Disease and Faith

If you take a look at the timeline of blog posts as it's reported here at Preaching to the Choir, you will notice that there is nothing there for the year 2016.  That doesn't mean that I didn't write anything that whole year; it's just that I was writing for a different audience.  As I'm doing my housekeeping here and getting everything back up to date, a failure to link to Disease and Faith would be completely remiss.

Disease and Faith is autobiographical in part, relating my battles with Crohn's Disease and Parkinson's Disease.  But the point of sharing my stories there was simply to establish my credibility to speak to the trials of others, and point them away from disease and toward faith.

You can purchase the paperback version at Amazon.com and elsewhere; there is also a digital version for Kindle and the like.  Or, better yet, drop me a line and I'll send you a paperback copy for free.

The Last Trumpet

I have just released my first piece of new writing since I retired on disability several years ago.  It is called "The Last Trumpet" and its purpose is to serve as a refutation of the pre-tribulation rapture theory.  It costs 99 cents at Amazon.com, only existing in digital format, but if you can't afford the price or don't have access to a Kindle reader, I'll send you a copy for free.  Just send me a note.

I am also at work on another similar project that I'm tentatively calling "Disease and Faith" that is kind of a summation of the things I've learned from my experiences with Parkinson's Disease, Crohn's Disease, and different expressions of faith.  If my past writing speed is any indication, look for it around the year 3000.

In the meantime, I hope to do a little better with these blog posts, particularly the Significant Passages and Acts of Worship ideas, and I may be getting into some musical posts as well, just having been blessed by the recovery of some songs that I wrote half a lifetime ago.  And finally, I hope to sometime finish "Owan's Regret," which is likely the final installment in my Hagenspan Chronicles series.  Thanks for the encouragement to keep on writing.  You know who you are, Harold!

What I'm Reading

I recently finished my second Malcolm Muggeridge book, Conversion: The Spiritual Journey of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim. I'm not going to give any in-depth analysis here; I just want to say that it was a beautiful book.

Muggeridge tells his life story, from youth to near-death, mostly in the third person but in a style that doesn't seem the least bit pretentious. He gives enough detail that the reader has a sense of the momentous events in the author's momentous life, but the story isn't nearly so much a historical narrative as it is a spiritual confession.

Just one sample excerpt, from the last chapter:

The hardest thing of all to explain is that death's nearness in some mysterious way makes what is being left behind--I mean our earth itself, its shapes and smells and colours and creatures, all that one has known and loved and lived with--the more entrancing; as the end of a bright June day somehow encapsulates all the beauty of the daylight hours now drawing to a close; or as the last notes of a Beethoven symphony manage to convey the splendour of the whole piece. Checking out of St Theresa of Avila's second-class hotel, as the revolving doors take one into the street outside, one casts a backward look at the old place, overcome with affection for it, almost to the point of tears.

So, like a prisoner awaiting his release, like a schoolboy when the end of term is near, like a migrant bird ready to fly south, like a patient in a hospital anxiously scanning the doctor's face to see whether a discharge may be expected, I long to be gone. Extricating myself from the flesh I have too long inhabited, hearing the key turn in the lock of Time so that the great doors of Eternity swing open, disengaging my tired mind from its interminable conundrums and my tired ego from its wearisome insistencies. Such is the prospect of death.

A triumphant story of a very real human being; someone so hard to find--an honest man. Well worth the read.

What I'm Reading

I had been aware of Malcolm Muggeridge only on my periphery--he was someone I had seen quoted by writers I admire, but I had never read any of his books for myself. Thanks to an infusion of Christmas money, I was able to snag this one (along with a couple of others) from Amazon.com. I picked this title to read first because it was the shortest, which is, I suppose, commentary enough on my competence as a student of literature.

The book's complete title is A Third Testament: A modern pilgrim explores the spiritual wanderings of Augustine, Blake, Pascal, Tolstoy, Bonhoeffer, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky. These men have likewise been heavily referenced by writers I respect, but had read little of for myself. I remember reading something of Bonhoeffer's many years ago, and I have recently finished Augustine's superb Confessions--nothing from the others, to my knowledge. In any case, I am looking forward to this read.

Here's just a brief excerpt, from the Introduction:

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What a perfect description of the revolutionary happenings now, which take place silently, invisibly, with the media lulling everyone to sleep, until the people awaken--if they ever do--to find that the Honorable and Right Honorable Members going in and out of the Aye and No lobbies are ghosts voting for and against nothing; that the vested priests at the high altar are praying to no one about nothing, and dispensing wine and wafers lifeless as stale yeast; that the currency notes being printed at the Mint have lost their value before they come off the presses, as the words dispatched to the composing room have lost their meaning before they are printed.

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If that's a fair representation of Muggeridge's genius, I think I'm going to like him ... at least as much as I can understand.

Because sometimes (very often, in fact) I read things that are too deep for me. Chesterton comes to mind, and Luther and Jonathan Edwards. But I also realize that, by dipping my toes into the deep end of the pool, I am learning how to swim in those waters, albeit gradually. The thoughts of the masters are influencing the thoughts of humble me, and helping me to grasp concepts I probably never would have even considered, being, after all, an average TV-loving American male.

I've also just begun a book simply for pleasure. Since I spend so many hours on topics that are relatively weighty, I also like to send my mind out to play sometimes as a reward--kind of like recess in the midst of the schoolday. My wife Susan bought me this tome for Christmas: The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 6: The Crime Stories. I won't be offering a review of this one here--if you've ever read Louis L'Amour, you know what to expect--but it's fun to read.