Book reviews from my roles as mother, wife, and rabbi

Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace by Ayelet Waldman

I've reviewed this one here before, but just recently reread it because... oy, I need the help!  It was good as always.  Mostly, it served its purpose in reminding me that even though I feel that I'm not succeeding particularly well at being either a mother, rabbi, or wife, that I am trying my best at all of them, and that's good enough.



Learning to Play with a Lion's Testicles: Unexpected Gifts from the Animals of Africa by Melissa Haynes

I nabbed this one because of the title, like everyone else I'm sure, since Jonathan loves lions and I thought he might like it.  Yet I was quite surprised by its contents.  The title phrase is slang for "to take risks" in South Africa, and the author decides to do just that volunteering on a wild animal reserve.  Yet she chooses to volunteer to escape the grief and guilt she feels over her mother's death, and the Africa chapters are interspersed with flashbacks of her mother's final months and hours.  It's a bit heavy-handed at times, but overall she does a nice job tying it together.  I'd recommend it, but with the caveat that it's not the light-hearted beach read you might be expecting.



Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and a Saint by Nadia Bolz-Weber

I checked this one out at Nicole L.'s request, and I'm so glad I did!  More than others I've read in months, this memoir made me think.  I even took notes on it, which I usually only do for academic books.  On the surface, the pages are a chronicle of the author's journey from drug user and alcoholic to being the founding pastor of a LBGTQ-friendly Lutheran church, with stories about herself and the people she meets along the way.  That's the easy summary.  On a deeper level, the book is a string of thoughtful sermons woven together in a non-chronological narrative.  Bolz-Weber shares her faith and her truth in a non-threatening, easy-to-understand plainspoken style (peppered with curse words), and explains where she finds her God and her grace.

I obviously don't share her belief in Jesus, but I admit, in a way I almost envy it.  It provides answers for her that I lack.  Take, for instance, her stance on suffering on page 128, given in the context of her reaction to the 2012 Haitian earthquake:

I've written about suffering already in this book, and I'll write about it again, because addressing pain and tragedy is one of my main responsibilities as a pastor.  I'm asked to find God in suffering.  And every time I go looking for God amidst sorrow, I always find Jesus at the cross.  In death and resurrection.

This is our God.  Not a distant judge or a sadist, but a God who weeps.  A God who suffers, not only for us, but with us.  Nowhere is the presence of God amidst suffering more salient than on the cross.  Therefore what can I do but confess that this is not a God who causes suffering.  This is a God who bears suffering.  I need to believe that God does not initiate suffering; God transforms it.

I wonder about suffering too, but I don't have a cross and a self-sacrificing God to transform it for me, to accompany me in my grief.  My image of God is not nearly as substantial as hers, I have no tangible Jesus-like figure to be with me and shoulder part of my burden.  I'd always wondered how Christianity and the Trinity could be logical to people, how they could believe in it, why they would believe in something that by its very nature depends on a tremendous leap of faith (I mean, believing in God is hard enough, believing in a man who is both God and God's son at once seems even harder to me) - but now I get it.  She sold this rabbi on why Christians need Jesus.  She made her faith real.  And it's truly beautiful.  It's not my faith, and it never will be, but it was wondrous to see someone else's so vibrantly and eloquently explained.

On an entirely different level, this book was also worth reading purely for my professional curiosity about the inner workings of a liberal Lutheran church, and for the contrast it offered between that and evangelical Christianity.  I had no idea, for instance, that evangelicals were faith-based almost to the exclusion of social justice, since in my personal bubble, social justice initiatives are much of the foundation of Reform Jewish congregational life.  I also came away with some intriguing notions for future adult education offerings, for some of her church's less philosophically-based programs are lovely, and I bet could be easily adapted to work in all faiths.

Overall, I highly recommend Pastrix.  Nicole L., great call!