I Surf, Therefore I Am

I got Peter Kreeft's latest book in the mail yesterday, and, even though I'm only 10 pages into it, know it's going to be a classic. A short description:

This is the first book about surfing ever written by a philosopher. The author, a 70-year-old surfanatic, has been Professor of Philosophy at Boston College for over 40 years and has written 50 other books on philosophy, religion, and culture. But compared to this one, the others are nothing but straw.

It gives ten compelling existential reasons why everyone should surf: reasons from the great philosophers: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Machiavelli, Freud, and George Morey. It explains how surfing is the easiest and most delightful way in the world to attain what you most deeply long for, for it can make you good, mystical, peaceful, wise, heavenly, happy, sexy, and even rich.

It also contains a manifesto defending bodyboarding as true surfing, not “sponging,” and a short handbook of seven practical lessons for beginners in this noble art. The book is suffused with the offbeat and unpredictable humor that characterizes both the sea herself and those who have fallen in love with her.

Walk the line

Rainy day yesterday. Silvi and I went out for breakfast together while Annie and Ian chilled out; Annie's chin deep into a Murder She Wrote marathon on Netflix Instant Viewing. I spent much of the weekend revamping my business website, making it more corporate (gack) and minimalist. A bit embarrassed by the *yawn* booooring videos I've put up as samples, but - that's all I's gots.

Also embarrassed by the cheesy Christian videos up there, but again... Man, I've made a lot of crap over the years. Sold out to the man. That's part of the reason I've started my own company, to create videos that I can be proud of and that won't come with a warning to not watch my videos late at night or before operating heavy machinery.

Lately, I've been working with a corporation on the side that is paying enough for me to invest some of the extra money into my own projects, which is pretty stinkin' exciting. (Thanks, Jim, for throwing the business my way.) I'm looking around for a writer for my philosophy video series; need to find someone who can walk the line between curriculum and documentary. So if you know anyone...

Speaking of walking the line, I'm delving into two books in my attempt to better understand, know, learn about, comprehend, find, discover what Jesus was like, who he was/is, etc. One book was written by an atheist, Jose Saramago and the other by an evangelical Phillip Keller. When Saramago, who wrote the killer book Blindness, published his novel - The Gospel According to Jesus Christ - it was renounced as heretical by almost everyone, Protestant and Catholic alike. Not hard to see why, since, according to Saramago, Joseph was the real daddy.

Keller, best known for his classics A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 and Lessons from a Sheepdog, is no doubt a fine writer, and more accurately reflects my own beliefs concerning these events, but, man, some of his book on the life of Jesus that I'm reading - Rabboni - is just downright cheesy. Stuffed crust cheesy. He's got Mary and Joseph sneaking lovey-dovey looks at each other, Mary not complaining (why add this interpretation) about riding - pregnant - on a donkey across the desert, Joseph a strapping tanned young man, etc.

That's why I have to read Saramago, a brilliant writer, in the other hand, to balance the story out. Same goes for a lot of other stories or books I read: If I'm holding Kierkegaard in one hand, the other hand's got Nietzsche.

Of course, I'm defaulting back to the original stories recorded by the Jewish writers of old to give me sure footing on this path, walking the line, struggling along the narrow ridge.

Escapes

I bailed out of work early yesterday; all the deadlines and constant stress was causing me to lose sleep. I was up for four hours in the middle of Monday night, lying on the couch, trying to switch off my thoughts. I shouldn't have gotten into the Frontline documentary on PBS called Bush's War, which is excellent. Highly recommend it, and you can watch it online.

So I just threw on my jacket and headed to the nearest movie theater. That's my chief escape. That, and philosophy books. Ahh, a cold winter's day, a hot latte and a good book on the ontological hermeneutics expressed in the existential-phenomenological works of Ricoeur. Bliss.

I quickly perused my choice of films and decided on The Band's Visit. Man, am I glad I did. Fantastic film! A+. Five stars. An Israeli film, it's about loneliness and connecting with others, even if just for a brief moment. It's one of those films that makes you ache and brings you joy, all at the same time. Films like these are why I'm in the field I'm in. How's that for a rave review?!

I haven't been going to enough movies lately. If I don't do the little things that bring me joy, I always seem to burn out. Now I just need to find a new philosophy book to read.

