Mary Chambers; Church is Stranger than Fiction – Review

Mary Chambers - Church is Stranger than Fiction

This most excellent Christmas gift suggestion is a golden oldie (1990) and that means that most readers nowadays have never heard of it, and it also means that you can get a copy for next to nothing; they’re going for 1 cent a piece!

I picked up my copy at a second hand bookstore many years ago, and I still treasure it as one of the most enlightening commentaries on church life today. And of course it made me roar with laughter.

Mary Chambers’ Church is Stranger than Fiction should be standard reading for anyone involved in church work. Order a copy today and put it under the Christmas tree for someone.

J.K. Rowling and Christ.

This J.K. Rowling quote is circling the Internet and as it circled onto my screen and subsequently onto my Facebook page, a friend asked if, perhaps, Rowling’s rock bottom has anything to do with Christ. If so, it would be odd because, as my friend said, “I don't see any sort of Christian ethics in her writings. Wizards, sorcerers, magic, all things the Christians are warned to stay away from.”

I don’t see anything in J.K. Rowling because I don’t read J.K. Rowling. That’s not because of some deep and meaningful reason; I just never was drawn to the whole fantasy genre. But she seems to be quite a contemplative person – has gone through the hell of divorce and clinical depression – and inadvertently expresses her complexities in her art. She grew up Christian and shows allegiance to Christianity, even though it would probably not hurt her successes to do otherwise. 

I’m guessing that part of the success of the Harry Potter books comes from its fresh reflection of a very real world, full of soul-sucking demons and nasty über-spirits and mysterious forces that we all experience but can neither place, name nor identify. I don’t think she referred to Christ as the Rock of her bottom, but I am curious to see why God chose to bless her so extravagantly anyway. I’m fearing that the Christian Christ we expect to be told of in properly elevating writing is not going to be the Christ who will be found when it’s too late to change our theologies. And while I’m waiting for it all to unfold, I quietly recall that Jesus was found first by a group of Iranian magicians who were clumping after some astral sign they saw.

"It's a pitty we're not trying for a bit of inter-House unity"

Hermione

A glowing review of Cross On Me on Amazon

A reader of Cross On Me who calls himself  Vesa S left a wonderful review on Amazon.co.uk:

"Cross On Me is a novel about a mad or a brilliant man. Book is hard to put down once you start and it contains many thought provoking ideas and parables that tickled my mind long time after finishing with the book.

We are following the journey of Qoe though highways and small roads of USA, Canada and Alaska, but book contains so many layers, symmetries and references that it hardly can be said to be a journey log.

I enjoyed the rich language and fast moving scenes from all over the world."

Cross On Me - a review

 A reader just left a glowing review of Abarim Publications's first published novel Cross On Me on Amazon:

Arie's "Cross on Me" is a sheer delight for the mind - as an author and person, Arie continues to shine! Cross on Me is a fantastic novel with time honored archetypal themes running deeply through the pages and scenes. Written with substantial texture, Arie manages to retain a delicate mixture of realism, character, and witty resignation combined with the ever present glimmer of hope. For the realist and the romantic; for the idealist and the nihilist, Arie extends the invitation to dive into loss and find oneself in the all.

Thanks Kevin Stevens!

Now Released: Cross On Me – A Novel By Arie Uittenbogaard

PRESS RELEASE:

A brilliant man flees from reality and drives in a panic from scientific Boston to the wilderness of Alaska. When his father learns of his son's plight, he sets out to find him. Before they can meet again, both men must pay an ultimate price.

In his ambitious, literary epic, Dutch-born author Arie Uittenbogaard shows the north American continent through the eyes of two displaced foreigners who are desperately looking for each other.

Their quest takes them from the latest scientific findings to the ancient wisdoms of the Bible, from the Dutch city of Leiden to the arctic shore of Alaska, from the howling infinite of fiction and the squalls of madness to the folly of knowledge and the essence of redemption.

Cross On Me follows the trail blazed by Dante and Bunyan, and shows a modern day and unlikely Nazarene whose powerful father has to relinquish everything, follow his son into his grave and raise him from the death he died.