"Book Reviews"

I've received a considerable number of responses to my SN11 posting titled "The Reading Assignments."  In that post, I whine about what a chore it is to read the articles, pamphlets, books assigned to us.  Some of the assignments are essentially things I know pretty well and don't feel the need for a "refresher."  Some of the assignments use words or ideas that I simply don't understand (because they're stated in a vague way that has multiple meanings or because they use terms or concepts with which I'm not familiar).  Some because I disagree (sometimes strongly disagree) with the ideas being presented.  

So I came up with this thought -- inspired in part by a response from Evelyn to my posting: I will write a review of each assignment here, expressing myself in a plain, straightforward manner.  And maybe that will help me see where the issue(s) truly is(are). 

To Pray and to Love  Roberta Bondi.  I found this book difficult to read any more than a few pages before giving up.  Again and again.  My feeling is that she had some ideas about prayer and stretched these ideas out with unnecessary verbiage to create paragraphs and then chapters.  She punctuates the points she's trying to make with quotes from the Desert Mothers and Desert Fathers -- some of which were quite nice and I'm glad I read them.  The quotes, that is.  She seemed to use these quotes as affirmation that her ideas were based on a sound theology because people felt that way thousands of years ago.  Her theology -- as I understood it -- includes a strong belief in sin (or is she simply saying that other people have a strong belief in sin?  I don't know...)  I got the feeling that she believes that even people who have sinned are capable of redemption and no one is beyond God's love.  Okay.  This idea, and several others, seemed to be returning in the text again and again.  Hey, I get it!! Like a number of other books and articles and pamphlets we've been assigned, the author needed a good editor to turn (in this case) a 138-page book into a 75-pager.  I would like to think that she would use her training and expertise in the Early Church into a more concise description of who these people were: much heavier on the quotes and lighter on her own feelings about sin and so forth.  By my account, there were over 300 footnotes -- documenting (I guess) the assertions that she was making.  Need I say they were not helpful in understanding the ideas she was writing about?  She is/was a Professor at Oxford.  I think it shows.  Maybe if I were a student of her topics, I would have appreciated the book and the footnotes more.