Second-Book Syndrome Strikes Again!

Last time Alan Fadling shared his thoughts on an unexpected form of writer’s block. Having written one book, authors often find major hurdles in finishing a second, especially if the first was successful. In working on Write Better (due out October 2019), I also asked Jen Pollock Michel about her experience with what I call Second-Book Syndrome. Here, with her permission, is what she told me.

The writing of my second book, Keeping Place, was pretty tortuous. I think partly it was the onerous sense of expectation, especially in that my first book, Teach Us to Want, won the CT award. I shed many surprising tears about that award, wishing I hadn’t won it. That sounds incredibly ungrateful, and I don’t feel that way now. But at the time, it felt like the surefire way to be a disappointment to people.

Here’s what eventually helped me:

1. The recognition that every book is different, requiring different things from you as an author and delivering different things to your readers. (The “books” are “babies” analogy here can certainly be extended: your second child is going to be different than your first, and it would be silly to expect every subsequent child to act and look like the first!) When you can allow your books their distinctiveness, rather than forcing every book to imitate the previous book you’ve written, that can help. Teach Us to Want required a lot of vulnerable self-disclosure. It seemed necessary to the topic of desire. There were a lot of people who resonated with that approach, and truthfully, it was “easy” to do in a first book in the sense that I didn’t have a readership or any certain expectation that people would read.

Writing Keeping Place was totally different, however. First, I wanted the book to reach a broader audience of women and men, so it’s more systematic in approach and probably a little less personal (although there are still personal stories in every chapter). Also, it’s just a different book. I’ve heard some people say they like it better than Teach Us to Want. And I’ve also heard the opposite! So maybe that leads to a second conclusion:

2. You can’t write books to secure approval from readers. That’s the surest way NOT to say what you’ve been called to say. Of course I want to say helpful things, and I write with readers in mind in the sense of their questions, their fears, their anxieties, their hopes, their longings. But I try to avoid questions like, “Will they like me? Approve of my spirituality? Admire me?” Reading is such a personal thing: if you get hung up on maintaining the approval of readers you already have, your writing is not going to risk and grow. In the “books” are “babies” analogy, I think we have to say that some readers will find some books cuter than others. And that’s ok.

3. Get yourself a contract! Force yourself to write! Put yourself under a deadline! I don’t know of a better way of overcoming writers’ block. When I signed for a second contract with IVP for KP (and a third), I didn’t necessarily feel “ready.” You’re not going to feel “ready.” Your first book comes from such a deep place on conviction. I think it asks and attempts answering some of your most pressing questions as a human being. Your second book, without the lifetime of germination your first book might have had, won’t feel as cured. And that’s ok.

Jen

Second-Book Syndrome

In working on Write Better (due out October 2019), I asked some other authors about their experiences with writer’s block, especially one unexpected form. Having written one book, authors often find major hurdles in finishing a second, especially if the first was successful. I call this Second-Book Syndrome. I couldn’t fit all of Alan Fadling’s helpful comments in the book, so here, with his permission, is more of what he told me.

I really did wrestle with my second book, An Unhurried Leader. Some of the dynamics were probably unique to me, and some are, I’m sure, common to many, such as a major vocational transition.

I also had to deal with the unexpected success of the first book, An Unhurried Life. Where I could have simply been grateful and encouraged by a CT book award (which I was, actually), I also let it become a point of fear and anxiety: “How in the world do I top my first effort? How can my second book be anything but a disappointment to readers of the first?”

I overcame this by deciding that my goal was not to top my first effort, but simply to share some important insights that had meant a lot to me. It helped me to think that writing this second book was something I wanted, and maybe even needed to do. Instead of focusing on the imagined response of future readers, I focused on sharing my stories, my insights, my experiences, trusting that they would be helpful to those future readers.

I also dealt some of the resistances I felt writing book one and feel now writing book three with my wife. I shared the paragraph below with a friend who is an aspiring writer.

“My reasons for not writing are legion. I don’t feel like it. I don’t have anything to say right now. What I have to say won’t help anyone. I don’t have a good focus for my writing. I’m in too busy a season to write. I’m in too noisy a place to write. There is too much to write, so I don’t know where to start writing. No one will want to read what I’m writing. No one will want to publish what I’m writing. Ad infinitum.”

