Book Reflection

Book Reflection: The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder

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There is something in a good book that carries the reader away on a journey into goodness, truth and beauty, that leads out into an unknown and imaginative land where anything perhaps is possible. Sometimes this is fiction, the lie that tells the truth, after all as Neil  Gaiman says.  Sometimes however it’s autobiography mixed with remembrances that may or may not be fiction so long ago was the memory from the writer.  

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder is one of those stories that our family has enjoyed twice in the last ten years, narrated wonderfully to us through the voice of Cherry Jones. The audiobook has twice carried us south to Kansas from South Dakota, to visit family, usually as the cold of winter sets in around Christmas time. Mrs. Wilder’s stories are always painted in the hues of Michael Landon’s television series, robbing our own imagination of creating the pictures, the faces and the landscape of the series. But we don’t worry about that too much. The TV series did the stories well.

The Long Winter is just as the title describes. The length and intensity of the winter is solemnly prophesied by both a muskrat and a stoic native American right at the outset and neither were wrong. The first blizzard storms across Dakota Territory in October and the snow doesn’t melt until May. Everything in between is snow and wind and blizzard and a desperate struggle to survive. It’s a mesmerizing story, surprisingly captivating seeing as how much of the story is trapped by snow inside the Ingalls home.  But there is something in it that captures the imagination, that draws the reader into a time and place, something about the experience of winter that slows a person down and causes one to take stock.  

Winter is that way, isn’t it?  Or at least it could be if only we’d lean in, shut off the TV and listen. The short days and cold weather drive us inside to books and to reflection. Annie Dillard put it this way: “It’s winter proper; the cold weather, such as it is, has come to stay. I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year’s planting.” 

The Long Winter is an excellent choice of book to read in the cold of winter.  As the days grow shorter and then miraculously, slowly begin to lengthen again even as the temperatures drop, it’s a book that will help you slow down, take stock, and find the blessings of the year that has passed even as you begin to dream about the one that lies ahead.

by Aaron G Myers

Book Reflection: The Chosen by Chaim Potok

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When a seventeen year old student of mine threw out the expression, “What you talking about Willis?” to a good friend a few years ago, it begged the question – Did she have any idea where the expression came from? 

She didn’t. 

She had the tone of voice right, but she had absolutely no idea how an expression from a classic seventies sitcom had transcended time and culture to become a part of twenty first century teen slang. 

Her example serves as a starting point in understanding a problem that I, as a member of western society, have every time I open up and read my Bible. I read expressions like “the blood of the lamb” and have an understanding of the concept of a sacrifice that has saved me from my sins, but having not been raised in a society where animal sacrifice is a part of the very fabric of every day life, I can only acknowledge that my understanding lacks a depth that resonates to the core of my being. 

And then there is the curious term Abba. A Hebrew word that first century Jews used to talk affectionately about their earthly fathers, Jesus shocked his contemporaries by using it as a term of endearment for the great “I Am”, God himself. I am told by preachers that it was scandalous to followers of Judaism who saw God as so holy that they would leave out the middle letter of G_d, lest they somehow mispronounce it and offend. 

Having no Jewish roots, I have to believe that once again, I am missing the magnitude of this shift from a God no one felt comfortable addressing to the loving, father God, Abba. How can I ever understand Abba? 

Chaim Potok, the Jewish author of The Chosen, gave me my first real insight into understanding this shift. A story of two boys, brought together in the classic playground brawl and reconciled to best friends, The Chosen takes the reader into the heart of the Jewish communities of Brooklyn, New York during the final days of World War II and the genesis of the new Israel. 

It is in this setting that Revuen Malter and Danny Sunders explore friendship, faith, Freud and fathers, and while the story centers on the first three, it is the latter, fathers, that seems most important. 

Throughout the novel, the boys’ fathers play like background music at a department store. Slowly, patiently though, Potok turns up the volume until in the end, the reader wonders if the story wasn’t so much about two sons after all. 

Perhaps The Chosen is a novel about two fathers; Abba and G_d.

