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333. Asymmetry

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:    Frank and Lisanne

Author:   Lisa Halliday

Genre:  Fiction

277 pages, published February 6, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Told in three distinct sections, Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations:  inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice. The first section, Folly tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer.   The second section, Madness is narrated by Amar, an Iraqi-American man who, on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan, is detained by immigration officers and spends the last weekend of 2008 in a holding room in Heathrow. The final section is an NPR interview with Ezra Blazer.

Quotes 

“I once heard a filmmaker say that in order to be truly creative a person must be in possession of four things: irony, melancholy, a sense of competition, and boredom.”

 

“But then even someone who imagines for a living is forever bound by the ultimate constraint: she can hold her mirror up to whatever subject she chooses, at whatever angle she likes—she can even hold it such that she herself remains outside its frame, the better to de-narcissize the view—but there’s no getting around the fact that she’s always the one holding the mirror. And just because you can’t see yourself in a reflection doesn’t mean no one can.”

“Some of us wage wars. Others write books. The most delusional ones write books. We have very little choice other than to spend our waking hours trying to sort out and make sense of the perennial pandemonium. To forge patterns and proportions where they don’t actually exist. And it is this same urge, this mania to tame and possess—this necessary folly—that sparks and sustains love.”

 

“for a country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak or a powerful one too powerful.”

 

“We ride too high on deceptive notions of power and security and control and then when it all comes crashing down on us the low is made deeper by the high. By its precipitousness, but also by the humiliation you feel for having failed to see the plummet coming. . . . Lulled by years of relative peace and prosperity we settle into micromanaging our lives with our fancy technologies and custom interest rates and eleven different kinds of milk, and this leads to a certain inwardness, an unchecked narrowing of perspective, the vague expectation that even if we don’t earn them and nurture them the truly essential amenities will endure forever as they are. We trust that someone else is looking after the civil liberties shop, so we don’t have to. Our military might is unmatched and in any case the madness is at least an ocean away. And then all of a sudden we look up from ordering paper towels online to find ourselves delivered right into the madness. And we wonder: How did this happen? What was I doing when this was in the works? Is it too late to think about it now? . . .”

 

“This is because my mind is always turning over this question of how I’m going to feel later, based on what I’m doing now. Later in the day. Later in the week. Later in a life starting to look like a series of activities designed to make me feel good later, but not now. Knowing I’ll feel good later makes me feel good enough now.”

 

“the more time you spend writing things down the less time you spend doing things you don’t want to forget.”

 

“As soon as you are born the sand starts falling and only by demanding to be remembered do you stand a chance of it being upturned again and again.”

 

“The older you get,” he explained, “the more you have to do before you can go to bed. I’m up to a hundred things.”

 

“the music made her more desperate than ever to do, invent, create—to channel all her own energies into the making of something beautiful and unique to herself—but it also made her want to love. To submit to the loving of someone so deeply and well that there could be no question as to whether she were squandering her life, for what could be nobler than dedicating it to the happiness and fulfillment of another?” 

My Take

I wasn’t sure what to make of Asymmetry.  While she is a gifted writer, Halliday has a unique style that takes a little getting used to.  Nevertheless, I still captivated by parts of Asymmetry, especially the first part of the book which chronicles the relationship between a talented, but somewhat aimless young woman and a much older and much more accomplished man.  The second part, which focuses on an Iraqi American detained at Heathrow Airport was much less interesting.  While Asymmetry was not one of my favorites of the year, I would read more from this author.

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328. Outer Order, Inner Calm: declutter & organize to make more room for happiness

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Gretchen Rubin

Genre:  Non Fiction, Self Improvement

208 pages, published March 5, 2019

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Outer Order, Inner Calm is Gretchen Rubin’s take on the idea that maintaining order in your surroundings is an important contributor to your overall happiness.  Rubin argues that getting control of the stuff of life makes us feel more in control of our lives generally.  By getting rid of things we don’t use, don’t need, or don’t love, as well as things that don’t work, don’t fit, or don’t suit, we free our mind (and our shelves) for what we truly value.  The book is organized around helpful ideas and suggestions for achieving order and organization.

