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In Defense of Ordinary Time

It seems presumptuous and even a bit preachy to pre-empt our summer of escapist fantasy by appealing to the church calendar, but as I thought about this writing experiment my mind kept going back to Kimberlee Conway Ireton's second chapter on Ordinary Time in The Circle of Seasons. Turns out she takes on pretty bold-facedly the longing for what lies beyond our immediate grasp:

When I was a girl, I longed to experience what Emily Starr, the heroine of L. M. Montgomery's Emily trilogy, called "the flash." . . . I wanted to experience that glimpse of the transcendent, to be thrilled with the momentary parting of the veil between heaven and earth.

What I have since realized is that I do have these glimpses of the glory beyond and that they are a mixed blessing. The parting of the veil fills me with awe and delights my soul, but it also opens in me a yearning, a deep and almost painful desire. . . . In the past, I have grasped at whatever ushered me into the enchanted realm beyond the veil--the sleeve of my husband's crisply striped shirt, the roses fresh-cut from my rosebushes and sitting in a bowl on the counter, the crescendo of the organ as we sing the name of Jesus in church--in an attempt to replicate the experience and so quench my desire to live in moments of mystery. This never works.

Summer may be the time when our escape impulse is most intense; it may even be the time when escape seems most sensible and achievable. This is summer, after all, where everything flourishes and even blazes with life. But for the church, summer means Ordinary Time.

Starting a mere week after Pentecost Sunday, when we celebrate the miraculous anointing of the church, and lasting till Advent, when our longing for the return of God becomes so acute that we can no longer ignore it--Ordinary Time is the longest season in the church calendar. Ordinary Time is so ordinary that according to many traditions it happens twice each year: from barely summer to nearly winter, and between Epiphany and Lent.

It strikes me that the Scriptures prepare the church for this prolonged ordinariness. Pentecost is marked in the early verses of Acts 2 with a big bang--fire and wind and dynamic preaching and mass conversion and all that stuff. But it very quickly gives way to the later verses of Acts 2, which are profound in their plainness. Here the Scriptures describe teaching and eating and praying (oh my). Even miracles are described in the passive voice. If you want to get your church all riled up, read them Acts 2:1-41. If you're brushing up on your bureaucracy, read 42-47.

Of course, there's awfully cool stuff happening in the ordinary days of the Church of Latter Acts 2. Passive or not, wonders and miraculous signs were done. Meals were shared. Property was redistributed according to need. The people's favor was enjoyed. And daily, the chapter ends by observing, people were being saved.

Kimberlee notes that the veil separating us from a more wondrous view of God is not really ours to pull back.

No one can look on God and live. It is not simply because we are sinful and God is holy. No, it is because God is real, and our finite minds cannot comprehend nor our frail bodies bear the eternity and majesty--the utter realness--of God.

Instead, when we embrace Ordinary Time as part of whole gift of our existence, we sometimes find ourselves pleasantly surprised by how thin the space we occupy actually is. The veil itself drops long enough to give us a sideways glance behind it at ultimate reality. We're reminded that even the most ordinary time is undergirded by something extraordinary.

We live the bulk of our lives in the daily, doing the same tasks again and again--preparing food, showering, dressing, checking voicemail or email, doing dishes or laundry, commuting to work--and it can come to feel like a grind, pointless and redundant. But it is precisely because these tasks are daily that they have such transformative potential. . . .

In sharpening our physical senses to be more aware of this world, we are also quickening our spirits, opening them to the earthly beauty that surrounds us so that we will be more ready to receive visions of the unearthly beauty that lies just beyond our senses on the other side of the veil. As with any grace, we cannot force or demand such a vision. We can only wait for it, attentively and hopefully, as we engage in the relationships and work that constitute our lives.

The most extraordinary moments, it seems, come not when we run away from the ordinary but when we walk by faith right through it.

What We Know

Maybe it's because I'm a frustrated musician, but I frequently compare the publishing industry to the music industry. It's often a helpful comparison: both industries are creative enterprises with content and personality both being critical ingredients for each new product's success; both have struggled to redefine themselves in the digital era. But I'm starting to wonder if my industry is less like the music industry than it is like its own arch-nemesis: television.

I had this proto-epiphany in a movie theater during the pre-previews portion of the evening's entertainment. On the screen was an extended commercial for (or "behind-the-scenes look at") the new Jada Pinkett-Smith medical drama Hawthorne. Punctuating the preview--I mean advertisement--was "TNT: We Know Drama." And I thought to myself, Well, yes, they do know drama.

TNT is a basic-cable enterprise out of the mind and wallet of Turner Broadcasting. They know lots of stuff, if you take them at their word--drama and comedy being their main areas of expertise. I don't regularly watch the content they broadcast, but I accept the identity they've claimed for themselves for a variety of reasons:

• they air interesting films and syndicated reruns (My Name Is Earl is by no means your typical sit com)
• their forays into original programming have earned them critical accolades (The Closer and Saving Grace are compelling dramas built around strong female characters, and Ten Items or Less and My Boys both consistently get props from critics, if not stellar ratings)
• they take their viewers behind the scenes of both their original programming and their repeats (a la Hawthorne)
• they get creative with their rehashed content (editing the randy Sex and the City for commercial rebroadcast)

So when TNT says they know something, they can point to things that back their claim up.

The other thing that strikes me, however, is that while each show is actually in a sense its own independent entity--producers shop programs around before landing a deal with TNT--each show is unavoidably tethered to the network. Episodes air on the network channel or stream on the network website. For better or worse, the individual programs are banking on the premise that TNT knows what they're doing, and that their audience believes it.

Of course, the dependence is mutual. TNT's reputation is more than, but not less than, the sum of its parts. It relies on the consistent quality and appeal of its contracted original programs and the actors who perform and promote them to sustain its reputation as a source of compelling drama, progressive comedy and innovative broadcasting. The moniker "TNT" is both an endorsement and an extrapolation of the network's contractual relationships.

So is the donkey that graces every Likewise book. As a line within InterVarsity Press's publishing program, we try to work with creative, compelling authors on significant books produced and promoted in interesting ways. Our publishing partners benefit from our sixty-plus year reputation, but that reputation is itself an aggregate of sixty-plus years' worth of publishing partnerships. What we know as a publisher, you might say, is more than but not less than the collective wisdom of our authors and the people who populate their acknowledgments page.

So what does Likewise Books know? If you base it on our authors to date, you might say we know the complexity of Christian faith, discipleship and mission twenty-one centuries into the life of the church. We know what resources are available to God's people, and we know what challenges God's people face. We know that there is wisdom to be found and embraced beyond the walls of the church, and that the church itself has wisdom to contribute beyond its own walls. And we know more than anything that we need to be there for one another. For Likewise that means bringing writers and readers into conversation with each other to explore the contours of acting thoughtfully and thinking actively--and above all, as our donkey reminds us, going and doing.

Of course, that's just my take on our publishing project. What do I know? Or maybe a more constructive question would be, what do you think?

