I love to write and love to read. When I noticed that one of my favorite authors, Ted Kooser, wrote a book about writing, I became very interested.

What was I hoping to learn? This: how to capture the imagination of the reader with careful detail.

Kooser’s work has a particular, simple way of taking the imagination to the most rural, the most ordinary places and there find the most affecting beauty.

Writing Brave and Free is a 101 book on writing. Everything you’d want to know about starting your craft is right here in these pages. More than the great ideas, though, is the simple encouragement and friendship you feel when you’re reading Kooser and Cox. When I would close the book after some chapters, needing time to think, closing felt like I’d just come from coffee with Kooser where he answered a few questions about my writing.

Final thought: I would have never guessed that reading a book about writing would be such a good read.

Athanasius: The Life of Antony of Egypt (Classics in Spiritual Formation). A Paraphrase by Albert Haase O.F.M. [Book Reaction]

In a flighty, frantic world, what’s needed is the rooted writing of wisdom and spiritual life. Due to the lofty feel some of these authors have (e.g., when I say, “Ascetic Desert Monastic,” you feel _______), a good paraphrase is needed to get us past those lofty preconceived notions and into the depths of wisdom.

Albert Haase does this for us, connecting us to a great guide in the Jesus Way: Antony of Egypt.

In short, Antony is an awakened, recovering sinner who’s led into the desert, like Christ, to practice a way of life that is not so much reclusive as it is engaging with the internal spiritual battle of vice and virtue.

The catalyst of his journey is the word of Jesus to give up everything you have, give all that to the poor, and to come, follow Jesus. Through a dream and another experience, Antony’s heart is bent to receive that message with faith, trusting that such a word is a redemptive word. And, Antony ventures into the desert to practice, step by step, the Redemptive Way.

In twenty years, word gets out about Antony’s journey as well as progress; others seeking such a similar redemption and freedom (one that’s not an abstract “you’re free from your sins,” but rather, “you’re free from your sins and becoming free through the work of grace and Spirit to naturally express virtue rather than vice.) find Antony. Soon, Antony senses a new calling: to guide others in the Redemptive Way, the Way of the Desert (think Manna in the Wilderness from Exodus 16).

Experiences with demons, dragons, and delusions, become the training ground for Antony. While these demon, dragon, and delusion stories seem fantastic, they’re written to convey an experience we own today. Like us, there is always a fork in the road: a narrow and broad way. When we choose the broad, there is forgiveness; but our life is not built on how many times we are forgiven for the broad choice, but on being evermore shaped to naturally choose the narrow.

My favorite parts?

The sections that captivated me most were when traveling monks would stop by Antony’s place and ask him questions and for advice. Antony’s resolutions were short and simple. A memorable example, one I feel is relatable today, is of a monk who comes to Antony seeking healing. (Sensing God’s power taking free course in Antony, such healing was anticipated.) I’ll quote it:

“There was a certain man by the name of Fronto, from Palatium, who had a terrible sickness. Like an epileptic, he would sometimes bite his tongue, and on top of that, he was gradually losing his eyesight.

He came to Antony’s mountain and pleased with the beloved of God to pray for him.

Antony prayed and then said to Fronto, “You can leave. You’ll be healed.”

But Fronto’s condition grew even worse, and so he refused to leave.

Antony said to him, “You can’t be healed while staying here. You must go, and when you get to Egypt, you’ll be healed.”

Fronto believed him and left. As soon as his eyes looked upon the land of Egypt, he was healed, just as the Savior had told Anotny in prayer.”

I find this story remedial. So often our minds are made up; we know how God will work, we’ve built the parameters for his landscape of operation. …and we fester. In particular, when our eyes are drawn to a teacher or pastor rather than Jesus, we fester (this is why Jesus said, “None of you shall be called Teacher for there is one Teacher.”).

If I could change one thing about the book?

…I’d change some of the translation. I applaud the work of Haase to get a book like this out of the clouds and into the hearts of “normal folks.” However, at times his translative work borrows quite a bit from the world of cliche, which I think runs the threat of diluting the wisdom with over used, dead phrases, like, “Throw your hat into the ring with the monks,” “Tickled to death to hear…” and “pie-in-the-sky.”

While such phrases ease the lofty feel of ancient Christian wisdom writing, they also ease the depths of wisdom.

And maybe that’s just the point. Perhaps I (we) have become too accustomed to thinking wisdom needs to come from people who “sound” wise; perhaps what we need is a disorientation to realize that wisdom itself vines up from the soil of the ordinary.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers of early Christianity have always intrigued me. Their book of sayings is filled with a consoling yet perplexing spiritual guidance – words I’ve never read a parallel to. Yet, those words from the desert are laden with meaning, especially today.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers were prayerfully led to the desert right after the empiric absorption of Christianity into Rome (313 AD). Once being a faith who championed martyrs, Christianity was becoming a politically correct, polite, accommodation for the values and life of the average Roman citizen. Instead of the way of Jesus, the church became more concerned with the civic way and propagation of Rome.

Many feel a similar thing about today’s Church in American culture. I think this is why I’ve been seeing a few more writings of the desert fathers recently. There’s a reaction underway that is seeing the church as a voiceless entity when it comes to the way of Jesus; the reactors are looking for guidance from those who have experienced the necessary call to once again take Jesus seriously.

The problem Nouwen is addressing is the numbness we find ourselves in. “We must be made aware of the call to let our false, compulsive self be transformed into the new self of Jesus Christ.” p. 20.

Many rhythms we find ourselves in in the world are designed to get us to rely on compulsion and ego. We experience that with the bombardment of advertising and such things. We’ve become quite used to operating by those immediate compulsive acts and ideas. Change will be hard, but within it, we sense redemption.

Nouwen simplifies the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers into a threefold way of solitude, silence and prayer. These, he says, are steps of formation of the soul, seeing God work within us to set free Christ within us.

Nouwen summarizes these rhythms:

“Solitude shows us the way to let our behavior be shaped not by the compulsions of the world but by our own new mind, the mind of Christ. Silence prevents us from being suffocated by our wordy world and teaches us to speak the word of God. Finally, unceasing prayer gives solitude and silence their real meaning. In unceasing prayer, we descend with the mind into the heart. Thus we enter through our heart into the heart of God, who embraces all of history with his eternally creative and recreative love. … solitude, silence, and prayer allow us to save ourselves and others from the shipwreck of our self-destructive society.” p. 91.

As I closed the book, I began wondering how to help ordinary people embrace these ordinary, redemptive rhythms without mutating these simple rhythms into pietistic (in the negative sense) actions. As I re-read some highlights, Nouwen’s words provide that simple path.