Paradise Threatened

The Daughters of Caleb Bender series by Dale Cramer is based on the daughters of the author’s own great grandfather who was the elder statesman of a colony of Old Order Amish who emigrated to Mexico in the 1920s when the state of Ohio passed laws requiring the Amish to send their children to public schools. Dale’s father was born in Mexico so he has a strong vested interest in these stories.

Multiple daughters mean multiple possibilities for romance. In the first volume, Paradise Valley, sixteen-year-old Rachel, not old enough for courting, falls in love with Jake before her father moves his family far away to Paradise Valley. Her sister Emma fears that the truth about her hasty marriage will lead to humiliation.(Click here to read my review of volume 1.)

Almost Christian

Moralist Therapeutic Deism—the religion of this age. There is a God, and he wants us to be nice and to feel good about ourselves. True, but what a watered down version of faith! It’s a far cry from “Be holy as I am holy!” This is not the religion of the apostles or martyrs, nor of medieval saints or the reformers. Moralistic Therapeutic Deism would never have driven the Pilgrims to the rocky shores of New England, or sent anyone to the Gulag Archipelago for defying an atheistic empire. 

They Almost Always Come Home

 On our recent cruise in Alaska I took a dozen books. My luggage didn’t know the difference since they all fit into a space no larger than my cell phone. Ah, technology! I don’t need to own a Kindle or a Nook—just agree to pay a whopping monthly data fee for my smart phone. Sigh.

One of the books I read sitting by the pool while the mountains of the inner passage slid by my vision was Cynthia Ruchtie’s They Almost Always Come Home. The strong, irreverent voice of a woman who “would leave her husband if she could find him” draws the reader in immediately.

Remembering September 11

Those of us who grew up in the United States all know the first verse of "America, the Beautiful", which tells of the physical beauties of this land from amber waves of grain to purple mountain majesties. But the powerful words of some of the other verses speak of spiritual qualities that Americans traditionally valued. 

O beautiful for heroes proved 
In liberating strife. 
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life! 

Interrupted

The phone rings at 5 AM. It’s my brother-in-law. I look vaguely around my office over the garage where I have been sleeping due to the family reunion and try to figure out why he is telephoning me from the house. Only he isn’t in the house. He’s in a town 45 minutes away. He’s telling me my husband has had a heart attack and they just sent him by helicopter to the Cities. “By the time you get there, he should be coming out of the procedure.”

Freedom's Stand

I have been surveying readers to find out what they would like more of on this blog. This is for all those who like book reviews and for those who want to hear more spiritual thoughts relevant to travel, justice, etc. It also falls under “other people’s ministries with children at risk” because, although she is fictional, Jeanette Windle’s character, Amy, in Freedom's Stand works with women who have been imprisoned in Afghanistan and their children. (That is, children who have been growing up in prison with their mothers. You can’t get more at-risk than that.) Some of the “women” are hardly more than children themselves—children running away from forced marriages to older men who abused them.

Thoughts on My Father

My dad is coming up to his eighty-ninth birthday in September. I was recently going through old photo albums with him looking for pictures of the house where he was born for a blog about life in the Midwest. He was a cutie! He reminded me of my brother when he was small, and I know my dad would consider that to be the greatest compliment.