Madness: A Bipolar Life by Mary Hornbacher

I want to own this book. I feel at home with this woman through it. Her pain shocks me and her sweet sense of survival brings me to tears. Hornbacher does an amazing feat of writing from a first person stream of consciousness at the age of ten. She then writes from her childhood up to her womanhood days.

She communicates her life to us by episodes. Each episode is colored by sadness, depression, anger, euphoria, boredom, quiet joy, fear, anxiety, romance, and mania. Some chapters are short, some are long. It makes the book feel more like a journal than it does a novel. Her powers of phrasing and sentence structure amplify her content as she effectively communicates her states of mind to the reader. She does not mediate her experiences with her opinion, rather the reader is left to encounter for her- or his- self. Her honesty about her self and the world she sees is raw. Whether she is communicating her self focused reasons for falling in love with her second husband or strong fears of being left alone when depressed, the reader is left feeling that Hornbacher held nothing back in her telling.

Hornbacher’s ability to communicate without pulling punches satisfies the purpose of her book. She humanizes herself to her reader. She presents herself in all her beauty, strength, weakness, madness, and complexity and not as another case study. Her strong use of emotion and empathy in her episodes not only humanizes her but humanizes those who suffer along with her. The fear, pain, and compassion of her parents, her friends, her husbands, and her mental health counselors are evident in their care and communication with her. Her bipolar sickness is also demystified. It becomes less a capricious malady and more a disease with quirks and rhythms all its own. In short, Hornbacher, becomes less a woman who suffers and more a woman with a full, rich, deep life that is well worth living.

Madness: A Bipolar Life is 280 pages. It has appendices at the end that counter balance the narrative heavy story with Bipolar Facts, Useful Websites¸ and a Bibliography. She ends the book with a series of acknowledgements to those who supported her in this endeavor. This book is a wonderful resource to those seeking to understand and love those who suffer from Bipolar 1 disorder.

Book Review of There Was A Country by Chinua Achebe

Where the Rain Began to Beat Us

“A man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body” (Achebe, 1). The next generation wants to bring Nigeria forward, we want to progress in healing the wounds of this nation and making it healthier, peaceful place. We need to know where the rain first began to beat our people, before we can begin to dry our people. According to Achebe, the rain first began to beat Africa when Europe “discovered” the continent (Achebe, 1). The problems faced by this present generation, some of them have their beginning during Chinua Achebe’s early. Achebe tells his story as a way of informing the next generation where to begin to heal our hurts.

His book seeks to act as a Genesis story to the joys and problems of Nigeria. He tells personal stories of his experiences of Nigeria as a freshly-minted country. He creates complex characters with comedic anecdotes and tragic endings and is careful to place them as well as himself with the historical framework of Nigeria’s short political history. He is careful to give both sides of each story a hearing and to include the world’s response to Nigerian events. His book is full of references, he is careful to point out to his audience that his memories are not misremembered or conjured up; rather his memories are based carefully researched historical fact. These facts include the many layered relationships and ruptures that led up to the Biafran war and the textured response to the subjugated Igbo people that included both mercies and continued injustices.

“There Was a Country” does not seek to answer specific questions of Nigeria’s often bemoaned political state. It does provide a place for those with questions to begin searching for answers. He seeks to place Nigeria’s pains and impediments in relation to the socio-political history of itself and of the world. He is careful to include inter tribal and intra tribal political considerations that went into the sometimes atrocious actions of communities. As a diplomat Biafra Achebe considers the response of Western nations. However, his writing is never academic. He always uses personal stories that portray the very human people that he worked with.

Chinua Achebe has many features that deepened my understanding and respect for his material. He started each chapter with one of his poems in order to further communicate the “particular tension of war” (Achebe, 2). He also includes two appendices. One praises the servant-leadership of Nelson Mandela. The other provides a full transcript of the Brigadier Banjo’s, the leading ground officer Nigeria’s invading force, first inaugural radio transmission to the conquered Midwest. He provides a full bibliography of his references to historical events and an index of terms.   

