Eating Your Words

Today I want to announce the official release of my latest book, Eating Your Words: An Introduction to Reading Biblical Narrative. (Available on Amazon.com--click the cover for a link.)

"What's it about?" you might be asking. "Food? 'Cause I think of food when I look at the title."

It is about food, namely the word of God, which is food of the highest culinary transport. The Bible mentions in several places that God's word is food, a delight to the heart. For example, in Jeremiah 15:16, the prophet says  

Your words were found, and I ate them, 
and your words became to me a joy 
and the delight of my heart, 
for I am called by your name.

One can almost picture Jeremiah's exhuberance as he finds the word of God, the savor of the flavor in his mouth (pardon the rhyme), and the swelling delight of his heart.

King David mentions something similar in Psalm 119:103:

How sweet are your words to my taste, Sweeter than honey to my mouth!

In his lengthy celebratory discourse on the law of God in Psalm 119, he stops multiple times to proclaim his delight in God's word. Here he says the words are actually sweet to his taste, sweeter than honey.

And so it is.

And this is the starting point of Eating Your Words. The Bible is a feast, waiting to be tasted and savored, waiting to nourish and brighten our souls. But if we do not come to the table aware of what we're eating, we’ll surely miss some of the experience.  
 
Eating Your Words invites readers to remember the rich color and texture of the Bible, and to read it with eyes that see and understand the narrative art and craft of its stories. Why? Because grasping the biblical narrators’ literary form and technique allows us greater understanding of the Bible's meaning.  
So come. Come to the feast. Eat of God's words—as Jeremiah did. See that they are, indeed, sweeter than honey to the mouth. Hear and see and believe. Be saved and sanctified by the very active Word of God, as it pierces the innermost being. And yes, see that the true story—as story—is good.

Book Realease! ~ Another Angle

This past weekend I released a new book called Another Angle: Sacrament and Life through Poetry and Story. As it's a bit of an unorthodox approach for a book, I have included most of the introduction below. If you're interested, click the photo of the cover or the link to the right.

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I have a vision problem. I think I know and understand—that I “see”—so much about life and purpose and fellowship with God. But the truth is I see little and know and understand less. The funny thing is, “the eye is not satisfied with seeing” (Eccl 1:8) and I do, indeed, long to see more, yet I’ve settled for seeing little while fooling myself into believing I see much. I’m like those folks C. S. Lewis once described, the ones who have contented themselves with making mud pies in their ghetto slum because they just don’t understand or can’t imagine God’s offer of a trip to the seashore. Yes, sadly, I’m also much like Isaiah’s audience, the people who kept on hearing but didn’t understand, who kept on seeing but didn’t perceive (6:9).

What I need is new eyes. I need my way of seeing crafted—sharpened and then continually shaped and sculpted by the living God. Thankfully, this is what theology does, what the preaching of God’s word does, what the study and discussion of God’s word does. This is what the administering and partaking of the sacraments does. This is what fellowship does. And, I’ve discovered and would like to argue, this is also what art does. But I get ahead of myself.

My guess is, most of us don’t see as clearly nor as fully as we could and as we long to see. Thus, my goal here is to pursue new eyes, at least in part, and to bring you along with me. More specifically, I’d like for us to consider life more fully, but we need some lenses through which to make our observations. And, we need something specific to observe, something that encapsulates and demonstrates the essence of life, for trying to look at all of life without any focal point would be maddening.

Is there any such thing as this, any such focal point? I think there is. The sacraments encapsulate the essence of life for they embody for us union and communion—community—as God intended humankind to experience in this world. In other words, in the sacraments we are given a picture of life as God created it to be, a “world miniature,” as Peter Leithart says. It follows that the better we understand the sacraments, the better we will understand how to live in the union and communion which the sacraments picture. Period.

So I’d like to invite you to see the sacraments in a new light that we might see the world in a new light. Ah, but here’s the catch: I don’t want to approach this exploration solely by way of mere theory or ideology—by theology--alone. Theology is necessary, of course, but constructing an entire worldview based only on rigid theological systems and ideals, devoid of imagination, tends to beget a stale and stagnant view of life. At least this is what I have observed in myself and the church. (Yes, I’m guilty of trying to live by theological constructs alone.) Seeing only through a rigid theological construct limits our vision and hinders us from grasping life more completely, more wholly. Hence the vision problem I mentioned earlier.