For the Love of Lent

Last night I gathered with others from my church for our annual Solemn Assembly to confess my sin individually and corporately; to have ashes placed on my forehead as a reminder that the cost of sin is death, and that I am finite and dependent on the Creator who formed us from the dust of the earth; to hear words of truth spoken from the Bible about who I am, about sins I'm guilty of; to pray the Jesus prayer as so many saints before have:


It's a service that called us to name our sin, to sit for a little while in the raw, ugly fact that we are sinners who have turned from God, doing what we want to do instead of what we know he wants us to do. It felt awkward, uncomfortable, unfamiliar, sitting with others I know, pondering my own sin, identifying with each other for a while not as the friends and ministry partners and small group members we are, the roles that usually define our interactions with each other--but as fellow sinners.

This, however, was not a wallowing service. It was solemn, yes, because it was serious, because sin is serious. But after we sat with our sin, after we asked Jesus Christ, the Son of God, for mercy--then we received that mercy anew. We shared in Communion, celebrating Christ's painful death and victorious resurrection on our behalf, taking it in as the free gift of God that it is. And we recommitted ourselves to living as the people of God--as sinners redeemed, as new creations in whom Christ dwells--in a hurting, broken, sinful world.

Lent, which begins on Wednesday, has become a significant time of year for me. Yet it can often feel unfamiliar or mysterious, depending on the tradition you've grown up in or depending on where you're at in your faith. Indeed, it is unfamiliar because it's so countercultural; it goes against our efforts to appear good, our perfectionistic tendencies, our desires to keep our minds on happy, uplifting topics. Lament and sin are not on any "conversation-starter lists" for first dates or parties. We don't discuss them in the hallways at work or on the train during our morning commute. We don't like to feel bad about ourselves and recognize our sinfulness, both of which usually occur during Lenten services like the one I attended last night.

But Lent as I am coming to see it is not about judging ourselves, grinding ourselves down into the dirt until we can't even get off the floor for the shame of the sins we've committed. It is, rather, a time set aside to give us perspective, to correct our vision of ourselves and the world that may have tilted to the "we can't help it that we sin" side through the year, to remind us that the world is not as it was meant to be and not as it will always be, and, above all, to help us better celebrate and understand what Christ has done. We can't really feel grateful for Christ's suffering until we understand that we are the ones who deserved to suffer. We can't understand the significance of his sacrifice until we accept the seriousness of our own sin.

In this context, then, Lent becomes not just about sin, but about the juxtaposition of sin and mercy: a confession of lust is forgiven with love; an acknowledgment of anger is answered with grace; a group of deserters has their feet washed by the One who knows they'll desert him.

So, whether you've been observing Lent for years or haven't heard of it till today, I invite you to do something to observe it, beginning on Wednesday. You might consider simply giving up something that keeps you from spending time with God, or that keeps you from seeing the truth of who he is.

You could also observe Lent with us at Likewise books. Tamara Park, author of Sacred Encounters from Rome to Jerusalem and relatively new to observing Lent herself, will send out a short email each week with a reflection and questions as well as a song, Scripture and image to keep in mind as you go through your days. These emails can help you take stock of your spiritual state and give you space for sacred encounters of your own. If you want to receive Tamara's emails during Lent, simply email us at likewise@ivpress.com and put "Lenten Sacred Encounter" on the subject line.

Kimberlee Conway Ireton, author of The Circle of Seasons, can serve as a Lent guide for you too. She explains the background and practices of Lent for you in chapter five of her book, as well as gives simple suggestions for Lenten observances that can make it a significant period of discovery for you. In addition, she's written and posted family devotions for each day of Lent at her website. Just click on "Resources" to find the guide.

Yet another option (aren't we helpful??) is to join Dave on his personal blog where, starting Wednesday, he'll be posting daily readings from his latest book, Deliver Us from Me-Ville--a particularly apt topic for the season.

Lent, admittedly, takes work. But it's work that is so necessary for our growth in Christ. As I walked from the parking lot to my office building this morning, the sidewalk gave me a clear--though unglamorous--picture of the essence of this season of the church year. There, alongside the white, unmarred snow that fell this weekend, lay a pile of geese poop. The juxtaposition of Lent is that stark as well: we see our ugly, unglamorous sin next to Christ's saving grace, our embarrassing messiness beside God's deep mercy. Starting Wednesday, let's name and sit in and walk through our sin together--that we might know in even deeper ways the gift of having that dirty sin become clean like untouched snow.

Pardon My French

Ooh la la! One of my authors, writing of a freak encounter with an unwashed rodent, let slip a naughty word. I'm blushing, I think. We may be edgy over here at Likewise Books, but we're not typically that edgy.

Normally our policy on vulgarities follows the policy of magazines, such as Time and others: either edit around it so it's no longer necessary, or strike the damning characters so that no one's virgin eyes are deflowered. So, for example, Lady Macbeth might be edited to the more family-friendly "Out, d*** spot!" Or, to keep it interesting, "Out, d*** s***"--in the event that I was feeling a little naughty myself. On the rare occasion when such edits will actually subvert the intent of the author, we will soberly leave the word unobscured.

The first time this problem came across my desk, it was assigned to me. An author had used a careless word, and his editor had failed to sniff it out. During a final review the word caught the attention of my sharp-eyed boss, and he commissioned me to review the entire book for other instances. I spent the better part of an hour giggling like a seventh grader as I typed every four-letter word I'd ever been spanked over into the search field in Microsoft Word. I felt like the George Carlin of the Christian publishing industry. (Google it.) An hour in my hot little hands and that manuscript earned itself a G rating, thank you very much.

So I'm accustomed to editing out the bad language of authors. But here I'm presented with a curious dilemma: the offending word is written in French.

This isn't the author trying to get around my puritanical editing; given the context, it's actually appropriate--a French epithet employed in a conversation that actually happened. The pottymouth in question is a Francophone. (Google it.)

Most of the author's audience are likely not Francophones, so only a percentage of the book's readers will know they're being sworn at. But I'll know, and the publishers in Francophone countries who are interested in translating the book for their audience will know. And my boss, with his annoyingly French surname, will also know. And when he reads the book, the m**** will hit the fan, if you catch my meaning.

So I'm editing the word out of the book. That is, perhaps, what Jesus would do, if Jesus were a twenty-first-century editor of Christian books for the American marketplace. Right? 

The Jacket on the Girl in the Orange Dress

You can't judge a book by its cover, but sometimes you can judge the cover. The forthcoming book The Girl in the Orange Dress needed a jacket design appropriate to both its contents and its audience. We found ourselves with two great cover options, so we asked you to vote. You can read the full details here.

While the contest was heated, with four hundred people voting and contacting us to elaborate on their vote, ultimately one cover clearly dominated. So feast your eyes on the winning cover here; in a few months you'll be able to feast your eyes on the whole book.

By the way, we haven't forgotten that we promised a free copy of the book to five random responders. The winners will be announced in a forthcoming Likewise Notebook, an occasional e-mailed update on the goings and doings of Likewise Books by InterVarsity Press, and at the Likewise Facebook group. Good luck! May the orange dress be with you. 

All Right. Stop Voting.

Thanks to all who participated in our cover survey for The Girl in the Orange Dress. We're closing the polls now. We'll take a little time to tally the results and announce the winning cover (and the winners of the random drawing) in the near future here and elsewhere. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about the book's author, Margot Starbuck, click here. If you're wondering what other funky books are in the hopper or in our warehouse, click here. If you want to get updates and be in the running for other book giveaways, click here. If you want to do nothing whatsoever, click here.

