Everything I think about Heaven I got from C. S. Lewis (1)

When I talk with people about heaven I use the phrase "C. S. Lewis thought..." at least once per minute, so this series is an effort to collect some of C. S. Lewis' thoughts about heaven and expand on them a little.

Heaven can be a neglected hope in the Christian heart, but I think this is just due to a failure of imagination. If we do not long for Heaven at every moment, then it may be that we do not understand what it is. C. S. Lewis helps here. So often I have felt a longing for Heaven stirred in me when reading Lewis. He does this because he understood that the joy that is to be found on earth is not an end in itself, but draws us toward some greater consummation, so when he writes about Heaven I find myself drawn on toward the horizon by his giving vague shape to things hoped for but as yet unseen, that are too wonderful for our minds to presently understand.

On each post I will take a different quote from Lewis and try to tease out a bit what he is saying. Here is #1:

The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds, from us by the very nature of the world; but joy, pleasure, and merriment he has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and be an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with old friends, a bath or a football match have no such tendency. Our father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home

Heaven is the home of every good, true, and beautiful desire. This world, being the curious mix of broken and whole pieces that it is, has good things scattered broadcast for us to find, but never for us to keep. Lewis is saying that this is with a purpose. The posture of the believer is leaning heavily on heaven. In the meantime, every great joy is tinged with the sadness of its passing, while every great sadness is diminished by the promise of the future homecoming.

As Lewis says, we are never safe, but we have plenty of fun. This reminds us that we are nomads. This is not to say that it is not right to put down roots, but rather, that it is not right to keep the treasures this earth has to offer as the ultimate treasures, nor to mourn their passing as if it was right that we keep them forever. The time for holding treasures forever is coming, if the Bible is to be believed, but isn’t yet here. There is such a tendency for safety in the human heart. This is a world where the good things that bring such joy can be taken from us in a moment, where pain can blindside us without asking if we are ready or if now is a good time or sending a warning that we ought to cherish what we have deeply because we will not have it long. Of course in such a world we will tend to build little circles of security around ourselves as best we are able.

The gospel, however, is not about minimizing risk, and, if the life if Jesus is to be any standard, it is often the opposite. When our hearts hold on the treasures in heaven becomes more secure it frees us to live without clinging to the treasures of earth. The pain of grief still hurts, but mingled with that grief is a supernatural endurance. Christians should love the earth, but long for a home that does not wear out, for bodies that do not fail, for relationships that aren’t scarred by selfishness, for work that is joy and creates things that will always last.

This should not take us out of the world, but give us secure grounds to enter it more fully. This does not make Christians miserly, but makes Christians those who most fully experience the joy, pleasure, and merriment that God has sown into the world like seeds of a promise that will one day grow into fruition.

Art Every Wednesday (29)

This morning I came across an interesting excerpt from a book about Wagner by Bryan Magee that makes the case that Christianity is anti-art, and so I thought it would be a good occasion to put forward the reasons I think that Christianity and good art are not mutually exclusive, but rather, understood rightly, art finds a home in the Christian worldview.

In this excerpt Magee is arguing that Greek tragedy was the "highest point ever reached in human creativity." He says this because it is the fusing of many different branches of the arts - poetry, drama, costumes, mime, instrumental music, dance, and song. Also, it was great because it came out of a humanistic worldview. It came out of a religion that celebrated the glories of man without having to turn to a god to find meaning and beauty. In the passage below he makes the case that this high art form disintegrated in part because of the rise of Christianity, which was "in effect, as it was bound to be, anti-art." Magee says,

"[Greek tragedy's] available content dissolved when Greek Humanism was superceded by Christianity, a religion that divided man against himself, teaching him to look on his body with shame, his emotions with suspicion, sensuality with fear, sexual love with feelings of guilt. This life, it taught, is a burden, this world a vale of tears, our endurance of which will be rewarded at death, which is the gateway to eternal bliss. In effect this religion was, as it was bound to be, anti-art. The alienation of man from his own nature, especially his emotional nature; the all-pervading hypocrisy to which this gave rise throughout the Christian era; the devaluation of life and the world and hence, inevitably, their wonderfulness; the conception of man as being not a god but a worm, and a guily one at that; all this is profoundly at odds with the very nature and existence of art. Such a religion, based as it is on the celebration of death and on hostility to the emotions, repudiate both the creative impulse and its subject matter. Art is the celebration of life, and the exploration of life in all its aspects. If life is unimportant - merely a prelude to the real life that is to begin with death - then art can be of only negligible importance too."

