The Burr in the Burgh

I am usually reading at least two or three books at the same time. I'm not boasting. In fact, I consider this one of my flaws (though not one of the greater ones). I typically have one religious book at hand as well as one work of fiction. Occasionally, I may also be into something political or a biography. I wish I could focus my attention on one thing at a time, but alas, I cannot.

The two book occupying my mind at the moment are:

Journey Back to Eden: My Life and Times Among the Desert Fathers by Mark Gruber

The author is an American Benedictine monk who teaches anthropology at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, PA. For his doctoral research, he spent a year or so visiting and living in Coptic monasteries in the Sahara desert. This wonderful book was the result. It is his log of his time in Egypt.

Personally, one of my great desires is to visit Egypt and at least see the types of ancient desert monasteries he writes about. He focuses on the liturgical life of the Coptic monks, their forms of piety, and some of their theological reflections on sin, temptation, and grace. He gives insights into their cycles of fasting and feasting, their austerity, and their tremendous joy under hardship. He noted that Coptic monks are quite a bit more rigorous than Western monks. For instance, they go to pray for up to six hours at a time, standing, singing the entire psalter every day. He tells of attending a Christmas Eve service that lasted from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.

I have often been intrigued by the life of the Christian churches in Muslim countries. Christians in Egypt are a despised minority, though they probably fare somewhat better than in many other countries in the region.


Windswept House: A Vatican Novel by Malachi Martin

This is the second time I've read this fascinating and exciting book. Malachi Martin, now deceased, once worked closely with Pope John XXIII at the Vatican, so he is well acquainted with life in that most rarified of settings.

I was previously blown away by his documentary dramatization of several true modern case studies of demonic possession and their exorcisms in his work: Hostage to the Devil. That's well worth reading too, as long as you don't mind being completely freaked out.

Windswept House is what I would call a Vatican thriller. The halls of Vatican City become the battleground between good and evil, boiling over and scalding characters and settings around the world. It could have been re-titled Satan at St. Peter's. In a near apocalyptic drama, Martin uses the occasion to comment sagely on real spiritual issues undermining the Roman Catholic Church (and the rest of us too). It's fiction. . . I think. A real page-turner.