 

Ha ha, that last one was a joke.

You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover, but You Can Judge the Cover

Coming soon to a store near you is The Girl in the Orange Dress, a story of struggle with the fatherhood of God by Margot Starbuck. Here's what novelist Lisa Samson had to say about it:

"I haven't felt this much emotion from a memoir since reading Angela's Ashes. Outrage, grief, joy and humor mingle together in Margot Starbuck's book, drawing the reader into her experiences in a way that leaves one feeling neither like judge nor voyeur, just a friend on the journey. Humbly honest, graciously hilarious, evocative, The Girl in the Orange Dress is for anyone who needs to know, really needs to know, how much God loves his children."

We need your help as we bring this book to publication. We have two very different cover designs under consideration. Which would you take home and read? Which tells you what you need to know about the book? Click here to vote at Survey Monkey. Five respondents will be selected randomly to get a copy of the book when it releases in July 2009! (If you work for InterVarsity Press, please don't vote. It's not that we don't care, it's just . . .)

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We Are Waiting for Christmas

Better late than never, here's a nice meditation on Advent from The Circle of Seasons by Kimberlee Conway Ireton. I like to describe it as "a life in the year of the church."

The coming of Christ into our midst requires that we rethink our desires and that we learn to hold them lightly, allowing the desire of God to supplant--or increase--our own desires.

If we were to observe Advent as the season of thoughtful reflection and repentance that it has traditionally been, we would have an opportunity to do just that: to rethink our priorities, to realign our lives with God's desires for us, to seek forgiveness and to start anew--the first Sunday of Advent, after all, marks the beginning of the church year. What better time to reflect, repent, receive forgiveness and so refresh our weary souls?

To spend the weeks before Christmas in this way would be radically countercultural, to be sure, but it would also serve to remind us that we are waiting for Christmas--and that the celebration of Christmas is worth waiting for.

The book goes on to offer really lovely experiential insights into the various seasons of the Christian calendar, from Christmas to Easter to Ordinary time, and all points in between. But for now it's a nice reminder at the end of a calendar year that the year of Emmanuel--God with us--is only just beginning.

Filth on the Floor, Crown on the Head

The latest in our ongoing lunchtime series of topical discussions related to Likewise Books, the Donkey Congress, involved a conversation about the tension between cynicism and earnestness, and the appropriate balance between the two. I left the meeting and stumbled upon the following comments from President Theodore Roosevelt, who presided over the social progressive movement in early twentieth-century America and the parallel movement of "muckraking" exposé journalism.

In [John] Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck-rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.

In "Pilgrim's Progress" the Man with the Muck-rake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing. Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil.

So maybe between Bunyan and Roosevelt we have the appropriate caution for an otherwise healthy cynicism: every once in a while, for your own sake and for the sake of everyone else, you gotta look up.

The Fortnight So Nice We're Doing It Twice

Every time we stumble upon a topic here at Strangely Dim that stimulates our imagination enough to generate an entire fortnight's worth of material, I get really excited. So you might imagine how excited I am to announce that Lisa and I are going to attempt the virtually impossible: two back-to-back fortnights on the theme of donkey tales from the Bible.

This project has been a modest dream of mine since the unveiling of the Likewise Books logo:

 

And in fact we toyed with the idea in a line description that accompanies every Likewise book. That line description inaugurated the first fortnight of donkey tales; I thought it would be appropriate for this second fortnight to draw from the two samplers we created for the line.

The first sampler featured five books--Flirting with Monasticism, Practical Justice, Sacred Travels, The New Friars and Blessed Are the Uncool. The latest sampler features one book that's now in print--Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers--and two books that are forthcoming: The Green Revolution and Love Is an Orientation. The introduction tethers these various books on diverse topics to the overarching idea of our publishing program: that striving to live like Jesus in our everyday going and doing is a discipline of seeking wisdom in real time, something that we rely on one another to accomplish. Without further ado, then, here's the inaugural post to our second fortnight of donkey tales:

There's an unusual warning buried somewhere in the middle of the Bible: "Do not be like the horse or the mule."

It's ludicrous, isn't it? Why would anyone compare a human being to a donkey?

And yet, if the horseshoe fits . . .

Do not be like the horse or the mule,
which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle. (Psalm 32:9)

There are days when we just can't figure out how to go anywhere or do anything without compromising our convictions--being less than who we were created to be, living less than fully in the way we were made to live. On days like that, being controlled by a bit and bridle doesn't sound so bad.

In fact, Jesus makes us an offer:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

Likewise books are an exploration of the yoke offered us by Jesus. . . . We invite you to respond to the simultaneous challenge and promise in Jesus' words to another skeptical would-be follower: "Go and do likewise."

This Month's Donkey Congress: The Shack

Yesterday a group of us associated with Likewise Books met over lunch in our bimonthly Donkey Congress to discuss the runaway bestselling novel/theological treatise The Shack. We didn't publish it, but we read it anyway, because we're not particularly provincial. Anyway, I could write a summary of the nature and tone of our discussion, but I don't have to, because my friend Al Hsu already did. You can read his very thoughtful post over at his blog.

The thing about group discussions is that every one is different, even if they all involve the same book. I actually attended another discussion about The Shack earlier this week populated not by publishing professionals such as myself but by people involved in lay or vocational ministry. The conversation was slightly different and perhaps less critical theologically than the in-office Donkey Congress, but again people saw great potential in a book that Eugene Peterson called this generation's Pilgrim's Progress, Al Hsu called this generation's Disappointment with God and I'll call, I guess, this millennium's Confessions. Or this month's The Secret. Take your pick.

Our next Donkey Congress will be in late October, where we'll discuss the forthcoming book by Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers. If you're interested in hosting a Donkey Congress in your very own time zone, give us a shout.

Donkey in a Box

Today at Likewise Books, base camp for Strangely Dim, we held our bimonthly Donkey Congress, where we discuss a publication (sometimes one of ours, sometimes another publisher's) that has even the most dubious bearing on our publishing program. Today's discussion was on I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus, written by Likewise poster-child Don Everts and InterVarsity's regional director for campus ministries in Southern California, Doug Schaupp. (Pause for breath.)

I Once Was Lost is not technically a Likewise book, but neither is it a book by some random other publisher. It bears the imprint of IVP Books, an imprint of InterVarsity Press, the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a member organization in the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. IVP Books for short.

Despite the absence of the Likewise donkey (we like to call him "Jack") from the book's cover, I Once Was Lost struck us as particularly appropriate for an hour-long conversation. As it turns out, it was appropriate for an hour and a half, and honestly, we probably could have gone longer. (I can be pretty long-winded.) We had two guests from outside Likewise Books, both serving as pastors in our area, both of whom offered helpful insights to our discussion. It strikes me that there might be others out there who could spare an hour to talk about how faith is shared in postmodernity, so what follows is a script for your very own do-it-yourself Donkey Congress. Please feel free to buy the book (sneaky, huh?) and use or deconstruct what follows as a framework for your discussion.

Five Thresholds of the Postmodern Path to Christ

·      What are the contributing factors that make "distrust" the default posture toward Christianity among postmoderns?

·      What makes Jesus compelling in a post-Christian culture? How do we present Jesus as compelling without commodifying him in some way?