Speaking of which, I bought The Philosophy of Jesus by Boston College professor of philosophy, Peter Kreeft. Kreeft isn't for everyone; while mostly funny and witty, he can be a little dogmatic and combative at times. But I've always learned from his books and look forward to this one. I'm also reading Deep River by the Catholic Japanese writer Shusaku Endo. His book Silence (which Martin Scorsese is hoping to convert into a film) is one of my all-time favorites, and I can't wait to finish this one.

This week is much more relaxed, so I hope to do more writing. Hope to, anyway.

Stairs bookcase

If I had a house and an extra wad of cash, I would totally copy this person's design for a bookshelf.

See more of the pictures here.

More books

One of my unwritten resolutions for 2008 is to read more books. I uploaded a bunch of the book titles from my personal library to LibraryThing. Stop by and check out my list; maybe you can suggest some good books that aren't on there. (I also added a link to these books over in the right-hand column.)

My struggles with Bibliophilia

I go to a bookstore at least three or four times a week. That doesn't include my time spent reading online or looking for used copies of Peter Kreeft's works on Amazon. (For those not familiar with Kreeft, he is a Catholic philosopher and professor at Boston College known for his wit, apologetics and love of the ocean.) Before I had children and when my wife worked in retail and my Saturdays belonged to me, it was my common practice to sit and read in our local bookstore for eight hours at a stretch. (I once worked with a former supervisor of said local bookstore and she informed me that I was the kind of customer she and her co-workers despised. I rarely buy new books, and why should I when I can get it for half-price from global monsters like Amazon? She should have said something and maybe I would have stopped highlighting all of Emmanuel Levinas' works.)

And so when my bibliophilia is allowed to run unchecked and it's the day after payday, I buy books. (My wife wishes I would spend more of my paycheck on new shirts, but have you seen what patrons of second-hand bookstores wear?) When Ian was born on Saturday at 12:45pm, I only managed to wait 22 hours to buy a new (couldn't wait to search Amazon for this one) copy of Babies with Down Syndrome: A New Parent's Guide. (Did I buy any books when Silvi was born? If not, why not? Is it because she was born without that blessed - or cursed, depending on the hour these days - extra little chromosome? Sorry Silvi, I owe you a book.) A day later and I bowed before the Amazonian god to purchase Critical Reflections Of Stanley Hauerwas' Theology Of Disability and The Man Who Loved Clowns, which I understand is a classic in DS circles.

I read the first three chapters of Babies with Down Syndrome before passing it over to Annie to finish for me. Maybe I stopped too soon, but chapter three focuses on all of the things that could go wrong with Ian. Ian may have trouble hearing, seeing, swallowing, running, breathing, he might need heart surgery, get Leukemia or Alzheimer's or both coupled with Autism and... I mean, come on! Give the little guy a break already.

As is often my habit when using the salving relief of words on pulpwood, I moved from that depressing book about reality - the concrete, if you like - to the abstract world of professor Stanley Hauerwas, one of America's most influential theologians, fervent pacifist and a voice for the disabled. One could argue, though, that his is not an entirely abstract perspective in that he has been championing the rights of the mentally impaired since the 1970's. Abstract thought only remains in the abstract when there is no one to put the ideas into practice. And that is why I am turning to Hauerwas and others like him, such as Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche, a home for those with mental challenges.

Putting ideas into practice. Right after I finish reading another book.

Translation

Will someone please translate these books? Thank you.

Short stories

I've been sitting with my "novel" the last few nights (there are only five chapters so far, a long way from the twenty-two chapters I had planned). I started it nearly four years ago. It is loosely based on my experiences working with a charismatic organization in Seattle. It is also based on some of my childhood experiences overseas.

Over lunch, I spent an hour in Andre Dubus' world of short stories. (The father, not the son known for The House of Sand and Fog.) I spend at least a few lunch breaks a week at the chain bookstore down the street, wandering the aisles until something calls out to me. Dubus was a Catholic and one of the best American short story writers of the last century. The two stories I read over the bad cup of coffee pulled something within taut - kind of like tuning a guitar until the chord sings its proper note. These are the best kind of stories. Ones that remind us - "retune" us - to see the world as it actually is, not how we hope it to be.

I'll have to sit with my novel a bit more. It needs some tuning.

Persian Mirrors

I'm nearly finished with Persian Mirrors, by Elaine Sciolino. Like Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem, it is full of fascinating and exciting stories about day-to-day life in modern day Iran. I highly recommend it; it'll help put a face on what is all too often a political strawman.

