Book on Prayer Ignites

In Constant Prayer

By Robert Benson

This book is to the Christian’s prayer life what gasoline is to fire. In humble yet inspiring terms, Robert Benson carefully crafts a vision of perpetual communication with God among the Christian community. Benson outlines the history of repetitive prayers from such sources as the Common Book of Prayer, The Daily Office Book and others.  Once a time-honored tradition, the saying of daily prayers is now so uncommon that it is virtually unknown.

He estimates it takes a little over ten minutes to read and say morning prayers.  That amount of prayer should not be too much to ask of any believer, he insists. Yet Benson describes his own prayer life in frank and conversational admissions of an own ongoing experience of both awe and failure before God.  Though Catholic readers may not feel he has covered the subject exactly in their tradition, Protestants may feel he goes to far in urging a proscribed liturgy.

Personally, I found the balance refreshing. After spending years as a Protestant making up my own prayers, I see the value of falling back on the wisdom of the ancients. Instead of being a dull book on the obligation of prayer, which I must admit I half expected, I found it ignited my passion to pray.  I plan on sharing this around to get feedback from my friends and family, and then re-reading it again soon.

I have received a complimentary copy of In Constant Prayer from the publisher in return for my honest opinion of the book.

Stranger Than Fiction : a review

The power of words is certainly underestimated by the childish ditty we were taught: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." I've never broken a bone, or been struck by a stick or stone (that I can remember) but there are many words that resonate with at least a small amount of rancor, if not low-lying disappointment, inside my psyche.

Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson, already a strange pairing, exist in a fantasy/horror scenario where a writer's actual words narrate and eventually become real life. Ferrell 's IRS auditor character, Harold Crick, wakes up  in a verbal voodoo-like state created by the words of Thompson's somewhat unstable writer character Karen Eiffel.

As the story progresses, it seems inevitable that Crick will be killed off by Eiffel's story. After shrugging off his shrink's diagnosis of Schizophrenia, Harold turns to literary critic Jules Hilbert-heavy on cynicism, short on compassion-played by Dustin Hoffman, who concedes it inevitable and somehow fitting for the literary world that Harold should die, as he considers Eiffel's almost completed manuscript the masterpiece of the decade.

Were it not for the down to earth warmth of Queen Latifah's character as Eiffel's writer's assistent, and free-spirited bohemian baker Maggie Gyhyllenhall, Crick's love interest, the story would wither on the vine.  The detached manner in which Crick lives his life gives little room for sympathy, until he begins to take Hoffman's advice in light of his imminent death,  to "live the life you want to live".

That is perhaps the thesis of the movie, the takeaway phrase. 

What are we all waiting for anyway? Our death, while perhaps not imminent, is inevitable. Are we living the life we really want to live? When will we begin?

The truth of our lives is, after all, usually stranger and far more absorbing than fiction.

Why We Love Christmas

There's something at work in the world that holds a  magnetic attraction for people everywhere. Children, teenagers and adults are not immune.

This 'something' leads us to create an ever increasing variety of recipes, adding, changing the ingredients to make something new. We aren't sure what it's going to taste like until it's completed. The same hunger keeps us reading a good book. We want to find out how it ends. The secretive nature of a good story, whether on the screen or told by the fireside, is irresistible.

Consider what a world it would be if each day we saw played for us the exact events of the following day. Few of us would choose this!

 A wedding between virgins promises a far more thrilling honeymoon than the other kind. Though though we have done much to make it so, the womb is not transparent.  We cannot see the child within until it is born.

The discovery of the unknown has fueled much of the amazing inventions of the past centuries, and continues to propel us into the future. Our great love affair with surprise has funded the lotteries, and boosted the economy every December.

The whole world loves surprises. Good ones, of course.  We are all like children when it comes to being surprised; it is intrinsic to our human experience.

Gifts are wonderful, but a gift, unwrapped,  is not nearly as exciting as the thrill of discovering what is under the wrapping. This is why we love Christmas. Not only are we amazed that God himself came to visit us as a baby, but our gratitude overflows in gifts, in surprises to each other.

 GK Chesterton said, "We can increase the good we do to others by adding the element of surprise."

Consider how you might insert the magic of surprise into your everyday personal and business relationships!

Modesto FedEx office bustling before holidays - Business - Modbee.com

Modesto FedEx office bustling before holidays - Business - Modbee.com

My hard working husband has delivered packages through sleet and rain, snow and record breaking high temperatures for 18 years, cheerfully getting up long before I wanted to. He has delivered on his own time at the end of the day, when it needed to be done, made his cell phone available for customers to gain easy access to him. He has found thousands of dollars in cash and lost items and returned them to their grateful owners. He has delivered packages to ungrateful recipients on Christmas day, and given up vacation days to work when the company was short on workers.  He has logged in break time at a stop to listen to a chatty customer who needed to talk to someone more than they needed the package they ordered. He has spent lunch times playing piano for retirement homes on his route. He has taken pictures of the company picnic and made copies for all the stations that attended, all on his own time and dime. He has kept company secrets, codes and passwords in his head safe and sound and many a time delivered liquid morphine when he knew that meant his customer was at the end of their earthly journey.

