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Book Review: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth (Birzer)

April 12, 2025

Book: Sanctifying Myth — Book: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth (Birzer)

This book – J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, Understanding Middle Earth by Bradley J. Birzer – is a book I’ve been wishing existed ever since I read The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams (that book is also a good read).

When I read The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, I enjoyed getting more acquainted with the literary aspects of Tolkien, Lewis, and the people around them. Yet, as I also found myself deeply curious about the religious relationship – and what I was sure must have included strains – between a British (South African!) Catholic and an Ulster Protestant (that aspect wasn’t delved into particularly in The Fellowship: The Literary lives..).

Birzer’s book Sanctifying Myth takes a sociological look into Tolkien and mythology. Tolkien, for example, considers myth to by sociologically necessary for humanity and to be every bit as tangible as scientific learning. This book also provides a deep dive into the religious relationship and tensions between Tolkien and Lewis. For example, Tolkien considered his Hobbit books to be more Christian in nature than C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters! There are also other curious tidbits in this book. For example, when Tolkien’s son Christopher enlisted in WWII, an RAF form asked Christopher Tolkien to list his father’s occupation; he listed his father’s occupation as “wizard.”

Most evenings, I read a book for a few minutes before going to sleep. At present, I am reading Sanctifying Myth before going to sleep. However, I am finding that I need to read this book earlier in the day; there’s enough stimulation and tension in the book to keep a person awake…..

I will be reading more books by author Bradley J. Birzer.

Bibliophile and would-be-antiquarian Kim Burkhardt reviews books at The Books of the Ages. If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them (thank you!).

Book Review: Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place

October 11, 2024

I just took a break from reading another book to read (re-read?) Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place.

When I recently happened upon a copy of The Hiding Place, I thought “Yes, I read this.” Perhaps I did read it in high school or in my twenties. I decided to read it again – this time for its’ Christian insight. As I read it this time, I didn’t remember the details of the book. If I read it before, I think I probably read it as a historical account of WWII.

The book absolutely is a historical account of WWII and of a family who participated in Dutch resistance. It is also the account of a family who deeply put their Christian faith into practice.

Most evenings, I pick up the latest book I am reading to read a few pages before I go to sleep. Last night, I finished The Hiding Place and then found myself unable to sleep because of the distress of reading about the horrors in Germany’s concentration camps. I was also compelled – as the author intended – about the author’s conviction that we are compelled to forgive. At the end of the book, she wrote of spending time after the war – and after being released from Ravensbrück concentration camp – helping WWII survivors to heal and educating people about forgiveness (prompted significantly from her sister’s witness on this topic before dying). At the very end of the book, Corrie Ten Boom wrote of encountering a guard from Ravensbrück where her beloved sister Betsy perished. Forgive even him? She had to reach deep into herself to try forgiving, then ask God to help her forgive. Ten Boom wrote compellingly that it was God who made it possible for her to forgive.

For anyone trying to live a life of faith, this book is a must-read. Corrie Ten Boom absolutely challenges us to go farther than we think we can in putting our faith into practical practice.

Book Reviews: U.S.’s Founding Mothers & Later First Mothers

August 31, 2024

Books by Cokie Roberts and Bonnie Angelo

In these two books, political journalists Cokie Roberts and Bonnie Angelo contribute to our understanding of women who have influenced the U.S. as the mothers, sisters, and daughters of the country’s founding men and mothers of more recent presidents.

Such books are an important contribution to our understanding of the nation’s leadership. I found value in reading both books. I am keeping book books (I am one of those readers who keep valued books I’m read – because I value the books and because I want visitors to my residence to see the books that have helped shape my own thinking….).

In Founding Mothers, I learned historical trivia such as Ben Franklin’s lifelong correspondence that he sustained with his favorite sister Jane Franklin.

When writers speculate about what their biographical subjects must have thought in specific situations, I sometimes wonder how a biographer came to think that the people they wrote about would have thought X or Y in a given situation. Not so in the case of Bonnie Angelo’s First Mothers. Bonnie Angelo’s speculations resonate as viable and insightful thoughts into what First Mothers likely thought in specific situations. I also learned that all the presidents whose mothers are written about in this book spoke more about how their mothers influenced them than about how their fathers influenced them.

