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Lynne M. Baab

Goodreads Author

Born

The United States

Website

http://www.lynnebaab.com

Twitter

lynnebaab

Genre

Christian

Member Since

July 2018

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I was born in Washington, DC, and moved at 18 months to Athens, Greece. That would be the first of 12 moves in my first 15 years. My dad was in the military. Two of the few constants in my life were church attendance and reading.

As a kid I loved Nancy Drew, the Little House on the Prairie books, and the Moomin books by Tove Jansson. Probably my most favorite were the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. Betsy was so sure she would be a writer when she grew up, and I thought I'd like to do that too.

My writing career began in earnest at midlife. I've read a lot of biographies of writers, and they seem either to start young (like Georgette Heyer who wrote her first book as a teenager) or at midlife. I did write a couple magazine articles in I was born in Washington, DC, and moved at 18 months to Athens, Greece. That would be the first of 12 moves in my first 15 years. My dad was in the military. Two of the few constants in my life were church attendance and reading.

As a kid I loved Nancy Drew, the Little House on the Prairie books, and the Moomin books by Tove Jansson. Probably my most favorite were the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. Betsy was so sure she would be a writer when she grew up, and I thought I'd like to do that too.

My writing career began in earnest at midlife. I've read a lot of biographies of writers, and they seem either to start young (like Georgette Heyer who wrote her first book as a teenager) or at midlife. I did write a couple magazine articles in my twenties and a couple more in my thirties, but I started focusing on writing in my late thirties.

It took me a year to write my first short story ("A Garden of Living Water," the title story in my collection of short stories published for kindle). in my late thirties, I wrote a handful of short stories, mostly focused on themes of "what am I going to be after being a stay at home mom"). In my early forties, I wrote four novels. I have recently published two of them for kindle ("Dead Sea" and "Deadly Murmurs").

I was 45 when I got my first book contract (for "Personality Type in Congregations"). More books followed every year or two after that. Every one of them is precious to me. Equally precious are the three Bible study guides I wrote, for which my husband, Dave, did the background research into each biblical passage. It was fun to work with him. My Bible study guides are "Sabbath," "Prayers of the New Testament," and "Prayers of the Old Testament."

My strongest selling books are "Sabbath Keeping" (which has been chosen to be a "book of the day" at the Urbana Conference December 2018), "Fasting," and "Personality Type in Congregation." My latest book focuses on Christian care, "Nurturing Hope." It's the first book I've ever been asked to write, and it's the "anchor volume" for a series of books on pastoral care.

Dave and I live in Seattle, and our two sons live here, too. One of them is married and the father of our beloved granddaughter. Our other son is a journalist with the Huffington Post, writing long and interesting articles using the pen name Michael Hobbes. It's easy to find his articles online because they are read by millions of readers. It is a thrill to have a writer son with such a big audience.

The topics of my books continue to be very real in my own life. I keep a weekly Sabbath, and I engage in a variety of Christian spiritual practices. I try to care for the people God puts in my path.

Thanks for reading my books. I am deeply aware of the privilege of being a writer, and writers depend on readers. Please visit my website where I blog every week: lynnebaab.com. ...more

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Lynne M. Baab's Blog

A Cat with a Noble Character

Our older son, Jonathan, was two weeks short of one year old when we got a cat. She was all white, so we called her Vanilla. She was also about one year old. She was a wonderful cat for toddlers. Jonathan was so eager to have a relationship with her, and he would try to be gentle, but in his eagerness to relate to her, he would sometimes hurt her. She would walk away two feet and sit there, as if Read more of this blog post »

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Published on July 27, 2014 15:03

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Lynne M. Baab’s books

Average rating: 3.98 · 732 ratings · 135 reviews · 29 distinct works • Similar authors