·      On the television show In Treatment, a therapist characterizes the New Testament thesis as "God good, people bad," and the intrinsic appeal of self-loathing as the principal reason Christianity spread so quickly. What makes "life change" a particular value of Christianity? If "life change" as a value is unique to Christianity, how is it made compelling to non-Christians?

·      Is a focused search for Jesus a realistic expectation of people in a frenetic, multitasking culture with constant ambient noise? How so or why not?

·      How ought our posture change toward a person who has entered the kingdom of God?

 

The Farmer Versus the Friend

·      What does it mean to be different in a pluralistic culture? What do you suppose our non-Christian friends want for us?

·      How does the movement of the church from the center to the periphery of culture affect our relationship to non-Christians? Is there such a thing as "Christian privilege" (similar to white privilege) that we should give up expecting or even repent from? If so, how would you characterize Christian privilege?

·      What complications emerge from the dual relationship of "farmer/soil" and "friend/friend" described in this book? To what degree is an evangelist unavoidably unfriendly?

 

The Thresholds of the Evangelist

·      It's become a cliché that short term missions changes the missionary. Does evangelism change the evangelist? In what ways?

·      Much methodology associated with evangelism presumes that the evangelist is interesting. That is, frankly, not always the case. How does one become intriguing? And to what degree does this refashioning of your personality reinforce distrust?

·      What thresholds does an evangelist need to pass through to have an authentic, redemptive relationship with a non-Christian?

 

 

 

Goodbye Donkey, Hello . . . ??

Dave was away from his desk for awhile this morning (no one's talking about it, but there are suspicions that he and Andy had "a talk" about Dave's post, and what frustrations are appropriate to share on a corporate site. The word rabbits angrily spoken might have been heard coming from Andy's office earlier today) so he may not have had a chance to respond to your angry outbursts over the ending of our rabbit game, but I wanted to give you my two cents on the whole thing, and provide a few more details about the intense conversations going on here at IVP surrounding rabbits and donkeys.

The fact of the matter is, the rabbit game and the ensuing friction it's caused has, simultaneously, helped everyone face the cold, hard truth: We picked the wrong animal to represent the Likewise line. We're proud of our Likewise books; they're noble, thought-provoking, authentic and honest. And the donkey is, let's face it, an ignoble, inelegant, not-so-bright animal. Sure, one of the donkeys in the Bible could talk, but we can't go around basing our whole line on an exception. Every other donkey on the earth has only ever been able to make a braying noise that, if heard for too long at one time, has been known to cause depression in children, not to mention compulsive furniture rearrangement and increased reports of Pin the Tail on the Donkey using large nails and heavy hammers instead of stickers--and on days when it's not even someone's birthday. (Shocking, I know.) Our Likewise donkey-bearing books are for people who lead, not for burdensome, whining beasts who have to be dragged around by bit and bridle. You see the problem.

Given the recent unpleasantness, one might be tempted to simply swap out the current donkey for the silhouette of a rabbit. But while rabbits are far more endearing, generally, than donkeys, they have almost no societal impact. They simply hop around foraging for food and keeping to themselves. And while they are much easier to find in the stuffed or chocolate variety than, say, donkeys (just try finding a peanut-butter-filled chocolate donkey--just try, I dare you!), in real life, they are scared as blades of grass in lawn-mowing season, and run away before you even have a chance to admire the length of their feet. Not to mention the fact that they occasionally cause damage to lawns and gardens--which has caused one editor here at IVP (who shall remain nameless, for protection) to express desires involving shotguns and rabbits. And we certainly don't want our Likewise animal invoking violent thoughts!

So--we thought we'd put it to you, the Likewise audience. Which animal should take the place of the donkey in our logo? We would also of course invite you to make a case for keeping the donkey. I don't want to influence your opinion or skew the vote by suggesting animals you should vote for, but while I'm writing I would like to speak for the llamas, which happen to be very intelligent and social animals, and which I might have mentioned casually when we first started discussing an animal to represent our Likewise line. Not that I'm bitter we didn't go with the llama. I just wanted to put it out there as an option. So don't be a scared rabbit (or a donkey's fool, for that matter)--give us your comments!

What I Dithcovered in Theattle: The Latht Entry

I'm in Seattle for the New Conspirators Conference. Here's round four of what I learned.

* Jesus wants to know whether I am a sheep or a goat.
* You'd be hard pressed to find a cul de sac in the suburbs called Martin Luther King Court or Malcolm X Way. (Efrem Smith)
* The beloved church is a loving, abiding, confessing, perfecting church. (Efrem Smith)
* If you keep the beginning and the ending of your worship service the same, most congregations will let you do what you want with the middle. (Mark Pierson)
* Software, not hardware, is the key to the future.
* I can browse the same books at the same bookstore over and over and over again without getting bored.
* I'm not a very competitive person largely because when I compete, I lose.
* Mark Scandrette is the coolest guy in the room, regardless of the room.
* The game of "Rabbit" does not favor travelers or residents of the west coast.
* Kimberlee Conway Ireton writes a killer book and cooks a killer souffle. (Keep an eye out for the book, due out this winter; step lightly around the souffle.)
* It's hard to select a church to attend when visiting Seattle, but it's easier to select two.
* I'm looking forward to being home, and to visiting Seattle again.

What I Dithcovered in Theattle: Third Timeth a Charm

I'm in Seattle for the New Conspirators conference. Here's what I'm learning.

* The least are the new most.
* Some reports put "regular church attendance" at once a month.
* Third places don't have clocks. Neither are they monoprogrammatic.
* As long as you have a segregated city, you will not be a leader in the multiethnic church. (Tali Hairston)
* Seattle is a lonely city; in such a context, hospitality is prophetic.
* Commercialized community further marginalizes the poor and outcast. (Karen Ward)
* To create is to not destroy. (Karen Ward)
* As soon as you are willing to be told what to do by a twenty year old, you will have twenty year olds in your church. (Karen Ward)
* We are called to be ourselves, remembering that our true self is a child of God, redeemed in Christ, enlivened by the Spirit.
* I miss Lombard.

What I Dithcovered in Theattle: Thecond in a Therieth

What I Dithcovered in Theattle: Thecond in a Therieth

I'm now done with day two in Seattle, where I'm attending the New Conspirators conference. Here's what I've learned:
* Seattle has pretty good coffee. Don't know if you'd heard that before. El Diablo and Caffe Vita are destined to be my breakfast and lunch destinations while I'm here.
* A quarter doesn't buy you near as much street parking as you might hope.
* Walking in Seattle, with its steep inclines, is a good workout for your calves and buttocks. Seriously, I can feel the burn.
* If you are driving within the broadcast range of 103.7 "The Mountain," you don't need to bother with your i-Pod. You also only rarely need to leave your car.
* Every "Mars Hill" is just a wee bit different from every other "Mars Hill."
* Good fences may make good neighbors, but good churches may make something else entirely.
* I could live here, I think.
More to come!

A Donkey and a Dream--Or Something Like That

My friend and colleague Jeff Crosby reads the New York Times. I do not. Jeff, therefore, is more hip than I am to all the news that's fit to print, including a recent article about a guy traveling from Portland, Oregon, to Patagonia, South America, with a donkey in tow.