Fear. Anxiety. Self-doubt. Insecurity. Perfectionism. All of these are resistances I often have to press through to write.

The last thing I’ll say is that I find a lot of help in Dallas Willard’s encouragement to release outcomes to God. It is my attachment to outcomes, imagined as amazing or imagined as dire, that gets in my way a lot. Usually, getting unstuck ends up being a matter of being in the present moment, being in the Presence, and being focused on the present task of actually writing.

Alan Fadling

Silencing Our Inner Censor

When we think about writing or being creative in some way, we often suffer from negative messages echoing in our heads.

“No one will think this is good.”

“What makes you think you can paint?”

“Who will want to read this.”

“You don’t have what it takes.”

“Your brother is the talented one.”

“You can’t make a living from art.”

“It’s too late in life for you.”

When we do think about starting a project, these voices can halt progress before the first word is written or the first photograph is taken. As a result many who long to be creative stuff our impulses, appreciating the work of others from a distance.

How can we can get out of this wearisome cycle? Julia Cameron, in her classic book The Artist’s Way, offers a simple solution. Simple but not necessarily easy.

She calls it morning pages. Each morning for twelve weeks we commit to filling three pages with text. We can recount what we did the previous day or describe what’s in the room or why we like our dog (or hate our neighbor’s dog) or the fact that we have nothing to write about. Stream of consciousness is fine. Our pages don’t have to make sense. And most important, we promise ourselves to show them to no one.

What’s remarkable is that whether we want to sculpt, make movies, paint, or do interior design, writing our morning pages each day helps get us unstuck. The negative voices will carry on even as we write. But after a week or two they typically begin to fade. We drown them out with output, quieting our inner censor, and getting in the habit of actually producing.

Eventually something that finds its way into our morning pages may trigger and idea or project we want to pursue. That’s fine. We can work on it outside of our time set aside for morning pages, and that we can show to others for input if desired. But we never show others our morning pages themselves. A friend of mine, Bill, who didn’t think he was very creative undertook Cameron’s disciplines and started producing some remarkable poetry.

Writer’s block can be one of the most challenging obstacles to face. We need every tool and tactic at our disposal to overcome it. Morning pages is a powerful option.

Photo credit: Andy Le Peau

Paradoxes of Life in Christ

The paradoxes in the Christian faith are many. Christ is fully God and fully human. God is Three and God is One. The Bible is God’s Word but written by humans. Jen Michel is fully aware of these in Surprised by Paradox. But instead of doctrinal paradoxes she focuses on those surrounding how we live out our faith.

In the kingdom of God we are to give our money and possessions freely—but thank God because he has “richly provided us with everything to enjoy” (1 Tim 6:17). John the Baptist was a desert prophet. Jesus partied with sinners. Paradoxically, the kingdom life embodies both.

Michel also tells us, “Grace is the unmerited favor of God—and paradoxically, Moses seems to think God’s people are entitled to it”—even when we are disobedient because after all, without it we wouldn’t be your people as you have made us. (p. 112). In God’s anger over sin, he is patient toward us.

Given that there are more Psalms of lament than any other kind, God apparently approves of confronting him with what we think is wrong with the way he runs the world. When we complain to God, rather than pulling away from God, we engage God deeply.

Too often we want to tidy up our faith so everything fits in its own neat box so we can be secure and comfortable. That is not, however, the life God has given us. Opening some of these mysteries is the book Jen Michel has given us.

Complaining and Lament

Have you ever been reading the Bible and suddenly thought, “Gee, that’s odd”?

I have been going through the book of Numbers. In chapter 11 I read how unhappy God was with Israel for complaining about their troubles in the wilderness (especially about not having meat) even after God had freed them from the Egyptians. At the same time I was reading a book on lament in the Psalms and, of course, in the book of Lamentations.

I thought, “Gee, that’s odd. In Numbers complaining to God is bad, but elsewhere lament (which essentially seems to be the same thing as complaining to God) is good. Which is it?”

I think the answer is a lesson in our tendency to take things out of context. Understanding what’s going on depends on seeing the whole sweep of the narrative in all thirty-six chapters of Numbers and the whole sweep of Psalms, not an isolated chapter or verse.

