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For Christians, last month’s Ash Wednesday marked the start of the Lenten Season, a 40-day period (excluding Sundays) for fasting, solemnity, and personal introspection in preparation for Holy Week. Christians from various traditions—Protestant, Orthodox, Evangelical, Roman Catholic, Anglican—have long used this period to consider their own mortality and the seriousness of sin, as well as the forgiveness of God as offered in the Gospel. It is also a common occurrence for laymen and clergy alike to use the period to rededicate oneself to a disciplined spiritual life, reforming or recommitting certain habits to aid one’s contemplation of God’s words during this time. Along this note, several textual aids are available to the individual or group desiring direction during Lent, as well as several classic texts addressing themes appropriate to the season.

In the past couple of decades, there have been many texts published concerning the Spiritual Disciplines, but several titles have stood the test of time. Richard Foster’s classic work, A Celebration of Discipline, is lauded by many as one of the best treatises on the importance of the core spiritual disciplines. In the book, Foster outlines 12 disciplines under three broad categories: the Inward Disciplines, the Outward Disciplines, and the Corporate Disciplines. Thus habits like meditation, prayer, simplicity, service, confession, and worship are put in the context of personal, familial, civic, and communal life, giving the book a certain pastoral completeness.

Other titles in this category include Donald Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life and John Calvin’s classic reader, Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life. For those looking for books treating individual disciplines, John Piper’s book on fasting, Hunger for God is very good. Also, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Meditating on the Word is a small treatise for those looking to grow in this important discipline.

Finally, the use of prayer books in lay life is an increasingly popular activity these days, especially during intensely devotional seasons like Lent. Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer has served a central role in Western directed prayer for over three centuries. Additionally, the Valley of Vision is an excellent compilation of Puritan prayers published by Banner of Truth. Finally, Phyllis Tickle has compiled a three-book series of directed prayer and praise for individuals and groups called The Divine Hours. The three book series contains Prayers for Springtime, Prayers for Summertime, and Prayers for Autumn/Winter, respectively.

Signs of Life is having a sale on Art Books this weekend: Thursday March 1st through Saturday March 3rd. Buy any Art Book in stock at the regular price and chose a second one for free! The usual restrictions apply: the free book is the one of lesser or equal value to the purchased one; applies only to regularly-priced books; no special orders.

Come in and get a fantastic deal on beautiful books!

Acclaimed author and long-time leader of The Navigators, Jerry Bridges, returns to Lawrence February 2nd and 3rd to speak on the topic of What the Gospel Is, Isn’t, and Why It Matters. Mr. Bridges served in the collegiate ministry and community ministries of The Navigators, and for 15 years he was the Vice President for Corporate Affairs. This exciting conference is open to the public and sponsored by the University of Kansas Navigator group. Details are available at the KU Navs website.

Mr. Bridges is the author of over a dozen books, the most popular of which, The Pursuit of Holiness, has sold nearly one-and-a-half million copies. His publisher writes: Jerry takes holiness out of the realm of the impossible and brings it into the real world of our daily lives and decisions. Whether you’re continuing your pursuit of holiness or just beginning, the principles and guidelines in The Pursuit of Holiness will challenge you to obey God’s command of holiness.

The Jerry Bridges book we most often recommend at Signs of Life is The Gospel for Real Life. In it we are given the sage advice to “preach the gospel to yourself every day.” But what is the gospel? And how does it affect our day to day life? Here you will find profound answers to these questions; but don’t confuse “profound” with “hard to read”.  The novice as well as the mature Christian will both find this to be a very satisfying book.

Poet, novelist, essayist, and man of letters, Wendell Berry has been writing his accounts of the human condition, the plight of man’s intimate relationship to the natural world, and many other timeless thus ever-timely topics for more than 45 years. Perhaps best described as the late 20^th century’s lone voice for “Agrarian Traditionalism,” Berry fills his fiction and non-fiction writings with a celebration of humanity’s mystery and goodness as informed by local “membership” within the community and native places we call home. Love, grief, forgiveness, grace, treachery, loyalty: all of these words serve as connecting themes in Berry’s writings as he plumbs the depths of human experience.

Berry’s fiction corpus is comprised of eight novels to-date, as well as dozens of short stories that tell the history and life of the Port William membership. A fictional agrarian community located in the boonies of the Kentucky river-bottoms, a county map would show Port William as made up of no more than a handful of commercial buildings and family residences. But as chronicler of the intricate web of relationships among the people, land, and history of Port William, Berry describes a society that can only be known by a certain love and commitment to its native place. Berry said of his first novel, Nathan Coulter, published in 1960, “When I finished work on this book at the end of the 1950s, I thought merely that I had made my start as a writer. I did not know that I had begun an interest in these characters that would still be productive over thirty years later.”