Jonathan Dunham is, apparently, an unassuming guy with virtually no attachments, save the donkey given to him by Mexican farmers. The donkey goes by the name Whothey, which is pronounced "Judas," which sets the mind a-wondering.

People, especially reporters, are among those awondering and have been assigning various motivations to Jonathan--from world peace to a world record and even world evangelization. But what will ultimately be a four-year journey for Jonathan probably most closely resembles the ancient practice of pilgrimage. He has a destination in mind, and he's living simply and quirkily along the way. And while one can only guess at why he's doing what he's doing, he seems to be a likeable guy and has in fact done a little bit for world peace and perhaps even world evangelization along the way. The jury's still out about the world record.

This story appeals to us at Likewise Books for obvious reasons, the most obvious of which is that it features a guy and a donkey, which--if you haven't noticed--is our logo. The lifestyle Jonathan has embraced for himself appeals to us as well, albeit in a more mystical, enigmatic sense: he's living what some of our authors have lived and profiled along the way, from the discipline of pilgrimage practiced by Christian George to the simple and just living articulated by Scott Bessenecker and Kevin Blue, to the embodied spirituality championed by Chris Heuertz, Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (two books in our very near future; keep your eyes out for them), and even the evocative imagery employed in books by Don Everts and Rick Richardson. Jonathan is going and doing, and we here at Likewise can get behind that.

If you think of it, pray for Jonathan and Judas--for safe travels, for warm receptions, for occasional epiphanies. Pray for us if you think of it as well--that we'd publish what needs publishing and that our authors would grow through the experience of helping others grow. And then, if you think of it, pray for yourself--that you'd know when it's time, as Jesus suggests, for you to go and do likewise, and that you'd have the sheer moxie to do it.

Destination Likewise

Strangely Dim isn't just a dumping ground for the random thoughts that occasionally come to Lisa and me; it's also the official blog of Likewise Books, a line of books from InterVarsity Press. And as an official blog, it's our official duty to officially inform you that the Likewise Books website is up and at em.

Soon enough Strangely Dim will actually be relocating to likewisebooks.com, complete with a funky facelift. But you should go to the website now anyway, because it's really cool. There's regularly refreshing content on the home page: a featured interview with a Likewise author, excerpts from Likewise books, a link to this blog and, in perhaps the site's most quirky feature, profiles of people who lived Likewise before they were dead.

You can, of course, also look through our list of books and authors, even peeking into the near future for what's coming next. You can find out where our authors are headed and jump from our site to sites that at least one of us has found interesting at one point or another. It's frightening, really, just how much stuff we've crammed into one little website.

OK. Consider yourselves officially informed. Now, back to the strange and the dim . . .

Virtually Online

Yesterday at an all-InterVarsity Press meeting we got a sneak peek at the revamped Likewise Books website. It's going to be, I daresay, nifty, with new content (including original artwork and a brand new blog), interviews with authors, and links to books and other interesting stuff. You can get a taste (and I mean just a taste, like those little spoons they give you at the ice cream shop, not like those shot glasses they give you at an olive oil tasting) at likewisebooks.com. Probably when it launches the Strangely Dim URL will change, so be ready.

Jesus Without Religion & Life After Church

We were apparently in a grandiose mood when we titled this season’s Likewise books. Coming soon to bookstores (and bookshelves, one might hope) everywhere are two books making bold statements about some of the foundational beliefs of the Christian faith.

First up is Jesus Without Religion, by Rick James, the king of faith-filled funk. Rick wrote his book as an attempt to look at Jesus through the text of the Bible and the culture of Jesus’ era, rather than through the institutional constructs put in place by centuries of church. Not that he has anything against church; Rick simply wants to get down to the nitty gritty: What did Jesus say, what did he do, and what was the point?

The only thing standing in the way between you and Jesus now is Rick’s Robin-Williams-esque sense of humor, which peppers each page and salts each assertion:

Genre is everything. The merit of the phrase “eggs, chili powder, prune juice and Captain Crunch” can only be assessed by learning whether the genre is that of a grocery list, a poem or a recipe. It’s a coherent grocery list, a lousy poem and a vile recipe.

To understand a particular section of the Bible, you simply must identify the genre. . . . Jesus’ . . . explanation for speaking in parables . . . is similar to the rationale behind a poem. The shocking truth is that Jesus doesn’t want everyone to understand him. Yes, that’s what I said, “Jesus did not want everyone to understand him.” . . .

In cloaking the truth in parables, Jesus allowed for people to be in a process, to be on a spiritual journey, to remain neutral if they chose. The parables are a dog whistle, piercing to the faithful but muted to the masses, graciously allowing the unready to avoid an out-and-out, final confrontation with the truth.

Pretty clever, huh? We see Jesus being controversial, then we see why. Add a little Captain Crunch and everybody’s happy.

On the heels of Rick’s book comes Life After Church: God’s Call to Disillusioned Christians by Brian Sanders. Brian is, and is writing about being, a leaver: in love with Jesus but dubious about the institution that carries his banner. Brian’s point is that many “churches” haven’t earned the title, or they’ve lost their way over time. It’s time to be honest, he challenges, and make lucid the hope that God calls us to as the church.

This isn’t, of course, some blanket permission to sleep in late on Sundays or to slander pastors and denominations or to sanctify your stool at the local bar. Brian’s helping us to understand what church really is and then pushing us to live into that understanding. You can do that where you are, within an existing church, or you can begin something new and revolutionary; either way, it needs to be done.

Try to be the church. Pray and serve and organize and dream and plan and give and welcome and sacrifice and form community and have conflict and reconcile and lead and share Jesus and behold and study and pray and teach and baptize and love and be a neighbor and meet needs and know people, all kinds of people. Be the church. Don’t be a victim of the structure you were born into; be a leader. Treasure Jesus, know him, study him, and then you will know yourself, who you were meant to be; then you will know the church and what it is meant to be. The vision God has for his bride is the same as the vision he had for his Son. It is the redemption of the world and the ushering in of the kingdom of God.

Brian’s book is a manifesto of sorts, a call to vital faith for people who feel their faith being gradually eroded.

These are only the latest books to emerge from our Likewise line. Plenty more where that came from, so keep us in your sights.

Confessions of a Ten-Year Temp

Today marks my tenth anniversary at InterVarsity Press. On June 11, 1997, I walked into my swanky corner office for the first time and formally requested two weeks off.

In my defense, I requested the time off for a youth group trip to the Navajo reservation that I had been planning for a long time. My supervisor decided it would be good for me to get in a couple of weeks training time before my predecessor left, so I started early. The timing of my start date didn't matter much to me, to be honest; I was more concerned that my new job wouldn't get in the way of my living my life.

I don't know if my boss knows this, but InterVarsity Press was supposed to be a temp job for me. I had run out of money while working as a fundraiser for a startup youth ministry, so I took the job at the Press. I figured that I ought to at least enjoy what I was doing while I dug myself out of debt. But time gets away from you, especially when you're enjoying it and seeing the immediate fruits of your labor.