Magee makes several claims about Christianity:

1. Christianity divides man against himself.
2. Christianity devalues life.
3. Christianity teaches that this present life, and by association, art is of negligible importance.

I want to make the case that each of these claims arise from misunderstandings of what Chrsitianity truly teaches and, when understood rightly, Christianity is not anti-art, but actually impells people to value art, make good art, and love the beauty and goodness that art brings into the world.

1. Christianity divides man against himself.
Magee says the Christianity teaches man to "look on his body with shame, his emotions with suspicion, sensuality with fear, and sexual love with feelings of guilt." If art arises out of the human experience, and if these aspects of the human experience are denied, then the possibility of art ends before it begins. I would argue, however, that Magee is mischaracterizing Christianity in these areas. Rather than teaching man to view his body with shame Christianity celebrates the body. It is forever an embodied religion, teaching that matter and our bodies are good and to be enjoyed, and that includes emotions and sexuality. Any shame associated with our bodies that we experience in the present is a passing thing, and was neither the source of our bodies, nor is it their destination.

The truth is that Christianity claims to make a restoration in the human identity rather than separating man from himself. Because the Christian story says that all aspects of life are not as they were meant to be, does not mean that it is saying they are wholly evil. Christianity is not skeptical of all of life, but neither is it naively trusting, rather it is realistic. How does apply to art? It is a story that inextricable ties man's true identity to creativity. God is himself a creative being, and that creativity is a celebration of life, and humanity is made in God's image in that we also are creative beings. There is a sense in which we are only living out of our true identity when we are living out of the fact that we are created to create.

2. Christianity devalues life.
Magee says that "Christianity devalues life and the world and hence, inevitably, their wonderfulness; the conception of man as being not a god but a worm... is totally at odds with the very nature and existence of art." Christianity is not naievly optimistic about the state of humanity left to itself, and if that is what he means by a devaluation of life then I suppose he is right. But the Christian story does not end there - it ends in a massive affirmation of life and of art specifically. It says the world was made good and retains traces of glory everywhere. Creation is indelibly marked with the imprint of God's goodness. It is his workmanship and that goodness cannot be eradicated. The world is, as Francis Schaeffer said, "a glorius ruin."
Insisting that it is in fact in a ruined condition is not devaluing life, nor is at odds with the nature of art. The stories that happen in this world are a mixed bag of joy and sadness. They are shot through with glory and with loss. That is not pessimism. Turn on the news, build something, hope, raise a family, pay careful attention to the turbulent currents of your own heart and you will see that we are glorius but we are ruins.
It is out of this understanding that the best art arises. Art involves sadness and hope mixed up together in a way that mirrors what we experience in life. It is not the job of the artist to smear a veneer of optimism over the truth of human experience, but it is their job to tell true stories. The Bible says that all of creation groans with longing to be freed form its bondage to decay, and as long as that is true art will tell stories that echo that longing, which may appear to be a devaluation of life, but are truly a celebration of it and are redemption songs that await the day when everything ruinous is taken away. Which brings us to the third claim.

3. Christianity teaches that this present life, and by association, art is of negligible importance.
The restoration Christianity heralds does not make bad art, nor does it make people who withdraw from the world as if it were of negligible importance. C. S. Lewis said that it is precisely those who are most taken with the next world who accomplish the most in this one. The kingdom of heaven is such that all those who draw near to it are scattered again into the world to fight for the good of the world. All of life is important and all of life is to be redeemed, that includes art. So Christianty sends artists into the world of art for the common good and bids them to use their God-given creativity to translate the true experiences that are common to the human condition into art and make something beautiful and glorious of them. It arms people with a resources to fall in love with the beauty in the world. It sets mankind on a course to spread that beauty through art or through any other means. Magee says it well when he says that "Art is a celebration of life and the exploration of it in all its aspects." Christianity proclaims no other message.

Advent Conspiracy

Why I Am A Christian (7)

Christianity is a timeless message that is revealed in time. The fact that it is revealed in time makes it adaptable, and it’s timelessness makes it liberating.

By timeless, I mean that it is a voice from outside any human culture across time and geography but is able to speak in to those cultures an unchanging message. It is the unmoving center that draws all 360 degrees of the circle to itself.

