What three books have influenced your faith the most?

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RevLindsayGKing1930 said:
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PilgrimsProgress
FROM THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE (NEJM)

Comes this excellent review of Norman Cousins' great book, HEAD FIRST, The Biology of HOPE. I have always said that the real title of this book should be

SPIRIT (PNEUMA) FIRST, The Biology of FAITH, HOPE & LOVE
Reading this book is what influenced me to scrap the word 'hypnotherapy' and replace it with the neo-logism, PNEUMA-therapy.

Here is the link to the review http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199004263221720

Head First: The biology of hope
By Norman Cousins. 368 pp. New York, E.P. Dutton, 1989. $19.95.

Norman Cousins' new book continues the story of the "obsession" he first reported in Anatomy of an Illness (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979): to demonstrate that emotion and mood affect biology directly. Cousins has set out to influence physicians, encouraging them to "put to work all the resources of spirit that can be translated into beneficial biochemical changes." The book interweaves many themes: Cousins' new career as adjunct professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, after 31 years spent as editor of the Saturday Review; his commitment to honoring individual experience while subjecting it to scientific scrutiny; his study of patients with melanoma; an account of the hypnotist, Franz Anton Mesmer; a study of the placebo effect; and Cousins' survey of images of the physician in literature. Perhaps the most suggestive aspect of the book is the scientific grounding it provides for the traditional values of the physician.

Cousins constantly attempts to bridge the cultures of journalism and medicine, aware that medically trained readers, schooled "to shun conclusions based on single experiences and to look for evidence based on numbers of cases," may prefer reasoning that moves "from the general to the particular" to the anecdotal method Cousins employs. "Writers seek out anecdotes as a way of making larger statements," he points out. "They tend to shun statistics, [which] obscure souls. If nothing is real to medical researchers except as it happens to a significant number of people, nothing is real to a writer save as it happens to a single person." This comfortable view begs the question, Can a single outcome define prudent policy for the many? What about the many head-first right-thinkers who go straight on to painful death? Possibly they die happier — but do they? Beware. To answer that question demands numbers — more than a single case.
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Thus LGK ... would you say that OE Sus or Jesus is a scattered light ... a somewhat fractal or abstract image that is buried in real light or otherwise the sublime shadow? Pure hype to many who can't get below the emotional horizon?

I liked A Noe's book Out of our Heads as a hint of a multi etude nous variance from the one-way theme a step towards wakening us to eternal cognizance? Some say they experience this in a NDE, OBI or hypo nautical trip in the dark pool. Scott Peck claimed it a dangerous pilgrimage and one should go there with much assistance of you could end up disrupted or in chaos ... that's like it appears ... a temporary or temporal thing!

Now in the institutions in the east there is great hesitation and inhibition about studies of such things and they are very conservative about things that are not solidly institutionalized ... even if in Eire ...

Thanks for the hint on another book on what many consider mythical or out of the physical head containment. Sometimes one has to be sublime to get round the philosopher's stone ...

I'll take the plunge ... an immersion into the saliently isolated metaphors? They are outstanding but remain unseen ... code-X ... the unknown!
 
Another book that was a big influence, and maybe should be my third, is Cosmos by Carl Sagan. It is badly dated scientifically but no book by a scientist has given me a better sense of the sweep, scope, and beauty of the universe and our place in that sweep, scope, and beauty.
 
I liked Jody's dive from that elevated machine into a dark region where she submerged for 18 minutes that was denied by the powers ... a period of silence so to speak ...
 
'You Can't Be Serious — essays in wonder'… you won't find it yet. I'm told it's coming out in August-September (Rock's Mills Press).

I wrote it. No: it's NOT self-published. It has influenced me deeply because it made me engage more widely and more deeply than I ever would without the disciplines of authorship.

Writing is a powerful way of exploring and testing your own thoughts, attachments, assumptions, faith and selectivity. My cherished blind spots, self-contradictory prejudices, ignorance, hypocrisy and illogic confronted me like flint-faced judges instead of huddling together as a fluffy comfort zone.

If you REALLY want to wrestle with a book, I can't recommend anything more highly than to write one. Give it the next 5 years of your life (you'll NEED a tight deadline).
 
MikePaterson said:
'You Can't Be Serious — essays in wonder'… you won't find it yet. I'm told it's coming out in August-September (Rock's Mills Press).

I wrote it. No: it's NOT self-published. It has influenced me deeply because it made me engage more widely and more deeply than I ever would without the disciplines of authorship.
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Another Wonderwriter? Cool. Let us know when it's out and maybe we can do a thread on it. I know we had great fun discussing @Seeler 's novel when it came out.
 
What I most miss on this site, and for that matter, in some of my churches is a widespread burning curiosity that comes from the realization that the more we know, the more we realize how much we don't know. In the wake of such humbling awareness, wonder and awe, and a relentless spiritual longing are the building blocks of a thrilling spiritual quest that yields life-changing mystical experiences, not just elegant theology.
 
Pr. Jae said:
I'm still awaiting the eBook. Every good novel becomes an eBook.
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And, unfortunately, so are even more bad ones. :rolleyes: Self-published ebooks have become the cheap, sleazy dime novel paperbacks of the 21st century.