A book is, in a sense, the inevitable destiny of an idea, and so I dwell daily among ideas moving inevitably toward their destiny, making sure that those ideas are well-spelled and adequately punctuated. Then again, a book is often the incubator for new ideas--and not only new ideas but new ways of living. A hallmark of InterVarsity Press's publishing program is a high value of transformation, the thoughtful integration of life. And so in our finest moments to edit an IVP Book is to midwife a midwife, so to speak: to help bring about the means for a person or a community to transform into something better, something new and fresh and more fully alive.

Of course, books aren't the only harbinger of transformation. Whatever growth I've experienced over the past ten years is due only in part to what I've read. I'd attribute perhaps a greater part to the interactions I've had with my friends and colleagues over the years, and to the opportunities that my supervisors and authors have afforded me. I wouldn't have four years of blogging under my belt if it weren't for my boss inviting me to write for the company website, and without this blog I wouldn't have come across some of the remarkable people I've met along the way. Likewise, in my interactions with authors and coworkers I've been challenged to broaden my vision of the church, to reconsider the extent of my discipleship. Given the isolating nature of the work that editors find themselves so often buried under, I've been fortunate to have a distinctly communal experience.

When I first started working at InterVarsity Press I would politely decline every invitation to lunch from my peers--not because I didn't want to lay down roots but because I was that broke. I regret it now, because over ten years you see a lot of people come, and a lot of people go. But I'm on a better financial footing now, and I'm well-rooted in the purpose and values of the Press, and I'm regularly in the mood for lunch. So today I raise a peanut-butter cookie in gratitude to InterVarsity Press. If only I had a glass of milk in which to dip it.

Mix It Up Day

Yesterday, apparently, was Mix It Up Day at InterVarsity Press. (It was also Sarcastic Wednesday, according to Hallmark's Hoops and YoYo.) Yesterday I parked in the parking spot normally taken by the director of production and fulfillment (gasp!). Yesterday the associate editorial director led a meeting normally led by the editorial director (wow!). Yesterday the director of sales and marketing sat in the seat normally occupied by the senior marketing manager (huh?!?). Yesterday the editorial intern took the favorite lunch spot of Craver VII. And yesterday the editorial department cancelled its weekly popcorn meeting in favor of a Thursday bagel meeting. I even switched stalls.

We were all mixin' it up yesterday. This post even mixed it up; I scheduled it to go online yesterday afternoon, but here it is, one day late. We didn't plan Mix It Up Day, but in all sorts of ways we honored it.

It's good, I think, to mix it up on occasion. It's far too easy to settle into habits and routines that once were refreshing and innovative for us but have become regimented, subconscious, automatic.

Some things, of course, lend themselves to becoming regimented, either by their nature or by design: our bodies require regular rhythms of sleeping, eating, whatnot; we discover the most efficient path to a repeated outcome, and we repeat it because to do otherwise would be silly, wasteful. Those things notwithstanding, I think there often comes a time when we need to look squarely at what we've become accustomed to, in order to determine whether we've become enslaved to it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (my favorite Dietrich) gave at least one example in his book Life Together:

"Let him who cannot be alone beware of community."
"Let him who is not in community beware of being alone."

I'm struck by this pairing of statements both because they caution us against the type of settling we're vulnerable to--when we seek out community or solitude by default, we miss out on the benefits and responsibilities of their opposites--and because the paradox itself mixes it up for me. Every time I read these statements together, my initial reaction is "Huh? . . . Wait a minute . . . Huh?"

So for a time at least I get interrupted from my presumptions about what it means to be in community or in solitude, and I revisit my own understandings of what I need from others, and what they need from me. What happens next is unpredictable, which is, I suppose, why we don't often like to mix it up.

Nevertheless, I welcome you to make your own Mix It Up Day. Share your favorite memory of mixing it up (or getting mixed up) here. Then go, as they say, and do likewise.

Editors Are People Too

Karen Sloan, author of Flirting with Monasticism, came through Chicago this past week to take part in the Wheaton Theology Conference, this year discussing ancient-future Christian theology--just the sort of place where monasticism is actively flirted with.

Because of the apocalyptic weather systems we've been experiencing lately, Karen's flight to Chicago was delayed, so she missed the scintillating conversation that takes place every Wednesday afternoon when our editorial department gets together to eat popcorn and catch up. There's nothing quite like the anthropological experience of sitting with editors in our natural habitat, chewing with our mouths open so we can talk with our mouths full. I know it's a meager substitute, incidentally, but starting this week you can have a similar virtual experience at any one of our three new editorial blogs: Behind the Books, Addenda & Errata, and our fearless leader's recurring diatribe, Andy Unedited. Seriously, it's like an editorial smorgasbord around here.

But I digress. Karen was able to make it over here Thursday instead. For her trouble she got an up-close and personal view of my office, which is a total disaster area because I lack the common courtesy to clean up for my guests. She also got to meet some of her e-mail correspondents face to face, and she had lunch with a scintillating colleague of mine. From there she went to the conference, and from there she came to a play I was in, where she saw me dressed in a tunic and heard me singing poorly about my--make that Peter's--denial of Jesus.

I think by now it's well-established that I'm not afraid to make a fool of myself in front of virtually anyone, but while I've had authors sing to me, this was the first time I've sung to an author. Fortunately, her book already came out, so for the time being at least, she's stuck with me for an editor.

I mention all of this not only as a public thanks to Karen for her visit but as a way of communicating (read that "confessing") that editors are human. We do weird stuff--but that's not because we're editors, it's because we're human. We get anxious about what other people think of us--but that's not because we're editors, it's because we're human. My authors have learned that firsthand; it's part of the demystifying process of getting published.

One of the nice things about working for a publisher such as InterVarsity Press is that we learn while we're working--about God, about ourselves. In my case, I learned the following from David Benner as he wrote The Gift of Being Yourself:

People who are afraid to look deeply at themselves will of course be equally afraid to look deeply at God. For such persons, ideas about God provide a substitute for direct experience of God. . . . Paradoxically, we come to know God best not by looking at God exclusively, but by looking at God and then looking at ourselves--then looking at God, and then again looking at ourselves.

I learned a lot--about God, about myself--from Karen Sloan too, and I'm learning as I go from the other authors floating around this place these days. Yep, editors are people too, and people, I think it's fair to say, need one another.

Treat Your Author Right

Taco John's: Lunch of Champions

This week I visited Chris Heuertz, international director of Word Made Flesh and forthcoming Likewise author (I'll tell you the title when we make up our minds). After being well-fed and hydrated by him and his wife Phileena (below) and well-entertained by the good people of WMF for several days, I treated them to lunch at Taco John's, because I know how to treat people right. I wore my extra-large jeans in anticipation of all the Potato Ole's I ate. Yummy.

From left: Chris Heuertz, Phileena Heuertz, Dave Zimmerman

The U.S. office for Word Made Flesh is based in Omaha, Nebraska, but they have like-minded people befriending the poorest of the poor all over the world. If you've read the Likewise book The New Friars, Chris probably looks and sounds familiar. Keep an eye out for his book; it's gonna be a good one for shizzle.

Gotta Go, Got Stuff to Do

The Sloan donkey gets a call from her agent, who's concerned about overexposure.

Put Your Donkey on My Shoulder

Likewise guru Andrew Bronson at play with the Sloan donkey.

Bringing Donkey Back

Here's the, uh, rear view of the Sloan donkey. It's a music box; you wind it up and it dances while playing "Amazing Grace."