Quotes 

“Nothing is more exhausting than the task that’s never started.”

 

“What we do every day matters more than what we do once in a while.”

 

“Outer order isn’t a matter of having less or having more; it’s a matter of wanting what we have.”

 

“Getting in control of our possessions makes us feel more in control of our fates. If this is an illusion, it’s a helpful illusion–and it’s a more pleasant way to live.”

 

“When deciding what to buy, remember that some things are easy to buy—but then we have to use them. If they’re not used, they don’t enhance our lives; they just contribute to guilt and clutter.”

 

“One of the biggest wastes of time is doing something well that didn’t need to be done at all.”

 

“Rather than striving for a particular level of possessions—minimal or otherwise—it’s helpful to think about getting rid of what’s superfluous. Even people who prefer to own many possessions enjoy their surroundings more when they’ve purged everything that’s not needed, used, or loved.”

 

“Actually spending ten minutes clearing off one shelf is better than fantasizing about spending a weekend cleaning out the basement.”

 

“It’s easier to keep up than to catch up…”

 

“Just because we’re busy doesn’t mean we’re being productive. Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.”

 

“Having less often leads us to use our things more often and with more enjoyment, because we’re not fighting our way through a welter of unwanted stuff.” 

My Take

As my friends well know, I am a huge fan of Gretchen Rubin (Better than Before, The Four Tendencies, The Happiness Project) and consider her as my personal happiness guru.  I have internalized her many of her numerous pearls of wisdom on happiness and truly believe that I am leading a happier life as a result.  Perhaps because I am such a Rubin devotee, I found that most of the ideas presented in Outer Order, Inner Calm are ones that I have seen before.  However, it was still useful to have them collected together in one place and I think Rubin is spot on when advocates for getting rid of the clutter and organizing your physical surroundings.  I AM much happier when I live this way and I love the little jolt of happiness that I get every time I open a drawer or closet that I have recently cleaned out.

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327. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Heather Ringoen

Author:   Frederik Backman

Genre:  Fiction

372 pages, published June 16, 2015

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The protagonist of My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is Elsa, a quirky seven year old who is picked on at school and who is learning to adapt to her parents’ divorce.  Elsa’s closest friend and confidante is her 77 year old grandmother, a doctor who was always away traveling to war zones when raising her own daughter (Elsa’s mother) and who has very strong opinions matched by unpredictable actions.  Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.  When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure and begins and she learns to come to terms with her own life.

Quotes 

“People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.”

 

“We want to be loved,’ ” quotes Britt-Marie. “ ‘Failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. The soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.’ ”

 

“Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild’s ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details.”

 

“Only different people change the world,” Granny used to say. “No one normal has ever changed a crapping thing.”

 

“Death’s greatest power is not that it can make people die, but that it can make people want to stop living.”

 

“I want someone to remember I existed. I want someone to know I was here.”

 

“Because not all monsters were monsters in the beginning. Some are monsters born of sorrow.”

 

“if you hate the one who hates, you could risk becoming like the one you hate.”

 

“People have to tell their stories, Elsa. Or they suffocate.”

 

“It’s strange how close love and fear live to each other.”

 

“Granny and Elsa used to watch the evening news together. Now and then Elsa would ask Granny why grown-ups were always doing such idiotic things to each other. Granny usually answered that it was because grown-ups were generally people, and people are generally shits. Elsa countered that grown-ups were also responsible for a lot of good things in between all the idiocy – space exploration, the UN, vaccines and cheese slicers, for instance. Granny then said the real trick of life was that almost no one is entirely a shit and almost no one is entirely not a shit. The hard part of life is keeping as much on the ‘not-a-shit’ side as one can.” 

My Take

As a big fan of Frederik Backman (A Man Called Ove, Beartown, Britt-Marie Was Here), I was looking forward to reading My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry.  While a good read, I would classify it as lesser Backman, in the same vein as Britt-Marie Was Here; interestingly the Britt-Marie character has a relatively large role in Grandmother).  There are interesting characters and ideas, but on the whole it is not a compelling book.

