Book Review

Praying in Color:  Drawing a New Path to God by Sybil McBeth.
Book reviewed by Deacon Lois Howard.
    In I Thessalonians 5:17, Paul reminds us that we are to “pray without ceasing,” (KJV) or “pray continually” (NEB).  Is this phrase from scripture an order or a personal invitation to pray?  We can learn different prayer forms such as centering prayer, walking prayer, meditation, contemplative prayer, walking a labyrinth.  All of these forms are legitimate and we choose the form that seems to feel best to us.
     In her book, Praying in Color, Sybil McBeth presents a new idea - that of drawing or doodling a shape on a piece of paper, placing someone’s name within that shape and then using colored markers, crayons, or colored pencils, to add color to the shape.  All the while one doodles or colors, attention is focused on the individual named in prayer.  The doodling can be saved each day or it can be added to.  Markers and paper, thus, set the stage for our prayer time.  McBeth writes that by using this visual means of praying, we carry that image, that person, and that prayer with us throughout the day.
     Throughout her book, McBeth gives suggestions for how this prayer form can be used with scripture, for remembering, for discernment, with calendars, for our enemies, and even using the computer.  She explains that “a new prayer form gives God an invitation and a new door to penetrate the locked cells of our hearts and minds.”  (page 49)  The book is simple and teaches how to pray with the right side of the brain.  Some may find this new form a useful way to pray when using only words to pray seems to reduce God by the limits of our finite words.

Book Review
Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

Book reviewed by anonymous
    I first came across the writings of Wendell Berry in college. A few years later I came across some of his poetry then, a few years ago, I discovered his fiction. I still enjoy Berry’s essays and poetry, but his fiction is superb. The writing is simple and clear; yet demands to be read and savored slowly.
    Berry’s fiction is set in the town of Port Williams, Kentucky, a fictional town along the Kentucky River where a number of generations of his characters have lived. Most of his fiction tells the story of the town through a member of the community. Hannah Coulter is his first published attempt of writing about the community through the eyes of a woman. Interestingly, one of Berry’s first novels, Nathan Coulter, was about the second husband of Hannah (her first died in World War II). Berry’s characters have faults, but because they work together, they overcome them and enjoy a simple life close to the land.
    Hannah Coulter grew up poor, but was a hard worker. She married well, as they say down South, to the son of a prosperous and hard working farmer. But shortly after her wedding, the war came. Her husband died in battle, leaving her with a child. Her second husband, Nathan, survived the war. Upon their marriage, he purchased an old worn-down farm and they spent their lives building it up.
    Berry’s stories entertain, but they also make us wonder if those of us who have moved away from the farm and the land have lost something. Over and over again, he finds a way to slip in his vision of a land ethic. People are suppose to stay put and take care of the land and when they do, the land will take care of them.
    Another value that Berry highlights here and in other stories can be summarized in the old hymn, “Abide with Me.” The “members of the Port William Township” abided with each other, rejoicing in the good times and being beside them during the bad (one of Berry’s collections of short stories about Port Williams is titled Watch with Me.
    Sometimes I wonder if Berry’s battle is as useless as fighting the wind, but other times, his vision becomes real enough to make me wonder if it isn’t possible and if we wouldn’t be happier living a cyclic life, a little closer to the land.
    I encourage you to read Berry and maybe if interest was voiced, a class in the fall could be offered.

Book Review
Submitted by The Rev. Elise Johnstone
Lexington, Kentucky

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Have you ever “just known” that something was not right after having observed it for only a second or two? Malcolm Gladwell, who was a business and science reporter for the Washington Post as well as a staff writer for The New Yorker, has used that “two seconds” of decision-making time the subject of his second book.

Blink is a fun book to read. While Gladwell concerns himself with real life situations, thus making the book a non-fiction work, he writes well and keeps the reader’s interest with countless examples of what he calls “rapid cognition.” Rapid cognition is the quick thinking that happens in the first few seconds of a situation being presented to an individual. Early in the book, the author gives an example of a sculpture that was offered to the J. Paul Getty Museum for sale. The sculpture was presented to the museum as an ancient Greek statue of a boy, known as a kouros and it was in excellent condition, and the Getty spent much time in authenticating its age and place of origin. All the facts seemed right, but more than one expert on ancient Greek sculpture would look at it for the first time, for just a few seconds, and know that something wasn’t quite right about it. What was “wrong” was nothing that could be described very well—so many details of the sculpture were correct for a sculpture of its type and supposed age. It turned out that after even more extensive research, that the sculpture’s age and origin couldn’t be authenticated—those experts, while not being able to describe what was wrong with the statue, knew there was indeed something wrong.

Because Gladwell came at this topic as an investigative and research reporter, and not an expert on the cognitive workings of psychology, the book is one that is interesting and accessible for non-experts in psychology. For those who have more of a background in psychology, it whets the appetite in an intriguing way. Gladwell explores this process of quick decision-making and gives the reader a good assessment on the art of “thin-slicing”, the practice of filtering the very few things that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.