Thus, the pursuit of this book is to peer into the sacraments—and thereby into life—through the lens of theology as well as through the lens of art and imagination. We can’t help having a theology, a worldview, a lens through which to interpret and understand reality. Everyone has a worldview, regardless of whether he or she knows it or not. We can’t turn it off, nor should we even attempt to do so. For Christians the Bible forms and informs our worldview, our perspective and understanding of God, man, and creation. At the same time, as creatures made in the image of God and thus possessing a creative capacity, we also need to acknowledge the importance of art and imagination. We ought not ignore or turn off this creative human capacity, for it informs our understanding of life as well. Both theology and art are essential means of grasping and articulating what is often beyond our reach and our words. Both are necessary if we are to see and understand the world more wholly.

Because my desire—for myself and for others—is a more complete grasp and understanding of life as God intended, in Another Angle I will first look briefly at the sacraments through the lens of theology. Then, with this theological foundation, I will add the lens of art, specifically poetry and story, and look at the sacraments and life through it. This will give us another, more complete, angle on life.    

Behold: a point of view shift

POV. Point of View. It's a literary term that gets thrown around often, and rightly so, for it's a pretty central concept to writing and reading. Understanding who's point of view you're reading through in a story is often (always?) crucial to interpretation and understanding. 

Narrative techniques used to convery point of view are sometimes subtle, sometimes easy to miss. For example, in the Old Testament, a change in point of view is often noted with the word "behold."

Case in point: in 1 Samuel 25 (as I've discussed before), David is on his way to slay the ungracious Nabal for refusing to show hospitality to David and his men. Abigail hears of this, prepares food and mounts a donkey to intercept David and his men. Here is how verse 20 reads:

"And as she rode on the donkey and came down under cover of the mountain, behold, David and his men came down toward her, and she met them."

The shift is subtle. We are given the narrator's point of view, his retelling of the events: "And as she rode on the donkey and came down under cover of the mountain." Then the point of view shifts and we are seeing what Abigail sees:

"behold" [which marks the point of view shift]

"David and his men came down toward her" [Abigail's perspective]

If this were a film, we would be seeing the general perspective of the scene--perhaps Abigail on stage right and David and his men higher up on stage left, and then we would be seeing out of Abigail's eyes, experiencing what she is experiencing.

Now this might not mean much; in fact, I'm not sure what the exact significance is in this story. It could be we're seeing through Abigail's eyes as she assesses the situation. Perhaps she is deciding what course of action she should take, given David's current emotional state.

Regardless of the exact meaning, I am coming to see more and more that perspective or point of view in the Bible (in all literature) is important. As readers we need to be aware of whose point of view we're listening to. If we're not careful, we'll follow the wrong one and end up making skewed interpretations.

The same could be said of real life, could it not?

[Image: "Abigail and David" Woodcut Biblical illustration by Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld, published in the book, "Das Buch der Bücher in Bilden." From the World Mission Collection, http://www.wmcwels.com]

Sacraments from several angles

I'm finally getting around to working on putting some books together. I have several manuscripts that need polishing and submitting, so I figured it was time to get around to it.

One project I'm working on is a bit unique. It's about the sacraments, but I'm looking at them from four angles: through the lenses of theology, philosophy (sort of--I'm trying to explain that we should look at them through art), poetry (my attempt at lyrical art), and story (my attempt at narrative art). My goal is to offer an exploration of the sacraments and the life they depict, but I want to do so from several perspectives in order to offer a more complete picture of them.

I'm not sure how this will go over, since placing such a book on the shelf in some sort of category will be difficult. 

Anyway, here are a couple of the poems that will be in the book.

I

Individual heads, hearts and bodies

Most miraculously made into one…

And yet, we live like we’ve been dissected,

Laid out around the table all undone.

The same unstained blood pulses through our veins,

Taken hold and organized organic.

Diverse body parts seamed—quick—together—

At table the wounds heal, for the water’s thick.

II

We gather around wood

Unique

And yet united

We take and eat the food—

Our need,

From us divided.

We taste, we see it’s good—

We feed:

Our body’s braided.

I'll let you know how the project progresses. If you get the chance, let me know what you think about such a book--one with a couple of essays, fifteen or so poems and a novella. Does something like this even work? Make sense?