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326. Come With Me

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Helen Schulman

Genre:  Fiction, Science Fiction

320 pages, published November 27, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Come With Me is set in modern day Palo Alto.  Amy Reed, a part-time as a PR person for a tech start-up run by Donny, her college roommate’s nineteen-year-old son, and her husband Dan, an unemployed print journalist, are struggling to hold onto their increasingly unaffordable lifestyle, their marriage and their family.  Donny, a genius and a junior at Stanford in his spare time has  developed an algorithm that may allow people access to their “multiverses”—all the planes on which their alternative life choices can be played out simultaneously—to see how the decisions they’ve made have shaped their lives.   When Amy agrees to be Donny’s guinea pig, she gets a first hand view of what her life would look like if she had made different choices.

Quotes 

 

My Take

Come With Me is an okay read.  I liked parts of it, especially the futuristic passages,  but other parts felt a bit self-indulgent, very much like the main characters Amy and Dan.  The fundamental problem for me was that I did not like and had little interest in this couple, so whether their marriage would survive was ultimately a question I had no interest in finding the answer to.

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324. Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Margo Funk

Author:   Thomas Cathcart, Daniel Klein

Genre:  Non Fiction, Philosophy, Humor

200 pages, published May 1, 2007

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

An overview of the great philosophical traditions, schools, concepts, and thinkers as told with humor and jokes.

Quotes 

“Moses trudges down from Mt. Sinai, tablets in hand, and announces to the assembled multitudes: “I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news is I got Him down to ten. Thebad news is ‘adultery’ is still in.”

 

“Some have argued that because the universe is like a clock, there must be a Clockmaker. As the eighteenth-century British empiricist David Hume pointed out, this is a slippery argument, because there is nothing that is really perfectly analogous to the universe as a whole, unless it’s another universe, so we shouldn’t try to pass off anything that is just a part of this universe. Why a clock anyhow? Hume asks. Why not say the universe is analogous to a kangaroo? After all, both are organically interconnected systems. But the kangaroo analogy would lead to a very different conclusion about the origin of the universe: namely, that it was born of another universe after that universe had sex with a third universe. ”

 

“Sorting out what’s good and bad is the province of ethics. It is also what keeps priests, pundits, and parents busy. Unfortunately, what keeps children and philosophers busy is asking the priests, pundits and parents, “Why?”

 

“The optimist says, “The glass is half full.”

The pessimist says, “The glass is half empty.”

The rationalist says, “This glass is twice as big as it needs to be.”

 

“A man stumbles into a deep well and plummets a hundred feet before grasping a spindly root, stopping his fall. His grip grows weaker and weaker, and in his desperation he cries out, “Is there anybody up there?” He looks up, and all he can see is a circle of sky. Suddenly, the clouds part and a beam of bright light shines down on him. A deep voice thunders, “I, the Lord, am here. Let go of the root, and I will save you.” The man thinks for a moment and then yells, “Is there anybody else up there?” 

My Take

If you want to learn more about philosophy and philosophical traditions, this humor book is a fun way to do so.

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323. Romans For You 8-16

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Timothy Keller

Genre:  Non Fiction, Christian, Theology

224 pages, published February 3, 2015

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Romans For You 8-16 is the second half of Romans study by noted theologian and Christian writer Timothy Keller.

Quotes 

“The same sun that melts wax hardens clay.” In other words, what makes a life “good” is not a particular set of circumstances, but how the heart interacts with them.”

 

“Sin can only grow in the soil of self-pity and a feeling of “owed-ness.” I’m not getting a fair shake! I’m not getting my needs met! I’ve had a hard life! God owes me; people owe me; I owe me! That’s the heart attitude of “owed-ness” or entitlement.”

