Rev. Val Ohle > Recent Status Updates

Introduction, page xxvi: "America had to be carried kicking and screaming every inch of the way, but the sacrifice, blood, and death of many innocent people to move America toward freedom and equality for all in the mid-twentieth century." One of the most righteously condemning statements I've ever read.

She may be starting to grow on me. A little. What she has to say in this book is even more relevant today than when she wrote it a decade or so ago, and I'm saddened that we didn't heed her advice initially.

The author of this book is frustrating me; not in what she is saying but in her delivery. She goes from sounding arrogant and judgmental to somewhere over the rainbow in a heartbeat. Chapter 2 is the main reason I'm going to keep reading.

Only sixteen pages in and I'm torn between wanting to choke the author for what comes off as a self-righteous "my beliefs are right; yours are wrong" attitude or toughing it out and hoping she doesn't maintain that attitude. *sigh*

Every page closer to the end of these Nouwen books leaves me wanting more ... more pages, more time, more Nouwen. These are so good.

While this repeats major passages from Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith, those repetitions seem necessary. This book and Spiritual Direction are good enough that I just ordered the third book in the series on Discernment. I have a feeling if Nouwen were still alive I'd be repenting for being jealous of those who had access to him. What a phenomenal teacher he must have been (and still is!)

This book is good, but it isn't recreational reading. This is work.

I appreciate and am enjoying (and learning a lot from) what I'm reading in this book, but Wright's need to repeatedly use cliffhanger style "we'll get to it in a future chapter" statements is starting to wear thin. Maybe I typed one too many scientific journal articles way back when. It would seem to make more sense to me to put the concept up front and spend the book unpacking it.