February Book Reviews

Here are the books I read in February. Perhaps there are some gems herein that others may enjoy.

Waiting on God, Simone Weil: 

Many of the writings of Weil, from her letters to a priest, to her advice to students, her reflections on affliction and the implicit love of God, and her thoughts on the Lord’s Prayer. Weil is masterful, attentive, and unrelenting in her thought and action. If she believed something she followed it through until the bitter end, logically and experientially. As such, her words are searing and truthful, sometimes brutal and stark, and piercing in a way that few writers can or even want to manage. The most important of her revelations, to me, was on the nature of attention: God’s attention to us, our attention to God, to religious matters, to nature, to neighbours, to those in affliction, and to friends. It is in this place of total attention that Weil sees the true manifestation of faith, the true sacramental encounter with God. 

The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin: 

You know a book is really good when you feel you must approach it with trepidation. Each line of Baldwin’s missive (really two letters from Baldwin - one brief and one long - to his nephew, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Emancipation in the USA) is both sharp and blunt. He sharply cuts incisively into the heart of the historical and contemporary oppression of Black people in the West, and bluntly gut-punches any attempt at justification or prevarication. It is largely based upon his own autobiography, his own rearing in a ghetto surrounded by poverty, drugs and churches, none of which offered any true liberation in Baldwin’s mind. At a certain point in his life he did escape into the Church, but ultimately did not find the truth of love therein. At another point he was invited to meet with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, but likewise could not see the liberating truth of love in calling all white people devils and working for a separation of states, black and white. Baldwin is incredibly wise and perceptive, deeply and consistently aware of the diagnosis and prognosis of America’s racial line, and forthrightly adamant in his prescription of love. Not sentimental love, mind. Love that enables people to see things - especially ourselves - as they really are, no matter how painful the glance. His book ends with hope, but also a warning. The opportunity exists (he wrote in 1969) to reexamine everything, to recreate a country on the foundation of total liberty for black people, which would actually lead to genuine liberty for white people. But he is unsure whether it will happen, and, should it not, he invokes the biblical warning that it won’t be the judgement of water, but fire next time. 

Parable of the Sower, Octavia E. Butler: 

A profound and disturbing book, the kind of book that gives science fiction a reason to exist. It is the story of Lauren Olamina, a young black girl in California, beginning in 2024. Though written in 1993, the book describes a climate catastrophe in which rain has mostly stopped, lakes have dried up, and society is in near-collapse. Towns are surrounded by walls and try to keep robbers, rapists and arsonists out. Lauren’s family is in one of these towns, and the description of a pastor/teacher father trying to protect his family, including a precocious daughter and a reckless son, from arson and poverty and violence cut a little too close to home. Lauren loves her father, but can see what is coming more clearly than anyone else, and begins to prepare for life outside the walls. She is a Sharer, one who experiences the pain of others empathetically - but physically - when she sees it. Also, and most importantly, she has developed her own new faith, called Earth Seed, which has as its central tenet: God is Change. Her idea of God could not be more different than my own, but her desire to create a new form of community, once the inevitable happens and she is forced to flee with a few survivors, absolutely resonates with me. The depiction of life in this cataclysmic moment is stark, artful, and brutal. Butler pulls no punches in her realism. It is dystopic, but it is also not without hope and possibility.

Jacob’s Ladder: On Angels, Sergius Bulgakov: 

A fascinating book, written by a man who was exiled from the Soviet Union, and on the eve of the Second World War. At this precise, precarious moment in history, Bulgakov chose to write a book about angels. Why? It has nothing to do with escapism. Quite the opposite. Bulgakov discusses in detail the ways angels interact with humanity and God, as detailed through Scripture, Church tradition, and philosophy. Angels are intimately involved in every aspect of human life, personal and corporate, and in their nature participate in Divine love. They pray for us, guide and protect, communicate the messages of God, and are our intimate friends who we will greet in glory. Bulgakov examines their nature; the fall of the demons; angelic roles; the examples of angelophanies/theophanies in the OT; their particular relationships to Mary, John the Baptist, and Jesus; and much more besides. This is no light and fanciful work, but a serious theological and philosophical examination of angels which both moved and challenged me. I had genuinely never thought about much of this before, even though angels are everywhere throughout Scripture and in the stories of the Church. I can honestly say my perspective on this has been massively expanded and I am excited to interact more meaningfully with my guardian angel, and to meet my angelic friend one day in glory. 

The Sophiology of Death, Essays on Eschatology: Personal, Political, Universal, Sergius Bulgakov: 

A masterful series of essays on the subject of death, and the working of Divine Wisdom in and through death, including Bulgakov’s own near-death experience. Bulgakov speaks of Divine Sophia and Created Sophia - that is, the uncreated Divinity, and the creation that has been made to become united with God. The eschatological hope and promise is that Divine and Created Sophia will become in union, as Creation (humanity and the cosmos) is divinized. This is already happening, through the overshadowing of the Spirit upon Mary, the Incarnation of Jesus (the God-Man) and the Pentecostal filling of the Church with the Spirit. So death, which Bulgakov speaks of as an unnatural rupturing of humanity’s body, soul and spirit, will still eventually lead to the reunion of these elements in the kingdom. Bulgakov works through the implications of this in terms of Mary; Christ’s death and resurrection; the idea of conditional immortality (which he opposes); and the apocatastasis of all things, including angelic and even demonic beings. Not an easy read at all, but absolutely mind-blowing all the same. 