The story has done much to help me understand the magnitude of the endearing Abba that Jesus chose to call his father as well as appreciate anew the G_d we are called upon to revere and fear. 

So if you too have a deep desire to grow in your understanding of the God of the Old Testament and the Abba father of the New, pick up The Chosen and listen for the heartbeat of the love of the father, God.

  • Ages: 14-99
  • Awards: National Book Award Finalist
  • Pages: 272 Pages
  • Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

by Aaron Myers

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The Screwtape Letters: A Reflection

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The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, is a collection of letters between two fictitious devils, “Uncle Screwtape” and his nephew “Wormwood”. This insightful little book follows the letters of advice from Screwtape, higher up in the satanic ranks, to Wormwood, a tempter on earth, on the methods and tricks to steer his patient away from the enemy “God and his kingdom”. This book, like no other, lays out all our tendencies and failings as human beings, while at the same time giving you, as a reader, incentive to rise above them. It opens your mind so vividly to the exponential power and light of Christ, that it can not help but bring you into the ever so real struggle between the kingdoms of Good and Evil, even if only in little ways. As a review in the New York Times put it, “Somewhere in the inferno there must be a considerable annoyance.” 

One of the biggest reasons I think The Screwtape Letters is such an effective and powerful book is because it is written from the devil’s perspective. In this form the book captivated me in an entirely original way. It gave me the powerful feeling of understanding, it was like a breeze in the fog, temporarily forcing me to face the distance. I really believe it is one of the most brilliant books written. The whole idea of Screwtape writing letters on the finer points of temptation to his nephew Wormwood, combined with an opportunity of sitting down with the edited thoughts of one of the greatest Christian thinkers, had an amazing effect on me. The result was, an opportunity for me to clearly face my faults and to see my potential.  By having the stereotypical perspective on Christianity reversed, I had the wholehearted satisfaction of feeling I was in some way outwitting the devil. This in particular had such an effect on me, that in recent weeks when had I found myself frustrated and about to lose my temper or discontent and snappy I would suddenly realize the benefit this would be to Screwtape, which would instantly cause me to check my behavior, and than to smugly feel I had outmaneuvered his trap, muttering under my breath a gleeful cry of “Not today Uncle Screwtape.” 

There were so many sections of this book that either introduced me to a completely new thought or concept, or phrased in clear English a foggy picture I might have otherwise never clearly understood. For example one of the points which hit me as a literal prescription to one of my biggest problems, which is me constantly over analyzing of the past, is the part where Screwtape says of God that, “His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him.” Too often I completely miss out on the present by indulging myself in a degrading self critique of every instance where I messed up in the day. I don’t commit these instances of failure, that I was probably the only one to notice, to heaven, then wash myself of them like God wisely says to do. Instead I dig through them all and let them define me. I dont give myself the love or grace God offers me. I unfairly give the past the power to cheat the present. 

Another passage that stuck out to me is where Screwtape says God, (the enemy in the book’s context) “wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another.” This passage is by far my favorite. Everytime I read it, it creates wonder in me, adding glorious details to my painting of what hope looks like. It speaks to me of a wonderful invitation, to begin a journey, a journey towards a kingdom that is full, but always has room for one more. Where people build cathedrals and know they are just right. As the passage goes on, it adds that, “The enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbors talents or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man to recognize all creatures ( even himself) as glorious and excellent things.” I love the fact that we were created to create and to someday have the kind of perfect love for our neighbors and ourselves, that we can say of what we have done, that, “It is good.” 

I think The Screwtape Letters is an important book to read. It has equipped me with answers to so many questions I have had and given me no choice but to confront myself honestly and begin to intentionally seek out my problems. It has opened my eyes to so many temptations I fall into daily but at the same time I see the incredible grace and love God has for me more than ever before, so rather than being discouraged I feel grace. Being reminded that if I fall I will be caught has filled me with the courage to keep on leaping forward. As C.S.Lewis says so well in his book, “He wants them to learn how to walk . . . and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.”

  • Age: 14-99
  • Awards: None
  • Our Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

By Sonora Myers