Wisdom for Mothers

Wisdom for Mothers By Denise Glenn Kardo International Ministries, 1997, 2004 ISBN: 1-932960-00-7 NOTE: Euodia wishes to thank our friends at HEvencense (http://www.hevencense.wordpress.com/) for granting us permission to post this review at Paw Prints. Wisdom for Mothers is the first Bible study/workbook published by Kardo International Ministries under the MotherWise logo. “Although a woman may use this workbook for individual personal Bible study,” notes the Introduction on page 9, “she benefits most from being part of a MotherWise group that participates in the full MotherWise program” in which a group “meets for two hours once a week for 10 weeks.” This claim is open to debate for a number of reasons. First, a major flaw with this “program” is the frequent lack of focus, cohesion, and unified thought as well as author Denise Glenn’s penchant for proof-texting and her frequent violation of the historical-grammatical method of Biblical exegesis. Her reliance upon sources that many consider suspect or controversial is equally troubling. (See p. 87 as well as the Bibliography on p. 267 for examples.) An unseemly presentation of the concept of “blood covenant” (p. 116-117) is another. (More than one woman in my MotherWise group found this segment offensive and culturally irrelevant. Several felt it was in poor taste.) Although well-intentioned and passionate, Glenn’s lack of expertise and care in handling the Biblical text seriously hampers the bulk of her “Bible study” materials. Additionally, some women find Glenn’s breezy, chatty style appealing. Some don’t. It has been described as ”warm, charming and engaging” as well as “bubble-brained,” “air-headed” or “irritating.” Likewise, some ladies deem both the video presentation and Wisdom workbook “insightful and inspirational.” Others dub them “patronizing”, “plodding” and “tedious.” (Some college-degreed professionals I talked to found Wisdom “insipid, insulting” and “a waste of my time.”) Also problematic is the fact that the typical class format and leadership structure are easily susceptible to cliquishness. Leadership Qualities as listed in the accompanying Wisdom Leader’s Guide fail to connect with—or even mention–leadership skills and can easily place women in leadership or “mentoring” capacities who are “nice,” but painfully deficient in basic leadership skills. Whether or not a candidate has any gifting or experience in leadership is not mentioned. Leader’s Guide directives such as meeting “regularly outside of class to discuss the progress of the class” are often vague and ambiguous and seem to do little more than encourage gossip and other counter-productive behaviors. To be fair, many of the Biblical principles and applications offered in this 260+ page resource are sound. However, the material founders dangerously when it strays off Scriptural charts and heaves onto the reefs of personal agendas and peculiar application from questionable sources. Some women may benefit from this studies. Others may find them geared toward quick, mass consumption on a “burgers and fries” level. Wisdom for Mothers is not for everyone. This study is best suited for women who’ve been married a few years - say, five or less- or for women who’ve been married longer but are baby Christians or non-Christians. Wisdom is NOT for mature Christians. Serious students of Scripture will find little here to fuel authentic spiritual appetites and may opt to look elsewhere for more balanced, substantive meals. ”Boring,” “square one,” “painfully rudimentary,” “dull,” “makes me feel like I’m in Kindergarten,” and “can we move on?!” were comments I heard over and over again related to Wisdom. Like food from a Drive-Thru window, a suitable label for Wisdom might be: “WARNING. Contents hot, marginally nutritious, and incredibly average. Proceed with caution.” *** For a more detailed review, visit: http://hevencense.wordpress.com/2007/10/27/book-review-wisdom-for-mothers/