How does that make it liberating? Isn’t conformity to an unchanging standard the exact opposite of freedom?

I think the answer to that question hinges on how you define “freedom.” If freedom means the ability to act in complete independence without outside influences, then the answer is no, Christianity does not make people free no matter its being timeless. But I would also add that not only does Christianity not make people free in that way, but nothing does. If that is freedom, then no one has ever been free. This definition of freedom comes out of the belief that to be free one must have no master – one must be completely autonomous, but we are all slave to something. Even the person who is most independent is still a product of a culture and a time and a place and those factors become the blinders around which he sees the world. Even the prevailing worldview in the west, which has so tenaciously held up this definition of freedom and insisted that an individual is only free when they are not living under any other banner than that person's own has only resulted in flying another banner under which people can live.

But if autonomy is not freedom, then what is? The gospel holds out a definition of freedom that is not autonomy, but obedience. Freedom is not being able to occupy any place, but it is occupying specifically your own place. Think of it like this: a fish is limited in that it cannot breath the air, but to that fish water is not limitation, but life. Happiness is found in this limitation, and anything else is death. Freedom is when human beings live in the place they were made for, and under the banner they were made to live under.

If humanity cannot escape living under some banner then it is no longer a question of living under one or not, but it becomes a question of which and why.

If all worldviews are the same then it does not matter which you choose, but if there is a worldview that is timeless truth, then everything depends on living under its banner. If the gospel is a human product then it is just good advice, but if it is the timeless voice from outside then there is a chance it can be the breath of life it claims to be. If living under the banner of the gospel leads to destruction then it is a lie even if it does counter the blind spots of our personal and cultural idols, but if it creates human flourishing then it’s yoke is easy and it’s burden is light because it is the yoke humanity was made for. If it makes us flourish then our happiness lies not in being autonomous and independent, but in living in the place that was made for us and for which we were made.

Art Every Wednesday (28)

The Human Story is a audio project trying to tell the story of the human experience with songs and quotes. The idea is to collect songs and quotations and arrange them into a narrative. The six acts of this narrative are:

Act 1: "All manner of things..."
Everything is right and the sounds are in harmony. Crescendos depict the explosion of life into the universe.

Act 2: "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
Discord enters and there is brokenness and fragmentation in the sounds you hear. The songs tell of pain and separation, isolation and loneliness.

Act 3: "Years of living among the breakage."
The music and quotes show the pain in the human story, and yet, also the moments of beauty and hope that are all tied in together with it.

Act 4: "Prayers for Rain (Interlude)"
These songs are prayers for something, anything, to enter the world and change it. A prayer for a eucastastrophe.

Act 5: "With a hollow rumble of wings..."
This is the beginning of the end. The broken pieces and fragmented bits of the human experience are beginning to be set right.

Act 6: "...Shall be well."
The consummation. Harmony re-enters the story, and creation is wholly healed, being that it was in the beginning despite the sadness of the first 5 acts.

Here are some sample tracks from each section:

1. God's Grandeur. This is the first track of the collection. It combines "Takk" by Sigur Ros with a voice over of Jerram Barrs reading "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

2. The Downward Spiral (Medley). This is the pain and brokenness of life translated into audio. Notice the fragmentation and discord. If it is disturbing to listen to it is because it is supposed to be.

3. Signifying Nothing. Shakespeare's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" and Explosions in the Sky's "Inside it all feels the same."

4. Diary of an Old Soul. This track is a mix of a selection from George Macdonald's long poem "Diary of an Old Soul" set to Explosions in the Sky's song "First breath after coma."

5. Now We Are Free. A quotation from Dostoevsky's "Brother's Karamazov" and "Now We Are Free" from the Gladiator soundtrack.

6. This is the Morning. The closing lines of C. S. Lewis' book, "The Last Battle" and "The Next Place" from the Meet Joe Black soundtrack.

Doses in the Long Run

There is a sense in which this world tends toward disorder. Order and life appear through constant renewal.The story of the Bible is one in which the fall pushes everything toward decay, but sin is not the only force at work - God is at work also. He creates, sustains, and renews all things. You might say this life is a battle between the entropy of sin and the renewing grace of God.