They chose him for this sweet little piece by the Bee. And it is fitting, as more than a few of his coworkers agreed!  Kudos to my husband, Jim Maris, a Santa Claus of a guy who spend his days bringing people what they always wanted. May you have whatever your heart desires. You already have my heart! Merry Christmas darling!

Fast and Often Sad Ride with Brilliance

Imagine you are going 90 miles an hour in a sidecar, whizzing past scenes you barely know and the driver of the motorcycle is a brilliant British playboy atheist. That's the experience reading Hitch-22 gave me.
Hitchens, a native Brit, covers more political ground than the average American citizen pays attention to in a lifetime. And these are just the highlights. Photos of "Hitch" in many other countries, verbal snapshots of meetings with people we plebeians only know by reading of them in the paper or hearing their name in the news. These weighty journalistic exploits are interspersed with stories of his friend's private jokes that made this non-atheist blush more than once, and I must confess, let out a cackle or two.


A self proclaimed `contrarian', Christopher Hitchens endured the blistering reality of the English school system and a mother who committed suicide, only to emerge as a brilliant intellectual known for a rapier wit and an even sharper tongue, if possible, when it comes to religion, or totalitarianism, as he terms all religion. Discovering he had a Jewish heritage later in life, Mr. Hitchens devoted much of his energy to the study of "The Jewish Question".

As a believer, I certainly found a few things to take up argument with, but taking up sides against this man is no mean task. So I settled for common ground. Easily found. I thoroughly enjoyed a peek inside the mind of a man who said he tested his acquaintances on whether they felt their lives would be over if English Literature were to disappear. If only I were an acquaintance, I would pass on this criterion.
The Hitch? How to be totalitarian about being against Totalitariansim.

I was given a complimentary copy of this book by Grand Central Publishers in return for my review.

Review For Masquerade

Would you trade places with your best friend if you could? Even if she was a maid, and you were a wealthy society lady?  Charlotte and Dora, a lady and her maid do just that. Despite the fact that the two are immigrants from England, where an accent alone can betray the origins of your birth, they manage to pull it off. Charlotte’s reluctance about the marriage her parents have arranged for her becomes the answer to Dora’s prayer, or so she thinks. 

The trip over on the ship begins a series of events that is anything but smooth sailing for the ‘masquerade’.

I found the descriptions of the immigrant ghettos most riveting. The entrance of Sven, as a photographer in that time period seeking to document the squalid conditions was an interesting concept. No doubt there were people who did that, as some early photography exists. 

The conclusion was fairly predictable, and if you forget about the poor Italian immigrants, satisfies your itch for a happy ending!

 Ms. Moser’s letter to the reader, and her explanation about how the plot changed over time was a novel addition. I found her honesty engaging and almost as fun to read as the book.

Bethany House sent me a complimentary copy of Masquerade in return for my honest opinion of this book.

nancymoser

Tasting is Believing

I've always felt that the best way to advertise is to let people get a taste, smell, look or listen- in other words a sample of what you do.

I proved my own adage this past weekend.

For three out of the five years we've been going up to Napa to help our good friends Ken and Susie Pope at the cedargablesinn host the historic inn tour, we've enjoyed a sampling of some dessert by anniethebaker. A peanut butter parfait. They were good. Delicious, in fact. But every year I kept hearing about her cookies. They are for people who love the dough more than the cookie, she said. I'm one of those people. But still, I'd never tasted one of her cookies, the cookies that she'd painstakingly developed by scientific experimentation, often testing each cookie with a thermometer to make sure it was thoroughly done, and still tasted like it wasn't, quite.

Yada, yada. It was all talk to me. I'm sure they were good, I mean most every cookie I'd ever tried was good, you know? And all the dough, too.

We stayed up ater the tour, our aching feet longing to have a rest, standing in the kitchen to talk to Annie, who is one of the most energetic and funny conversationalists I've ever met. She told us how she left accounting to pursue her dream. To bake cookies, and how her parents were and still are a little 'nnnhhh'...about it.

I was fascinated by her as a person. She'd grown up in the midwest. We understood each other. Still, I'd never tasted a cookie of hers. Everyone left. Annie went home. I passed by a table in the foyer with rounded mounds that someone said were Annie's cookies. I tried a chocolate one. OOOOHHHH! Now I know what she meant. It tasted like cookie dough (forbidden treat) but it was a fully cooked cookie. I had another, a white one with huge milk cocolate chunks. Really full, but tasting more, I finally tried the rainbow sprinkle one,  the favorite of all the kids.

I was hooked, and am now a believer.