The first part of Numbers (chapters 1–25) tells the story of Israel’s rising rebellion against God after crossing the Red Sea. Though they begin with obedience, the complaining in Numbers 11 culminates in Numbers 13-14. There all but two (Joshua and Caleb) of the twelve spies rebel against God’s plan to enter the Promised Land because of the “giants” they find there. We see other examples of disobedience in Numbers 15, 16, 17, and 20. God promises that the whole generation will die in the wilderness except for Joshua and Caleb.

The second part of Numbers (26-36) begins with a census just as the first part did, but now a census of the new generation that will enter the land. In these last chapters we find hope and promise.

What we have then in Numbers 11 is not a universal prohibition against bringing our griefs, misfortunes, or even our complaints to God. Rather it is a piece of a story that denounces the ongoing life of rebellion and disobedience of Israel’s first generation out of Egypt.

Complaints to and even anger at God (that is, lament) as found in dozens of Psalms are offered in a larger context of a book about wisdom and worship. In these Psalms of lament, the act of remembering God’s past faithfulness triggers asking what in the world is going on in the present.

Even Psalm 88, the most despairing of all the psalms, is a valid expression to God even when we cannot see God on the other side. For it resides in the context of the whole book of Psalms in which we seek God’s wisdom in the midst of both sorrow and of praise.

It may seem odd to complain to God in a context of worship. But that’s not necessarily how God sees it.

photo credit: Pixabay, GidonPico (dead sea)

Putting Our Faith at Risk

When Harold Camping, a Christian radio broadcaster, predicted that Christ would return on May 21, 2011, he made national news. Many of his followers paid for billboards, took out full-page ads in newspapers, and distributed thousands of tracts about this day of reckoning. One engineer spent most of his retirement savings, well over a half-million dollars. He took out full-page newspaper ads and bought an RV that he had custom-painted with doomsday warnings. When May 21 came and went as normal, Harold Camping revised his prediction to October 21, 2011. Of course, that prediction failed too.

What happened to those who had so fervently believed? They lost their faith. They stopped reading the Bible. They quit Christianity. Of course, it wasn’t the Bible that was wrong—it was Harold Camping who was wrong.

When we firmly, completely, uncompromisingly put our trust in a particular way of viewing the Bible, ironically we put ourselves at risk of disbelief. Why? Because if one brick of the structure we have built crumbles, then the whole edifice falls.

If we believe a perfect Bible written two thousand years ago should follow the rules of 21st-century historiography but then see a discrepancy between two gospel accounts, what should we conclude? If we think the Bible gives unassailable information regarding science, but then find what looks to be compelling evidence for four-billion-year-old planet, what should we think?

Should we think the Bible is wrong or that our particular way of viewing the Bible was wrong?

Should we walk away from faith, or should we reframe our faith?

Augustine put it this way centuries ago:

In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture…We should remember that Scripture, even in its obscure passages, has been written to nourish our souls.*

We need to learn objections to and questions about the Bible early and often. We need to treat such concerns with respect and appreciation. That way, we won’t be surprised and our faith won’t be shaken later if we find value or insight in those concerns.

And yes, we can learn answers to these problems as well. But we should also learn that our preferred answers are not the only possible, valid ways to respond, that there are other ways to affirm the truth of the Bible and the worth of our faith.

So believe. But believe with humility. Believe with openmindedness. Believe knowing there is always more to learn. Believe knowing that we are finite and limited while God is not.

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*John Hammond Taylor, S. J., trans, St. Augustine, the Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. 1, Ancient Christian Writers., vol. 41, (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 41-43.

photo credit: pixabay, cobain86

The British to the Rescue

The story is classic. The main character enjoys prominence and prestige only to sink into obscurity before slowly rising again. Mark Noll tells this tale in his benchmark book on the history of American evangelical scholarship (1880-1980), Between Faith and Criticism–a book full of insights which still bear fruit today.

Some reasons for the decline are well-known but Noll adds other significant factors. One is the professionalization of academic study beginning in the late nineteenth century. Biblical studies were no longer the exclusive domain of denominational seminaries but became ruled by the technical, research-oriented graduate schools of major universities. In such an environment, assumptions of faith were thought to taint academic pursuits.

