My Commonplace Book

Rainy, the narrator in Leif Enger’s novel I Cheerfully Refuse, throws a birthday party for his wife, Lark. Friends, neighbors, and even strangers have gathered at Rainy and Lark’s home to celebrate. While his band performs for the gathering, Rainy reflects on what he once hoped the church might be like.

Michael Goheen argues that suffering is a mark of a faithful missional community seeking to follow Jesus in the world.

Lesslie Newbigin describes the church as a pilgrim community on mission to the ends of the earth.

Lesslie Newbigin understands the Church to be the inaugurated end-time new humanity on mission.

Kathryn Greene-McCreight takes up the challenging task of putting her lived experience of depression into words. She does an admirable job, using a mixture of description and metaphor.

Kathyrn Greene-McCreight says religious platitudes like “Pray harder” offer little in the way of help to those who live with mental health challenges. In fact, such trite advice might actually cause a depressed person more hurt.

The British preacher Charles Spurgeon lived with depression. Being a public figure, he often received well-meaning but insensitive advice about his condition from fellow Christians.

Wendell Berry sees vital connections between practicing solitude, cultivating personal wholeness, and participating in community.

Charles Spurgeon was well acquainted with depression. He spoke often to his congregation about his experience with it.

Want to write a memoir? Become a custodian of memory, says William Zinnser.

Todd Wilson argues that many Evangelical approaches to spiritual formation fail because they don’t foster integration or wholeness.

Poet Christian Wiman prescribes awe as the only true antidote to the despair that characterizes the modern world.

Research shows that experiences of awe have a greater impact on mental well-being than contentment, amusement, gratitude, and joy.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau recognized a connection, at least in his own case, between cognition and locomotion.

Christian Wiman reflects on the ways art helps us process fear, pain, and loss rather than being paralyzed by them.

Makoto Fujimura said, “In my studios in Princeton, New Jersey, and Pasadena, California, in between pouring precious pulverized minerals onto handmade paper to create the prismatic, refractive surfaces of my art, I rest in my quiet space, waiting for the paper surface to dry…”

Charles Spurgeon said, "We do not know how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be—certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam…"

William Styron said this about the lived experience of depression: “It is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair…comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of…”