These two books are both worth reading.

Book Review: The Gentleman From Finland

August 26, 2024

I happened upon a copy of The Gentleman from Finland in a Little Free Library in Seattle.

The author and I both live in the Seattle area. I found myself drawn to the book as the author and I both travel solo and this book is his story of riding the Trans-Siberian Express. As a solo traveler (I call myself a “solo nomad”), I don’t meet many kindred spirits who like to travel solo. In pondering The Gentleman from Finland – and in purchasing another of his books – I began to ponder solo travelers. I searched online, as a result of wondering about other solo travelers who I don’t often find among my own acquaintances and because of this book, and was pleased to discover a website dedicated to solo travelers.

When I brought this book home a few months ago and read it, I laughed so hard that I cried. Robert M. Goldstein’s willingness to write about his crazy mishaps riding the Trans-Siberian Express across the Soviet Union (he’s a train enthusiast) had me navigating a tension – I wanted to savor each hilarious moment in the book, yet anxiously wanted to turn the page to read what was going to happen next. It takes a certain wit and perhaps a self-deprecating outlook to be entertained by life’s mishaps.

I so thoroughly enjoyed this book that I gave a copy of the book to a friend and checked to find out if he’s written more books. Fortunately, he’s written two more accounts of his travels. I needed a few months to savor this book before tackling another of Goldstein’s books. I have now ordered his travel biography Riding With Reindeer and very much look forward to reading it.

Bibliophile Kim Burkhardt reviews books at The Books of the Ages. If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them (thank you!).

Book Review: The Orthodox Way

June 25, 2024

The back cover of this book describes The Orthodox Way as follows:

“This book is a general account of the doctrine, worship and life of Orthodox Christians by the author of the now classic THE ORTHODOX CHURCH. It raises the basic issues of theology…. helps to fill the need for a modern Orthodox catechism… Throughout the book, Father Ware shows the meaning of Orthodox doctrine for the life of the individual Christian.”

For readers who have anything of a contemplative bent or an interest in mysticism, I find the book to be an important read for growing one’s faith (the Orthodox church has a very definite contemplative vein within it). I recently quoted The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware in a previous blog post:

“The Greek Fathers liken man’s encounter with God to the experience of someone walking over the mountains in the mist: he takes a step forward and suddenly finds that he is on the edge of a precipice, with no solid ground beneath his foot but only a bottomless abyss.”

I read this book a year or two ago. I find myself coming back to it; statements such as the one above feed my prayer life. This is the type of book I read before going to bed – a book to lift one’s spirits. A worthwhile read!

Kim Burkhardt blogs at The Books of the Ages and at A Parish Catechist (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them (thank you!).

Book Review: Martin Laird’s ‘Into the Silent Land’

March 25, 2024

I was recently given a copy of Martin Laird’s Into the Silent Land: Christian Practice of Contemplation.

As a contemplative pray-er, I find this book refreshing. Rather than only being a how-to book on the mechanics of how to pray contemplatively, this is the type of contemplative prayer book I look for: a description of what happens when we do a deep dive into contemplative prayer. It is – to paraphrase a speaker I heard once – the “poetry of our lives” that demonstrates the animation of one’s prayer life when prays contemplatively. Such poetry – it seems to me – helps lead readers into the experience of contemplative prayer via surrender into what we read in the books’ text.

A few “poetry of our prayer lives” excerpts:

“Silence is an urgent necessity for us: silence is necessary if we are to hear God speaking in eternal silence; our own silence is necessary if God is to hear us” (page 2).
“This book…proceeds from an ancient Christian view that the foundation of every land is silence (Ws 18:24), where God simply and perpetually gives himself” (page 6).
“…the grace of Christian wholeness that flowers in silence….dispels (the) illusion of separation [from God]” (page 16).

This is a short book, but it takes a long time to read – its’ contents are contemplated rather than merely read. It contributes meaningfully to one’s prayer life. This is a book I will keep.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at The Books of the Ages and A Parish Catechist (and a “Content Creator/Individual” member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog post, please share it with them (thank you!).

