Week i

Wreck of the Whale Ship Essex: The Complete Illustrated Edition - Owen Chase (William Coffin, Jr?)
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex - Nathaniel Philbrick
The Buddha in the Attic - Julie Otsuka

  There she blows! A week ago The Whale by Philip Hoare breached off my larboard, spouting it's magic, misty whale breath, hypnotizing me with its broad, waxy back, flashing its fluke in my face and splashing spume onto my ship's deck. As soon as it dove, disappearing beneath its footprint, I hove to and called out for a gam with my sister ship the USS Rumble. "Full and by the mizzen top sail off the lanyard point to on the poop deck, aye Cap'in?" Captain Richard knew exactly what I meant, and graciously loaned me Wreck of the Whale Ship Essex and In the Heart of the Sea.
  
  I ate them up like a finback eats krill. Don't ask me how a finback eats krill...something about baleen. As you can probably tell, I know nothing about whales or sailing, so "the complete illustrated" part of Wreck of the Whale Ship Essex - charts and photos mostly - really helped me appreciate what I was reading. Also included in Wreck are excerpts from Moby-Dick and other books about maritime disasters. In the Heart doesn't just retell the Essex story, it sails it, hunts it, stoves it, starves it, tries it, finds it, loses it. Captain Pollard: "My God, Mr Chase, what happened?" Chase: "We have been stove by a whale."

   
  The Buddha in the Attic is the second Julie Otsuka book I've read this year - When the Emperor was Divine is the other. Both books follow Japanese Americans into the WW2 prison camps [where did 'internment' come from?]. Emperor follows a family - mother, father, daughter, and son - from pre-war California life into prison and back out again. Buddha follows thousands of young Japanese women arranged to be married to Japanese men already living in the U.S.; Buddha follows them, written voices and voiced thoughts, across the Pacific, into the marriage bed, into the fields and shops and homes to work, into motherhood, into war-time, stopping short of the prison-camp experience. The final chapter of Buddha records the voices and experiences of white neighbors immediately after the Japanese are taken away.

  Otsuka's writing is so accessible, so open, so human...there is no escape. The effect is a kind of relentless clarity. Relentless connection to the story and characters. Both Emperor and Buddha are short books, for which I am grateful. I'm not sure I could handle a 400 page Otsuka manuscript; I'd be a puddle of emotions by the end of it. These are stunningly beautiful books.

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  Just a quick thought - Jesus said that the only sign he would give would be the sign of Jonah, three days in the belly of the whale, three days in the tomb before rising again. Is the sign of Jonah, in some sense, the sign of the whale? "One calm, windless morning when the sea was flat as glass and the sky a brilliant shade of blue, the smooth black flank of a whale suddenly rose up out of the water and then disappeared and for a moment we forgot to breathe. It was like looking into the eye of the Buddha" (Otsuka pg13; Otsuka uses italics for speech or quotes). Is the sign of the whale, in some sense, the sign of the sea?

 The Bible has such a rich imagery of the sea - the formless waters before creation, the great flood, the crossing of the Red Sea, Jesus calming the waves with a word. Waves and waters can represent threat, chaos, tumult: "the roar of the seas" (Psalm 65), "the waters have lifted up" (Psalm 93), "the torrent washes over me" (Psalm 69). There are some Biblical allusions to the near eastern myth of a storm god (Marduk, Baal) battling and vanquishing a sea goddess or sea monster (Tiamat, Rahab) - like in Psalm 89, "You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise you still them. You crushed Rahab like a carcass".

  The sea is also a sign of God's greatness, God's power to separate the waters above from the waters below, God's wisdom and mercy to "set a boundary that they [the seas] might not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth" (Psalm 104), God's world-encompassing salvation, "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" (Habbakuk 2:14). God is so great that "Leviathan You [God] formed to sport in it."

