Reviews

The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Timothy Keller

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is short (48 pages) and profoundly challenging. The simplicity of the message will rattle around in the tombs of our soiled memories.
Tim Keller looks at our condition in this inflated/deflated world. The world is flat and black and white; while we perform in our shadowed reality. There is only one way to the truth and the light. We find ourselves off the beaten track and lost. Until, we are picked up for vagrancy.
We are then brought to a trial room with only the smiling mob and the Court Jester. Every day we wake to a trial, much like the trial of the main character in Franz Kafka's The Trial.
We find that all the jurors are pointing at us and laughing at our hopeless condition, because we still think we can save ourselves. We think that there is a way for us to justify our own actions. We cower at our reflected image and our ballooned ego lets out a gasp and we find ourselves thinner than Jack Sprat.
Where is your heart (insert your name here)? is the first question the Supreme Court Jester asks.
We say in response, "I played the game! I played by the rules! How can you accuse me of being a loser on my own?"
The Jester replies, "Who do you want to be son, than be that person."
We wake up and the trial resumes.
Keller shows us how to break out of this fun house and self delusion through the reliance of Christ. For Christ has already won the trial that we continually want to defend our sins by.  Court Jesters have no problem in enabling us to feel that we must wage a defense.  The battle wears us out.   Keller shows us a way out of this soul defeating routine.

Freedom of Self Forgetfulness must be read by anyone who struggles with depression or anxiety in the modern world.

Ramblings of Greg 7.2.

I am not writing well today.  Nothing is really that bad, it’s just one of those other days.  It has been a lazy morning here in Florida.  It has been rainy and the clouds hang low like a present rumor.

My wife plays the guitar in the other room. Her soul soars on high.  

Sometimes writing is difficult, there really is not much going on. 

But you need to write every day, no matter what!   So today I sit here trying to think of what to say that might be somewhat positive.  

My arm hurts. Probably from cutting too much meat, filling customer orders, and cleaning up.  Why does ones ears not hurt from listening too much?  

Tonight I will be going to feed the homeless at Munn Park from old Chinese carry out containers, and food made by my friend Miguel Vazquez.  

Cheers to my Nederland friends, and the three guys I met in Israel.   We had a blast partying in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1997, London Underground, Arizona Bar, and spending all my money so that I had to borrow some to get back to Egypt.   I have never planned very well, and have had to rely on the courtesy of strangers.  I have learned  a lot from these adventures though. I am so happy that y'all beat those brats from San Paulo.  

Twilight Series: Eclipse

Yes, I asked my wife to go see the matinee of Twilight.  According to the bro-code, I probably lost about 30 man points in watching this movie.   But so what?  Because my wife and I both enjoyed the film.

I learned something from the new Twilight Series about the need for traditional values in today's youth conscious. Edward (the Vampire) is a great character of heroic stature. If I was Bella's father I would want the right guy to marry my daughter. Edward would truly be someone who I would have no problem saying"Yes, you can be my son in law!" He stands by his girl. He is respectful of her body. And he believes in traditional values.

At first Bella's dad thinks there is something different about this boy. No one can be this respectful these days. I would not expect boys in 2010 to act so courageously. He desires to be right with Bella's dad, and wants to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage.



Too bad Edward is fictional and is also a vampire, but perhaps we can dream of a day, when boys become like Edward and court the girl. Lets hope that the good bachelors are not vampires.

Reprint:

Toy Publix truck on mantle,
Van Gogh Flowers Poster
Flogging Molly Banner
Mountain Riders Maui Poster 242-9739
White (the hero's color) Cowboy hat from Ocala
Cologne: Burburry London for Men
Obsession Silken Body Lotion C.K.
Compass pointing out Due North
Date Jar full of Dimes
Wind in the Willows Poster from London's National Theater
My bedroom lies cramped with so much character.   

Review: The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

The E-Library Librarian suggested that I read this book. So I listened to the Audio CD.

The book explores the relationship of book collectors, book thieves, and the books they collect. The book is an examination on how books shape our lives and how we shape the books we read or collect. Thomas Jefferson Fitzpatrick desired to make a tomb by collecting so many books, when he died in 1951 he had so many books that he had to sleep on a cot in his kitchen.

I read and collect books because it is an elixir for my insecure post modern polluted mind.

Books provide a way to make a personal biographical museum of our interests and our loves tomes in one volume. Books serve as a vehicle for a public image shaped carefully by our selected works. We discard books as a way to say, "See how much I have grown, and look at the books I use to own." Words today are footprints of our fleeting thoughts, some holy-some not.  


The book poses the question: "Are we shaped by the books we read, or do we shape the books we read?"

Outline of the Republic Leads us to Rediscover Heart of Darkness

"The offing was barred by a bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky-seemed to lead into the heart of an immune darkness." (Conrad 158) So ends Conrad's heart of Darkness.   Sidhartha Deb ends his book with an allusion, an implicit reference, to the end of Conrad's Heart of Darkness.  "I turned left , knowing that if I kept going I would come to the river." (Deb 318)  Deb points us again to the place that holds the heart of darkness, once described by Conrad, and that this place still remains in the twenty first century.  We have failed to become a modernized utopia.  A utopia where  the river now flows to the heart of heal-able light.