So Many Books, So Few Blogs

Mea culpa! It has been over two months since my last blog. I hope I can plead absence--as well as the absorption of summer. We spent most of the month of August in Los Angeles, and for June and July I was directing the Seminars in Christian Scholarship at Calvin.

And alas, the best I can do here is a promissory note. For any who might be interested, watch for some thoughts on some of my summer reading, which has included: David Harvey's New Imperialism, Paxton's Anatonomy of Fascism, Melville's Moby Dick (finally!), Clinton's My Life (on audio through Kansas and Missouri), Stephen Schwartz's From West to East (on the development of radical thought in California), some more Franz Wright poetry in The Beforelife, Christopher Hitchens' Letters to a Young Contrarian, and my favorite summer discoveries: John Ruskin's Fors Clavigera (pointed to it by Francis O'Gorman's little book Ruskin) and William Morris' News from Nowhere.

But perhaps instead of a blog about these books (though I won't be able to resist in the future), I should--in the spirit of Anne Sexton's "Welcome Morning" (a must read poem!)--stop right here, take a moment, and give thanks for a life and vocation where I can spend a summer reading great books. I am blessed to have been called to a vocation and ministry which baptizes my curiosity and creates the space for me to explore the nooks and crannies of God's world. For that, I am grateful. Thanks be to the God of the Book, who gifts great authors, and grants the time and respite to explore His world with them.