	Sabbath Keeping: Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest 4.08 avg rating — 449 ratings — published 2005 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Fasting: Spiritual Freedom Beyond Our Appetites 3.75 avg rating — 104 ratings — published 2006 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Friending: Real Relationships in a Virtual World 3.77 avg rating — 26 ratings — published 2011 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care in the Twenty-First Century (Living With Hope, 1) 4.27 avg rating — 22 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Renewed Spirituality: Finding Fresh Paths at Midlife 4.05 avg rating — 22 ratings — published 2002 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Personality Type in Congregations: How to Work With Others More Effectively 4.07 avg rating — 15 ratings — published 1998 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Joy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your Congregation 3.80 avg rating — 15 ratings — published 2012 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Reaching Out in a Networked World: Expressing Your Congregation's Heart and Soul 3.15 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2008 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian Life 4.29 avg rating — 7 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Prayers of the Old Testament really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2010 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Lynne M. Baab…

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Lynne Baab is currently reading

The Place We Make: Breaking the Legacy of Legalized Hate

by Sarah L. Sanderson (Goodreads Author)

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Lynne Baab said: " A fascinating personal and historical journey

Sarah Sanderson makes Oregon City in 1851 come alive. She helps us see and hear the leading players in the mind-boggling trial when Jacob Vanderpool was thrown out of Oregon solely for being Black. Sarah d A fascinating personal and historical journey

Sarah Sanderson makes Oregon City in 1851 come alive. She helps us see and hear the leading players in the mind-boggling trial when Jacob Vanderpool was thrown out of Oregon solely for being Black. Sarah describes her own multi-faceted personal journey as well.

You may remember that Oregon City was the end of the Oregon Trail. Jacob Vanderpool, who was Black and born in Jamaica, ran a hotel there. The Oregon Territory passed an exclusion law indicating that anyone of African descent couldn’t live there. The law was not enforced until a rival hotel keeper wanted less competition and filed a lawsuit against Vanderpool. Sarah describes the legal proceedings, as well as Vanderpool’s journey before and after the lawsuit. She also helps us understand an earlier court action against Native Americans. Sarah’s narrative is deeply grounded in a sense of place. She lives two miles from historic downtown Oregon City, and she enables us to see the physical location, near the largest waterfall in Oregon, so valuable to Native Americans and early settlers.

I am using “Sarah” for this review, instead of the more customary “Sanderson,” because Sarah has given us such profound glimpses into her personal journey with race and her own heritage. Sarah describes the ways she learned about her familial connections to two of the White players in Oregon City in 1851. She also writes about specific incidents in her life that showed her how racism is deeply embedded in her psyche. She is not asking for our absolution or our comfort. Her honest and vulnerable self-reflection provides a model for how we, her readers, can look at race and racism and dig deeper into our own emotions and background. Her description of her stumbles and discoveries shows how she pushed through her own shame and tries to keep learning and growing.

She describes her frustrating efforts to talk with people about what she is learning, again not so that we will sympathize with her or admire her (although I did both), but so we can see more examples of the complexity of discussions about race. Her subtitle describes what she wants to do in this book: “Breaking the Legacy of Legalized Hate.” Whether we see it or not, we are descendants of a system of sanctioned hate, and Sarah presents compelling illustrations of that system in one specific place in Oregon at one specific time. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we’ve been sold a bill of goods that it’s okay to hate certain groups of people. It takes work to change what we’ve learned, and Sarah invites us into her work.

She intersperses chapters about the key figures in 1951 Oregon City with chapters about her own genealogical and personal exploration. I personally don’t like reading history very much, but I liked this form of history, deeply connected with Sarah’s contemporary journey and the geography of Oregon City. Sarah is an excellent writer, as befits a high school creative writing teacher with an MFA in creative nonfiction. Her descriptions are clear and vivid, and her model of self-discovery makes this the most engaging book I’ve read about race in America today.

I was given a review copy of this book by the publisher. I thought I would like the book, but I had no idea I would like it this much. ...more "

Aug 15, 2023 07:29AM · see review