Oddly, though, some very good novels haven't made the leap yet. Robertson Davies' stuff took a long time to come out (though it looks like at least some of the finally have).
 
Mystic said:
What I most miss on this site, and for that matter, in some of my churches is a widespread burning curiosity that comes from the realization that the more we know, the more we realize how much we don't know. In the wake of such humbling awareness, wonder and awe, and a relentless spiritual longing are the building blocks of a thrilling spiritual quest that yields life-changing mystical experiences, not just elegant theology.
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EVERYTHING, in the end, resolves into mystery. Certainty is (arguably perhaps) one of our most dangerous delusions.
 
Mystic said:
What I most miss on this site, and for that matter, in some of my churches is a widespread burning curiosity that comes from the realization that the more we know, the more we realize how much we don't know.
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I'm not sure churches all see that as part of their their mission (and I'm probably taking us badly off track so maybe a new thread is needed). That kind of curiosity has been a driving, and spiritual, force in my life for most of my 50 years but I never really had it fed by either church or the education system. Science, s-f, philosophy, and various other personal interests and hobbies are what have fed it. Reading books on religion and studying religions (my own and others) fed it, but church itself was not really a part of that. The UCCan curricula of the day weren't especially big on encouraging curiosity so much as filling you up with Christian history, theology, etc. and the services were rather the same. UU'ism is much better at it but I came to that religion more or less fully formed (I was about 40 when I joined my present church and in my thirties when I started actively attending UU services) so I can't really say that it was an influence in this aspect of my life.
 
MikePaterson said:
'You Can't Be Serious — essays in wonder'… you won't find it yet. I'm told it's coming out in August-September (Rock's Mills Press).

I wrote it. No: it's NOT self-published. It has influenced me deeply because it made me engage more widely and more deeply than I ever would without the disciplines of authorship.

Writing is a powerful way of exploring and testing your own thoughts, attachments, assumptions, faith and selectivity. My cherished blind spots, self-contradictory prejudices, ignorance, hypocrisy and illogic confronted me like flint-faced judges instead of huddling together as a fluffy comfort zone.

If you REALLY want to wrestle with a book, I can't recommend anything more highly than to write one. Give it the next 5 years of your life (you'll NEED a tight deadline).
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Exciting. I echo Mendella's comment -- please let us know when it is out, and where it is available.
 
It is resources for worship services:

It's called PLUG & PRAY:

Plug & Pray evolved when some lay worship leaders in The United Church of Canada expressed a desire to have resources that they could grab off the shelf and use right away.

As a liturgical writer in The United Church of Canada, I've been trying to build a library of worship services that I've written that people might find helpful.

Each of the 52 liturgies in the book has:
- one or two Focus Scriptures;
- a Christ Candle lighting litany;
- a Call to Worship;
- an Opening Prayer;
- Hymn suggestions;
- an Invitation to an Offering;
- an Offering Prayer;
- a Prayer for Illumination:
- Prayers of the People;
- a Commissioning and Blessing.

As well, you'll find exploration questions for Learning Together time and some help in structuring a reflection on the Focus Scripture.

The book will be coming out in soft cover, but those purchasing it will be given a download code, which will allow them the text so they can "Plug & Pray" it into their own worship format.

CHECK OUT: http://liturgy.richardbott.com

NOT to be confused with the film of the same name which a title search delivered me to.


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MikePaterson said:
Plug & Pray evolved when some lay worship leaders in The United Church of Canada expressed a desire to have resources that they could grab off the shelf and use right away.
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True story... my late aunt saw a number of United Church ministers come lead her congregation. She liked them to varying degrees. One of them she considered a true disappointment. This one - a "Rev. Cathy" was often late for services - and a few times didn't show up at all. On one morning - late - she arrived at the church gathering - announced that she had failed to prepare a sermon that week - and instead read to them from something that she had grabbed off the shelf - the current month's edition of Readers Digest magazine!
 
All sorts, Jae. Ministry (my wife's a UCC minister) comes in many forms. Liturgy is an art, pastoral care can be extraordinarily demanding, office and administrative demands are pressing; prayer, reading and personal preparation are essential disciplines. Service preparation takes attunement to the sacred AND the secular. And a minister is on call 24/7. It's a calling, not a job. Faith is the key; there's no "manual" beyond trust in god. So there's no valid job description, and the degree of assistance a minister gets can be wonderful, or almost non-existent. Demands can be light or impossible. Expectations differ from one congregant to the next, and are often based on what life was like in the past. Most Christian outreach is into communities that are largely conditioned now against ANYTHING metaphysical except Star Wars. And the waters are muddied by fundamentalist literalists who, in a World of greed, war, racism, sexism and injustice, prefer to complain about gender identity and other irrelevancies. So your "Cathy" may well have been capable and competent in all sorts of ways. Maybe Reader's Digest was a good source for something that needed to be heard that day?
 
MikePaterson said:
I

Plug & Pray evolved when some lay worship leaders in The United Church of Canada expressed a desire to have resources that they could grab off the shelf and use right away.
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Interesting. UUA has run a website for UU worship leaders called WorshipWeb for years. Similar concept but in electronic rather than book form.

http://www.uua.org/worship
 
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