Bookstore

Annie, Silvi and I went to two used bookstores last night to find copies of Perelandra, That Hideous Strength and any book by George MacDonald (I settled on The Princess and the Goblin, one of his better known children's books). I also bought another Bible, a used NRSV. I often buy books based on aesthetics, and Bibles are no exception. I would rather buy a trade paperback over hardcover, and try to stay away from mass market paperbacks. I also hate buying the "movie" version of a book. I looked for a copy of Contact without Jodie Foster on the cover with no luck.

I own about ten Bibles. (apologies to Brother Andrew): the NIV, NASB, The Message, New Living Translation, The Living Bible, The Complete Jewish Bible, and the New English Bible from Scotland. The last two I purchased in an effort to free myself from Reformed and conservative evangelical theology (although the CJB was translated by a graduate from Fuller Theological Seminary). I needed to view the Scriptures through a new lens, gain fresh insight into the words. I wanted a literary Bible, one with language that was both poetic and true to the spirit of the texts. I found that in the NEB.

I bought the NRSV last night as a version with which I can commit verses to memory. Much of the NEB's language, although movingly poetic, is difficult to follow in that it is written for readers in the United Kingdom. (Examples include asphodel, batten, bustard, distrain, felloe, hoopoes, keen (as a verb), lapis lazuli, panniers, reck, ruffed bustard, runnels of water, and stook.) I also like that the NRSV is used by Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox believers.

Reading

I finished reading Out of the Silent Planet by Lewis last weekend; I am about a third of the way through Till We Have Faces. I am also 120 pages into Stephen Lawhead's The Paradise War and 200+ pages through Contact by Sagan.

Thus far, I am unimpressed with Lawhead. It's really quite uninspiring writing. Chapter upon chapter with not much happening (kind of like this blog). I like the concept (based on Plato's idea of Forms) but he needs to tighten everything up. Three or four chapters could be condensed into one. Sagan, on the other hand, is a good writer, but provides entirely too many details. And his constant insistence that Beings from other planets must possess higher intelligence can get old quick; he refers to this belief all too often.

Lewis, of course, is the master of words. It is refreshing to come back to him after an hour with Lawhead or Sagan. His sentences are taut, the action is compelling yet not overwhelming and his characters stay with me into the night. Next? Perelandra.

Da Vinci Code

Last one to mention the Da Vinci Code in a book, on a blog or talk radio show is a rotten egg.

Dreams and Diaries II

This excellent review of 1994 Cannes winner, Caro Diario, captures what I had hoped The Cinema of Nanni Moretti: Dreams and Diaries would.

"Moretti's three-part movie-essay is structured as a wry, affectionate and very funny odyssey through the Roman suburbs, the Aeolian Isles, and the Italian health system. Relaxed and leisurely, it's an effortless blend of documentary and fiction, part road movie, part sociological satire, part polemical reminiscence. As Moretti travels around, investigating and commenting, he manages to provoke not only laughter, but the sense that we are seeing Italy anew. Accordingly, just as he includes offbeat gags about, say, movie critics being fed a taste of their own medicine, so when he drives to the site of Pasolini's murder, he forces us simply to look and listen, to take in light, space, shape, movement and music; in other words, to recognise the essence of cinema shorn of story and superfluous stylistic tropes. That's no mean achievement in these days of narrative and technological overkill, though the movie is too modest to insist even on its own quirkiness, let alone its more serious subtextual concerns."

Moretti the existentialist

My Amazon Review: (read it here or on Amazon.com)

"I've been reading the study of Moretti films, Dreams and Diaries, with some disappointment. The reason I am so attracted to his films is for the quiet "existential" moments: riding his Vespa around Rome, kicking a soccer ball on a deserted field, pausing to watch an old film on a cafe television.

The authors of this book focus on subjects such as a citizen's relationship to the state, the form of autobiography, postmodern politics, etc. Even their study of the crisis of masculinity, where they elicit the work of Robert Bly, seems to miss the mark. I appreciate academic studies, yet they never quite capture the essence of Moretti's work. The apartness, the playfulness, the longing for a new Italy, a new man.

As far as I know, this is the only study of Moretti's films available in English. I think that's a shame. I hope someone writes another book, and remembers the man - not just the ideas - behind the lens."

