I’m going to try to get myself back into the blogging spirit by posting on books I’ve read over the past month or so. This will be an ongoing post – I’ll add to it as the day goes on.
(What else is going on? Lots, actually, but none of it seems quite fascinating enough for blogging. When it comes to my own online reading, I’ve been perusing the links that you find on my del.icio.us feed. Someone said I can do an automated daily blog post with what I’ve bookmarked that way, so perhaps I’ll try to figure that out today. I’m also getting sucked back into Anglican Matters. I’m still pretty confused but with Lambeth coming up, various dioceses making noises in protest of Presiding Bishop Jefferts Shori’s tactics, Bishop Robinson making his wedding plans and Bishop Nazir-Ali making the shocking claim that Matthew 28:19 still applies, it’s hard to stay away. )
A Day Apart: How Christians, Jews and Muslims Find Faith, Freedom and Joy on the Sabbath is a really excellent book – with no mystery as to its subject, eh? Ringwald juxtaposes the personal – he is a Christian, but also sees the sabbath concept through the eyes of Jewish and Muslim friends – and the academic quite skillfully. It might make you rethink how you spend your Sundays. (Or Saturdays. Or Fridays.) It is worth contemplating how the concept of the Sabbath, once so powerful (and in some areas of the world, still, of course), is now, in the West, so forgotten. (For it is, admit it. You can say, “Well,yeah, I’m not working when I watch those football games.” But the fact is…somebody else is, though, to make it possible. And possible for you to go out to eat. Or go to the movies. To make that happen – somebody’s working.)
Anyway, A Day Apart is an informative, winning read.
More to come…