Book Beginnings and Friday 56 – Spiritual Rhythm (April 10)

This is my first Friday meme combo for almost two months and for it I have chosen a book I’m about to start that I was given for Christmas – Spiritual Rhythm by Mark Buchanan. I haven’t read anything by him before, but I’ve heard good things about his books and writing. The following description comes from GoodReads:

Abide in me, Jesus tells us, and you will bear much fruit. Yet too often we forget that fruit needs different seasons in order to grow. We measure our spiritual maturity by how much we do rather than how we are responding to our current spiritual season. In Spiritual Rhythm, Mark Buchanan replaces our spirituality of busyness with a spirituality of abiding. Sometimes we are busy, sometimes still, sometimes pushing with all we ve got, sometimes waiting. This model of the spiritual life measures and produces growth by asking: Are we living in rhythm with the season we are in? With the lyrical writing for which he is known, Mark invites us to respond to every season of the heart, whether we are flourishing and fruitful, stark and dismal, or cool and windy. In comparing spiritual rhythms to the seasons of the year, he shows us what to expect from each season and how embracing the seasons causes our spiritual lives to prosper. As he draws on the powerful words of Scripture, Mark explores what activities are suitable or necessary in each season and what activities are useless or even harmful in that season. Throughout the book, Mark weaves together stories of young and old, men and women, families, couples, and individuals who are in or have been through a particular season of the heart.

Now for this week’s excerpts:

Book Beginnings is hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader, who invites anyone to join in, saying: ‘Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.  Please remember to include the title of the book and the author. Leave a link to your post.  If you don’t have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.’

The beginning of Spiritual Rhythm:

From the preface:

The fastest growing sport in Norway is wingsuit jumping. It’s the pastime of lunatics, or it’s what warrior-knights do in an age without dragons. It requires steel nerves, a cool head, a touch of madness. You must be able to look fast-approaching catastrophe in the face, and whoop.

Here’s what you do. Ascend the uppermost part of a fjord, walk to the edge, and jump.

From the introduction:

I live in Canada. If you don’t, forget your stereotypes: sled dogs and igloos, polar bears and ice palaces, Eskimos in fur-lined parkas and seal-skinned mukluks poised with fish spears over ice holes. Those are rare sightings anywhere in my country, but only myths in the part of Canada I’m from. I’m from Canada’s West Coast.

I wanted to include both of these beginnings because I like his sense of humour in both of them. I think I’ll probably like this one.

The Friday 56 is a book meme hosted by Freda’s Voice and the rules are as follows:

*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence, (or few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Add your (url) post below in Linky. Add the post url, not your blog url.

It’s that simple.

From page 56 of Spiritual Rhythm:

I started skiing when I was twelve. It was a way to break the endless dreariness of the winters where I lived.

My first time skiing was a near disaster.

Even though we have a small ski hill in town here, I’ve never tried downhill skiing in my life. I’m not about to start now. I think I’m getting too old for trying new things that could result in broken limbs. I am intrigued, though, to find out what the author’s near disaster was. Hopefully I’ll get into this book soon and find out. It looks like it will be an enjoyable read anyway.