Top Twelve Books

This is not your typical Top Ten (or in my case, Top Twelve) book list.  This is not a list of the best books that have hit the market in the last year.  Quite literally, there are NO hot takes in this post.  

That’s not how I roll, in part because a girl can only buy SO MANY BOOKS at a time, and also because library waiting lists take forever.  But more than that, reading has become for me a spiritual practice and I am finding that the Spirit brings books across my path at just the right time. This year has been no exception as these books in particular have been both spiritual companions and guides for me as I worked through a year of hard, but fruitful personal growth.  So, like I said, no hot takes.  More like testimonies.  But, you never know what book might become a tool of transformation, or a source joy and encouragement.

Glittering Images by Susan Howatch
Don’t be fooled by the slightly cheesy cover or the fact that this novel was published thirty years ago. This book is not only a well crafted novel with rich character development and plot, it is also a spiritual powerhouse. It called me to account in entirely unexpected ways.  If you want your inner life left well enough alone, do NOT read this one.   

Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout
I originally picked this book up simply to immerse myself in quality writing.  (Writers are readers, right?!)  I had no idea that the book was about a young pastor, wrestling both with a wound-filled inner life and his vocation as a minister in the church.  Strout manages to create vivid scenes, not only between the characters but also within the main character.  It’s stunning.  Much to my surprise, I deeply identified with the tension the pastor experiences between the persona he portrays and his actual inner experience.  Gorgeous and hopeful.

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
This is a series of essays about Dillard’s experience as a writer.  In true Dillard fashion, it is vivid, sometimes startling so. I felt like a eager disciple, sitting at the feet of a master.  And a quote…just because it is so good and takes the greatest lie of writing, scarcity, and exposes it as false, “One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.”

Everything Belongs: the Gift of Contemplative Prayer Richard Rohr
This book is 15 years old.  It came out my freshman year of college.  But it’s one of those books that would have been meaningless to me had I read it then.  How often do I miss what God is doing because I am preoccupied with what I think God should be doing, in me, around me, in my family, in my church.  Rohr’s challenge is a challenge of vision and of posture, seeing and welcoming what is and finding God already elbows deep in redemptive work right there.  It is might be an uncomfortable read, but in the best way.  

The Sacred Enneagram by Christopher L. Heuertz
I started exploring the Enneagram in early 2018. It was initially disorienting and unsettling and left me feeling a bit bereft.  (Okay, a LOT bereft).  I sought out Heuertz’s book because, not only because of its accessible and thorough explanations of the types, their shadows, motivations, etc., but also because it offers a way forward through spiritual practices.  It was the word of hope I needed to bring me out of my “Oh my word, I’m a 3” despair and nudge me toward healthy shadow work.

The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris
I was only vaguely familiar with Norris when I picked up this book.  I was participating in a writing institute (way in over my head by the way) at the university and monastery where Norris wrote this book. This particular work is so unique in that it weaves together personal vignettes and reflection with meaty theological and biblical themes.  A nourishing read.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
I have become increasingly aware of the burden of responsibility to read authors that don’t look or sound like me.  Sometimes it feels like a discipline because the author isn’t catering to my sensibilities, and rightly not.  It is my job to show up to listen.  This was a hard but necessary read.  The power in the pages can bring a reader low with the author’s ability to speak truth without fear.  This is a book I need to read again, and maybe again.  

Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction by Eugene Peterson
I had read bits and pieces of this classic book by the recently deceased Eugene Peterson, but never read it in its entirety.  While it is several decades old, it is both timeless and timely.  I read it during a particularly vocationally challenging window of time early in the year.  It reminded me who I was as a shepherd, and what I was to be about, not meeting people’s every need or solving all their problems, but helping them to pay attention to God in and around them.

Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again.
I have appreciated Rachel Held Evans’ work for a long time, particularly her books that lay out honestly the struggles of her faith journey.  But this book felt altogether new.  It is an exploration of the Bible written by a person who has walked through the fires of disillusionment and doubt and come out on the other side with a deeper, more honest love for Scripture.  It is not an idolatrous love, a propping the Bible up on a pedestal as a unofficial fourth member of the Trinity, but rather the work of someone who has encountered God anew through the story of God.  Altogether lovely, but will be a challenging read if you affirm a literalist, dictation, fundamentalist view of the Bible.

Uncluttered: Free Your Space, Free Your Schedule, Free Your Soul by Courtney Ellis
I got a sneak peek ahead of the crowd on this one!  I loved this book, and not just because it’s written by another co-pastoring mom of littles.  It offered practical guidance offered along the way through the down-to-earth wittiness of the author.  But beyond that, I loved this book for just how very Christian it is, not in a “Jesus veneer shellacked over some self-help,” but truly Christ-centric.  It is grounded in God’s kind and generous intentions for all of Creation, and invites the reader to trust those intentions by being obedient.  Read my full review here.

You Welcomed Me: Loving Refugees and Immigrants Because God First Loved Us by Kent Annan
If you are sick unto death of sound clips, news snippets, and the endless cacophony of voices telling us what we should do about the “refugee issue,” this book is for you.  It is a book for people of faith seeking to follow Jesus in the midst of loud voices on every side demanding allegiance. Unlike so much of the chaos I find blaring on various social media platforms, this book provides practical ways to engage the topic, to exercise sanctified imagination, and to put feet and hands to work for good in the world. 

The Chosen by Chaim Potok
Why did it take me several tries to finish this book over the course of a few years? I have no idea. Maybe I wasn't ready to receive it.  It is worth noting that the entire book is worth the last 15-20 pages. It’s an incredibly powerful story that asks difficult questions: what is faith? What is my role in that faith? What is my vocation? How does one raise a child to follow the Lord with the best resources you have available? What does it mean to be a friend, to walk with a person through the deepest valleys? As one who, as of late even more so, wrestled with my pastoral vocation, I was so moved by the father's raising of the child to be a tzaddik (rabbi), knowing full well he would likely not fulfill his prescribed role, but doing so anyway shape his character into a person of compassion, capable of suffering alongside another human being, and not being a slave to his brilliant mind. So much more could be said, but that's all. Read it when you are ready to receive it.