Molly's Book List B: Spiritual Healing

Spiritual Healing: Book List B

1. Here and Now - by Henri Nouwen

2. We Would See Jesus - by Roy and Revel Hession

3. Reaching Out: the 3 Spiritual Movements - by Henri Nouwen

4. Abba's Child: the Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging by Brennan Manning

5. Devotional Classics - ed. Richard Foster

6. Can You Drink the Cup? - by Henri Nouwen

7. Diary of Private Prayer - by John Baillie

8. What's So Amazing About Grace - by Phillip Yancey

9. The Jesus I Never Knew - by Phillip Yancey

10. I hear Oscar Romero is good

11. I would like to read more of Mother Theresa's writings


-- please share any recommendations --

Molly's Book List A: Fiction

book recommendations for some good Fiction:

***** = super, must read
**** = great book
*** = good book
** = not so good
* = no good

1. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver * * * * *
- a bestselling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from Georgia to the fictional village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo. The Price's story, which parallels their host country's tumultuous emergence into the post-colonial era, is narrated by the five women of the family: Orleanna, long-suffering wife of Belgian missionary Nathan Price, and their four daughters – Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May.

2. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini * * * * *
- three generations of women in the midst of three different eras of oppression and fierce rule in Afghanistan find friendship and a glimmer of hope in each other

3. The God of Small Things - Arhundati Roy * * * * *
- is a semi-autobiographical, politically charged story set in Northern India. It is a story about the childhood experiences of a pair of fraternal twins who become victims of circumstance. The book is a description of how the small things in life build up, translate into people's behavior and affect their lives. The novel won the Booker Prize in 1997.

4.Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin* * * *
- one man's mission to promote peace one school at a time starting in Pakistan and overflowing into Afghanistan

5.A Hundred Years of Solitude -Gabriel Garcia Marquez* * * *
- brilliantly loaded writing style that will challenge anyone's IQ
- magical realism at its best

6. When Broken Glass Floats - Chanrithy Him * * *
- A Cambodian survivor unrolls the reels of her memory to give us this heart-wrenching memoir of growing up under the brutal Khmer Rouge. the author's intro. poem:

When broken glass floats, a nation drowns,
Descending to the abyss.

From mass graves in the once-gentle land,
Their blood seeps into mother earth.

Their suffering spirits whisper to her,
"Why has this happened?"

Their voice resounds in the spirit world,
Shouts though the souls of survivors,
Determined to connect, begging the world:
Please remember us.
Please speak for us.
Please bring us justice.

7. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini * * * 1/2
- The Kite Runner tells the story of Amir, a boy from the Wazir Akhbar Khan district of Kabul, who is haunted by the guilt of betraying his childhood friend Hassan, the son of his father's Hazara servant. The story is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, from the fall of the monarchy in Afghanistan through the Soviet invasion, the mass exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the Taliban regime.

8. Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri * * * 1/2
- Moving between events in Calcutta, Boston and New York City, the novel examines the nuances involved with being caught between two conflicting cultures with their highly distinct religious, social, and ideological differences.

9. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai * 1/2
- the plight of three near strangers under one Himalayan roof interwoven with plight of illegal immigrant from India making his way in New York where joy and sorrow and the rainy season are almost indistinguishable
** turns out this is mostly super tragic, so tragic that it almost re-redeems itself as being above reality and even artistic -- so only read it if you have a lot of hope in your heart so you won't be too discouraged


-- please share any recommendations --

tidbits from working with kids

so, i've been working with the kids in the After-School-Program for several months now. For whatever reason we have a lot of first graders. there are so many of them and they're so confused and they don't know how to read or subtract so i end up working with them a lot. i'm pretty sure it was on my first day that one of the little girls approached me and told me that she had lost her tooth - and i was so happy to celebrate this right of passage with her - we did the whole shabang - we talked about tooth fairies and biology and the pains of growing up. ((i mean i've worked with kids for the past 4 summers and i don't remember any kids talking about loose teeth or fairies or anything - maybe they don't fall out much in the summer.)) but as of late, it's been a bit overkill, kids are coming to the center everyday with new plastic lockets around their necks encasing the bloody baby teeth with style and pride - i've never been bombarded by so many loose teeth - i mean these kids are literally falling apart.

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i've noticed that most of the kids look like their moms and then i was thinking, well, maybe they resemble there fathers too - i just wouldn't know because i've never met any of their dads.
Where are all the fathers?

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feliz navidad

i just realized today that last year when i was in Nepal i was always looking for beauty in the world around me - perhaps inspired by the depraved environment of poverty in which i was living. today i am living in abundance and i have a hard time seeing beauty in it. God, restore my vision, open my eyes.

i don't usually get one-on-one time with the kids but today for whatever reason the second van i took to school was just me and Jacob. it was me and Jacob in a fifteen passenger van on the snowy, narrow roads to elementary school. right after we pulled out of the parking lot "Feliz Navidad" came on the radio. i love Christmas music and this is one of my favorites, so i turned it up. and we just sang along with all our hearts, Jacob more confidently on the English verses. i looked back in the rearview mirror and Jacob was bobbing his head, looking around with light-hearted delight. there was no pretense, no fighting, just singing together. and then it hit me, this is it, this is my life, my lot, this is me communing with little Jacob, and this is God showing up and delighting in us. God, i long to live each minute, as a moment pregnant with life and new beginnings, give me fresh eyes and a fresh voice to sing along with you, oh God, as you did to us this morning.

warm december wind

today on my to work, the wind was warm on my face. it's the beginning of December and I live down the street from a couple 14,000ft peaks and the wind was warm today. the sky had streaks of pink and orange, spotted with sky scrapers. i spaced out and took a wrong turn and ended up running into a friend who was also biking to work so we went on together. i don't know why i never write anymore. maybe i haven't noticed enough sunsets and the wind has been too cold on my cheeks for me to look up at the sky.