Recently read  The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I love good fiction, but rarely read it. The Alchemist is a story about a young shepherd named Santiago who is on a journey to fulfill his Personal Legend. It’s philosophical, it’s spiritual, and it’s entertaining. I couldn’t put it down.

Here are a few things I’ve read over the last several weeks:

Go Put Your Strengths to Work by Marcus Buckingham

• I highly recommend this book.  It challenges the age-old idea that the way we will succeed in life is to thrust our energies into our weaknesses in order to improve them.  Buckingham’s research shows that in fact, people get better when they focus with a higher level of intensity on making their strengths stronger.  It’s a great read for anyone interested in maximizing their influence, productivity, and effectiveness.

Wide Awake by Erwin Raphael McManus

• Full disclosure: I am an Erwin junkie.  That said, this is a fantastic book.  It explores what it means to truly live out your dreams.  One of my favorite quotes from this book is, “There are things that you are not supposed to learn from experience because the experience will kill you.”

Community 101 by Gilbert Bilezikian

• I decided to do some reading on what Biblically functioning community should look like.  At the request of Dr. Waddell, I started with Community 101.  Wow.  Any Christian should have to read this book.  Community is central not only to relational growth, but also to Spiritual growth.  Bilezikian begins by exploring the Triune Godhead and then launches into a fantastic overview of what “the church” should look like.

Eternal Echoes by John O’Donohue

• This book is community from the perspective of a quaker.  O’Donohue uses multiple essays to explore our longing to belong.  Why were created with this longing?  What happens when it is not met?  When it is pursued?  When it is rejected?  When it is found?  It’s a fantastic reflection on human relationship and the need to belong to one another.

     

Here’s the deal. I know some of you don’t like these book reviews, but you need to realize that I think it’s great when you chime in and we discuss them, but ultimately these reviews are for me. The blog is a great way for me to track my yearly reading and to be able to review some of the content. With that, I just read Blue Like Jazz. Honestly, I thought it was great but I feel like it didn’t quite live up to some of it’s press. Miller is a great and relatable writer and I totally resonated with what he had to say.

• “Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself.”
• “I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time.”
• “Nothing is going to change in the Congo until you and I figure out what is wrong with the person in the mirror.”
• Coming to know that Jesus is God is not like doing math.
• “Light cannot be proved scientifically, and yet we all believe in light and by light see all things.”
• Chess players go crazy, not poets.
• “I love to give to charity, but I don’t want to be charity.”
• “It’s not that I want to earn my own way to give something to God, it’s that I want to earn my own way so I won’t be charity.”
• “Passion is tricky, though, because it can point to nothing just as easily as it points to something.”
• Christian spirituality is a nonpolitical mysterious system that can be experienced but not explained.
• “There was room at the table for me, but I wasn’t in the family.”
• “It took me a while to understand that the answer to problems was not marketing or program but rather spirituality.”
• “I want to marry a girl who, when I am with her, makes me feel alone.”
• “I think our society puts too much pressure on romantic love, and that is why so many romances fail.”
• “I am that cordless screwdriver that has to charge for twenty four hours to earn ten minutes use.”
• “Jesus wants us interacting, eating together, laughing together, praying together.”
• “When you live on your own for years, you begin to think the world belongs to you. You begin to think all space is your space and all time is your time.”
• “There is no addiction so powerful as self-addiction.”
• “It was the affection of Christ, not the brutality of a town, that healed Zacchaeus.”
• “All the wonder of God appens right above our arithmetic and formula.”
• “If we could, God would not inspire awe.”
• “I think we have two choices in the face of beauty: terror or awe.”
• “We are too proud to feel awe and to fearful to feel terror.”
• “I don’t think there is any better worship than wonder.”
• “I was tired of Biblical ethic being used as a tool to judge people rather than heal them.”
• “God has never withheld love to teach m a lesson.”
• “Everything rests in the ability to receive love.”

On the way home from New York I read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. Inspiring. For those of you who don’t know, Randy Pausch is a college professor who recently found out that he only has three to six months of good health due to pancreatic cancer. This book recaps his last lecture on “How to Achieve Childhood Dreams”. I highly recommend this book. It’s an extremely read. If you’re not a big reader, at least check out the video of Randy’s lecture.

• “When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.”
• “The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”
• “Sometimes the most impenetrable brick walls are made of flesh.”
• “I know you’re smart. But everyone here is smart. Smart isn’t enough. The kind of people I want on my research team are those who will help everyone else feel happy to be here.”
• “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.”
• “Complaining does not work as a strategy.”
• “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”
• “When you go into the wilderness, the only thing you can count on is what you take with you.”

While I was in New York I finished reading The Shack by William Young. This book is amazing. It’s a fictional exploration of forgiveness and God’s love. I love how the author describes the relationship of the trinity. Even though I usually wouldn’t include quotes from fiction, a few lines really stood out to me:

• “I suppose that since most of hurts come through relationships so will our healing.”
• “Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book.”
• “I told you for later.”
• “To force my will on you,” Jesus replied, “is exactly what love does not do. Genuine relationships are marked by submission even when your choices are not helpful or healthy.”
• “Judgment is not about destruction, but about setting things right.”
• Learn to live loved.
• “It is not the nature of love to force a relationship but it is the nature of love to open the way.”
• Live in expectancy not expectation.
• If anything matters, than everything matters.