There Was a Country seeks to give a personal history of an event that changed the course of a nation. It bemoans the loss of the innocence of a nation and the bitter coming of age of a people. This book is also hopeful. The author believes that the problems that plague Africa in general and Nigeria especially can be healed. He believes healing can begin with treating the root causes of African discomfort and then working towards the symptoms. Truest of all, There Was a Country communicates his deep love for Nigeria. 

Dear Worker,

"Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, And not hold the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit togethery, increaseth with the increase of God."
Colossians 2:18-19

This verse, and it's chapter, reminded me to view work, not in just a biblical way, but in a way that holds specifically to Christ.

Dear Worker,

You are called to work. You were made to work. Yet, work is fallen. Thorns and thistles, frustration and loss mark and mar your efforts and successes. There is beauty in your work, but no perfection. There is joy, but fleeting contentment. You were made, from the ground up, for this world. Yet, this world is not as it should be and neither are you. The sighs, the groans, the draping fears, and helpless tears, I know them. They are universal. Your work answers your questions about who you are and how much you are worth. Continually you answer, "not much," according to your proven inability to make your dreams come true. Yet, it defies what you are meant to see. You cry for perfection, for fearlessly fulfilled dreams, and for permanence most of all. You hang your heart on what you have already done, like your portrait on a wall. Only to find that wall both moving and crumbling. All that you would hang your hat on, base your self-value is still crumbling. Every peice of evidence against the accusations of unworthiness falls to pieces. it seems that the accuasations are the eternal things in our souls. The honest, god-less and hopeless soberly face that they will always be measuring up and that that is life.

Yet, that is not life.
Jesus, alone, is life.

He was perfect and worked perfectly. He came, put on imperfection, and worked in imperfection. He came into our need for self-worth measured by work. he came into our need for permanence. Jesus satisfies us. He gave us promises of eternal life. Through his apostles, he promises perfect, fearless, and joyful working. He came and he proved that the score-cards we kept for our self-worth were never authoritative. The score-card of our worth is kept by God and God alone. To Him, through Christ, we are always worthy of His love and goodness. Our worth is and remains based on the creating of God alone. Dear worker, you are worthy, you are permanent, and your work is good because of what Christ has done for you.


I hope you are encouraged.



Book Review: Father Elijah

Father Elijah

By Michael D O’Brien

1996

I loved this book and would love to remember it. The book is an apocalypse in much the same way the Left Behind series is an apocalypse. Both stories, tell about normal people living in at abnormal times. What makes this both stories so powerful is the obviously outstanding pictures used by John the apostle to communicate the revelation given him.

Father Elijah is a catholic priest who lives as a monk in the monastery of Mt. Carmel. The Catholic Church calls him to a secret mission. An extremely popular man has risen through the ranks of power, is uniting the world, and is very much against the believing church. They want Father Elijah to offer this man the gospel. Father Elijah, a Jew by birth, escaped the atrocities of World War Two, he fought for the survival of Israel as part of the Jewish Haganah, and as a lawyer was rising to fame as a prosecutor of Nazi war criminals. Yet, he aborted his own rise. He walked away from fame, fortune, and power to become a very quiet monk. Father Elijah accepts the challenge and with an unlikely cadre of friends engages his journey.

His friends and allies begin one dimensionally, but most of them take on history and complexity as the story goes on. There is a satifying element of pluck, mystery, and interior consideration in each one. The author allows the character of each one to be in-flux and to be, at times, unwilling participants in Father Elijah's story. At the heart of each character, even the bit-players, lies a decision to or not to trust in God. Humanity of the men and women who pass through Father Elijah's story, add immensely to its depth and definite power to its climax.

Father Elijah is a man of many gifts and talents. He loves archeology and theology. He gained a few skills and street smarts in his time with the Haganah. His skills as a lawyer remain undimmed. Yet, his call to offer another the gospel plays not to his strengths but to his weaknesses. So much is unknown to him and to the Church that calls him. He fights with the weapons available to him, yet he continues to suffer losses and setbacks along with his victories. His enemy mystifies him. His God mystifies him. Even as they face life and death, Father Elijah and his team often find themselves facing fear and doubt. So his response of faith is especially heartening. Father Elijah is often reminded to and often reminds others to go and pray. There in prayer, he and others find peace and meet with a God who directs, inspires, strengthens, and stretches his servants. Prayer is Father Elijah’s main redeeming quality.