I'll Never Be Your Beast of Burden

The Sloan sisters--Emily and Karen--gave us cute little donkeys for Christmas. This is the front view.

Saddle Up Yer Donkey

Lazy

Likewise Books had its own lounge at Urbana St. Louis, complete with couches, books and videos.

Lisa Lounging

Strangely Dim writer Lisa Rieck lounges at Urbana St. Louis, sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

Urbanarama

Likewise Books was out in full force at the Urbana 06 Student Missions Convention in St. Louis, home of this arch.

It Only Takes a Spark . . .

Paul Grant, author of Blessed Are the Uncool, got his book today and blogged about it. If you've ever wondered what it's like to be handed your first published book, you can read about it here.

One of the joys of working for a publisher is playing midwife. Be sure to congratulate Paul on his new baby, and remember: uncool is the new cool.

Atheists Are from Mars, Theists Are from Venus

Wired Magazine has run a feature article on the New Atheists. The new breed are more zealous, more militant, than your friendly neighborhood atheist. Here's the lowdown:

The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.

The New Atheists argue, for all practical purposes, that there is no real meeting between belief and unbelief. There are blue states of consciousness, and there are red states of consciousness; there can be no purple. The author of the article strikes a militant tone with the "atheist's prayer":

that our reason will subjugate our superstition, that our intelligence will check our illusions, that we will be able to hold at bay the evil temptation of faith.

The chief hurdle in the New Atheist agenda--taking over the world, or something like that--is the fact that they sound so smug about it. Atheist activist Clark Adams claims that they are "predominant among the upper 5 percent" of the population--they're the best of the best. They're the navy seals of the cosmos, the philospher-kings of the new republic; why don't the rest of us get our heads out of the clouds and bow down to them?

Not all atheists are so self-assured, of course. An episode in the most recent season of Thirty Days required an avowed atheist to live among devoutly evangelistic evangelicals for a month, and exposed the sociological complications of life as a 5 percent minority. In a democracy, strength is found in numbers, which makes a democracy perhaps inherently uncomfortable: the majority must respect the rights, but not necessarily anything else, of those who believe otherwise.

But to be honest, it's difficult to respect the beliefs of the New Atheism if you're among the lower 95 percent. Chief among their contentions is that religion is not just not good for you, it's actually bad for you--and for them, and for everybody else. Mere semantics and social controls separate your friendly neighborhood evangelical, for instance, from Osama bin Laden: adherence to an extrasensory, unprovable and illogical system of beliefs is dangerous; indoctrinating children into such a system of beliefs is immoral.

The very first book in the Likewise line involves a conversation between a friendly neighborhood evangelical and the lead singer of the New Atheists: Greg Graffin. He's profiled in the Wired article as an evolutionary biologist and lead singer of Bad Religion. History professor Preston Jones takes up an extended e-mailed conversation with him in Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? It's a nice venture into purple territory, where New Atheists and evangelicals alike show themselves to be fundamentally human. I guess we're just wired that way.

Can You Smell What the Press Is Cookin'?

Peter Mayer with Bert the Donkey. I smell Oscar!

Likewise Reunion

Several friends of Likewise attended the Catalyst Conference; here we all are catching up over sugar.

Who Are You Wearing?

The Catalyst Conference was held in a large arena in Gwinnett; attenders were shuttled to the red carpet by SUV limos, where they were greated to a soundtrack by the Killers ("Comin' out of my cage--you know I'm feeling just fine!"), freshly prepared omelets, ice sculptures and paparazzi.

Gotta Be Gwinnett to Win It

The Catalyst Conference took place in the northeast suburbs of Atlanta, in a town called Gwinnett. They have two watertowers, which probably explains why they feel justified in making the bold claims "Success Lives Here" and "Gwinnett Is Great!"

Go and Booth

Likewise was a sponsor of the preconference labs for the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta; here's what our booth looked like. More pictures to come.

All the Days Run Together

I went to Atlanta for the Catalyst conference last week. It was quite possibly the worst travel day ever: all the stoplights between my home and the airport had stopped working, so we got to the airport late and missed our flight. Fortunately we got on to another flight that left an hour later, but when we arrived in Atlanta we couldn't find the rental cars. Fortunately we wandered around confusedly long enough that we found ourselves in the shadow of a Budget shuttle, so we were able to get to our car. But when we arrived at our hotel, we found out that (1) our room was booked for only two nights instead of three, (b) our room had only one bed instead of two, and thirdly, there were no rooms at our inn or all the other inns surrounding us. Fortunately we were put in touch with a hotel some distance away that could put us up Thursday night, and they gave me a rollaway bed so I didn't have to get all biblical with my coworker.

But the really funny thing is that we had Friday's for lunch and Ruby Tuesday's for dinner. I wanted sundaes for dessert, but that joke will have to wait for another day.

We had a great time at Catalyst. We had a little reunion with some of our Likewise Gathering friends, and I had a little reunion with Andy Crouch, whom I've met twice but who's rapidly becoming an idol of mine. Shame on him. He's actually working on a book for InterVarsity Press, which I expect to read eagerly and underline prolifically.

Likewise sponsored the preconference labs at Catalyst, so everybody there got a sneak peek at five Likewise books. Incidentally, it's now been recommended to me by two different people that we name the Likewise donkey Hotey. (Like Don Quixote, get it?!?) Pretty clever; one of them elaborated on the suggestion as follows:

dictionary.com defines quixotic as "extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable" or "impulsive and often rashly unpredictable.". I think that either of these works. Huh, almost food for thought. Kudos to IVP for really stretching into new avenues.

I like that. It reminds me of a novel I read last year: Quixote, by Michael Oeming and Bryan Glass, an extention of the Don Quixote mythology into a present-day context. One man's justice is another man's impulsive impracticality, so to speak. Anyway, so far Donkey Hotey leads the pack in the pin-the-name-on-the-donkey game, so if you don't like it, better come up with something better. Photos from Catalyst will show up just as soon as we digitize the film from our disposable camera--ah, modernity. Come back McSoon.

Likewise Notebook Betamax

IVP Books is just about to launch the extra-special Likewise website, likewisebooks.com, which will serve as a gathering hole for Likewise authors, readers and wannabes. You're all invited, of course. And if you're even more interested, we're going to be keeping in touch with our Likewise friends by e-mail, in a fun little newsletter we like to call the Likewise Notebook.

Of course, we don't want the Likewise Notebook to be lame, because we want you to love us. So we're playing around with the feel of the thing, and we'd like your feedback: If the following arrived in your in-box, what would you do? Would you run away? Would you point and laugh? Would you point and click? In the historic words of the Spice Girls: "Tell me what you want--what you really, really want."

Inside the Likewise Notebook
*Welcome to Likewise
*Doing the Dishes
*The Grass Is Always Greener
*Name That Donkey
*Sample Likewise

Welcome to Likewise
Considering that you signed up for the Likewise Notebook, you're probably already aware that InterVarsity Press has launched a new line of books. But we're so tweaked about it that we keep showing it off, like it's a new Mini Cooper or something. For the record, Likewise gets better mileage than a Mini--which is good, because we've got a long road ahead of us.