Though scholars like A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield at Princeton had the stature and substance to maintain some degree of standing in the field, shortly after 1900 such influence hit bottom. The next generation was one of exclusion and retrenchment, highlighted by the writing of The Fundamentals and the highly publicized Scopes Monkey Trial.

The issue which most divided evangelicals from modern or “liberal” scholars and vice versa, was biblical criticism. Noll, assuming his audience knows the term, never defines it (also called higher criticism) which does not mean negative evaluations. Rather it concerns a range of “scientific” approaches (which gained prominence in the nineteenth century) for analyzing texts to determine their meaning and historical accuracy. Many evangelicals objected to conclusions from these methods which included, for example, doubting Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and assigning a second-century BC date to Daniel. The result, they often felt, called the authority, infallibility, and inerrancy of Scripture into question.

How evangelical scholarship pulled itself out of these doldrums takes us to Britain. First, as members of the established Anglican church, some evangelicals there were always part of the faculty at the elite universities. They were never excluded the way their American counterparts were. Second, through the work of what became Tyndale House and Tyndale Fellowship (both under the umbrella of the InterVarsity Fellowship student ministry), serious scholars and scholarship were nurtured and encouraged. These included F. F. Bruce, G. T. Manley and others.

Via publications and some transatlantic travel both ways, the Brits had a salutary effect on American scholarship. Of ten evangelical commentary series available in the early 1980s, only one had a majority of American contributors.

Noll also offers a taxonomy of evangelical scholarship that is still useful thirty years after his book was published. (1) Critical Anti-Critics “regularly put scholarship to use in defending traditional evangelical beliefs and in attacking the nontraditional conclusions of other scholars.” (2) Believing Critics (led by British scholars) accept that new research may overturn traditional beliefs but that this need not undermine an inspired Bible. They “find insight as well as error in the larger world of biblical scholarship” (p. 158). Generally, then as today, members of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) are in the first category while members of the Institute of Biblical Research (IBR) are in the second.

Ultimately, the challenge for evangelicals has been to develop a comprehensive method for understanding both the divine and human aspects of Scripture. Do minor errors or a failure on the part of the biblical writers to (anachronistically) follow 21st-century historiographical conventions call the reliability of the whole Bible into question? Do the fallen and finite human contexts, cultures, and origins of the Scriptures somehow negate their divine inspiration and authority? Or is there a way both can be affirmed? In answering these questions, our British brethren have led and continue to lead the way.

F. F. Bruce photo credit: InterVarsity Press

As Different As We Think:

Catholics and Protestants (4)

Conversionism is one of the four main characteristics of evangelicals that British historian David Bebbington has identified.* Salvation must be appropriated through personal faith that comes via repentance. This event which takes us to an entirely new level spiritually looms large in the evangelical psyche—so much so that the continuing journey of sanctification often takes a backseat. Not so for Catholics. That journey is what our life in Christ is all about.

The emphasis on conversionism has had another effect. It has made evangelicals more individualistic than Catholics, who are oriented more toward the community of faith as a primary means for drawing closer to God. Certainly American individualism has had a tremendous impact on American Catholicism as well. American Catholics are much more willing, as mentioned earlier, to disagree with and act contrary to the Church’s teachings than Catholics in many other countries. Nonetheless, when it comes to spirituality, it is primarily a matter of the community.

Analogical thinking and the community meet on a journey, for Catholics, in the liturgy and the sacraments, of course. By means of symbols acted out in the midst of the gathered people of God, we understand more than intellectually who we are in Christ. We experience it spiritually. Liturgy itself is a journey—a year-long journey that tells the story of Jesus’ life and ministry as well as that of the newly born church. This journey is punctuated by the Advent journey to Bethlehem and the manger, and the Lenten journey to Golgotha and the empty tomb.

The journey that Phyllis and I began when we became engaged led us down a Protestant path. Thinking more like Protestants than Catholics at the time, we decided we couldn’t in good conscience sign the document. “It is the Church’s wisdom,” Father Pendergast told us, “that these things should be decided before the wedding so they don’t interrupt or trouble the marriage later.” He and the Church were probably right.

