The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda’s Voice.
Rules
- Grab a book, any book.
- Turn to page 56 (or 56% on ebook).
- Find any sentence that grabs you.
- Post it.
- Link it at Freda’s Voice.
It Just Doesn’t Make Sense…
The March for Life is today in Washington, DC. Today is the anniversary of the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision. Every year since 1973, beginning with 20,000 people in 1974 and over 650,000 in 2013, people gather in DC to protest the killing of innocent children. According to the Center for Disease Control, 2000 babies were killed every single day in 2011. Over 56 million children have lost their lives since abortion was legalized in 1973.
Review: Ancient Christian Worship
Ancient Christian Worship by Andrew B McGowan Publisher: Baker Academic (2014)
eARC (320 pages)
Via: NetGalley
Rating:
Reading Challenges: 2015 Alphabet Soup, Read 2015
Synopsis
This introduction to the origins of Christian worship illuminates the importance of ancient Christian worship practices for contemporary Christianity. Andrew McGowan, a leading scholar of early Christian liturgy, takes a fresh approach to understanding how Christians came to worship in the distinctive forms still familiar today. Deftly and expertly processing the bewildering complexity of the ancient sources into lucid, fluent exposition, he sets aside common misperceptions to explore the roots of Christian ritual practices–including the Eucharist, baptism, communal prayer, preaching, Scripture reading, and music–in their earliest recoverable settings. Students of Christian worship and theology as well as pastors and church leaders will value this work.
Find the book: Goodreads, Amazon, Book Depository
Review: A Book of Uncommon Prayer
A Book of Uncommon Prayer by Brian Doyle Publisher: Ave Maria Press (2014)
eARC (128 pages)
Via: NetGalley
Rating:
Reading Challenges: 2015 Alphabet Soup, Read 2015
Synopsis
Acclaimed, award-winning essayist and novelist Brian Doyle—whose writing, in the words of Mary Oliver, is “a gift to us all”—presents one hundred new prayers that evoke his deep Catholic belief in the mystery and miracle of the ordinary (and the whimsical) in human life.
In Brian Doyle’s newest work, A Book of Uncommon Prayer: 100 Celebrations of the Miracle & Muddle of the Ordinary, his readers will find a series of prayers unlike any of the beautiful, formal, orthodox prayers of the Catholic tradition or the warm, extemporized prayers heard from pulpits and dinner tables. Doyle’s often-dazzling, always-poignant prayers include eye-opening hymns to shoes and faith and family. In Doyle’s words, “the world is crammed with miracles, so crammed and tumultuous that if we stop, see, savor, we are agog,” and the pages of his newest book give voice and body to this credo. By focusing on experiences that may seem the most unprayerful (one prayer is titled “Prayer on Seeing Yet Another Egregious Parade of Muddy Paw Prints on the Floor”), he gives permission to discover the joys and treasures in what he often calls the muddle of everyday life.
Find the book: Goodreads, Amazon, Book Depository
Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Covers
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.
This week’s list is a freebie so I looked back at the archives and choose my Top Ten Favorite Covers. Some of these are books I’ve read and some aren’t.