Relics and Miracles, Two Theological Essays, Sergius Bulgakov: 

Two works by Bulgakov, on relics and on miracles. The first, on relics, was brought about as a result of Soviet officials breaking open the containers that held relics inside of Orthodox Churches, “examining” them (pulling them apart) and showing the results to believers. This was an attempt to undermine belief, to show that the remains were not incorrupt. Bulgakov was scandalised by this practice, but used the occasion to develop a theological explanation of what relics are and what they are not. In particular he argues that while incorruptibility is possible, and considered essential in the popular view, a proper understanding of humanity’s essential corporeal nature and the body’s relationship to soul and spirit will show us that this is not required. I had never before truly considered what relics really even were, so Bulgakov’s use of relics to highlight truths about our incarnate reality is fascinating and helpful. The second work, on miracles, is much longer and more intricate. Bulgakov goes through the nature of miracle, explains that they are not suspensions of natural law but rather ongoing providential acts of God’s freedom (not creational acts), and then demonstrates the nature of Jesus’ miracles, ending with the resurrection. Most importantly, in my view, Bulgakov talks about Jesus’ miracles - apart from the resurrection - as a function not just of his divine nature, but of his human nature. There is no separation of natures here, for example in the raising of Lazarus. Jesus was divine in his God-nature, but also deified in his human nature, and what he did is something theoretically accessible to us all. The resurrection, however, is the miracle of miracles, the acting of the Trinity in granting Jesus’ soul the ability and right to raise the body from the dead. Wonderful work, though not an easy read. 

Writings from the Philokalia, on Prayer of the Heart, edited by E. Kadloubovsky and G.E.H. Palmer: 

A huge book of excerpts from the Philokalia, those writings of various monks, abbas and staretz, spiritual athletes who spent years in solitude and silence in their caves and cells. Their primary preoccupation was the prayer of the heart. This means the descent of the mind into the heart, the guarding of the heart from all distraction, wandering (prelest) and dispersion, and the keeping of sobriety through the invocation of the name of Jesus. There is much that is challenging and profitable herein, and much that sounds very strange to our modern ears. It is counsel given primarily from monks to monks, so this must be born in mind. It is not, generally speaking, a way of life that most people could or even should practise, but it does point the way to a profound experience of prayer, of divine light, and of guarding against the lusts of the flesh. 

Jailbird, Kurt Vonnegut: 

Vonnegut’s writing is always unique and entertaining. In this book he follows the life of Walter F Starbuck, son of immigrants, raised in the home of a stuttering millionaire industrialist who sends him to Harvard in return for playing chess with him. Eventually Starbuck goes to jail for barely participating in Watergate. But that’s not really what the novel is about. It careens across the decades, filling in bits of Walter’s story, but in Vonnegut’s inimitably natural way. Nothing feels forced here, just a man remembering his life and all the strange coincidences inside of it. And there are many seeming coincidences which reveal themselves over the course of the book, often hilariously. Vonnegut also manages to convey the fundamental absurdity of life, while also defending the poor and the anarchists against industrialists and ending with a stirring invocation of the Sermon on the Mount. Great stuff.

Job, Robert Alter translation and notes:

I am a huge fan of Alter's translations of the Hebrew Scriptures, and of Job in particular. Alter demonstrates the poetic genius of Job's author, particularly in placing the most cliched poetic statements in the mouths of Job's "friends", while giving Job's contrary viewpoint (contrary to the rest of Wisdom literature, especially) a powerful poetic expression. This expression is only bested by the sublime poetry coming from the mouth of God in the final chapters as He addresses Job's complaint with the power of his presence. Magnificent.

Fantastic Mistakes, Neil Gaiman and Chip Kidd: 

The transcript of Gaiman’s speech to the 2012 graduating class of the Philadelphia University of the Arts, in which he implores the graduates to make mistakes, learn from them, and carry on making good art, but unique art, art only they can make. It is counsel won from years of making mistakes and making good art in ways that nobody thought could be done. The speech is presented by graphic designer Chip Kidd in a way that is visually arresting.

Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, Markus Rediker, David Lester: 

The story of a dwarvish, hump-backed Quaker who railed against the Society of Friends in three countries (England, Barbados, and America) for the sin of slavery. Benjamin Lay and his wife Sarah, largely forgotten or suppressed by history, were tireless provocateurs in the fight against the enslavement of humans by humans. Lay employed shocking tactics to try to wake his fellow Quakers up from their sin, and he was motivated primarily by his love for God, his obedience to God’s truth, and his compassion for his brother and sister humans. The art in this graphic novel was not, to my mind, the best I had seen, but the story was gripping and important.