Yet in the more than thirty years since we were married, that has not been the end of the journey for the two of us. Another path was also in store. Over the years we have befriended individuals and connected with organizations that would like to bridge understanding between Catholics and Protestants. We continue to have significant theological differences, but we have learned to understand that some (not all) of our differences arise from issues other than theology.

In addition, our daughter Susan attended Boston College, where she sat at the feet of professors like Peter Kreeft (a Catholic who has authored many books for evangelical publishers) as well as a number of Jesuits. After graduating, she spent two years in Peru working with Catholic missions. When she returned she decided to become a Catholic. “It’s my spiritual home,” she told us. “It’s where I feel the closest to Christ.” As parents we have always prayed that all of our children would be drawn to Christ. That prayer has likewise been answered for our other children, but in Protestant contexts.

David Tracy thinks the analogical and dialectical imaginations are complementary, that it is beneficial for both traditions to work together.** Each has something to offer and each saves the other from certain dangers. For Protestants and Catholics, that seems about right.

*David Bebbington, in his seminal study Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Baker, 1989), defined evangelicalism by identifying its four distinguishing marks: conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism.

**David Tracy, The Theological Imagination (Crossroad, 1981), pp. 420-21.

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This article was originally published in Books & Culture, March/April 2010, pp. 33-35. I am serializing it here for the first time in four parts.

photo credit: Andrew Le Peau

As Different As We Think:

Catholics and Protestants (3)

I was recently having lunch with a Catholic priest who leads retreats and is a spiritual director. He works out of a nearby conference center with about ten other spiritual directors who meet regularly with over a hundred people. As we were enjoying our meal he said, “Well, maybe you can answer this question. It comes up with the other spiritual directors I work with. About ten percent of the people who come to us are Protestants. When we get together to discuss in general our work, other directors ask, ‘How come after about six months of spiritual direction, the Protestants all say, ‘Are we done yet? When do I get fixed?’ What is that all about?”

I said, “The Road to Emmaus is a paradigm of Catholic spirituality, right? Spiritual growth is a journey that we go on. And Christ travels with us on this journey even though we may not know he is there. But we recognize him in the breaking of the bread, in the Eucharist. And our immediate instinct at such times of significant encounter with Christ is to go to the community, just as the two on the Road to Emmaus did. So we have in this paradigm the key elements of the journey, the presence of Christ, the Eucharist and the community that make up much of Catholic spirituality.”2 He looked completely bored, as if I were telling him the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

“But,” I said, “the paradigm of spirituality for evangelicals is not the Road to Emmaus but the Road to Damascus, where you have a dramatic, decisive crisis encounter with Christ.”

His eyes at once became huge, and he said, “And you get knocked off your horse!”

“Exactly. Spiritual growth happens in crisis events when we are suddenly thrust to a higher or deeper level of intimacy and commitment to Christ. From that moment we are radically changed. Spirituality proceeds dialectically. There is a radical discontinuity of the past from the future. Sometimes that moment is the crisis of conversion. Sometimes it is hearing a calling or some other new spiritual experience. So I think your Protestant friends may be expecting a Damascus Road experience.”

“Oh,” he said, still wide-eyed, “that is so profound!” My lunch companion, as you see, had a greater gift for the dramatic than I suspect I had for the profound.

Catholics often go through life, somewhat unaware of Christ’s presence at all, and then notice, “Hey! Look at that! He’s been walking with me all this time! Isn’t that great!” They also instinctively know that our spiritual journey is never complete. We are always in process. Our sin and human frailty are always with us, but so is his grace and his company.

A Catholic friend who had had an evangelical-styled conversion experience once told his parish priest that he knew he would go to heaven when he died. “Well, that’s a bit arrogant,” the old pastor responded. And to the Catholic mind it is. While the issue has significant theological dimensions, it’s as much or more a style of thinking that is in question.

The priest’s response is roughly equivalent to the response many evangelicals might give when fellow evangelicals say they have achieved “sinless perfection.” For evangelicals there’s a big difference between having assurance of salvation and achieving sinless perfection. But for Catholics, it’s all the same.

