Alec Worrell-Welch > Recent Status Updates

I like the vibe

It’s nighttime, and there’s still a quarter of the book left. What’s to come, I wonder?

I enjoyed the beginning, but right now each character feels very flat, and their actions and conversations build more like a string of caricatures than the outplaying of organic tensions. The book addresses sensitive themes—a family’s faith convictions changing asymmetrically, hostility toward LGBT people in rural America—but it is currently not handling them with great depth, creativity, or sensitivity.

Finally got that audiobook back! He’s discussing trauma and repressed memories. It’s a hard listen right now.

This is full of beautiful practices to “thin the veil” and recognize God’s near presence. Each chapter also contains a few historical, theological, and exegetical nuggets that deepen our engagement of the text—a bit like the “Feasting on the Word” series. The main idea can feel overdone, though, and the shocking vulnerability and scope of personal disclosures invite a few questions.

Shane fully trusts that our loneliness from God is, as the mystics wrote, a “ray of darkness” or “cloud of unknowing” where we wait attentively, receptively, because the dark silence is not God’s absence but an intimacy so near, it takes time and grace for our senses to adjust. He identifies numerous times when heaven and earth overlap in Revelation—God, near. This is a soul-testing, refining read.

This villain fills me with a sense of powerless ire. Most of the important characters have left the plot for now, so I’m curious how it will develop.

Ah, I don’t like the reader as well as the guy who voiced the other two Enger books! 😣 The first few pages dragged, but I’m enjoying the introspection of the failing author protagonist.

A strong start. I really appreciate the pause and meditation on how the person of Jesus is what (or who) John really wants to know and share with people in need. The book reads well so far and gives practical ways to grow in understanding and to encounter God anew, ourselves.

“It wasn’t suicide,” character after character maintains about those who, despairing of life, take “the Willow.” “They went in search of something better.”

Lord, come quickly.

“Choosing Trust” felt like an abstract idea at first, but Bidwell breaks it down into 5 elements (positivity, gratitude, maturity, love, purpose) that are modeled and taught by consistent, dependable people who model trust and encourage hopeful dreams and actions. Material, sociopolitical, psychosocial, and spiritual elements comprise the “soil” in which trust grows. Mature trust “redefines normal.”

I understand that the original finalized Dracula has 7 parts, equal in length. I think one of those parts took up no more than 12 pages in this version. Still, it’s a good read, and the castle parts eeee very striking and spooky.