My sister gave me a copy of Hap Wilson’s The Cabin: A Search for Personal Sanctuary for Christmas this year. I’m thoroughly enjoying it, especially since I paddled past it a couple years ago and can picture all the scenery.
This astute quote is the epigram to chapter ten:
The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between the way nature works and the way man thinks.
It’s funny how many small coincidences there are in life. I picked up this book about a year ago with good intentions, only to let it sit on a shelf until I stuffed it into a box to move to Bracebridge. I was looking for something different to read a few nights ago and stumbled across it.
In other news, I’m currently preparing to preach a series of “Meaningless Messages” on Ecclesiastes. Imagine my surprise when I realized that Candide was essentially a retelling of Ecclesiastes!
Does life have a purpose? Do we live in the best of all possible worlds? What should we do in life?
Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him—for this is his lot. (Ecclesiastes 5:18, NIV)
“Let’s work, then, without disputing,” says Martin. “It is the only way to make life bearable.” (130)
For an old classic, Candide is surprisingly readable. If you want to rethink your position on the meaning of life, this is an interesting place to start.
While working my way through Wright’s monster-sized volume on the resurrection (The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3)), I found this inspiring nugget:
Paul will not say that death is a good thing; it is still, for him, the final enemy (1 Corinthians 15.26). But even if it should occur, God is greater than death, and will perform on a large scale that rescue for which Jesus’ resurrection is the model and present apostolic experience the foretaste.
Last Sunday at WSPC, we wrapped up our series on “Our Role in God’s Kingdom”. We looked at the Kingdom of God, the role of the local church, and the role that each person contributes to the whole. The core of this series was a detailed look at the seven gifts that Paul listed in Romans 12.
Here’s the series in one convenient place if you’re interested:
Coming up next: “Meaningless Messages from Ecclesiastes”.
I’ve entrusted my life to Hap Wilson in the past: I’ve followed his maps through the backcountry of Temagami, and down the Missinaibi River. I have learned to respect his accurate map making and rapid-sketching skills. When I heard that he had written a memoir of the Temagami wilderness, I thought it would be well worth reading.
I have mixed feelings about the book. In the first place, Wilson is an excellent writer with a better-than-average vocabulary. He knows just how to hook you at the beginning of the chapter and to keep you enthralled to the end. I read this rather short book one chapter at a time to savour his craft. I also loved how his descriptive skills put me right back into the park where I have paddled in the past.
That said, it was frustrating to endure his attitude at times. The hyperbole in describing how difficult the country is was overwhelming. I’ve paddled much of the park, and have found it difficult but not unendurable. Aside from that, the most frustrating thing was Hap’s sense of entitlement. In one chapter, he describes his anger at the government who burned down his illegally constructed cabin—while he, as a park ranger, burns down the structures of other squatters.
This issue came to a point for me when I read his comments on organized religion:
I had lost faith in organized religion because of the hypocrisy of its flock and the audacity of its tenets in the face of Nature.
One could lose faith in the environmental movement for the same reason.
(Thanks to my sister, Kathy, for this Christmas gift.)
This came from the mind of a elderly man with Parkinson’s disease who was contemplating suicide—all via the mind of Jonathan Franzen in The Corrections.
The human species was given dominion over the earth and took the opportunity to exterminate other species and warm the atmosphere and generally ruin things in its own image, but it paid this price for its privileges: that the finite and specific animal body of this species contained a brain capable of conceiving the infinite and wishing to be infinite itself.
This book was a pleasure to read. The topics ranged from nanotechnology to covert pranks in the Manhattan Project! On every page, Feynman’s sense of humor and love for truth and discovery shine through.
It might sound odd hearing a devout Christian recommend the collected works of a devout atheist—but we share something in common: a love for finding things out. I obviously don’t agree with his conclusions when it comes to the meeting of science and religion, but I respect his curiosity.
If you’re at all interested in science, biographies, or humour, this book is worth the read.
I found this profound gem in A Faith and Culture Devotional:
Beauty can be painful to bear alone.
For anyone who has wrestled with science and Genesis, Walton’s book (The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate) is quite the page-turner. Here’s one of his best lines:
Science cannot offer an unbiblical view of material origins, because there is no biblical view of material origins aside from the very general idea that whatever happened, whenever it happened, and however it happened, God did it.
I took a quick look at the Amazon reviews for this book and was quite surprised. I just assumed everyone would love it—I certainly did!
The Corrections is an massive work. The plot is simple on the surface: an elderly woman wants to bring all of her children together for one final Christmas in the family home. Franzen allows us into the minds of all three kids, as well as their parents. This is where things get interesting.
The mother is mildly psychotic from dealing with the dementia of her husband. The kid’s lives are all tragic in their own different ways. Franzen manages to explore all of these tragic lives and relationships while making you laugh at the same time.
Yes, it’s long. Yes, it sounds a bit like verbal diarrhea at times—but that’s the point! One of the best paragraphs in the book is a massive run-on sentence that details the single thought of the Father as he’s drifting into dementia.
The Corrections is tragic, funny, and mildly redemptive in one package. What more could you ask for?