Editor’s Note: As summer begins, we’ve invited some of our favorite theobloggers to share the book that has most deeply affected their faith life in the past ten years, as well as the book they believe every Christian should read, but may not have yet. Here, seminary student and author/blogger Amy Julia Becker shares her response.
I first learned of Kathleen Norris in 1998, upon my graduation from college, when my thesis advisor gave me Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith. I lapped it up, grateful for the combination of personal narrative, poetic language, and research about the “scary” words of the Christian faith: blood, atonement, cross. I went on to read everything Norris had written. I learned her history, from a young woman from the midwest with ministers in the family to an atheist poet in New York City, and then back to the Dakotas and back to her faith. But it was a more recent little book of hers, a pamphlet almost, called The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and Women’s Work, that shaped my faith most deeply. This series of meditations upon the rhythms of everyday life, quotidian life, helped me to believe that there is significance in changing diapers and reading bedtime stories and wiping the kitchen counters for the fifth time in a day. Although Norris herself remains childless, her reflections helped me find my way into this new vocation of motherhood.
The book that comes to mind for every Christian to read is Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. It is the story of Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health. It is well-written and, as it details Farmer’s work in Haiti, relevant to the current moment. Yet it strikes me as significant for Christians because it issues both a challenge and an encouragement. Farmer is a believer of sorts, although by no means a conventional or orthodox one. And yet his sense that God calls people for specific tasks that will serve and bless others compels him. Beyond that, he understands that individuals will be called to different tasks. For instance, when a wealthy businessman asks if he should sell his business and move to Haiti to serve the poor, Farmer responds with a definitive NO! He sees the work of the businessman who gives generously of his money as equally important as his own work providing medical services on the ground in Haiti. His work is an encouragement to find a vocation– a calling that is life-giving to the self and the community. And it is also a story that suggests individuals who find that vocation really can participate in God’s work of bringing the kingdom among us.
Amy Julia Becker is a writer and a student at Princeton Theological Seminary. She blogs at Thin Places.
Read more theobloggers’ picks for Summer Reading at Patheos here.
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