So Berry has spent the last 47 years telling the stories of the various families and personas of Port William, ranging from the life-long bachelor town barber in his novel Jayber Crow, to the chronicles of successive generations of Feltners, Coulters, Catlitts, Branchs, Penns, and Rowenberrys that make up the true identity of the place. In so doing, Berry’s commitment to telling the stories of the Port William natives demonstrates the type of attachment to place that is required of people if like temporal realities like contentment, loyalty, grief, and eternal realities like faith, hope, and love, are to have any bearing on the human soul. Yet far from a nostalgic or dreamlike portrayal of small town life, Berry’s fiction is deeply rooted in harsh reality of modernity, showing the drastic effects that two world wars, the rise of industrial agriculture, generational betrayal, and hyper-mobility have had on traditional ways of life. Though these stories, Berry shows the paradoxical relationship between community life caught up in time and the eternal realities that inform its nature.

Never having been particularly PC here at Signs of Life, we’d like to recommend another fascinating, if controversial book. In The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature, editor of the Conservative Book Club Elizabeth Kantor takes readers on a fascinating tour through great literature in all its politically incorrect glory. She includes a syllabus and a guide to the English literature education most people were denied in school. You’ll learn how Beowolf teaches us to admire heroes, Shakespeare shows how some choices are inherently destructive, and from Flannery O’Connor we learn that even modern American liberals aren’t immune to original sin. As a future dead white male, I’m delighted by this rehabilitation of those of my persuasion.

Islam is a religion of peace. This is a statement we’ve heard repeatedly from politicians and scholars since 9/11. In his new book The Truth about Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion, New York Times bestselling author Robert Spencer presents his case that the “religion of peace” mantra is at best a useful fiction and at worst a recipe for world disaster.

Spencer doesn’t purport to give an exhaustive biography of the prophet but focuses on the aspects of his life and teaching most relevant to 21st century geo-politics. Using extensive documentation from the sources that Muslims themselves consider most reliable, Spencer shows the truth about Muhammad’s convenient “revelations” justifying his own licentiousness; his joy in the brutal murders of his enemies; and above all, his clear marching orders to his followers to convert non-Muslims to Islam-or force them to live as inferiors under Islamic rule.

One of the best features of this book is Spencer’s concluding remarks in which he offers a concrete plan of action which diplomats and theologians could follow to avoid a worldwide, jihadist-induced holocaust.

While supplies last, you can come into our store in downtown Lawrence and get a free gift with purchase!

When you spend $50 or more with us during any visit this Christmas season, you’ll receive a complimentary copy of The Shine Man, a charming Christmas tale for children of all ages. Or you can purchase the book on sale for 50% off the list price of $17.

If your purchases total $70 or more, then our gift to you is this book of poetry: The Green Earth, by Luci Shaw. Shaw’s book of creation poems is also on sale. Regularly $20, while supplies last it is only $10. Both these books are great gift ideas!

It’s a glorious day to give thanks to God from whom all blessings flow! President Abraham Lincoln, in proclaiming the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father noted that, our “. . . Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.” The depth of that mercy is highlighted by the fact that Lincoln’s proclamation was written in the midst of a national struggle that makes our current skirmish in Iraq pale in comparison. To read Lincoln’s entire text, click here.

Our first lecture in the Culinary Culture series was by Tim O’Brian, founder and cultivator of the St. John’s Organic Parish Garden who spoke on “Culinary Culture and Christian Stewardship”.  The video of his excellent presentation is now available for your on-line viewing pleasure here.

Author and historian Darryl Hart will speak at 7:30 pm tonight at the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. The title of his talk is “The Last Dance: Why the Romance between the Religious Right and American Conservatism May be Over.” Dr. Hart’s most recently published book, A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors the Separation between Church and State (September 2006) provides the backdrop for Hart’s analysis of evangelicals’ rise to power during the last 25 years.

This weekend Dr. Hart will be speaking locally at a conference on Christianity and Culture sponsored by the Aletheia Forum. His talk at the conference will also draw from another of his recent books, Deconstructing Evangelicalism. Sharing the podium with Dr. Hart will be Signs of Life friend Caleb Stegall as well as World Magazine managing editor Timothy Lamer.