Book Review: Embodying Forgiveness

January 8, 2024

This book, Embodying Forgiveness by Methodist pastor L. Gregory Jones, makes forgiveness more possible by demonstrating its’ theological necessity. Therefore, this is an important grow-my-faith book for individuals committed to truly living their faith. The book challenges readers to grow in ways that can be uncomfortable (growth that’s challenging to achieve can move us with particular stride along the long-haul journey of genuine maturing in faith).

This is a book that must be read slowly. The concepts presented grab a reader’s attention such that one must pause to take in the book’s ideas, find the emotional capacity to live each aspect of the book’s insights.

Sample excerpts include:

“….people are mistaken if they think of Christian forgiveness primarily as absolution from guilt. The purpose of forgiveness is the restoration of communion [between parties] (page five).”
“Christian forgiveness involves a high cost, both for God and for those who embody it. It requires the disciplines of dying and rising with Christ, disciplines for which there are no shortcuts, no handy techniques to replace the risk and vulnerability of giving up ‘possession’ of one’s self, which is done through the practices of forgiveness and repentance. This does not involve self-denial, nor the ‘death’ of self through annihilation. Rather, it is learning to see oneself and one’s life in the context of communion [i.e., community] (pages 5-6).”

A worthwhile read!

Book Review: This is My Body, A Call to Eucharistic Revival

December 12, 2023

was recently given Bishop Robert Barron’s book This is My Body: A Call to Eucharistic Revival. When I started reading it, I quickly found it as readable and engaging as Henri Nouwen’s book With Burning Hearts.

The author, Bishop Robert Barron, wrote this book as part of a U.S. “call to Eucharistic renewal” (he helped initiate a U.S. call to Eucharistic renewal while the Chair of the Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, USCCB). This book is engaging because it takes readers to the deeper meaning of faith concepts we’re meant to learn; he does so in an easily readable and interesting manner – plenty of “ah ha” moments. At the risk of reviewing this book with too much hyperbole, I stopped earmarking interesting pages after a few pages because I was earmarking most pages.

Here are two excerpts from This is My Body, A Call to Eucharistic Revival :

….”The opening line of the book of Genesis tells us that ‘in the beginning, God created the heavens and the eart’ (Gen. 1:1). Why did God, who is perfect in every way and who stands in need of nothing outside himself, bother to create at all? There are mythologies and philosophies galore – both ancient and modern – that speak of God needing the universe or benefiting from it in some fashion, but Catholic theology has always repudiated these approaches and affirmed God’s total self-sufficiency….God created the heaven and earth ‘of his own goodness and almighty power, not for the increase of his own happiness.'”

“Love, in the theological sense, is not a feeling or a sentiment, though it is often accompanied by those psychological states. In its essence, love is an act of the will, more precisely, the willing of the good of the other as other. To love is really to want what is good for someone else and then to act on that desire.”

This book is intentionally priced affordably to get it into the hands of readers. I am passing along copies to fellow readers who live in my community. If you are looking for something to read, you can order it online here.

Book Review: Playing with Dragons – Living with Suffering and God

December 8, 2023

I heard of this book recently while watching one of “The Great Courses” about the history of the Old Testament. The Great Courses presenter who mentioned this book was discussing the cultural context of how dragons came to be mentioned in the Hebrew Bible; in the context of that presentation, he referred to this book Playing with Dragons in the same sense of the book’s Goodreads summary, saying (in effect): “This is a book for those want to go beyond standard discussions of faith and suffering.”

There are multiple layers of opportunity for understanding the depths of religious meaning. The academic/sociologist/theologian James Fowler chronicles in his book Stages of Faith the six stages we have the opportunities to progress through in faith as we age; too often, we adults settle for remaining perpetually in a high-school level of a stage three faith (as described by Fowler). In hindsight, I got stuck for some years as an adult in a transition moving from a stage three faith to stage four faith (a common occurrence, according to Fowler). It took time for me to begin growing in faith again; once I did, I was happy to discover new depths of religious insight – such as metaphors provided to us in Biblical texts and religious ritual. Therefore, I looked forward to Andy Angel’s book Playing with Dragons, Living with Suffering and God when I found recently found the book. I, as the Goodreads summary for this book mentions, “find standard discussions of faith and suffering frustrating” – I often find such discussions inadequate.