 

“Notice that in 16:25 Paul does not say “is able to save you”; rather, he says God is powerful to “establish” us through the gospel. This reminds us that the gospel is not only the entry point into the Christian life; it is also the way we continue in, grow in and enjoy life with Christ. Paul has shown in Romans how the gospel not only saves us (chapters 1 – 5), but also how it then changes us (chapters 6 – 8; 12 – 15). If we believe the gospel, God is working powerfully through it, in us. We need never move away from it.”

 

“Look what God’s done for me! Is this how I respond to him?”

 

“This shows us that “the good” God always is working for us is character change. He is making us as loving, noble, true, wise, strong, good, joyful and kind as Jesus is.”

 

“Christians who don’t understand “no condemnation” only obey out of fear and duty. That is not nearly as powerful a motivation as love and gratitude.”

 

“Paul is saying that sin can only be cut off at the root if we expose ourselves constantly to the unimaginable love of Christ for us. That exposure stimulates a wave of gratitude and a feeling of indebtedness.”

 

“children of God” only for those who have received Christ as Savior and Lord: “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children [tekna] of God” (John 1:12). Sonship is given to those who receive him. No one has it naturally except Jesus Christ.”

 

“The “Spirit of sonship” that Paul speaks of is, therefore, an ability that the Holy Spirit gives us to approach God as a Father instead of as a boss or slavemaster.”

 

“Not Christians. We don’t expect things in life to “work for good” of their own accord. When we find things working out beneficially for us, it is all of God, all of grace, all of him. When things work out, Christians never say: Of course—that’s as it should be! Rather, they praise God for it.”

 

“But second, this truth removes general fear and anxiety when life “goes wrong.” We know it hasn’t gone wrong at all! If God “works” in “all things,” it means his plan includes what we would call “little” or “senseless” things. Ultimately, there are no accidents.” 

My Take

After reading Galatians for You and especially The Reason for God, I am a fan of Timothy Keller.  A thoughtful and intelligent religious thinker and writer, Keller challenges his readers to dig deep and really think about what it means to be a Christian.  Romans for You 8-16 does this well and Keller has some interesting discussions of some challenging texts in the Bible.

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320. The Witch Elm

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Lynn McInnes

Author:   Tana French

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

528 pages, published October 9, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The protagonist in The Witch Elm is a modern day Dubliner named Toby, a carefree twenty something with a job at an art gallery, a nice flat and the perfect girlfriend.  Toby’s idyllic life is shattered when he is attacked in his home and left for dead.  During his recovery, he moves into the family home to take care of his Uncle Hugo who is dying of cancer.  While there, a long decomposed body is found inside the hollow of a large wych elm tree on the property.  As  Toby and his family begin to uncover the mystery, layers and layers of duplicity are revealed that has Toby questioning his own sanity.

Quotes 

“But we’re so desperate, aren’t we, to believe that bad luck only happens to people who deserve it.”

 

“The thing is, I suppose,” he said, “that one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what else might be underneath.”

 

“I knew straightaway, from his smile, that he wasn’t a doctor; I’d already got the hang of the doctors’ smiles, firm and distancing, expertly calibrated to tell you how much time was left in the conversation.”

 

“Once the fear took hold, I was fucked. I’d never known anything like it could exist: all-consuming, ravenous, a whirling black vortex that sucked me under so completely and mercilessly that it truly felt like I was being devoured alive, bones splintered, marrow sucked.”

 

“I’ve never got the self-flagellating middle-class belief that being poor and having a petty crime habit magically makes you more worthy, more deeply connected to some wellspring of artistic truth, even more real.”

 

“Faye had always been sweet, flaky but sweet, unlikely to ask about your problems but deeply concerned about them if you reminded her they existed.”

 

“The wych elm’s whole crown was gone, only the trunk left, thick stubs of branches poking out obscenely. It should have looked pathetic, but instead it had a new, condensed force: some great malformed creature, musclebound and nameless, huddled in the darkness waiting for a sign.” 