  When Jesus claimed the sign of Jonah, three days in the belly of the great fish, was he also claiming order out of chaos? A return to the watery womb of creation? Union of male (storm, lightning) and female (sea, waves)? The mystery and majesty of the whale? The world-covering flood?

2018 Jesus Read-a-thon

   I've always wanted to spend a year reading as much Jesus literature as possible...is 2018 the year? I'm gonna give it a shot. My brother Richard said he'd read some with me, so I hoping we can keep each other motivated.
  Here's a list I made based on what we have in the library here at Richmond Hill. A handful of the books I've read before and need to read again. Most I've seen in the library and have been intending to pick up. Now's the time to pick them up! My plan is to make a weekly blog post with reading notes. Consistency is my goal. Read and write, read and write! Then, at the end of the year, perhaps I'll be inspired to write some kind of critical summary or spiritual reflection type thing.
  A year or two ago I read Housekeeping vs The Dirt, by Nick Hornby, a collection of his book reviews from the periodical The Believer (I think he has a bigger collection called The Polysyllabic Spree). I ate it up like candy; part book review, part memoir, part satire, it was insightful, personal, and hilarious. That's my dream - to be able to write something like that using mostly religious literature.
  This list is overfilled with WASP-y males like me, and also overdependent on the Jesus Seminar. People out there in cyberspace, I'd love some suggestions to diversify my author list. I may not be able to read it this year, but just having the title and author in my mind for future reading would be a comfort. Thank you!

Jan - Biblical Jesus

KJV Gospels

God’s Secretaries - Nicolson

Gospel Parallels

Five Gospels w Commentary - Funk, Hoover, etc

Who wrote the New Testament - Mack

Feb - Historical Jesus

Excavating Jesus - Crossan and Reed

New Test. Background, Selected Docs - ed C.K. Barrett

Meeting Jesus again for the First Time - Marcus Borg

Jesus Christ and Mythology - Bultmann

Honest to Jesus: Jesus for New Millennium - Funk

Mar - Christian Jesus

Acts-Rev

From Jesus to Christ - Paula Fredriksen

Religion in Greece and Rome - Rose

The Real Jesus - Luke Johnson

The Kingdom Within - Sanford

Jesus through the Centuries - J Pelikan

Christ and Culture - Niehbur

April - Extra Jesus

Gnostic Gospels - Elaine Pagels

Beyond Belief - Pagels

Jesus - K. Gibran

Gospel According to Mary - Miriam Winter

Lamb - Gospel According to Biff - Moore

Christ out of Egypt - A Rice

The Last Temptation of Christ - Kazantzakis

May - Prophet Jesus

Isaiah-Malachi

The Prophets - A Heschel

The Suffering Servant - Christopher North

The Prophetic Imagination - Bruggeman

June - Jewish Jesus

Two Types of Faith - Buber

Jesus the Jewish Theologian - Brad Young

Between the Testaments - D.S. Russell

July - Muslim Jesus

The Qu'ran

The Muslim Jesus - Khalidi

Rumi

Aug - Hindu Jesus

Hinduism - K. Sen

Message of Jesus Christ - Gandhi

Autobiography - Gandhi

Gospel of John in Light of Indian Mysticism - Ravindra

Bhagavad-Gita

Sept - Buddhist Jesus

Living Buddha, Living Christ - Hanh

Coming Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers - Hanh

In the Words of the Buddha - selections from pali cannon

Without Buddha I could not be a Christian - Paul Knitter

Oct - Jesus comes to America

God is Red - Vine Deloria

Jesus in America: A History - Fox

The Book of Mormon

The Pipe and Christ - Stolzman

Jesus for President - Claiborne

Nov - Black Jesus

Jesus and the Disinherited - Thurman

Souls of Black Folk - DuBois

The Cross and the Lynching Tree - Cone

Trabelin On - Sobel

I Have a Dream - collection of speeches and writings by MLK

Bearing the Cross - Garrow

Dec. - English Lit. Jesus

Milton, Donne, etc

Jesus as Precursor - Funk