"All writing involves a kind of arrogance. As I write this sentence, I have the chutzpah to believe it will be worth your time to read it." PY
How can you not like an author who added this into the preface of his book... And not just any author or any book. Grace Notes is the "greatest hits" of Phillip Yancey.
I remember the first book I read of Yancey's collection. It was "The Jesus I Never Knew". I don't remember much of my time through it, but it left a residue like most of my "Rocket Reads". Yancey wasn't just another "Christian Author" out there trying to make a living by selling Jesus. There was something more authentic about him.
I like what is said in this excerpt taken from his bio page on his website.
For Yancey, reading offered a window to a different world. So, he devoured books that opened his mind, challenged his upbringing, and went against what he had been taught. A sense of betrayal engulfed him. “I felt I had been lied to. For instance, what I learned from a book like To Kill a Mockingbird or Black Like Me contradicted the racism I encountered in church. I went through a period of reacting against everything I was taught and even discarding my faith. I began my journey back mainly by encountering a world very different than I had been taught, an expansive world of beauty and goodness. Along the way I realized that God had been misrepresented to me. Cautiously, warily, I returned, circling around the faith to see if it might be true.”
(a word about my book blogging... sometimes I blog the reads I just finish, and sometimes I like to go into the archives of my library and find a read that really impacted me years ago. This is one such read. A book read not so recently, but one that resonated with me profoundly)
"I have been writing full time for three decades, long enough for a publisher to propose this book of readings drawn from twenty-some books and numerous articles. As I read through them I feel a bit like Rip Van Winkle, going over experiences and thoughts from as long as twenty or thirty years ago. I’ve doubted, believed, doubted again, changed, grown." PY
Phillip Yancey has written his own library and his words have encouraged millions of readers over the decades. For a novice reader like myself, I wish I had the time, interest and energy to read more than just two of them. But thanks to his Yancey and his publisher... I have "Grace Notes".
I admire and want to read authors who aren't afraid to admit that they have issues and doubts about God. The words that come from their inspiration have more meaning and relevance to my life as a result of their struggles and openness to share them.
"Everything I write is colored by my family, my upbringing in the South and in fundamentalism, my back-roads pilgrimage. I can only write with passion about my own experience, not yours. Yet somehow my rendering of church, family, and halting steps toward faith may provoke a response in the reader, like the harmonic overtones from a plucked guitar string. As Walker Percy said, a writer may help reveal what the reader knows but does not know that he or she knows." PY
Grace Notes is a beautiful collection of Yancey's wisdom that is spread out over decades of his journey. It is a colourful artistry of a life that isn't figured out in one weekend at one conference; but painted over a lifetime of ups and downs, struggles, doubts and moments of joy in the midst.
Yancey maps out the whole calendar year with readings... 366 to be exact. This book can be read as a yearly devotional or just as as sporadic and spontaneous as the reader wishes.
"I do not try to defend the church, but instead identify with those it has wounded and point them toward the good news of the gospel. Jesus said that the truth will set us free and that he came to give life in all its fullness. If it’s not setting you free and enlarging life, then it’s not Jesus’ message. If it doesn’t sound like good news, it’s not the gospel." PY
I just read a few "days" or chapters and I am reminded that this is not a comfortable read as much as it is a read to get one out one's comfort zone. Phillip Yancey didn't write to make anyone feel comfortable in an easy faith, but to expose a little more reality and rawness into what is often a very complacent world. He talks about Jesus, not as a religious icon, but as a radical in a real world. I like that.
“I write books for myself,” he says. “I’m a pilgrim, recovering from a bad church upbringing, searching for a faith that makes its followers larger and not smaller. I feel overwhelming gratitude that I can make a living writing about the questions that most interest me. My books are a process of exploration and investigation of things I wonder about and worry about.” Yancey writes with an eye for detail, irony, and honest skepticism. (From Yancey's bio)
Today, I wanted to write a post, and so I went into my archives and was reminded that this blog isn't just about sharing great books, but sharing great authors. There have been so many great authors that have made an impact on my life's journey, and will continue to do so, because what they have is a timeless legacy of wisdom, research, unearthing discoveries, raw truth and amazing insights into a history we have been so far removed from. Phillip Yancey is such an author and my library will always have room for his books.
"From the Old Testament we can gain much insight into what it “feels like” to be God. But the New Testament records what happened when God learned what it feels like to be a human being. Whatever we feel, God felt. Instinctively, we want a God who not only knows about pain but shares in it; we want a God who is affected by our own pain. As the young theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer scribbled on a note in a Nazi prison camp, “Only the Suffering God can help.” Because of Jesus, we have such a God." PY (March 24 - "Disappointment with God")
No comments:
Post a Comment