world

And it snowed today. The first real snow day of the winter. It didn’t accumulate; not quite cold enough for that. But it snowed seriously, with deliberation. Notice has been served.

I spoke with a persecuted pastor in the library today. Pastor Tom Brock, my former pastor, victim of the Gay Inquisition, whom I’ve written about here before. He’s got a TV and radio ministry now, and he told me he was featured in this article at the Christian Post. You can read more about his story there.

Losing to win, in stories

One change owning a Kindle has made in my reading habits is that I’m now a whole lot more likely than I used to be to dump a book that fails to please me.

When I was younger, it was kind of a point of honor to finish any book I started. (This sprang in part from the fact that books were copied by hand on calfskin in those days.) But as I got older, and especially as I crystallized my political and social views, I became more willing to ashcan a book whose author (as I imagined him/her) obviously wouldn’t want a person like me for a reader.

The Kindle makes this easier because I’ve been getting a lot more free books, especially from the Free Kindle Books and Tips blog. Easy come, easy go. A lot of these books are fully worth their price of nothing, and I feel no guilt (OK, not much guilt) in showing them the virtual door.

I dumped one book yesterday, and another today, which I think is a new record.

One was a mystery/thriller, pretty competently written. The characters were mostly good, and the writing slipped only rarely. But around half way through I discovered that the evil District Attorney, whom we had been schooled to hate (the one-dimensionality of his character was one of the book’s weaknesses from the start) was a political conservative, getting money from those evil conservative political action committees.

I could have finished it. I’ve finished worse. But I wasn’t in the mood. Maybe it’s the election season.

The second book was more congenial in viewpoint, being a sort of contemporary Christian fantasy. And the writing was pretty good for Christian literature. But then the main character, a non-Christian, got into a conversation with his Christian neighbor at one point, and it all went south as far as I was concerned.

I have strong views about how conversations about matters faith in novels ought to go. I like to think I do it pretty well in my books, but maybe other people find my approach as offputting as I find so many that I see.

Here’s how I think such conversations should be handled—generally.

1. Avoid easy victories. Christians love anecdotes about how some Christian silenced an atheist through a single pithy, incisive remark. In my experience this never happens in real life. In real life the atheist has a good laugh, and the Christian trickles away humiliated (this isn’t necessarily bad. I know of instances when such conversations have resulted, eventually, in the conversion of the atheist). You gain realism points if you allow your Christian character to lose at least the initial skirmish.

2. Remember that the point of the exercise is not winning the debate, but winning the person. The action of the story is where the non-believer will have his world-view truly challenged. A story where he gets converted merely by an argument is by nature a weak story. Use the rising tension of the story’s action to make him doubt his preconceptions. This is both good storytelling and true to life.

3. Eschew Triumphalism. This really summarizes the two points above. James Bond is not a Christian. The smooth character who always makes the right choices and is always in control of the situation is not realistic, and would be a poor example in any case, since none of us live that way. The Christian conquers through bowing, through dying, through the way of humility.

And no, I’m not going to tell you the names of the books I dumped. I deleted them from my Kindle, and I don’t think I remember the titles. I’m sure I don’t remember the authors’ names.

Praise from Caesar

Today the American Spectator published my article on Andrew Klavan’s Weiss-Bishop mystery trilogy.

Klavan himself noted it on Facebook. He said, “Well, I like it when someone is both smart AND flattering…. When you sit down to write three books around the theme of love, you think to yourself, ‘Not that anyone will ever get that.’ It’s gratifying to be read so intelligently – and by someone who likes the books to boot!”

You may mark this down in the court records as a good day.

Scary Restaurants

Now, for something completely different, a feature on six crazy, scary restaurants around the world, like Dinner in the Sky, which hoists its guests 160 feet in the air over Niagara Falls and other places after you sign a $10 million insurance waiver. Closer to the ground, there’s a New York City joint called Dans Le Noir, where diners eat at a long, communal table in total darkness. And in Spain, there’s a place that simulates a 7.8 earthquake every night.

For more frights this weekend, be sure to catch the documentary on Capitol Hill antics called Paranormal Activity. Truly frightening.

The Santa Shop, by Tim Greaton

If you’re looking for a Christmas entertainment in the same vein as A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life, you could do much worse than picking up a copy of The Santa Shop, by Tim Greaton (if you’ve got a Kindle, it’s a free download as of the time of this posting).

The main character, Skip Ralstat, is a homeless man on the streets of Albany, New York. When he’s invited into a church by a kindly priest on a cold night, he refuses all suggestions as to how he might regain a normal life. He doesn’t want a normal life. He blames himself for the death in a fire of his wife and baby son, and he embraces social ostracism and suffering as his deserved penance.

But when he meets a strange homeless man who wears a dirty Santa wig, he hears of the town of Gray, Vermont, where there’s a bridge called Christmas Leap. Every year one homeless man leaps to his death from that bridge on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve is the anniversary of Skip’s family’s deaths. It just seems right to him that he should go up there himself and pay the ultimate price at last.

He doesn’t understand the forces at work around him, though. There’s a conspiracy—a good conspiracy—of caring people who will force him to face the truth of his life and to understand the real value of what he’s lost and what he’s trying to throw away.

I found flaws in The Santa Shop (you guessed I would, didn’t you?). The book seemed to me overwritten in places, and sometimes the diction could be imprecise. But I was nevertheless wholly engaged in it, and I’d be lying if I denied that my eyes were damp when the story closed up (I should note that it’s a novella. A sample of the follow-up book takes up nearly half of the Kindle version file). The story is notable for having the feel of a supernatural story when in fact the only magic is the magic of God-inspired human love and kindness (exaggerated, I would say, but moving).

I think most Brandywine Books readers will enjoy The Santa Shop.

Devotional Writing

I may have told you once before that I have been writing devotional emails for a small group of CBMC leaders for a few years now. (CBMC stands for Christian Business Men’s Connection.) This year, we opened a new, private discussion and resource community for CBMC members, and I’m posting my past and current devotional writing on a public blog there. I doubt I’m breaking any ground–I mean, I’m not Jared Wilson. But I hope to point readers to Christ and away from our natural tendency to moralism.

A few of my recent post are