Greetings, my book people and curious wanderers. Life is often a surprise. I’ve added 22-year-old former child actor and YouTuber Casey Simpson (@caseysimpsonchannel) as one of the bright streams that helps fill my outrageous booklist. I algorithmically wandered into his vicinity when I fancied a lot of his culture and finance content, but that wasn’t all. When he neatly wove a book into his analysis for the 3rd of 4th time, I paid new attention. It was a play I’d never heard of: “All My Sons” by Arthur Miller. “Death of a Salesmen,” sure. Dutifully consumed for AP English two lifetimes ago, and I remember almost nothing. (Maybe it would hit differently now.) What was I missing? I requested “All My Sons” immediately.Playwright and essayist Arthur Miller was born in 1915 and made it a brisk 89 years (about five of them married to Marilyn Monroe). He published “All My Sons” in 1947, in the shadow of World War II. In the play, told in three successively shorter acts, a manufacturing father grapples with the murky legacy he leaves for his surviving son, Chris. Chris, meanwhile, hopes to marry his late brother’s former sweetheart to the unsettling of his grief-addled mother. I raced through this family reckoning in less than day. Thanks, Casey!
When not taking my recent book cues from YouTube, I took them mostly from a ministry residency I have been part of for almost two years. The most recent month’s book assignment was “Pick the missions-centered book of your choice…this can be…a case study/story of a famous missionary.” I chose two: “A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael” (1987) by Elisabeth Elliot (a missionary in her own right) and “All is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir” by Brennan Manning (with John Blase, 2011).
I’d loosely describe both Carmichael (Irish, 1867-1951) and Manning (American, 1934-2013) as Jesus-preaching career missionaries, but good luck finding two more different missionaries than Amy Carmichael and Brennan Manning. Amy was a celibate who remained so till death and who made a life of rescuing children from temple prostitution in India. Her biography sat on my parents’ shelves my whole life, the title drawing my eye from time to time. Dad read an excerpt to me once when I was tackling a frightful pile of dishes, and a 2002 ticket stub in the copy marked my prior incomplete attempt. Back then I was an early Spanish student, and I surely laughed over Amy’s struggles with Japanese (she went briefly to Japan and Sri Lanka before transitioning to India). Not only did she amusingly chronicle her battle with the idioms of Japanese, but she often had a frank and funny manner in her copious letters that Elisabeth Elliot quotes from in the text. Overall, the book left me with longings this world can’t satisfy. Carmichael’s work continues today at the Dohnavur Fellowship in India. And while Elisabeth Elliot holds herself remote from the text, re-immersing myself deeply in her skilled writing for the first time since youth makes me want to explore the various biographies of her that have released in the last several years. However, they look depressing.
Meanwhile, Brennan Manning of “All is Grace” describes his young life in a tensely broken household (as an adult he got plastered instead of attending his cruel mother’s funeral and near his dying year had never laid eyes on her gravesite); he took Franciscan orders as a young man (he was also part of the Little Brothers of Jesus), then renounced them years later to marry his beloved Rosalyn. The marriage too unraveled. Manning abused alcohol off and on much of his life even while encouraging thousands about the love of Christ in seminars and retreats.
In her Patheos article “The Unfortunate Legacy of Brennan Manning,” Esther O’Reilly comments while reading his memoir, “This is not a man who deserved a place as a revered Christian leader or mentor. This is a man who should never have had a platform in the first place.” (If she were writing her article now, she might also take aim at the writer of the foreword, Philip Yancey. He, as a sage in my circle pointed out, is an adulterer “like the writer of Psalm 23”. Let us cast down our idols, writers or otherwise.)
I get O’Reilly’s correct concern. I also get that chaotic Saul prophesied in 1 Samuel 10 when the Spirit of God rushed upon him. God is no respecter of human rules, boards, or approval. As 1 Corinthians 1:27 remarks, “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (ESV). If you would like a sample of the foolishness of “ragamuffin” Brennan Manning, I suggest the 1999 “Kingdom Works” (“What it Means to Be Cool in Christ Jesus”). It always draws out a chuckle or two when my life is especially hard and my Jesus-following feels especially long-faced.
Finally, I often read something aloud to my kids as we eat breakfast, and I recently picked up Natalie Babbitt’s “Kneeknock Rise,” a Newbery Honor Book published in 1970. Babbitt, better know for 1975’s “Tuck Everlasting,” (adapted multiple times for screen and stage), writes natural description like her own feet root from the earth and illustrates the text herself. The town of Instep has long believed a monstrous “Megrimum” (MEG-ra-mum) lurks atop the rise; the citizens of Instep could be likened to the people of the kingdom in J.K. Rowling’s “The Ickabog,” named after the rumored monster of that land.
As in “Tuck Everlasting,” Babbitt writes kid-ready philosophy just right for chewing on in discussion. Questions that might arise are: “When is something figured out?” “How do we know?” “Are there things we can’t know with eyes and ears?” “Are there mysteries you enjoy not knowing the answer to?”
Next up: Camus, Gloria Steinem, John Paul II… in the meantime, may your mug be full of good drink and your libraries be well-staffed.
Honorable Mention: While less read than POURED OVER, I must highlight “A Street Through Time: A 12,000 Year Journey Along the Same Street” (with illustrations by Steve Noon). For teaching history, I use the 4-volume “Story of the World” series from Susan Wise Bauer. This year, right as I had recently finished acquiring the last of the 4 volumes, they started updating the series for the 25th anniversary. Dear reader, I bought the update. Totally worth it. More text, new literature suggestions, and heavily revised activity guides. You can absolutely still make a Chicken Mummy™, but we already did that and our corpse was stolen by grave-robbing raccoons (probably) who left only some of his wrappings behind in the woods, so we require fresh ideas. “A Street Through Time” was the first big hit from the revised supplemental reading list. It charms with its detailed, “Where’s Waldo?”-like depictions of eras through time with a bonus time traveler hidden in each era. Check it out!