My Take

I thoroughly enjoyed the many hours of reading that I spent with The Witch Elm and discovered a deep appreciation for the writing talent of Tana French.  Her characters are so multi-dimensional and so thoroughly fleshed out that you feel as if you are living your life right alongside of them.  While the book excels as a character study, there is also a fascinating mystery at its heart that keeps you reading long after it is time to turn off the bedside light.  Highly recommended.

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316. The Silent Wife

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   A.S.A. Harrison

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

326 pages, published June 25, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The Silent Wife is a psychological thriller about a marriage that is at risk and how far one woman will go to keep what she believes to be rightfully hers.

Quotes 

“Life has a way of taking its toll on the person you thought you were.”

 

“Other people are not here to fulfill our needs or meet our expectations, nor will they always treat us well. Failure to accept this will generate feelings of anger and resentment. Peace of mind comes with taking people as they are and emphasizing the positive.”

 

“In asserting that people don’t change, what she means is that they don’t change for the better. Whereas changing for the worse, that goes without saying.”

 

“She didn’t know then that life has a way of backing you into a corner. You make your choices when you’re far too young to understand their implications, and with each choice you make the field of possibility narrows. You choose a career and other careers are lost to you. You choose a mate and commit to loving no other.”

 

“Basic personality traits develop early in life and over time become inviolable, hardwired. Most people learn little from experience, rarely thinking of adjusting their behavior, see problems as emanating from those around them, and keep on doing what they do in spite of everything, for better or worse.”

 

“We live alone in our cluttered psyches, possessed by our entrenched beliefs, our fatuous desires, our endless contradictions – and like it or not we have to put up with this in one another.  Do you want your man to be a man or do you want to turn him into a pussy? Don’t think you can have it both ways.”

 

“You will not be the same person coming out of a relationship as you were going into it.”

 

“Even if you forget that´s not the same as if it never happened. The slate is not entirely wiped clean; you can´t reclaim the person you were beforehand; your state of innocence is not there to be retrieved.”

 

“It’s money not education that’s the holy grail in America.”

 

“The woman who refuses to object, who doesn’t yell and scream—there’s strength in that, and power. The way she overrides sentiment, won’t enter into blaming or bickering, never gives him an opening, doesn’t allow him to turn it back on her. She knows that her refusal leaves him alone with his choices.”

 

“Acceptance is supposed to be a good thing – Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Also compromise, as every couples therapist will tell you. But the cost was high – the damping of expectation, the dwindling of spirit, the resignation that comes to replace enthusiasm, the cynicism that supplants hope. The mouldering that goes unnoticed and unchecked.”

 

“Time hangs suspended, and yet it’s about to end. Death should be a seduction, not a rape. Given one more minute he could do so much. Even the guilty are allowed to make a phone call, send a message. How alive he feels, how brightly he shines, like a lit fuse, a firecracker about to go off. What he wouldn’t give for a minute more, just one ordinary minute tacked crudely onto the end of his life.”

 

“As for herself, every morning on waking she gives thanks to the God she doesn’t disbelieve in. Although she can’t credit him with saving her, she needs this outlet for her gratitude.” 

My Take

Much in the same vein as Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, The Silent Wife was a page turner that I couldn’t put down.  Interesting insights into a long term marriage on the rocks, with some twists and turns that kept me engaged.  Great vacation read.

 

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315. Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Clare Telleen

Author:   Kate Atkinson

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Foreign

332 pages, published November 1, 1999

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Behind the Scenes at the Museum is Kate Atkinson’s debut novel, a story of family heartbreak and happiness. Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets.

Quotes 

“In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.”

 

“Patricia embraces me on the station platform. ‘The past is what you leave behind in life, Ruby,’ she says with the smile of a reincarnated lama. ‘Nonsense, Patricia,’ I tell her as I climb on board my train. ‘The past’s what you take with you.”

 

“Sometimes I would like to cry. I close my eyes. Why weren’t we designed so that we can close our ears as well? (Perhaps because we would never open them.) Is there some way that I could accelerate my evolution and develop earlids?”

 

“But I know nothing; my future is a wide-open vista, leading to an unknown country – The Rest Of My Life.”

