| Summer reading: discernment and study |
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Dear Outlook Readers,
It’s the modern-day equivalent of the “Gone Fishing” sign – the “extended absence” e-mail response. I silently cheer when I receive a colleague’s automated response indicating they are on sabbatical, study leave or vacation. Then I wonder: what books are they reading on the plane or listening to in the car, and do they have any recommendations?
The Outlook always has recommendations, and this month is a “Choose Your Own Adventure”: Are you in a period of transition or discernment (perhaps on sabbatical)? Check out our book of the month, How to Walk into a Room. Or … do you believe summer is a time to read books that will inform your preaching and teaching? Then you’ll want to seek out Proclaiming the Parables. As I wrote in the Outlook’s summer books issue: Give yourself an uninterrupted afternoon and grab your highlighter before tackling this latest work from Tom Long. He challenges earlier understandings of parables as moralistic, over-simplified similes, removed from the context of Jesus as a Jewish teacher. Instead, he shows how Jesus’ parables reveal different aspects of the kingdom, bringing them together in a way that proclaims their power. Before covering parables from the synoptic Gospels, Long guides preachers to make wise interpretative choices before they reach the pulpit.
Each adventure leads to an excellent book — enjoy!
Happy Reading,
Amy Pagliarella
Outlook Book Review Editor |
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BOOK OF THE MONTH How to Walk into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away
Emily P. Freeman
Harper One, 240 pages
Published March 12, 2024
Spiritual director Emily Freeman invites us into her metaphorical “spiritual direction room” and accompanies us through the “rooms” in our own lives. She invites you to pay “particular attention to the ones you may be questioning (or the ones that are questioning you).” How to Walk into a Room guides readers through discernment processes ranging from what’s the “next right thing” to “Should I stay or should I go?”
“As we make these kinds of decisions, we’re usually looking for clarity and certainty,” she writes. “But the kind of clarity we want isn’t the kind we get from lists, books…”
Freeman’s book may not hand us immediate clarity, but it certainly offers thoughtful questions to help us determine our own values and decision-making criteria, as well as heart-felt stories to remind us to pay attention to “a stirring, a whisper, a discontent within,” noticing what our bodies tell us through a “clenched jaw” or lurching stomach. She also suggests different ways of connecting with God that work for our unique personalities, whether in silence and solitude or activism.
How to Walk into a Room really resonates as Freeman describes her own decision points, such as changing her mind about her church or determining when to exit a business. She walks us through her own process, as well as what she wishes she had said or done along the way. Her experiences become a guide to learning from our own lives and mistakes, noticing the red flags, and discerning both our readiness to move onward and our ability to live in the not-knowing of the present.
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“If, as we are claiming, the greatest power of parables is in their referent, the kingdom of God, what do we mean when we say ‘the kingdom of God’? To ask that question in a study of parables is, at best, ironic, at worst, foolish. The parables insist that we define the kingdom indirectly. What is the kingdom? Well, it’s like a man who had two sons, it’s like a woman mixing yeast into flour … If the kingdom of God could be described full flush – say as a list of principles, or a collection of big ideas, or as a series of scenes like those in a travelogue of Aruba – then once we had derived this description from the parables, we could throw the parables away. But when Jesus wants to talk about the kingdom, he looks off into the distance and asks, ‘What is the kingdom of God like, and to what should I compare it?’ Then he tells a parable.” |
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Book Giveaway! Congratulations to last month’s winner Mark Dayton. Thanks to our generous partners at Brazos Press, they received Lore Ferguson Wilbert's The Understory.
This month, one fortunate reader will receive a copy of this month’s quoted book Proclaiming the Parables by Thomas G. Long, kindly donated by the folks at Westminster John Knox Press.If you're reading this note, then you're all set! Know someone else who should be reading Page Turners? Send them this link and they'll get entered for a chance to win, too. The contest closes on July 22.
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