Engaging in that battle on some scale is a part of the calling of every believer. It is up to every generation to discern what renewal looks like in it's own time and place. However, because theology is often done in opposition to what came before it the danger in this process is that instead of reviving the whole gamut of Biblical truth, each generation only renews that portion of truth which counters the blind spots and weaknesses of the previous generation.

To put it in a word picture: imagine you have yellow paint that you want to turn into green paint. The problem is the paint you have now has become too yellow; there are two ways to correct this: 1. Go buy blue paint or 2. Go buy green paint. If you mix the blue paint with the yellow paint it will become green, but only in passing. Keep mixing the blue and the whole thing will become blue, and you will have only traded one wrong color for another. If you buy green paint it might take longer to change the color of the yellow paint, but it will become green and stay green. Now go from the somewhat silly analogy of paint back to the process of renewing Christianity in the world. In trying to renew the present landscape of Christianity there is a tendency to just try and add “doses” of the “other side." For example, if Christianity has become too modern, just add enough doses of postmodernism and the whole ship will sail true. The dose mentality only has the power to be true in passing, but in the end, unless the color we are adding to the mix itself represents the full gamut of biblical truth, then we will only be trading one set of strengths and weaknesses for another. What was intended for correction becomes a pendulum swinging into a new kind of danger.

That is not to say that it is never appropriate to give a “dose” of correction. Christians need to have both a wide-lens and a tight-lens when seeking to live out the Bible. Sometimes what is called for is the tight-lens, focusing on a certain part of God’s truth applied to a certain situation. The right tight-lens truth applied in the life of an individual person (or a culture) can mean life, peace, and truth. The tight-lens unbalances truth, and does so rightly as long as it is consistent with the wide-lens view of all the Bible teaches. The danger comes in when the unbalanced dose is presented as the point of balance itself.

In the process of renewing Christianity the unbalanced dose looks right because it is so opposed to the sins of the past that it is trying to correct, but that is only looking at the short term. As the reactionary theology spreads and becomes the new dominant theology new generations will grow up beneath its umbrella who never had the benefit of both sides. They will begin with the unbalanced dose as the starting point and whatever truth the reactionary theology did not retain, they will not retain.

Like shells fired from a shotgun, ideas tend to spread out over time and have unintended consequences. Christians must be far-seeing so that today’s solutions are not tomorrow’s dead zones. Believers must know the Bible and preserve the full gospel, unless in reacting to a certain cultural circumstance we do violence to scripture and sow the seeds of error into the church. If it is not right in the long run it is not really right in the short term either.

The Truth of Fiction

In an essay called "The Truth of Fiction" Chinua Achebe writes that everyone creates fictions for ourselves to make our worlds livable. By "fictions" he means the stories that make sense of things and connect the dots of life. Imagine the individual dots as isolated events, for example, a stray comment, some disappointment or heartbreak, an unexpected smile. The fictions are the stories we imagine that lie behind these events, the meanings we give them. Some of these fictions are beneficent (belief that a person did a hurtful thing not because of some character flaw, but a mood) and some are malignant (belief in superior and inferior races or sexes, belief that because a person is wearing an unusual kind of clothing they must have an unusual kind of soul).

I think Achebe is right, we are fiction builders. We do not just keep the fictions we create to ourselves, however, they are contagious. They spread from person to person like a virus (or a cure) and the stories we have made for ourselves to live in, others will try to live in too as that story spreads and they come to see the world, themselves, their loved ones, God in similar ways. That is why it is so important that we do not lie to ourselves, that we try not to let ourselves be deceived, that awake people remain awake.

Achebe is saying that whether these fictions are true or false, good or evil, they have power because they shape the way we see the world. The power to make a story that others will live in is a great power, which begs the question: How can people use this power well?

1. With Humility
2. With Love

Humility
Apply the idea that we are creators of fictions to the area of interpersonal relationships. Isn't that all that is happening when you are getting to know someone, you are creating stories about one another in your minds. No friendship, marriage, or hatred can begin without these stories, and the stories are the very stuff of the relationship - what you dread, or miss, or fall in love with. But when these narratives are firmly in place there is always more to the person than can fit into them. People married for half a century still learn new things about one another. Enemies can come to edit the stories they have for one another and be reconciled. This gift of creating fictions requires humility.