 

 

 

“Slattern! What a wonderful new word. ‘Slattern,’ I murmur appreciatively to Patricia.

‘Yes, slattern,’ Bunty says firmly. ‘That’s what she is.’  ‘Not a slut like you then?’ Patricia says very quietly. Loud enough to be heard, but too quiet to be believed.”

 

 “shop-bought cakes are a sign of sluttish housewifery.” 

My Take

I picked up Behind the Scenes at the Museum after enjoying Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life and A God in Ruins.  It wasn’t as good as those efforts, but still offered interesting insights into the human condition.

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312. Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Lisa Stock

Author:   Nadia Bolz-Weber

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir, Theology, Christian

204 pages, published September 10, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint is a memoir by Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran Pastor who started the Church of All Sinners and Saints in Denver and who took a very unlikely path to the clergy.  Bolz-Weber is a former standup comic, a recovering alcoholic, is heavily tattooed and regularly uses foul language.  In this book, she shares her theological insights and a personal narrative of a flawed, beautiful, and unlikely life of faith.

Quotes 

“God’s grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others and even the planet, and God’s grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word … it’s that God makes beautiful things out of even my own shit. Grace isn’t about God creating humans and flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace – like saying, “Oh, it’s OK, I’ll be the good guy and forgive you.” It’s God saying, “I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.”

 

“Matthew once said to me, after one of my more finely worded rants about stupid people who have the wrong opinions, “Nadia, the thing that sucks is that every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it.” Damn.”

 

“The image of God I was raised with was this: God is an angry bastard with a killer surveillance system who had to send his little boy (and he only had one) to suffer and die because I was bad. But the good news was that if I believed this story and then tried really hard to be good, when I died I would go to heaven, where I would live in a golden gated community with God and all the other people who believed and did the same things as I did…..this type of thinking portrays God as just as mean and selfish as we are, which feels like it has a lot more to do with our own greed and spite than it has to do with God.”

 

“I need a God who is bigger and more nimble and mysterious than what I could understand and contrive. Otherwise it can feel like I am worshipping nothing more than my own ability to understand the divine.”

 

“It would seem that when we are sinned against, when someone else does us harm, we are in some way linked to that sin, connected to that mistreatment like a chain. And our anger, fear, or resentment doesn’t free us at all. It just keeps us chained.”

 

“God was never about making me spiffy; God was about making me new.

New doesn’t always look perfect. Like the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don’t actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I’m right. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn’t live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing we never saw coming- never even hoped for- but ends up being what we needed all along.”

 

“Maybe the Good Friday story is about how God would rather die than be in our sin-accounting business anymore.”

 

“This is our God. Not a distant judge nor a sadist, but a God who weeps. A God who suffers, not only for us, but with us. Nowhere is the presence of God amidst suffering more salient than on the cross. Therefore what can I do but confess that this is not a God who causes suffering. This is a God who bears suffering. I need to believe that God does not initiate suffering; God transforms it.”

 

“Every human community will disappoint us, regardless of how well-intentioned or inclusive.”

 

“Forgiveness is a big deal to Jesus, and like that guy in high school with a garage band, he talks about it, like, all the time.”

 

“God’s grace is a gift that is freely given to us. We don’t earn a thing when it comes to God’s love, and we only try to live in response to the gift. No one is climbing the spiritual ladder. We don’t continually improve until we are so spiritual we no longer need God. We die and are made new, but that’s different from spiritual self-improvement. We are simultaneously sinner and saint, 100 percent of both, all the time. The Bible is not God. The Bible is simply the cradle that holds Christ. Anything in the Bible that does not hold up to the Gospel of Jesus Christ simply does not have the same authority. The movement in our relationship to God is always from God to us. Always. We can’t, through our piety or goodness, move closer to God. God is always coming near to us. Most especially in the Eucharist and in the stranger.”

 

“It happens to all of us,” I concluded that Easter Sunday morning. “God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over.”

 

“We want to go to God for answers, but sometimes what we get is God’s presence.”

