Books I’m Supposedly Reading

Posted by Eric (April 13, 2007 at 12:13 pm)

My pal James at the facetiously named blog “The Daily Brouhaha” (“Bi-Monthly Brouhaha” would be more like it) has tagged me with this “Book(s) I’m Reading” thing, so here goes. Right now I am currently more-or-less reading the following books:

The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus

One of the most important books on monasticism and the ascetical life ever written. St. John “of the Ladder” was the abbot of a monastery on Mt. Sinai in the seventh century. I’m on Step 26, “On Humility,” out of a total of 30 “steps” on the “ladder,” and had hoped to finish the whole before Pascha, but didn’t.

Each of the steps deals with a different aspect of the ascent towards holiness, a different spiritual challenge. Very hard core book, to be read with caution by a non-monastic, but full of wisdom as well as a delightful realism about spiritual battle.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dosteyevski

My second reading through the great Russian classic, perhaps the greatest spiritual novel ever written. The brothers—Mitya, Alyosha and Ivan—while remaining fully realized characters, at the same time represent different modes of hunger for truth and authentic experience: Mitya, the passionate sensualist (or perhaps better, the romantic); Ivan, the passionate thinker; Alyosha, the passionate disciple.

Everyone who wants to understand Christianity—both what it is and how it can fail to engage the world effectively—should read this book. The wisdom of Elder Zosima, Alyosha’s spiritual father in the first part of the book, is priceless—and, I find, echoes many of John Climacus’ ideas too.

Ecclesiasticus or The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach

Lately I can’t get enough of Biblical wisdom literature. I’ve always loved Proverbs, and since being introduced to the liturgies of the Christian East, the Psalms have become the heart and soul of my prayer life.

Now in Ecclesiasticus (a book, by the way, which is tragically missing from Protestant bibles) I’m finding much-needed guidance for some of my present struggles. God provides.

The Panda’s Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould

This collection, subtitled “More Reflections on Natural History” serves as my office “bathroom book,” each of Gould’s essays on Darwinism being just the right length for the purpose. The agnostic Gould is a fascinating writer on evolution and a horrible theologian.

For example, in writing about the panda’s thumb—not a thumb at all but a knob of wrist bone which grows out away from the paw and helps the panda eat bamboo—Gould declares, “Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution—paths that a sensible God would never tread.”

I’m ready to agree with the first part, and Gould’s careful investigation of these “odd arrangements and funny solutions” certainly presents a tremendous challenge to the Creationists; but in my experience, “odd arrangements and funny solutions” are precisely what I’ve come to expect from God—though I would never blaspheme the Lord by calling him “sensible.”

There are a few other books I’ve got going “on hold” right now, including St. Isaac of Ninevah’s On Ascetical Life, which it was a mistake to try to read concurrently with the Ladder, and Henri Daniel-Rops’ The Protestant Reformation, one of a series of about ten books on Church history to which I will certainly return one of these days.

And with that, I hereby tag Renee, Karl, John and Karen. I’m also going to “re-tag” John C (whom James already tagged), since he hasn’t blogged since before Lent!

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