There is more to the people around you than you know. The funny thing is somewhere along the line of getting to know a person we think that we know them, and then our opinion of them crystallizes to the point that we can only see them through that certain lens. Even if they are trying to show us there is more to their souls than we have pinned down we will not accept it if it does not fit with who we have decided that person is. We can put people in boxes and then keep putting them there and so we make our opinions of others into prisons for them.

Love
In order to be cruel or callous to a person, you must first create for them a malignant fiction. Once this is created you are free to treat them however you want because "they are just that way and you know it even if nobody else can see it." The fiction itself becomes enough justification for any kind of treatment. Trace every instance of cruelty or inhumanity back to its source and you will find someone deciding to paint another person in a certain dark light. If we are to truly love one another and act in loving ways it begins with going back and revising our stories of the people we find it difficult to love. There is a sense in which this is the very heart of compassion. Jesus did this constantly. He looked on people the world had cast aside and saw a different story for them than they had been taught to believe. In the gospel we see the very dregs of society flocking to Jesus because they find someone interacting with them in the light of a beneficent story. To love a person, at the end of the day, may simply mean to see them as God intends them to be, and the glory of this grace is that it leaves changed lives in its wake. It is as though in the process of imagining another story reality actually changes. Grace calls sinners saints and then makes them so. Grace is a very contagious fiction and as it spreads people may find it big enough to live in and big enough to be healed in.

I'll end with this quote from the end of Achebe's essay which i love:

"I have direct experience of how easy it is for us to short-circuit the power of our own imagination by our own act of will, for when a desperate man wishes to believe something however bizarre or stupid, nobody can stop him. He will discover in his imagination a willing and enthusiastic accomplice. Together they will weave the necessary fiction which will bind him securely to his cherished intention."

Art Every Wednesday (27)

Dale Chihuly is one of the premier workers of glass art in the world. His pieces have been featured in museum all over the world. I have had the privileged to see two of his installations and they are breathtaking. The first was an 80 foot pillar of blown glass and the second was a series of chandeliers hung in the Mayo clinic.

Chihuly at Google


Chihuly talks about his work


More examples of Chihuly's work with glass:

Project: Columbia - Love INC

Yesterday I interviewed Jane Williams of the Columbia branch of Love INC, to find out more about what is happening in Columbia to care for the needy in our community. I came away with a greater view of the scope of the problem but also a greater appreciation of what is being done. In a nutshell, Love INC is a middle-man between the needy in the community and the churches. People with needs call them and Love INC can connect them with Christians who can help.
Putting faith into action can be intimidating because the huge size of the need seems overwhelming and unfamiliar, but organizations like Love INC provide people with a way to get their foot in the door and serve real people in with their real needs.

Here are some excerpts from our interview:

Q: What is Love Inc?
A: Love Inc is a 30 year old organization started by a social worker in Holland Michigan who thought it would be a good idea for churches to work together in more strategic ways to address the needs in their community. The idea was to create "clearing house" where you actually gather information about what is available in churches and in the community so that when people in need call in you can actually give them referrals. Our goal is really trying to connect people with churches. Love Inc is not a church, we are just a little hub to try and point people to churches... and we are trying to help provide people with safe, manageable opportunities to move people out of the pews and into the community.

[From the Needy to Churches]
When people in need call in we try to help them. We engage them in about a 30 minute interview to try and find out their whole story. A lot of times they can’t pay their utility bill because they don’t have a job, and they can’t get a job because they have a felony conviction, or they don’t know how to make a resume, or they are just deer in the headlights depressed. They just need someone who will give them a chance. Or they grew up in foster care and no one really ever taught them how to live life. So we try to find out what are the underlying issues and we have started some life skills classes. A of people need help budgeting their money, finding a job, or the just need self-confidence. They just need to understand how to relate to people. Mainly though they just need friends. I have heard a few stories of people who have made it out of generational poverty, but never have I heard a story of a person whose done that without someone getting in their lives and helping them

[From Churches to the Needy]
A lady from a church came in yesterday and said that their youth group wants to put together Thanksgiving baskets but she don’t know any needy families, and she asked if we could give her a needy family to adopt for the holiday season. That church happens to be in an area where there is a lot of need. We get calls from there all the time, and we tried to connect them to a family close to their geographic area. Because we get all the calls in here and we can see that we can map out where the churches are and try to do that.

[Big Needs]
We also get situations where the need is so great we know we are going need to mobilize lots of people to help. We helped a family last month whose father has cancer, hasn’t been able to work for a year. The mother is from another country and couldn’t get a job because her papers had expired and they have 6 children. It’s taken a small army, but we have helped them find housing, get married, her get her ID. It turned out that they were never able to get married because she didn’t have proper ID. Its because we didn’t just say can we give you 50 bucks for your utility bill to ease our guilt. You plunge in. It takes plunging in and it is really messy and it always takes longer than you think.

Q: What can college students do to get involved?
A: A great thing for college students to do would be to come spend a few hours a week answering the phones over here. There is a real education in just hearing people in crisis and their story. The people who answer thephone don’t have to solve the problem. We triage and try to figure it out together. They wouldn’t be thrown in to the middle of solving the problem, but they would have the opportunity to hear some stories. We have a scripted interview. It’s pretty clear cut. Or they can help with the life skills program we are doing. We need childcare workers every week and would love to have people show up and hold some kids. They are mostly children of single moms who would not be able to attend the class unless you provided childcare.

Art Every Wednesday (26)

This weeks Art Wednesday is part autobiographical, as, in writing, we have finally come to an art form that I can speak about from personal experience. Sometime in college I was disillusioned with my major, feeling depressed, and generally feeling like I could already see the barren landscape of my future stretching out desolate all the way to the horizon, and then it hit me: switch to the English department and become a writer. The idea that did it for me (other than a romantic image of myself as some kind of Bohemian vagabond who travels around the world writing deep thoughts my whole life) was that in writing I could create stories that would do for others what stories had always done for me, namely, take people away to another world and give them hope.

I remember once I was sitting in study hall in 8th grade with my face in a book and the 9th grader sitting next to me looked over my shoulder and asked, "Why are you reading?" He said it loudly and in a tone of voice that indicated real confusion, as if he was faced with a mystery that he could not decipher. He might have had the same tone of voice if I had suddenly sprouted horns from my head. I panicked because a 9th grader was talking to me and thankfully the teacher overheard and saved me by declaring, "Stories teach you how to live." Years later it still seems like a perfect answer.

The best writers have this power to create a seamless dream that is so vivid that you lose yourself it in, which, you might say is the power of all art. It brushes with you and as it takes part of you along with it and when it returns to you that little bit is different, better. In this brief reprieve the greatest art will speak the truth. There are so many stories I've read through which I have experienced this exchange, and these are the stories that I return to over and over again when I need that little bit of truth. Writers work with language and craft it into something beautiful. They work with symbols and invest them with meaning. If the art is good that meaning becomes a razor point that can cut us where we need to be cut. As with all artists, writers repeat the act of creation in miniature. God made us creative beings, sub-creators, as Tolkien put it. There is power in the worlds writers create in their fictions. There is power in looking at the world and seeing it for what it is, in all its ugliness and glories, and then setting down on paper. It is the power to tell a lie that is really telling the truth.


Three books that contain examples of prose at its most beautiful:


A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
By: Annie Dillard

Dillard won a Pulitzer for this book and all that happens in it is basically that she goes outside and walks around and writes about what she sees and thinks about life, and it is beautiful. Her use of language leaves you breathless.




100 Years of Solitude
By: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This is the story of the long history of one obscure South American town and all that happens within it. I found myself drawn on by the originality and the creativity of the stories in this book and also by the great writing.






Going to Meet the Man
By: James Baldwin

I include this collection of short stories because it contains my favorite short story, Sonny's Blues. If you haven't read it, go read it. It is a retelling of the prodigal son set it mid-20th century Harlem.








Here are three books I have found helpful in learning about the craft of writing:


The Writing Life
by: Annie Dillard

Dillard tells stories and creates metaphors that serve to teach about the nature of the writing life. Read this book for the beauty of her prose if nothing else.






On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
by: Stephen King

Stephen King in his usual wit and dry candor weaves his thoughts on the craft of writing into his own story. This is an entertaining read that will make you laugh and alternately take our your journal to copy down lines.






Bird by Bird
by: Anne Lamott

Like King, Lamott tells her story with a strong streak of humor. This is very practical book. If you struggle with sitting down and getting things on paper (which I am sure all writers do) this book will give you some good advice and make you feel like you are not alone in the world.

Free Audiobook of the Month

Each month ChristianAudio.com makes a new classic of Christian listerature available for free.

This month is John Calvin's, Of Prayer and the Christian Life

Enjoy the book