Personally, I accept that suffering is “part of the human condition” and a consequence of original sin. God gave us humans the opportunity to have a naturally happy time of it on earth; that opportunity was destroyed through free will via “original sin.” I don’t find the concept of original sin to be a limiting and heavy weight put on humanity; rather, we are provided with the opportunity to move beyond it through baptism and by nurturing a right relationship with God and the people around us.

In this Playing with Dragons book, I am hoped for discussion about how dragons are provided as a metaphor for us to wrestle on a human level with the challenges we must contend with during this lifetime.

This book is summarized on Goodreads as follows: “There be dragons all over the Bible. From the great sea monsters of Genesis to the great dragon of Revelation, dragons appear as the Bible opens and closes, and they pop their grisly heads up at various junctures in between. How did they get there and what on earth (or indeed in heaven) are they doing there? This is a book for those who find standard discussions of faith and suffering frustrating. Andy Angel opens up the rich biblical tradition of living with God in the midst of suffering. He takes the reader on a journey of exploration through biblical texts that are often overlooked on account of their strangeness–texts about dragons. He shows how these peculiar passages open up a language of prayer through suffering in which people share their anger, weariness, disillusionment, and even joy in suffering with God. Angel explores how such “weird” Scriptures open up a whole new way of praying and reveal a God who approves of honest spirituality, a spirituality that the Bible holds open but too many of its interpreters do not.”

What I found in the book was a cultural and religious context of the Old Testament – how and why dragons were symbolic representations of the challenges we wrestle with and – importantly – that metaphor provides us with a way to “wrestle with life’s challenges” in ways that literal vocabulary fails us. Epic dramas are useful.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at The Books of the Ages and A Parish Catechist. If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog post, please share it with them (thank you!).

Book Review: Nourishing Love – A Franciscan Celebration of Mary

November 30, 2023

This book takes readers on a novel way of exploring Mary’s life (no, not a novel). For those of us who tend think of Mary either historically and/or as a saint, this book brings us an additional way to consider Mary.

Franciscan author (and priest) Murray Bodo offers us something similar to that of The Chosen TV series: a conceptual view of what it could have been like living Jesus’ or Mary’s lives – making their day-to-day lives more tangible for us than what many of us consider when reading the Gospels. Both this book and The Chosen contain historical aspects of the lives of Mary and Jesus (respectively). Reading historical accounts alone – however – don’t necessarily take us into thinking about the daily aspects what they did and felt as people.

In this book, Nourishing Love, there are reflections that take us to ponder, “what thoughts did Mary ponder?” After Jesus offered her and John to one another as mother-and-son, what conversations Mary and John have about Jesus? Possibly ponderings by Mary and possible – plausible – conversations between Mary and John are presented here to bring us into considering their lives on a very human level.

At one point in the book, the author writes, “Since Jesus was both God and man, he had his mother’s genes and was deeply influenced genetically, as most of us are, by his mother. He was Mary’s son, prompting us to imagine how Mary herself was in fact revealed in the person of her son.” Hmm….. Did genetics cause Jesus to look like his mother? Did Mary and Jesus share similar voice inflections? Did Jesus maintain some of Mary’s habits once he became an adult (ate the same foods for breakfast, had the same evening routines, etc.)? How much did Mary’s human personality influence Jesus’ human personality? The author of this book observes that the stories Mary told Jesus during his infancy and childhood may have influenced the types of stories Jesus chose to tell as an adult – including the parables he told. How she cared for the people around her could have been socially instructive for the human Jesus.

The way this book is constructed made me think of Ignatian exercises in terms of the creativity brought to subjects of faith. There’s a degree to which I felt uncomfortable with this book – I would more naturally gravitate to an academically-oriented sociological construct/analysis of people’s daily lives in first-century Palestine to get a sense of Mary’s life (that type of book would also be interesting!). Sometimes, though, discomfort is good. Discomfort can challenge us to consider topics in new ways; new perspectives help us grow.

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