IMPORTANT BOOKS THAT I HAVE MET

         At the end of a counseling session last week, a client asked if I would think about and list for him the "five most influential books" that I have read.  Quite a request but it piqued my interest and curiosity.  Part of that is easy . . . for reasons long since forgotten, in 1961, I began keeping a list of books that I had completed. (No, I plead innocent to any insinuations of  Obsessive Compulsive tendencies.) So, I located the list and that is when the request became a challenge.

      I made two columns ... fiction and non-fiction ... and began identifying 'nominees'.  There are more of the latter than the former.
And, the fiction was easier. ( I probably might have created a third section...historical fiction ... and therein included the writings of my fraternity brother, Charles F. Price, who writes eloquently.)  And, in that category would also go McKinley Kantor's Andersonville which I read as a college freshman and likely influenced my decision to major in History.  

    For fiction, I have enjoyed several of John Steinbeck and Reynolds Price's books.  I have 'benefitted' from reading: All Quiet on the Western Front; Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman; Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five; Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides; and Ferroll Sams's trilogy: Run With the Horsemen; The Whisper of the River; and When All the World Was Young.

    But for now, I want to reflect on the non-fiction titles.  I quickly made three sub-categories: First tier, Second tier, and 'fun'.  Here, my various professions likely have influenced several choices but personal predilections have also had their 'say-so'.  So far, I have been unable  to choose a 'top five'.  While I am pretty certain of the top  two, there are others that cannot be eliminated.  "The Envelope, please". . .   Runners - Up include Charles Wells, Dear Old Man: Letters to Myself on Growing Old; David Halberstam, The Teammates: Portraits of a Friendship; Gail Sheehy, Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life; Martin Marty, A Cry of Absence; Father Thomas Keating's Open Mind, Open Heart; and various titles by Frederick Beuchner and Barbara Brown Taylor.

    In second place but not by far, because as I have noted elsewhere in these posts, I annually reread Parker Palmer's Let Your Life Speak: Finding the Voice of True Vocation.

    Marcus Borg died this week.  As a member of the Jesus Seminar, he was often vilified as 'Liberal' by more-'orthodox' and conservative Christians.  I first became aware of him and his writing in 1996 when he addressed the Council of Ministers at a nearby college.  My friend gave me a copy of Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. Since then, I have re-read it several times, as well as reading several of his more recent writings. On two subsequent occasions, I heard him preach at Wake Forest University and  attended another lecture at High Point University. For some time, I had known that there were Understandings and Interpretations of Christianity that were at variance with my own but was unclear as to how to articulate these.  While there are points of differing understanding, because of him and his written and spoken words, I now without apology consider myself 'Christian'.

     Some time back, a client frequently railed against Borg and other "Liberals".  As a psychotherapist, my ministry is not 'evangelism' in the sense of trying to proselytize persons to my beliefs.  However, in the spirit of encouraging her be less judgmental and stereotyping, without identifying the speaker, I played Borg's YouTube sermon, What's Christianity.  After she indicated that she concurred with everything the speaker had said, I told her it was Borg.  Imagine her surprise.

    I have absolutely no interest nor intention to engage in theological debate in this space.  I am grateful that I encountered Dr. Borg and for his assistance in Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.

     Satchel