Life has been wild, so not as much reading, just chipping away… Just the same, a few selected highlights from the past couple of weeks’ reading…when I’ve had a moment.
Books
1. Continued reading The Kalahari Typing School for Men, the fourth book in Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.
2. Daily devotional reading of a passage a week in the Gospel of Mark, guided by NT (Tom) Wright’s Mark For Everyone. I’m into Mark 9 currently.
3. Read chapters 11 and 12 in Jesus Mean and Wild, by Mark Galli, for a men’s bible study I lead on Wednesday mornings before work.
Online: blogs, news/commentary, etc
1. This short piece from the Leadership Journal blog, Out of Ur: Lessons from St. Arbucks. It’s about the role of Starbucks as a place to meet and grow relationships in our culture…and what lessons, if any, the church can learn from Starbucks along these lines. To counter-balance the discussion, there is an excellent comment worth scrolling down to read. It’s the third comment down by “Melody,” who talks about how Starbucks, by analogy, explains the problems of modern American Christianity and reinforces them rather than solves them.
2. I’ve come to enjoy reading the daily “Today’s Papers” column from Slate.com. It’s a summary of what’s in (usually on the front page) of the country’s major newspapers: NY Times, Washington Post, USA Today, LA Times, and some from the Wall Street Journal. I find it a nice way to get a brief on things. I get the teaser in my email daily, then click over to Slate.com to finish the column. Here’s a link to today’s (Sunday), for example.
3. Want to better understand how you and others read the bible, and to better read the bible? Here’s a piece from Ben Witherington III’s blog on hermeneutics (The theory and methodology of interpretation, especially in reference to Scripture).
4. Finally, a couple of references to a story about the inner life, doubt, and wrestling with God by Mother Teresa. Here’s the one from Time magazine. From the blog “Get Religion,” which covers how the media covers religious stories), this piece.
Guy M Williams 
Thanks for the link.
Ben’s a good guy, but his meaning/significance distinction is as wrong as wool baseball uniforms.
You’re welcome for the link. Thanks for reading my blog.
But as for dissing the meaning/signifigance distinction…Really? Please say more about that. Seems to make pretty clear sense to me. So, I’m curious.