The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees: A Novel by Sue Monk Kidd 2002 by Penguin Books ISBN: 0142001740 Roaming my "home away from home" - the library - last week, I scanned shelf after shelf of books and just couldn't find the One. Know what I mean? The "One" book or author that grabs your eyes, hooks your attention like trout on a line, and jumps off the shelf into your hands. I couldn't find it. So I asked Lisa, the children's librarian, for a recommendation. Lisa steered me toward Adult Fiction and The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd. Odd title? Maybe. Here's what I found: The first thing I noticed was the cover art. "New York Times Bestseller" was plastered across the top, above a half-full jar of honey with a Black Madonna label. "Bestseller" is often enough to raise an eyebrow, maybe two. I find that many "NY Times Bestsellers" appeal to me about as much as Lindbergher cheese. But back to The Secret Life of Bees. This 302-page story is set in South Carolina in 1964. It starts slowly but picks up steam as protagonist Lily Owens, a fourteen year-old trying to come to grips with a painful past, runs away from her "father" - if you could call T. Ray Owens that. One thing leads to another and next thing we know, Lily has sprung her black friend/housekeeper Rosaleen from jail. Rosaleen has been unjustly jailed for "assaulting" some white men who were trying to prevent her from registering to vote. As the story unfolds further, we learn that Lily's life has been shaped by the blurred memory of the afternoon when her mother, Deborah, was killed. Lily was four years old at the time, hiding in the bedroom closet when a gun went off. We're never entirely sure who fired it - whether it was Deborah, struggling with T.Ray (whom Lily refuses to refer to as her "father"), Lily, or just an accident. Whatever happened - and we're never really told categorically - Lily's mother is dead, leaving her alone with T.Ray and Rosaleen, a black woman T.Ray hires out of his peach orchard to help care for his young, motherless daughter. Rosaleen is beaten up in jail and taken to the hospital for stitches. Lily springs her out of the hospital and the pair escapes to Tiburon, South Carolina, a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. In Tiburon Lily and Rosaleen wander into the pepto-bismol pink house of "the calendar girls," May, June, and August Boatwright. Lily and Rosaeleen are taken in by this "eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters," and introduced to the fascinating world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna, aka: Our Lady of Chains. Here Lily finds the true meaning of family and that real love is color blind. A quirkly, bittersweet story, The Secret Life of Bees is "about" a lot of things: a daughter's desperate attempt to understand her mother, her search for her own identity, race relations during the Civil Rights era, and how family can sometimes be found in the most unexpected places. I also think it's about female friendship and how the unique dual balm of truth and kindness offered within that context can help heal the deepest hurts. Filled with realistic emotion, authentic, dynamic characters and heart-felt dialogue, The Secret Life of Bees is lavishly written and filled with hope. Reading it is like opening an unassuming, orphaned gift at Christmas and finding something worth keeping. CAVEAT: The Secret Life of Bees is NOT - and does not pretend to be - a "Christian" book. It isn't a theological treatise, Sunday school lesson, nor an evangelical sermon. It is a novel. Don't take it for anything else. Although the story is rich and imaginative and worth reading, some readers may find parts Bees objectionable. Still worth the read.

Chocolat: A Novel

Chocolat, by Joanne Harris 2000, by Penguin Books ISBN: 0-14-100018-x Close your eyes. Breathe deep. Inhale the "rising vapor from the melting couverture. The mingled scents of chocolate, vanilla, heated copper, and cinnamon are intoxicating, powerfully suggestive; the raw and earthy tang of the Americas, the hot and resinous perfume of the rain forest. This is how I travel now, as the Aztecs did in their sacred rituals: Mexico, Venezuela, Columbia. ... The Food of the Gods, bubbling and frothing in ceremonial goblets. The bitter elixir of life." (p. 53) "Bubbling and frothing" is an apt description of this sumptuous dessert from Joanne Harris. Part fable, part sermon, part social commentary and part farce, Chocolat is a rich read for sophisticated palates with a taste for withering wit, realistic characters, and barbed humor. Though not for the faint-hearted, this delectable dish stirs up glimpses of insolent arrogance and brash hypocrisy a la restaurateur and wife-beater Paul-Marie Muscat, narrow-minded bigotry in the pompous Caroline Clairmont, heaving hedonism in the alternately acid-tongued and mischievous old woman, Armande Voizin, and hope in the escape and blossoming of gentle Josephine Muscat. It all begins when beautiful, headstrong Vivianne Rocher and her daughter Anouk sweep into the anemic French village of Lansquenet on the heels of a carnival. Carefree and vivacious, the dark-haired Vivianne seems to enjoy tweaking the noses of the establishment, but when she opens her chocolate shop directly across the square from Pierre Reynaud's church, trouble drips over the village like chocolate under an August sun. Vivianne's knack for divining and indulging each villager's secret delight brings her to loggerheads with the strait-laced Reynaud and many of his flock. Reynaud deems the newcomer a threat to his flock and his personal enemy - a plot twist which doesn't make much sense, but indulges certain prejudices. Convinced that only a witch could or would wield such powers, Reynaud determines to disrupt the chocolate festival Vivianne plans for Easter. Vivianne gradually coaxes some monochromatic villagers into living Technicolor, courtesy of "The Food of the Gods." She enrages others by befriending a crew of river gypsies and offering work to their enigmatic leader de facto, Roux. Harris arranges characters, dialogue, and descriptions with a deft and attentive touch that's a feast for the eye and ear as well as the tongue. Aromatic, scintillating and delicious, Chocolat is generously garnished with melt-in-your-mouth wit and pathos. It should not be mistaken for an entree, but as a dessert Chocolat is near the top of the menu.

A

The Gift

The Gift, by Richard Paul Evans Simon & Schuster, 2007 ISBN: 1416550011 The Gift opens with a soliloquoy dated “Christmas night 2006. ” Best-selling author Richard Paul Evans maintains from page one on that “this is not a Christmas story.” Maybe. Maybe not. Protagonist Nathan Hurst is an in-house detective for Salt Lake City-based MusicWorld (p. 11). He was also born with Tourette’s syndrome and about “twenty different manifestations from vocal tics to head jerking and grimacing” (p. 3) and “the need to touch sharp objects” (pp. 5,6). That’s not all. Among the other heavy personal baggage Hurst carries is an intense aversion to Christmas due to the tragic loss of his brother on that day and his father’s subsequent suicide a year later, also on December 25. Hurst’s childhood destroyed, his family all but gone, Nathan’s mother “was never well after that” (p. 7). He leaves home at age 16 and rarely - if ever - looks back: “Christmas was just another day on the calendar. I never believed it could be otherwise until I met Addison, Elizabeth, and Collin. The Bible says that God has chosen the weak things of this world to confound the things which are mighty. My story is about one of God’s weak things. His name is Collin, a frail, beautiful little boy with a very special gift.” Special, indeed. Like another Child of long ago. Stranded in a Denver airport by a Thanksgiving snowstorm, Hurst has a raging fever, a bad case of bronchitis and an even more severe case of unresolved guilt. His dynamo office assistant who never misses a beat, Miche, has booked him two appointments: one with the presidential suite in the airport hotel and another with the doctor. Standing in a “long line outside the Delta help counter,” Nathan meets Addison Park and her two young children, Elizabeth (age 5), and Collin (age 9). The boy has leukemia. And something else. A gift. A remarkable, incredible gift that the cynical, jaded Hurst experiences first-hand. Collin is a generous, affectionate young boy. He wants to help others, but exercising the gift comes at a terrible price to Collin and those who love him, especially his mother. As the story develops we meet an avaricious ex-husband with the ethics of an Anaconda, Hurst’s rarely lucid mother, now in a nursing home, a teenage boy whose brain cancer has him teetering on the rim edge of imminent death, hordes of hucksters looking for a quick buck and skeptics looking for a quick headline, a boss who makes Simon Lagree look like the tooth fairy, a doctor who repays a great kindness with his own unexpected generosity, and a certain in-house detective who hasn’t been able to maintain a relationship beyond the expiration date on a carton of milk but finally finds love, forgiveness, and peace. Peppered with excerpts from Nathan Hurst’s journal, a trademark Evans technique, The Gift is a story of healing in all its various phases and forms. The book, which can be easily read in an uninterrupted afternoon, quickly engages the reader who learns along with Hurst that “no hurt is so great that love cannot heal it” - and that Christmas “is indeed the season of miracles.” In The Gift Evans showcases what he does best: skillful, heartfelt, first-person storytelling. Evans has an unusual talent for crafting a tale in such a way that you feel as if he’s seated across from you at your kitchen table, sipping a cup of coffee and telling you his own story. The Gift includes some unusual plot twists and turns, but focuses on themes of love, loss, tragedy, hurt and healing. Skillfully woven throughout the entire story is a gentle message of hope. As Elizabeth opines in the Epilogue: “In the end, love wins” says Hurst (or is it Evans?). “There could be no greater message of Christmas than that.” I think he’s on to something. This is a wonderful “non-Christmas” Christmas story. I loved it. Richard Paul Evans fans will eat this one up as surely as newbies will discover a good book is also a good friend. Enjoy!

