The Traveling Mandolin: What I've Been Reading: 2021, Part Three

"A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal" edited by Sarah Bessey

After years apart from the liturgy, I'm dipping my toes back into the practice of praying prayers that others have written, and this book was a life-giving place to start. With contributions from some incredible authors such as Osheta Moore, Lisa Sharon Harper, Kaitlin Curtice, and Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes, as well as the editor's wise words, this collection features both prayers to say and essays about prayer in general, from a wide range of perspectives that remind me all the different ways to come before and encounter God.

Unfortunately (for me) this was a hot-ticket item at the library, so I only had two weeks to spend with it, but I'll definitely be picking it up again in the future; there is a lot to ponder here. Recommended for any Christian but especially for those who find prayer challenging, legalistic, or hard to touch.

"Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free" by Linda Kay Klein

I've added this to a long list of books that make me glad I didn't attend youth group when I was a teenager. (#onlyhalfjoking) The author uses her journalistic skills to track down and interview several women (and one trans man) from the standard evangelical youth group she attended in the early 2000's, sharing their stories alongside her own as a way to examine the Purity Movement of that time period (a combination of abstinence-only sexual ethic and strict modesty standards mostly enforced by shame, fear, and self-righteousness), and the damaging fallout of this theology.

Even as someone who only skirted the edges of purity culture (ironically, I avoided a lot of the really harmful rhetoric because I was so conservative at the time that I didn't even consider dating to be an option), I found a lot of the stories to be triggering, and the anxiety I felt as I read about others' experiences lingered long after I put the book down. Many of the stories are sexually frank, which was often tough reading.

What made me most uncomfortable, though, was that there was no clear narrative arc out of the messiness of deconstructing the damage done— no tidy ending, no "and then my true faith in Jesus made everything better." Each of the people interviewed found their own way out: some of them into deeper Christian faith, some of them to agnosticism or other beliefs. The author herself leaves the question of Christianity open-ended in her own life, even as she envisions a better way for churches to move forward. The book doesn't offer easy answers or a road map, and that's the point. This book certainly isn't for everyone, but it gave me deeper insight into and helpful language for processing a particular subculture that was mainstream when I was a teenager. It made me uncomfortable and it made me think, and that's always a good thing.

"The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships" by Harriet Lerner

When I told my counselor that I struggle with anger issues, she recommended this book, and although the 1980's-style cover deterred me, I dutifully picked it up. And it was SO HELPFUL. The book is straightforward and practical, acknowledging the many sources of various kinds of anger (including systemic issues such as sexism), teaching you to identify them, and giving advice for dealing with anger at the source. I was expecting an "anger management" book, but this was more about finding the root of the anger and taking care of it there, so you hardly need any techniques for dealing with the heat of the moment (although the book covers those too). It was full of lots of example conversations, which, while feeling a bit dated, were helpful to me because they encouraged me to visualize what different anger-warding-off conversations can look like: setting boundaries, addressing conflict, relinquishing the need to control, and dealing with various specific situations.

If you find yourself angry a lot, I highly recommend this book as a place to at least give you some language for understanding where the anger is coming from and how it can be channeled to improve your life rather than causing harm. It certainly helped me.

"No Longer Strangers: Finding Belonging in a World of Alienation" by Gregory Coles

I've been struggling with the theme of belonging in my life lately, and I hoped this book would offer insight into what finding belonging can look like (and maybe how I can get there too). Unfortunately for me, this memoir, while compelling as a story, mostly just made me jealous of how effortlessly the author seemed to have numerous very close friends. Ah well! Still worth the read, especially if you enjoy memoirs, and I appreciate Coles's perspective on God and the church as a queer Christian.

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Others in this series: