Egregious Reader

Go gather by the humming sea Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell, And to its lips thy story tell, And they thy comforters will be, Rewording in melodious guile Thy fretful words a little while, Till they shall singing fade in ruth And die a pearly brotherhood                 W.B. Yeats ...... Male as I am, my place, perhaps, is to sit down in a mysterious presence, leaving the vocabularies to toil, the machine to eviscerate its resources; learning we are here not necessarily to read on , but to explore with blind fingers the word in the cold, until the snow turns to feathers and somewhere far down we come upon warmth and a heart beating.                            R.S. Thomas

I understand this novel has been a favorite of Russians since its publication in the sixties (25 years after Bulgakov's death). I have come across it once or twice before in other works (M. Volf's work on forgiveness for one) and my Russian friend has recommended this novel to me more than once. I loved it. I thought it was incredible and look forward to re-reading it soon. The plot is terribly interesting, and needs to be told in short-form for those who have not read the novel. In the first chapter, a scholarly editor is scolding a poet who was tasked to write a blasphemous poem about Jesus for Easter (this is atheist Russia after the revolution). His criticism is that the poem makes Jesus come alive and since he never lived it has failed. Then a mysterious foreigner is there with him and he enters the conversation and contradicts the editor and quite unsettles him with some of his mysterious statements. This stranger is the devil himself and not only does he say that...

From my John Baillie Sermons he was talking about this image of Christ Knocking and made the following point: Religion always appears under two contrasted guises, corresponding to these two contrasted scenes. It is first an austere and disturbing challenge, and then it is a glorious and happy feast. Under the first of these guises religion is known to us all. In every man's life that first scene has been enacted. We all know what is meant by that stranger on the doorstep, and by that annoyingly persistent knocking, and by the terrible strain it puts on the man within. So much of religion is familiar to everybody. But the tragedy is that many a man's acquaintance with religion stops at that point, and he knows nothing of the second scene, when Christ is inside the room. That is why so many people carry with them all through their lives the idea of religion as a harsh and joyless thing, a thing that limits their freedom and cramps their spirits and makes them unhappy. That i...

I never thought of myself as ambitious. How can you be ambitions when you don't even know what you want to do? One of my biggest struggles as a young man was figuring out how I could be of value to the world. You hear people say, I alway knew I wanted to be a pilot or I plan on being a pastor when I grow up. I was the poster child of not knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up. Well, maybe not the poster child, because it really bothered me. My generation seemed to want to tell the world they could care less whether they ever made something of their life. I wasn't really like that. I cared a lot about trying to be something ... it was just difficult to name that something. And so through my twenties and into my thirties I really strived to find something I was good at, to make something of myself, to be something really meaningful. I was ambitious to have an ambition. Striving is such a good word for it ... man, I feel tired deep in my soul just typing that word. Strive...

My dad is really involved in a ministry that is largely serving the a community of Latinos in a local trailer park. This was all started relationally through a church community, and "corners outreach" has asked that local community, as well the local elementary school how they could help. The largest need was helping the kids with school. Anyway, there is no overt evangelism. The plan is to truly jump in and get to know people through working together. This seems obvious to my dad, but many church people who hear about the organization and want to talk with him about it are so locked into the idea of counting baptisms, they seem confused by this. A little more building up to why I bought this book again and read it all the way through. My dad recently offered to help people fill out their taxes for free. He has an accounting background and has helped plenty of people in the past. So someone from church came as a translator and men began coming to get help. What he saw and...