Category: book review

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Review: Essential Writings G.K. Chesterton

I’ve changed my reading routine to include 20-30 minutes of spiritual reading in the mornings. That is dramatic change in my usual speed reading zoom through books — an occupational hazard when you’re an English teacher with multiple courses. Enjoying, even savoring a book is not a thing. Enter the spiritual reading: not just a slow-down, but a conscientious discipline to read a small portion of a work and meditate upon it prayerfully. I look for texts that lend themselves to this, and I discovered that I already had G.K. Chesterton’s Essential Writings (part of the Modern Spiritual Masters Series) compiled by William Griffin.

This collection of essays are the perfect fit for my routine, and gave me many weeks of deep thoughts, the occasional guffaw, and plenty of reflection. Each selection has a brief set-up to facilitate the context of the piece, and was indispensable for my journaling later.

Chesterton’s observations are a little quirky and often surprising, but always spot-on. My favorite essay, “Why I’m Not a Pagan,” explores the limitations of a plain humanity found in paganism, and the elevation of the person through Christian virtue. I return often to my favorite passage :

Charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And Faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.

Essential Writings is a great introduction to Chesterton.

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reading thru your self-distancing time?

I am absolutely making my way through the stacks of unread books in my house, and in the midst of trying to get work done, doing some of those put-off chores, and a new-found fervor in prayer, I’m also having to do a little clean-up with my work in ministry with cancelled retreats and talks.

This week all of my books went on super-sale at Amazon! I’m happy to share those links with you here and hope you’ll jump in and support my ministry through those purchases. I also encourage you to look around and see what other authors have on sale too!

Our Lady of Charity: How a Cuban Devotion to Mary Helped Me Grow in Faith and Love is perfect for this trial we’re all enduring. Cachita, the Blessed Mother, rescues her children from a storm — and she’s with us now in our whirlwind storms. ($4.99)

Super Girls and Halos: My Companions on the Quest for Truth, Justice, and Heroic Virtue is the perfect accompaniment to your superhero binge on disney+ ! ($2.99). If you want a hardcopy, it’s on sale for $5 directly from Ave Maria Press. You might want to look around on those sale pages, too!

And finally, the book that started it all, My Badass Book of Saints: Courageous Women Who Showed Me How to Live is on sale for $0.99. It’s a good match with Our Lady of Charity!

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Review: A Sacred Look

I had the pleasure of meeting Sr. Nancy Usselmann this summer. She was visiting as part of a media group that was in town for the filming of I Still Believe (go see it in March when it’s out!). She dropped by the house with her posse for mojitos, and we had a lively visit.

We talked about movies, books, and superheroes and discovered a common love of seeking the seeds of the Gospel in popular culture.

Her book, A Sacred Look: Becoming Cultural Mystics, explores movies, music, television shows, and the current phenomenon with heroes and superheroes through a Catholic lens. She develops an approach to experiencing this entertainment that includes developing relationships. When we seek what is good, beautiful, and true, we want to share it, and share the experience.

We can carry these messages from the fictional plane into our lives because we “hunger ever more for communion, connection, and intimacy with other people….This physical existence is never enough. We long for communion with a Being beyond our comprehension” ( pp 127-128).

Becoming cultural mystics helps us spread the Good News of God’s love and our salvation through Jesus Christ by being in tune with the those seeds in the culture, and interpreting them for others. It’s not just an enriching way to respond to the entertainment we consume, but a way of living the New Evangelization.

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