Category: Reading & Book Reviews

  • Book Review: Singleness and Marriage After Christendom

    I’ve got a few projects in the works and some changes are on the way (more about all that soon!), but I am honoring my commitment to Speakeasy and these authors in sharing reviews of their work. This will be the last of my Speakeasy book reviews.  “…Our current desires and our ideas about happiness…

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  • Book Review: You’ve Got the Power**

    The first time I got a migraine headache, I ended up in the emergency room. I had laid down after lunch because I was feeling so unwell in a variety of ways, but when my vision went funny, I asked my husband to take me to the hospital. After some hours of testing and waiting,…

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  • Into the Mess: Book Review

    Written in short reflections on pericipes of scripture, I had intended to savor Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories devotionally, reading one per day. But, I was so drawn in and moved by Debie Thomas’s reflections that I devoured this book in an evening.  Much like a simple turn of the diamond, Thomas takes…

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  • Book Review: Birthing the Holy

    The organization I work for has found itself in a threshold season. As Christine Valters Paintner writes in her newest book, Birthing the Holy: Wisdom from Mary to Nurture Creativity and Renewal, “Thresholds are liminal times when the past season has come to a close but there is a profound unknowing of what will come…

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  • Book Review: The Soul’s Slow Ripening

    “The longest journey seems to be the letting go of the expectations, the assumptions, the woundedness; all of the ways we seek just what we are looking for rather than what is waiting to be revealed.” (Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul’s Slow Ripening) The early days of the pandemic came just a few weeks into…

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  • Fight Like Jesus

    Just a few weeks post-op, I found myself standing in an unfamiliar pulpit, preparing to preach to a crowd of people who were mostly unknown to me. My hands were a bit shaky (a side effect of temporary medications); I had tried on too many outfits (in an attempt to figure out which what would…

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  • Book Review: Walking Each Other Home

    Book Review: Walking Each Other Home

    I grew up in a pastor’s family. From the beginning of their marriage my parents were in ministry together, and as I grew up, my mom continued to embrace her own sense of call and giftedness.  Perhaps then it’s unsurprising that I, too, now find myself in ministry; embracing my calling and gifts as my…

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