Captivating: Unveiling the Mysteries of a Woman's Soul

Captivating: Unveiling the Mysteries of a Woman’s Soul won’t speak to all readers. It won’t speak to readers who equate “biblical” with banal, myopic, strait-jacketed and rigid. It probably won’t resonate with supercilious pseudo-scholars unable or unwilling to grasp basic elements of good writing or storytelling, such as the use of the inverted pyramid style or personal anecdotes to illustrate or amplify salient points. It won’t speak to the One Size Fits All approach to “women’s ministries” that ostracizes, villifies and maligns those who dare “color outside the lines” or yearn for something deeper, richer, or closer to the heart of God. It probably won’t say much to defensive, sanctimonious Torquemadas who perceive anything “new” or “creative” as suspect and destined for the stake. (These mentalities perhaps unwittingly personify some of the Eldredge’s secondary themes.) In terms of criticism, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. This is mine. Candidly, I disagree with much of the fire that Captivating has drawn. Among the most ferocious, oddly enough, is Captivating’s use of personal anecdotes and movie themes or song lyrics. This criticism is easily deflected and deflated if one understands that Stasi Eldredge uses her own life experience as EXAMPLES to illustrate and expound upon the tri-fold theme of the book. I’ve read the book thru twice, as has my husband and several friends, all from different denominational backgrounds. We all see the same thing: no where does Stasi state or imply that her troubled past is “normative” for others. Thus, this criticsm is both unfounded and silly. It’s also a sterling example of how someone can read a book without “getting it.” Regarding the Eldredge use of movies, Captivating never elevates the message of any movies cited to the level of Holy Writ. The basic themes and titles, such as Nathaniel’s words to Cora in “The Last of the Mohicans” cited on p. 8, are clearly used as illustrations from a medium with which most readers are familiar and thereby most likely to connect. Another criticism levelled against this book concerns the Eldredge’s use of the Song of Songs (Solomon). Some have alleged that Captivating takes S of S “out of context,” insisting that it only and solely refers to Solomon and his Shulamite bride. In truth, the traditional rabbinical view of the Song is that it depicts God’s love for Israel, his wife. God’s courtship of Israel from the time she left Egypt is a theme running through the Bible. Christian commentators have long interpreted the Song of Songs as a picture of the Church as the Bride of Christ. God loves His only Son and by the Holy Spirit He has called out and prepared for Jesus a beautiful, virgin bride. Captivating is well within the pale of biblical orthodoxy in its use of Song of Songs. Those who maintain otherwise might profit from a refresher course in Poetic Literature 101. Again, let me reiterate that Captivating won’t speak to everyone. I accept that. What I don’t accept is the type of response that one woman shared when informing me that she “doesn’t agree with the book’s premise.” When I asked, “What is the book’s premise?” she couldn’t articulate a single point, and eventually admitted that she’d never made it past the first chapter! (So much for an informed opinion.) From this example and others, my point is this: I don’t think it’s fair that those who disagree with or misconstrue Captivating bash it on the basis of their inability or unwillingness to grasp basic journalism and literary technique or the subtitle: Unveiling the Mysteries of a Woman’s Soul. Read the book for yourself and draw your own conclusions. For those willing to honestly look for and listen to that still, small Voice with an open and contrite heart, you will surely find Him within the pages of Captivating.

WELCOME

Gentle Readers and Friends: I was born in a library. Naw. Not really. But I could've - perhaps should've? - been. I love books. I grew up in a household groaning with every author imaginable, from Chaucer, Donne, and Shakespeare to Virginia Burton, J.M. Barrie and Dr. Seuss. So it seems only natural that this blog reflect my passion, hence Paw Prints, a clearly unoriginal but nevertheless accurate title for what we're trying to do at this blog. Paw Prints focuses on three of my abiding interests and focuses: books, writing, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Paw Prints will feature essays, reviews, descriptions, and book or literary "hits and misses" based on my purely subjective and personal rating. This will take some time, but that's our goal. Thank you in advance for your patience. Please note that many of the books featured here are from an unabashedly evangelical Christian perspective. But not all. Some of the books due to be featured here are simply enjoyable stories and well-written literature worth sharing. Some are profound, others fall into the category of "fluff" or even "chick lit." Some you may like or agree with; others yiou probably won't. That's okay. The books featured here are all , IMHO, good reads. And my purely subjective criterion for a "good read" is: -- Does this book or story provoke thought, expand horizons, pose questions, introduce the reader to new characters, cultures, setting or possibilities? -- If fiction, are the characters well-drawn, three-dimensional and dynamic? -- If non-fiction, what kind of "take away" value does the book offer? What do I learn from reading it? -- Is the language emotive, expressive, lyrical, beautiful, and crisp? -- Is the book's message clear, coherent, uplifting and/or challenging? My hope is that Paw Prints will "bite" you with a love for books and reading, and help plant and nurture a love of both the written word and The Living Word. Solo deo Gloria.