100 books like Revelation Of Love

Set in Holland during WWII, this autobiography gives an up close and personal look at life in a German concentration camp.

The vivid descriptions of the horrid living conditions and prevailing illnesses made me feel like I was there. Most memorable was the discussion of the flea-infested straw bedding and the notion of being thankful for the fleas. The author and her sister were devout Christians, but why be thankful for fleas? However, the guards left the women alone because of the fleas.

I will also always remember how the author was given a small bottle of liquid vitamin D and how she never hesitated to share it with the sick, yet it never ran dry. She makes it clear this was God’s work. 

Mary’s Oliver’s nature poems are like psalms: full of beauty, wisdom, and spirituality that touch my heart. I read her poems over and over again.

In particular, during a silent retreat I attended near Gloucester, Massachusetts where scripture is assigned for reflection, her poems became my meditations. Every morning in the dining room overlooking the sea, I watched the sun rise, glowing across the waves and rocks. “Hello, sun in my face…” Oliver writes and ends with, “Watch, now, how I start the day / in happiness, in kindness.”

This somewhat academic collection of articles, essays, and poems began in a Boston living room when a group of Jewish women recognized that traditional Jewish study was invariably seen through the lens of men. These women had formerly dismissed the Book of Ruth as irrelevant to them, nothing more than a tale about an old man marrying a younger woman.

They decided to compile a commentary about the Book of Ruth using female voices. These writings encouraged me to compile my own midrash (interpretation) and deeply impressed me with their understanding that this Biblical story is relevant for women today to explore powerlessness, vulnerability, loss, women mourning and rejoicing, and relationships.

A friend once asked to whom I’d most want to be apprenticed. I thought about it for a while and answered, “Joan Chittister.” She invariably speaks deeply from a spirituality not limited to her Catholic orthodoxy, but inclusive of many other religious traditions. I never stop learning from her wisdom which often arises from her own experience.

In Chittister’s chapter about endurance, I am reminded of my own struggles as a writer and as a minister and how these struggles have deepened my spiritual understanding. Her words always give me hope and help me to persevere.

Today’s book-banning efforts replicate the dynamics of past political and religious upheavals when books were destroyed, including thousands of medieval manuscripts, many written by women.

Among those that survived were two mystical treatises: The Book of Margery Kempe discovered by chance in the 1930s in a dusty cupboard on an English country estate, and Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, given its first complete printing in 1901.

Victoria MacKenzie’s delicate, meditative novel evokes the lives of the two female mystics who authored these texts. In exquisite, spare prose, she conjures the distinctive voices of Margery and Julian, two souls seeking solace from the crushing orthodoxy threatening to envelop them.

Read this book slowly, in a quiet place.

‘What would happen,’ Norbury writes in her introduction to this anthology, ‘if I simply missed out the 50 percent of the population whose voices have been credited with shaping this particular cultural form?’ (ie, the ‘lone enraptured male,’ as writer Kathleen Jamie once memorably put it). The answer is a compulsively readable and constantly surprising anthology: a magpie curation of glittering treasures.

One of the many things I love about this timely book is its arrangement by alphabetical order. So you have contemporary nature blogger Nic Wilson next to Virginia Woolf, and Monica Ali rubbing shoulders with Elizabeth von Armin – and Enid Blyton next to Tessa Boase. This feels oddly apt: the writer who got me reading. Her entry illustrates Norbury’s inspired eye for what counts as ‘nature writing’: here, Philip mansplains a slow-worm to silly Dinah.

In 2007, when Marion Ann Taylor, a pioneer researcher in the study of historical women biblical commentators, picked up a newly-published biographical encyclopedia of 200 “major biblical interpreters,” she was appalled to discover that it contained entries on only three women! This inspired her to edit a biographical dictionary dedicated solely to women who interpreted scripture. Taylor’s handbook contains 180 short articles, authored by expert historians and biblical scholars, about inspiring Jewish and Christian women who wrote about the Bible through the centuries. Readers learn biographical information about these women, as well as their approaches to scriptural interpretation, especially how they commented on the story of Eve and passages about other biblical women.

I love Bowman’s book for its simplicity and its scholarship. Through it, I discovered Revelation tells the gospel story as a drama! Reading his book, I begin to see, as the curtain is raised on each scene, wonderous mysteries are revealed. I eagerly read each page of the book and read and reread every page of Revelation to find more of its treasures. Having been convinced that Revelation is intended to be a carefully composed and complex drama, I adopted a similar format for organizing my own book.  

As a long-time fan of Eugene Peterson, I intentionally sought out his book. I was attracted by the title, the praying imagination. I came hungry to Revelation for more understanding and he masterfully sets the table with a feast of Jesus’ last words each one to be continually savored and enjoyed. It’s as if I am ushered into the heart of Revelation to linger and pray and sing and reflect on the wonder and grace of the crucified and risen Lamb. And among all these riches, I found additional confirmation for my own dramatic interpretation of Revelation! 

I am a long-time student of N. T. Weight and have read many of his books. I appreciate his scholarship and ability to communicate with “everyone.” I love Wright for his scholarly defense of Jesus' bodily resurrection. He leaves me in awe with his knowledge of Scripture and of the Roman world of the first century. He has influenced my Biblical worldview to the extent I can’t imagine writing a book apart from his influence. I admire his extensive knowledge of the historical context of the cities in which the seven churches are located. I love reading Wright for his contagious joy!