Lots going on right now. Thought I’d share some recent books I read… a special thanks to Reverent Reader for many of these suggestions:

From Stone to Living Word: Letting the Bible Live Again by Debbie Blue — Love her writing. Lovely yet down-to-earth and even irreverent at times. These are essays based on various Bible stories. I found myself wondering whether these were just gussied-up sermons, but still, lots of food for thought. Loved her stuff on Mary and Elizabeth and the incarnation; paraphrased: “it’s amazing their story is in the sacred text of a religion that has been so up-tight about the body. These women might as well be dancing naked around a campfire and singing to the full moon.”

The Word Militant: Preaching a Decentering Word by Walter Brueggemann — a collection of essays on preaching by Uncle Walt. Some stuff I’ve read before; other stuff was new. Classic Bruegg.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris — OK, David is hilarious, and I was laughing out loud at many essays, but others were just “meh.” I actually didn’t finish it.

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell — I enjoyed this irreverent look at the Puritans quite a bit. She seems to love these people in spite of herself.

Honeybee by Naomi Shihab Nye — I really like her stuff and this was a great book of prose/poems. It’s very of its time, with poems about George W. Bush and such, so I’m not sure what kind of shelf life it will have. But her stuff is great.

The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus’ Birth by Borg/Crossan — I’d wanted to read this one for a while but hadn’t gotten around to it. This provides some historical and cultural information about the first century, and helps put the birth narratives of Jesus into some context, and makes a convincing case for the parabolic function of these stories.