The subtitle to this AWESOME book is "A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are." I had heard about this book, seen the preview on the Amazon.com's "Recommendations for Sara" list, and even added it to my shopping cart there. I'm about half way through the book now, wondering why i hadn't read it sooner, but savoring each and every sentence and paragraph and page and chapter! This is a book of poetry, of life, of honest reflections, of hungering, of seeking, of finding, of learning and relearning. It has been ages since i've read a book that penetrated my heart and mind and soul so often. Every page has several sentences or paragraphs underlined. This is the first time i've started a review before i've actually finished a book, but i just had to start the process. It's a two-fold, win-win: you will get to start reading excerpts, and i will get to go back and reread previous chapters and absorb them even more fully. This book is a story about Ann Voskamp, (taken from the back flap) "She is a writer with DaySpring (a division of Hallmark), a contributing editor to Laity Lodge's The High Calling, and a global advocate for the poor, traveling for Compassion International. With an educational background in psychology and education from York University and the University of Waterloo, Ann and her husband are farmers in the Mennonite countryside of southwestern Ontario, raising a half dozen kids, crops of corn, and the roof in praise." Throughout the book, she refers to her husband as "The Farmer," and her kids as "The Tall girl," "The boy-man," "The Little one," etc. :-) As a young child herself, her family encountered great tragedy when her sister was crushed to death under the tires of a delivery truck, right before her mother's eyes. That was the time in their life where they ceased to see God as a "good God" or a "God of grace." The doubts came, the questions raged, and it took many years and life experiences for Ann to come to a new, fresh understanding of the Creator God of the Universe. One day, she received an email from a friend, a "dare" of sorts, to write down 1,000 "things you love," or are grateful for. Thus, the inspiration for the title of the book. Without further ado, let the excerpts begin....
From the first chapter: "That forked tongue darts and daily I live the doubt, look and my reflection, and ask: Does God really love me? If He truly, deeply loves me, why does He withhold that which I believe will fully nourish me? Why do I live in this sense of rejection, of less than, of pain? Does He not want me to be happy? From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story....Satan's sin becomes the first sin of all humanity: the sin of ingratitude. Adam and Eve are, simply, painfully, ungrateful for what God gave. Isn't that the catalyst of all my sins? Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren't satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other...We were lured by the deception that there was more to a full life, there was more to see. And, true, there was more to see: the ugliness we hadn't beheld, the sinfulness we hadn't witnessed, the loss we hadn't known." Continuing on..."We look and swell with the ache of a broken, battered planet, what we ascribe as the negligent work of an indifferent Creator (if we even think there is one). Do we ever think of this busted-up place as the result of us ingrates, unsatisfied, we who punctured it all with a bite?...If I'm ruthlessly honest, I may have said yes to God, yes to Christianity, but really, I have lived the no. I have. Infected by that Eden mouthful, the retina of my soul develops macular holes of blackness. From my own beginning, my sister's death tears a hole in the canvas of the world." And towards the end of the chapter..."When we find ourselves groping along, famished for more, we can choose. When we are despairing, we can choose to live as Israelites gathering manna. For forty long years, God's people daily eat manna--a substance whose name literally means 'What is it?' Hungry, they choose to gather up that which is baffling. They fill on that which has no meaning. More than 14,600 days they take their daily nourishment from that which they don't comprehend. They find soul-filling in the inexplicable. They eat the mystery...And the mystery, that which made no sense, is 'like wafers of honey' on the lips...With memories of gravestones, of combing fingers through tangled hair, I wonder too...if the rent in the canvas of our life backdrop, the losses that puncture our world, our own emptiness, might actually become places to see. To see through to God. That that which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To Him. To the God whom we endlessly crave. Maybe so."
In the second chapter, Ann delves into the true meaning of the Greek word "eucharisteo," which is the original language used in the Biblical telling of Christ at the Last Supper, "He gave thanks." (What is called "The Lord's Table," or "Communion.")
So, here's what she writes as she comes slowly to a deeper understanding of all that that word holds and how it can change our lives. "The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning 'grace.' Jesus took the bread and saw it as grace and gave thanks. He took the bread and knew it to be a gift and gave thanks. But there is more, and I read it. Eucharisteo, thanksgiving, envelopes the Greek word for grace, charis. But it also holds its derivative, the Greek word chara, meaning 'joy.' Joy. Ah...yes. I might be needing me some of that. That might be what the quest for more is all about---that which Augustine claimed, 'Without exception...all try their hardest to reach the same goal, that is, joy.'
"I breathe deep, like a sojourner finally coming home. That has always been the goal of the fullest life---joy. And my life knew exactly how elusive that slippery three-letter word, joy, can be...Deep chara joy is found only at the table of the euCHARisteo---the table of thanksgiving. I sit there long...wondering...is it that simple? Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks? So then as longs as thanks is possible....I think this through. As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible. Joy is always possible. Whenever, meaning--now; wherever, meaning---here. The holy grail of joy is not in some exotic location or some emotional mountain peak experience. The joy wonder could be here! Here, in the messy, piercing ache of now, joy might be---unbelievably--possible! The only place we need see before we die is this place of seeing God, here and now...
"Eucharisteo! It really might be the mystery to the fullest life...I lie on relief. I might have found the holy grail...and lost it, moved on. And yet really---hasn't God set the holy grail in the center of Christianity? Eucharisteo, it's the central symbol of Christianity. Thanksgiving. The table with its emblems is the essence of what it means to live the Christ-life. Sunday after Sunday in our nondenominational Bible church, we're formally invited to take the bread, the wine. Doesn't the continual repetition of beginning our week at the table of the Eucharist clearly place our whole lives into the context of thanksgiving? And too...it's the most common of foods, bread. The drink of the vine has been part of our meal taking across centuries and cultures. Jesus didn't institute the Eucharist around some unusual, rare, once-a-year event, but around this continual act of eating a slice of bread, drinking a cup of fruit from the vine. First Corinthians 11:26 reads, 'whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup' (NIV)---whenever. LIke every day. Whenever we eat. Eucharisteo---whenever: now. Joy---wherever: here. Doesn't Christ, at His death meal, set the entirety of our everyday bread and drink lives into the framework of eucharisteo?"
(i really hoping i'm not infringing on any copyright laws...i only want to give y'all a beautiful taste of this working of words, this deliciously filling poetry of truth and life and pain and joy....more to come, if i don't get deleted off of the web ;)
~Published by Zondervan 2010