God is painted as a present, powerful, and unknowable character in this story. He does not answer every prayer immediately. He does not help or deliver from death everyone who believes in him. He calls his people precisely into the things that they would want to avoid. He uses his people for his own ends with no warning or preamble. The characters simply act as the characters they are, full of intellect and instinct. Through and with them, God accomplishes his work. This portrayal of God, if sometimes dark and distant, is utterly believable.

The book is long and exciting. It is well paced, full of humorous one-liners, in short a gem in the genre of Christian fiction. Though I cannot agree on the degree of veneration given to the Virgin Mary and other theological points and habits intrinsic to the Roman Catholic faith, I can agree with a dependence on a God who is not at all tame, but very, patient, and very, very good.

Merry Christmas!

Today, this world remembers that Jesus was born today. He gave the greatest gift of his life. The first thing he did was become what we needed, a man-child. I am glad he trusted his Father so much. It has changed our lives whether we like it or not. 

Merry Christmas!

The Lord of the Rings is an amazing trilogy. It was written by JRR Tolkien who, according to Tom Shippey, as a Christian, wrote an essentially pagan myth. This myth is powerful in its ability to portray the various facets of human nature as it interacts with a believable spiritual reality. To the extent that it is true in its portrayal, I think that trilogy glorifies God. I think the work of that author does so amazingly well and on levels that are still beyond me.

Recently, I have been meditating on words quoted from the movie and used in a men's conference. They are the words of Elrond to Aragorn (son of Arathorn) on the eve of the battle before the walls of Minas Tirith. He says, "Put aside the ranger. Become who you were born to be." The men's conference called us as men to do the same. We were called to put aside our lonely, self-focused ways and become men of community and men who are focused on bringing good to our world.

I have been ruminating on the ways I have and have failed to put aside those ways. "How can I become king?" How can I become the great man I was, obviously, meant to be? Then I read, NT Wright's article in the Sept/Oct 2012 edition of Relevant magazine. Wright wrote about the five mistakes we as Christians often make when considering what to do with the recorded life and works of Christ before his passion and death. As I finished reading the article Wright's line struck me, "In fact, the four Gospels are trying to say this is how God became king."

"this is how God became king."

If the story of Aragorn within the Lord of Rings trilogy is a good portrayal of both human nature and spiritual realities, then in that story, I am not Aragorn (son of Arathorn). Instead, I am either Gimli or Legolas. Jesus, for me, is Aragorn. He put aside his own independence. He took on the responsibility of this "Middle Earth." He won the victory. He became king. I am a friend and fellow traveler, who, in a sense, shares in his suffering and will one day, in a very real sense, fully share in his victory and glory.

Festival of the Nations

It has been awhile since I last posted. In that time, I have moved, shifted schools, and job sites. St. Louis is a beautiful with so many things that glorify God. The Boys and Girls Club of Greater St. Louis (BGC) is a non-religious organization that provides kids with a safe place to play, learn, and build positive relationships with adults and their peers. This organization has been in St. Louis since 1967 and has positively affected the lives of thousands of children and their families. Family is a fundamental institution to any society or cultures. BGC is an organization that helps families resist modern pressures that fragment family relationships and stunt positive mental and psychological growth in teens. I believe that this organization glorifies God.

My favorite annual event in St. Louis has come and gone. The Festival of the Nations! For two days, cultural organizations come together to share their food, their dances, and their art with each other. One day you can carry a Filipino drink, corn beef and cabbage from the Highlands, and Ethiopian injerah all to one lunch table and devour it. On that same day you can hear an Indian dobro, see traditional German dancing, and watch Brazilian capoeira dancers “fight” each other. It makes for an absolutely awesome two days. My personal favorite was hearing Portuguese bossa nova. The music is deeply moving.

The Festival of the Nations is my favorite reminder of Revelation 7:9. One day, we will stand before the throne and the Lamb, just as we are. If God looks forward to us and our culture, why shouldn’t we seek the same now?