January daze

It's the great void of winter and all I want to do is crawl into bed and watch repeats of The Office and Scrubs. I finished my Walker Percy book, and, after three of his books, am going to give up trying to read more of him. I literally hurled The Moviegoer across the room out of frustration. "This novel explores the modern disease characterized by alienation and ennui." Just what I need on a cold January evening. Calvin and Hobbes, where art thou?

Work is really slow; I'm archiving old projects - a tedious job. "Foods" or famine, as my boss says in his broken English.

Literary Journey

I spend my days looking for God in books. One of the first books that I can remember reading that impacted me was Holy Sweat, by Tim Hansel. I came across it recently and couldn't get past the first few pages. Here is a short list, in semi-chronological order, of the books that have led me to how I see God today.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis
Lessons from a Sheepdog, by Philip Keller
The Normal Christian Life, by Watchman Nee
Walk Across America, by Peter Jenkins
The Walk West, by Peter Jenkins
How Should we then Live?, by Francis Schaeffer
Money and Power, by Jacques Ellul
The Jesus I never Knew, by Phillip Yancey
Heaven - Your Real Home, by Joni Eareckson Tada
The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Portofino and Saving Grandma, by Frank Schaeffer
The Mars Hill Review - (postmodernism issue), Mars Hill Review
The Sacred Romance, by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge
Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Marie Rilke
Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham
Traveling Mercies, by Anne Lamott
Saints and Villians, by Denise Giardina
The Existentialist Posture, by Roger Shinn
Ways of Seeing, by John Berger
I and Thou, by Martin Buber
God in Search of Man, by Abraham Joshua Heschel
Is it Righteous to Be?, by Emmanuel Levinas
The Mystery of Being: Reflection and Mystery, by Gabriel Marcel
Waiting for God, by Simone Weil
Three Outsiders, by Diogenes Allen
Life with Picasso, by Francoise Gilot
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
Hey Nostradamus!, by Douglas Coupland
When the Heart Waits, by Sue Monk Kidd
The Source of Life, by Jurgen Moltmann
The Conflict of Interpretations, by Paul Ricoeur
The Fratricides, by Nikos Kazantzakis
Silence, by Shusaku Endo
A Soldier of the Great War, by Mark Helprin
The Art of Listening, by Neil Pembroke
Malccolm Muggeridge: A Biography, by Gregory Wolfe
Jesus: The Man Who Lives and Jesus Rediscovered, by Malcolm Muggeridge
My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok
Lost in the Cosmos, by Walker Percy
A Tragic Sense of Life, by Miguel de Unamuno
The Resurrection of the Son of God, by N.T. Wright

I am currently spending my evenings reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and The Complete Jewish Bible, a very interesting translation by David Stern.

Any suggestions?

The passion of Nietzche

I received a gift certificate to a bookstore for Father's Day and spent a few hours trying to find a good book on the life of Jesus. There was no shortage of books, from Just give me Jesus by Anne Graham Lotz (Billy Graham's daughter) to This Hebrew Lord by liberal John Shelby Spong. As I wandered past book after book, I got more and more frustrated. Surely there was one book that spoke my language, the language of Miguel de Unamuno and Kazantzakis and Nietzche.

I don't want to read another book about atonement or justification. I don't want to hear about the historical accuracy of the synoptic gospels. I don't want to read more about Jesus the Berkeley feminist or Jesus the champion of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. I don't want Jesus Freaks, The Jesus I Never Knew, Jesus CEO, or to Experince the Heart of Jesus.

Jesus of the suburbs. The suburbs are killing us.

I have yet to find a book with the same intensity of the gospels. Shusaku Endo's A Life of Jesus comes close.

Depressed and beaten, I reluctantly settled for N.T. Wright's Following Jesus. I respect and admire N.T. Wright and his sermons are alive and full of passion. I also bought a copy of Nietzche's classic, Beyond Good and Evil. A much-needed mirror to keep the suburbs at bay.

Theology of Hope

I went to the Mall of America for lunch. It's only a few mintutes from our office and I enjoy spending the hour reading in the Barnes and Noble bookstore. (I forgot that today was a holiday; hordes of people.) I sat in the cafe, reading Moltmann's In the End--The Beginning: The Life of Hope, in which he states that the world is not moving toward an Ultimate Battle between good and evil. I wasn't able to read his final conclusions, but his assertions would require another paradigm shift from me. I'm getting a little tired of all these paradigm shifts. To have the mind of a child again.