Soul Survivor by Philip Yancey (Photo credit: Jordon)

Then again, and yet, America also has preachers like Philip Yancey, a Christian writer who speaks the truth in love, who preaches the Good News of the Gospel, going to the best and worst of places, in the best and worst of times, shining God‘s light.

I found Yancey’s book “What Good is God? In Search of a Faith That Matters” at Books-A-Million. Yancey’s excellent book is also wonderfully illustrated, in shadow and light, by Klaus Ernst. The book’s copyright is 2010, but Yancey writes real and always relevant.

Topics Yancey and Ernst cover in this book include life’s tragedies, and how God reaches out to people in the highest and lowest places, performing His good will, although, so much of the time, it doesn’t seem good. In the first chapter, Yancey explains that this particular book about faith started as he and his wife were completing a tour to five cities, sponsored by his publisher.

The couple’s last stop in that tour was in Mumbai, India, in 2008. “As it happened,” Yancey writes, “that was the horrifying night when terrorists attacked tourist sites with grenades and guns, killing 172 people.”

Title chapters indicate wide-ranging places and times and events, including all humanity. They include: “Virginia Tech: Campus Massacre”; “China: Winds of Change”; “Green Lake: Professional Sex Workers”; “Cambridge: Remembering C.S. Lewis” and “Memphis: An Alternative Vision.”

There are other chapters, all timely, and timeless. I hope you can find a copy of this book by Yancey, illustrated by Ernst. Recently, I highlighted a passage from the chapter “Middle East: Church at Risk.” Yancey, an American, wrote: “How differently would the world view my country if it associated the U.S. with ‘the Jesus Syndrome’ rather than with weapons, wealth, and the ‘Baywatch syndrome”?

It’s a tiring and difficult battle and sometimes we fail. But we don’t have to worship the golden calves in America, or anywhere. We can get God’s Good News of Jesus out to the whole world, as best we can, here, there, and everywhere, to the ends of the earth.

Jesus gave us the Great Commission, to take the Gospel’s Good News unto all the world, from wherever God happens to have us, right now, in this place.

So today (emphasis mine) from Isaiah 40:9, New King James Version, we offer a Holy Shout!

“O Zion,

You who bring good tidings…

‘Behold your God!”

Related articles

• Rock slide closes part of highway in Yancey County (wspa.com)
• Premier Sacramento Roofing Company Says Winterize Your Home Now from Wind Gusts and Rain (pr.com)
• Yancey Company Remodels and Builds Attractive, Stylish Handicapped Bathrooms (pr.com)
• Was God Giving the Disciples a Gift By Leaving Them? (makingroomforgod.wordpress.com)
• Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church (A book review) (bookmouse.wordpress.com)

Giant Redwoods at Humboldt 2 (Photo credit: benjcohen)

Yesterday I took down pieces about the poor, afraid of not pleasing somebody, ashamed and guilty for telling about the plight of the poor, which has become my own. Afraid to make anybody out there feel less than cheery because I use Cable TV as solace and somebody else paid for it.

But then last night, for one thing, I read about the Giant Redwoods in the late John Steinbeck‘s book “Travels With Charley: In Search of America.” Overnight and over-morning, I changed my mind and decided not to write for followers anymore. So, if you are following and want to leave my little place here, feel free and hopefully, no hard feelings. But I must write about plights and blights and sometimes brights and I must write what’s real, what’s real to me now.

The late Mr. Steinbeck wrote of the Giant Redwoods as “ambassadors from another time.” I wish you could read the whole book “Travels with Charley” because the writing is so magnificent, like Giant Redwoods.

“The feeling they produce,” the late Mr. Steinbeck wrote of the Trees, “is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe.”

It seems almost irreverent to even repeat it, about the Trees and Mr. Steinbeck, whose writing inspires my awe and joy and wonder.

So maybe someday I’ll get to meet Mr. Steinbeck’s “ambassadors from another time” and feel the silent mystery of grandeur in those glorious trees, and in that man’s glorious writing, which is also an ambassador from the past.

The late Mr. Steinbeck’s courage gives me courage to keep writing about the plights and blights of the poor, which is what I’m learning about now. On-line, at http://www.gradesaver.com, I learned that Steinbeck attended Stanford University, but did not finish. Instead, he chose to work manual labor jobs while he wrote stories and books. His first “successful” story was “Tortilla Flat,” about Mexican-Americans. He understood the stories he wrote because he lived them and knew the people through experience with them.

If I can find a manual labor job I can work, I’ll take it, if my old feet can take it. Meanwhile, I hope to keep writing about the struggle of looking for work, of living hard in hard times. If you don’t like my place here, I’m not writing for you anyway, correct?

But, if you read about Steinbeck’s Giant Redwoods and you feel something mysterious and awestruck and quiet, we can be here peacefully together. We can be real. Not always cheery, not always dreary, but real. I hope you stay a while. If not, that’s okay too.

Related articles

• The Photos That Inspired The Grapes Of Wrath (101books.net)
• Do Not Surrender Fierceness (wemovetogether.me)
• 4 Amazing Facts About The Mighty Redwoods (degreesearch.org)

The grass harp / El arpa de hierba (Photo credit: Sofía)

When a writer makes me feel welcome and acceptable and a little bit wonderful despite it all, I almost cry.

The best I can do to thank and honor that magnificent storyteller is to tell other people, read this book.

So here I am telling you, asking you, pleading with you to read “The Grass Harp” by Truman Capote. The book was first published in 1951, but can probably be found at just about any local library. If you’re lucky, you might find a copy at a used book store for $2 even. The book is worth buying even if you find it new.

Do you remember pressing your pencil onto Kress paper? Or climbing up into a tree house or building a creek fort for summer days? Maybe remember the pink fuzzy blooms of a mimosa tree and the dark red pomegranates spilling out black seeds strange and bittersweet like many human relationships.

The late Truman Capote, born Truman Streckfus Persons, helps me remember and get through. I wish he could have been my friend. Capote has died, but he left us his very heart in his books and in his characters like Dollyheart and Catherine and Riley and Judge Cool.

When I consider certain passages, my heart stirs with the precious recognition that I’m not alone, that someone went before and knows what it’s like to feel different. And don’t many of us feel different, somehow defective, at one time or another?

Here’s Judge Cool explaining Spirits to Dolly and when I got done reading, I hoped it meant I was one of the Spirits instead of just plain difficult or crazy. “Spirits are accepters of life,” Judge Cool tells Dolly. “They grant its differences–and consequently are always in trouble.”

Trouble yourself, if you can even call it that, to read this long-ago book by Capote, who took his stepfather’s surname after his mother married a second time. When Capote asks you, through the voice of orphan Collin, “When was it that first I heard of the grass harp?,” I’m betting you will want to know the answer.

Related articles

• ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ and other Capote classics coming out as ebooks (canada.com)
• A Sleeping Bee (bloggingtonybennett.com)
• Currently Watching… Capote (alexrister1.wordpress.com)