Likewise is about the challenges of living with faith and integrity in a fast-paced, ever-changing world. Our authors are plugging along on that road, just as you are, just as we are. Keep checking in to find out what they've found out along the way, and we'll try to keep one another up to speed on what lies ahead. Sound good?

Doing the Dishes
Ann Swindell, an InterVarsity Press employee, graduate student and first-year spouse, just wrote another article for Relevant Magazine Online. Check it out here. Let us know what you thought of it; we'll pass your thoughts on to Ann.

Learn to be at peace, and thousands all around you will be saved. --Seraphim of Sarov

The Grass Is Always Greener
Some days it seems as though all the earth is paved. That's the sense we have here at Likewise Central, at least, seeing as how our backyard is becoming a dumping ground for mixed concrete. Our distribution center isn't big enough to handle all our work, and our yard is bigger than it need be, so we're taking steps to alleviate that imbalance by building a bigger warehouse. From now on we'll have to take advantage of the Westmont, Illinois, Park District for all our Likewise Bocce Ball tournaments, but at least you'll continue to get your Likewise books in a timely fashion. How lucky for you.

Name That Donkey
Likewise Books is represented iconically, you may have noticed, by the silhouette image of a man leading a donkey. Consequently, we get a fair amount of equine-related e-mail; people want to know what mules have to do with books. You can read the story behind the donkey here, but we also suggest you set aside your need to justify the image and simply enjoy yourself. We'd love to hear what you'd name the donkey if he (or she) were yours to name. E-mail us at likewise@ivpress.com.

If I am an experiment, am I the whole of it? No, I think not; I think the rest of it is part of it. I am the main part of it, but I think the rest of it has its share in the matter. --Mark Twain, Eve's Diary (Translated from the Original)

Sample Likewise
If you haven't seen it, download the Likewise Sampler at likewisebooks.com and get a first look at five forthcoming Likewise books by authors you're going to want to get to know. Also, check out recent Likewise releases by Randy White, Don Everts, Preston Jones and Rick Richardson here.

That's it! Tell your friends, and stop by and see us sometime!

Likewise on the Airwaves

It must be August, because august Christian thinker Charles Colson has been caught reading a book by august Christian publisher InterVarsity Press. The book just so happens to be Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant, the inaugural book in the Likewise line. The donkey is in the hizzle, so to speak.

The book collects the e-mailed correspondence between Preston Jones, a Christian historian, and Greg Graffin, the lead singer of the punk band Bad Religion. Graffin has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology, so he's eminently qualified to front a punk band.

To be frank, Chuck Colson isn't the core audience for Likewise books; he's about three times the age of our typical Likewise reader, actually. But I'm certainly glad he found it, nevertheless; we're tickled that he's given the book a reading and, by extension, a hearing. His description of the book, both its content and its tone, is apt and a good indicator of what's to come in the line. You could say that he's pinned the tail on the donkey, if you wanted to be corny like me.

Read (or listen to) Colson's review here. There's a link to the book from there.

Happy Bastille Day!

July 14 is Bastille Day, the French equivalent of the American Independence Day. I learned of Bastille Day in high school, both in French class and in world history class, and being a would-be revolutionary I glommed onto it. On July 14, 1789, French commoners stormed the Bastille prison, freeing political prisoners, stealing government armaments, and launching the French Revolution. I celebrate by indulging myself with all things French.

Today, for example, I downloaded the song "Dominique," by the Singing Nun. This French Dominican nun wrote the song as a tribute to the Spanish priest who founded her order, St. Dominic. I used to prance around my house like an idiot to this song, while my roommates tried to put as much distance between them and me as possible.

Coincidentally, I just finished editing the book Flirting with Monasticism, coming soon to the Likewise line, in which author Karen Sloan learns about monastic spirituality over the course of a year in regular interaction with several Dominican communities. I met Karen when she was leading Lauds (morning prayer) at a conference, and the more she told me about her year with these friars-in-training, the more I wanted to hear.

The monastic world is full of mystery for evangelicals, as much because we have no equivalent for our faith tradition as because monks aren't the chattiest people in the world (some of them take temporary vows of silence), and so they don't tend to share much about their lifestyle. The result is that evangelicals know less than they should about the monastic practices that would encourage their faith development, and Dominicans in general suffer from bad press: I was taught that "Dominique" tells the story of St. Dominic traveling through Europe killing Protestants. Needless to say, that's not a word-for-word translation from the French.

Check out Karen Sloan's weblog Wonder. And if you're in the mood to prance around like an idiot, you can download "Dominique" from i-Tunes for 99 cents. Bon chance!

Embrace the Tension

So we had this Likewise Gathering over the weekend. Nineteen guests of InterVarsity Press came in to discuss the faith + publishing needs of people in their twenties and early thirties. Among the things I learned: "young adults," in the ears of most people, means "adolescents." I wonder what "old adults" means, but I fear that it would mean me.

But the word that kept coming up was tension. The tension of enjoying your youth but being taken seriously as an adult, the tension of living in a consumer culture while knowing that children are being victimized around the world by consumer practices, the tension of making ethical decisions in real time, the tension of navigating adulthood when the primary adults in your life checked out years previous, the tension of living up to the life handed you as a child of promise, the tension of bearing someone else's legacy as your lineage. My nails are getting shorter by the minute.

Add to that the tension of a faith rooted and established in paradox: Jesus the fully human and fully divine, one God in three Persons, the now and the not yet, and on and on and on. The rallying cry of the weekend seemed to be the concept statement of Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz: faith, like life, doesn't resolve.

As a publisher we face our own tensions. Do we publish books for the mind or the heart? Do we publish to social-justice activists or pop culture gluttons? Are we a ministry or a business? And on and on and on.

In a culture characterized by tension, the misery index is going to be pretty high, but it's only aggravated by the fact that we've been, in the words of Sam Phillips, "raised on promises." I certainly expected to be president of the United States by now, but instead I can't decide which pile of work I need to do first, which denomination I should invest my energy in, and on and on and on.

So perhaps the job of a publisher is to find and produce books that train people to tolerate tension--and beyond that, perhaps, to even embrace the tension. If God, after all, is paradoxical, then even our happy ending will have a fair bit of tension built into it.

The logo for Likewise displays some tension; a man leads a donkey, with a taut rope between them. An earlier draft, believe it or not, was even more tense: the donkey's legs were locked tight. Our designer hinted at motion by bending the donkey's leg. Clever, huh?

I can't imagine that selling tension is an easy task; good thing I'm in editorial.

A Likewise Limerick

This week IVP Books is gathering seventeen people to discuss the direction of our Likewise line, which I've posted on previously both here and at Loud Time. In case you don't like to link to stuff, Likewise is a line of books geared toward young adult discipleship. The logo is a farmer leading a donkey; the tagline is "Go and Do." You can see the logo here. I wrote a limerick to celebrate the line (so to speak):

There once was a donkey named Ferdinand
Who started a hurdy-gurdy band.
The band liked to swing,
But soon broke a string
When they strummed with their hooves--not fingery hands.

As you can see, I've named the donkey Ferdinand, and I certainly have my reasons, but you're welcome to offer up your own name for both the donkey and the farmer, whom I've named Tony. Anyway, I'm looking forward to a fun time with some interesting people over the next few days. I'll blog about it when it's all over.