Having begun their spiritual life in a moment of crisis, evangelicals (subconsciously) anticipate that growth will occur in sudden leaps forward, often at a gathering of other Christians. Perhaps we hear a call to be a missionary and take that step in a dramatic commitment. Or it could be a decision to not just trust Jesus for our salvation but to commit our whole lives to him and his will—body, soul and spirit. We may begin speaking in tongues or be slain in the spirit or have a dream in which Christ appears. Not all evangelicals will approve of all these, but the notion of such a sudden, life-changing spiritual event is not foreign, and for many is expected.

This article was originally published in Books & Culture, March/April 2010, pp. 33-35. I am serializing it here for the first time in four parts.

photo credits: pixabay Free-Photos (footprints); Bergadder (horse)

As Different As We Think:

Catholics and Protestants (2)

Catholics and Protestants (especially evangelicals, who have maintained certain historically Protestant distinctives) have certain habits of mind, culture and world view that affect the way each thinks and acts. I generalize here, of course, and not every Catholic or every Protestant will recognize themselves in the descriptions I offer. Yet the differences can often be seen in several key ways.

Perhaps the major mental category to consider is how Catholics and evangelicals handle cognitive dissonance. Evangelicals tend to think in either/or terms. If one thing is right, its opposite is wrong. Either Scripture or the pope is the supreme authority. It can’t be both. There is a yearning for consistency of faith and practice. Knowing that we have flawed natures, evangelicals warn against error and in the prophetic tradition call God’s people back to his truth and purity.

Catholics, by contrast, are very happy to think in terms of both/and. John Paul II was highly revered by Catholics, yet large majorities of Catholics (particularly in North America) felt perfectly at peace disagreeing with him on birth control, priestly celibacy and stem cell research. The inconsistency bothers them little.

Evangelicals have a difficult time understanding how Catholics can perform such mental gymnastics. In the evangelical mind, if one accepts the pope as the final authority in the church, then one must consistently agree with and obey him. If you don’t, you aren’t a real Catholic. Of course, Catholics who do disagree with the pope on many issues would be highly insulted by the suggestion that they are not true Catholics. Evangelicals have problems not just with the fact that Catholics believe different things but that they are somehow able to accommodate themselves to apparently inconsistent or incompatible beliefs.

Some time after Phyllis and I were married, I was introduced to the work of David Tracy, a prominent Roman Catholic theologian at the Uni1versity of Chicago. What I had thought of as both/and thinking Tracy, with much more sophistication and subtlety, termed the analogical imagination (in a book of the same name). Catholics tend to think by analogy. One thing helps us understand another by the similarities in both.

Symbols are therefore very important. In fact, symbols, for Catholics, are generally better than propositions in grasping the truth because there is more room for mystery and wonder. In a proposition, truth is limited to the words on the page and their meaning. So a symbol can better apprehend the truth in its multiple dimensions. We can never completely mine all the gold of truth in a symbol. And that is only as it should be because God (who is Truth) is so much more than could ever be encapsulated in a statement, or even in a whole book of statements. Sacrament and symbol lead us to a fuller, truer experience and knowledge of God.

For evangelicals, the game is thought to be won or lost on statements. If we can’t have fixed truth expressed in words, we are subject to every wind of doctrine. We lack an anchor and may drift into heresy or at least into the shoals of liberalism. While Catholics lean toward analogical thinking, Evangelicals tend to embrace what Tracy calls the dialectical imagination. Since we have a tendency to deceive ourselves, we seek certainty. Symbols are too vague to achieve this. Propositions warn us clearly against error, set limits and call us back to truth.

Have these differences always been so? Another Catholic, Ingrid Shafer of the University of Oklahoma, writes, “Until the Reformation both paradigms were part of the Catholic tradition. After the Reformation, Protestants and Catholics have tended to separate along analogical and dialectical party lines, even though . . . both modes are still found across the Christian spectrum and (ironically) the Catholic hierarchy (in contrast to the majority of the laity) has tended to follow the absolutist and dialectical paradigms. Furthermore, these two modes of seeing do not only hold for religious thought; they inform our total response to existence, our moral and aesthetic values as well as the manner in which we conduct our practical lives.”*

*Ingrid Shafer, “Harnessing the Power of Love,” usao.edu/~facshaferi/DIALOG02.HTML

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This article was originally published in Books & Culture, March/April 2010, pp. 33-35. I am serializing it here for the first time in four parts.

photo credit: pixabay, jerycho1960 (pope); stempow (Bible)