Hope Givers by Daisy Rain Martin is not a book you should read
– unless you’re a human being seeking to find meaning in life
– unless you’re seeking to scrap together some sense of a healthy perspective on the many travails and ups and downs of life
– unless you follow Jesus in some rather unorthodox, non-conventional, humble, really down-to-earth, and utterly outrageous ways
– unless you’re the sort of person who finds that reading anecdotes and slices of other people’s lives and seeing how they cope, process, unravel, face-plant, and somehow rise again to live another day to be helpful and inspring
– unless you’re open to seeing “God moments” in the ordinary stuff of life
– unless you’re open to the all too frequent possibility of having your coffee or tea shoot out your nose in fully belly laughter as you witness the “OMG I can’t believe that just happened!” moments of embarrassment that a certain sassy wife, mother, and theologian has the guts to share with the world.
Hope Givers is “the book that almost never was” and is the latest creation from the author of Juxtaposed. The chapters aren’t long, but they are rich and they each offer nuggets of inspiration, moxie, triumph, and folly over the day to day real life circumstances of that an unusual and delightful family face and experience as they seek to civilly, and faithfully, interact with not always so civil schools, neighbors, family, friends, employers, and more.
Think Erma Bombeck meets Anne Lamott and somehow creates a love child with Charlie Chaplin, Fredrick Buechner, and Carol Burnett.
Helpful. Honest. Hilarious. Hopeful.
Highly recommended.
Not recommended for the sanctimonious, the legalistic, the rigid, the up-tight, the judgmental, or those who make life harder for others.
…. on second thought, scratch that. This book should be read by exactly those sorts of persons!
Hope Givers, Minkling Press, 2016.
Daisy Rain Martin’s blog Saturdaisies can be found here.
xx – Roger
Rev. Roger Wolsey is an ordained United Methodist pastor who directs the Wesley Foundation at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is author of Kissing Fish: christianity for people who don’t like christianity
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