 

“Singing in the midst of evil is what it means to be disciples. Like Mary Magdalene, the reason we stand and weep and listen for Jesus is because we, like Mary, are bearers of resurrection, we are made new. On the third day, Jesus rose again, and we do not need to be afraid. To sing to God amidst sorrow is to defiantly proclaim, like Mary Magdalene did to the apostles, and like my friend Don did at Dylan Klebold’s funeral, that death is not the final word. To defiantly say, once again, that a light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot, will not, shall not overcome it. And so, evil be damned, because even as we go to the grave, we still make our song alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.”

 

“The life changing seems always bracketed by the mundane. The quotidian wrapped around the profound, like plain brown paper concealing the emotional version of an improvised explosive device. Then, in a single interminable moment, when we discover the bomb, absolutely everything changes. But when we recall it from our now forever-changed lives, when we start with the plain brown wrapping, it looks like every other package, every other morning, every other walk.”

 

“Getting sober never felt like I had pulled myself up by my own spiritual bootstraps. It felt instead like I was on one path toward destruction and God pulled me off of it by the scruff of my collar, me hopelessly kicking and flailing and saying, ‘Screw you. I’ll take the destruction please.’ God looked at tiny, little red-faced me and said, ‘that’s adorable,’ and then plunked me down on an entirely different path.”

 

“God’s grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others and even the planet, and God’s grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word. My selfishness is not the end-all… instead, it’s that God makes beautiful things out of even my own shit. Grace isn’t about God creating humans as flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace—like saying “Oh, it’s OK, I’ll be a good guy and forgive you.” It’s God saying, “I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.”

 

“This is exactly, when it comes down to it, why most people do not believe in grace. It is fucking offensive.”

 

“When these kinds of things happen in my life, things that are so clearly filled with more beauty or redemption or reconciliation than my cranky personality and stony heart could ever manufacture on their own, I just have no other explanation than this: God.”

 

“This desire to learn what the faith is from those who have lived it in the face of being told they are not welcome or worthy is far more than “inclusion.” Actually, inclusion isn’t the right word at all, because it sounds like in our niceness and virtue we are allowing “them” to join “us”—like we are judging another group of people to be worthy of inclusion in a tent that we don’t own.”

 

“Maybe demons are defined as anything other than God that tries to tell us who we are. And maybe, just moments after Jesus’ baptism, when the devil says to him, “If you are the Son of God…” he does so because he knows that Jesus is vulnerable to temptation precisely to the degree that he is insecure about his identity and mistrusts his relationship with God. So if God’s first move is to give us our identity, then the devil’s first move is to throw that identity into question.”

 

“When what seems to be depression or compulsive eating or narcissism or despair or discouragement or resentment or isolation takes over, try picturing it as a vulnerable and desperate force seeking to defy God’s grace and mercy in your life. And then tell it to piss off and say defiantly to it, “I am baptized” or “I am God’s,” because nothing else gets to tell you who you are.”

 

“It was in those first couple months that I fell in love with liturgy, the ancient pattern of worship shared mainly in the Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox, and Episcopal churches. It felt like a gift that had been caretaken by generations of the faithful and handed to us to live out and caretake and hand off. Like a stream that has flowed long before us and will continue long after us. A stream that we get to swim in, so that we, like those who came before us, can be immersed in language of truth and promise and grace. Something about the liturgy was simultaneously destabilizing and centering; my individualism subverted by being joined to other people through God to find who I was. Somehow it happened through God. One specific, divine force.” 

My Take

Pastrix is a compelling, well written memoir.  Author Nadia Bolz-Weber is a strong writer has a lot of new and powerful things to say.  I also appreciated her explanations of how things work in a church.  For example, her explanation on the liturgy was very interesting and informative.  As a recovering alcoholic, heavily tattooed former standup comedian, she comes at religion for a different angle than books that I have previously read.  While I didn’t agree with everything she wrote, she certainly gave me a lot to think about and broadened my perspective on several theological issues.  Recommended.

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