by Phoebe Farag Mikhail

Forgiveness, reconciliation and love are the features of three books I’ve read this year: The 21: A Journey into the Land of Coptic Martyrs by Martin Mosebach, From Read Earth: A Rwandan Story of Healing and Forgiveness by Denise Uwimana, and The Heart’s Necessities: Life in Poetry by Jane Tyson Clement with Becca Stevens, all three from Plough Publishing. I could not put down these books, and each one taught me something about the expansiveness of God’s love and its ability to transform. (Read more about forgiveness and repentance in last week’s guest post here.)

To enter the giveaway for a copy of one of these three books, subscribe to my email newsletter and then comment below with the title you want to be entered for and why you are interested in this book. Giveaway closes at 11:59 am on Friday, June 14, 2019, US addresses only please.

From Read Earth: A Rwandan Story of Healing and Forgiveness

A memoir by a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, author Denise Uwimana describes how she manages to hold on to her faith in God despite all the evil she witnessed, and puts names to the numbers of the horrific genocide that claimed 800,000 lives in the span of 100 days. She does not sugarcoat the carnage, nor does she let anyone off the hook – this genocide was fueled by decades of colonialism, arms sales, the intervention of outside countries, and the paralysis of the United Nations, but she ultimately identifies the reality that in those 100 days, Rwanda was overcome by pure evil.

Uwimana does not hide her arguments with God during these terrible days:

I assailed heaven. Oh God, when these people stand before your throne, when they ask where you were when they needed you, how will you answer? What will you say to the little children who don’t know why they had to die? What will you say to their killers?

The book does not offer tidy answers. All Uwimana knows is that if she survived those 100 days, God had a purpose for her.

Through all the suffering, she also shares the kindness of Hutu friends, neighbors and even strangers, as well as miracles and answered prayers. But the most powerful part of the book is when she gets involved in groups that help Rwanda heal from this terrible wound–and even forgive. Moreso than the miracles that did save lives, these stories of forgiveness and healing go beyond miracles. I shared one of those remarkable stories during my interview on LogosTV (there’s a spoiler so don’t watch it if you plan to read the book!). And the work with these women help Uwimana herself heal from the immense tragedies she witnessed at the hands of those she thought were friends and neighbors, even fellow church-goers.

In her words:

They say forgiving is an ongoing process, a daily battle, and that’s certainly how the last twenty-five years have been for me. But, as I would soon discover, it wasn’t a journey I would have to make alone – thousands were on the road with me.

Purchase this book from Plough here or on Amazon here. To enter a giveaway for a free copy of this book, subscribe to my email newsletter and then comment below with the title you want to be entered for and why you are interested in this book.

The 21: A Journey into the Land of Coptic Martyrs by Martin Mosebach

I will admit to starting this book with some trepidation. As a book written by a European “discovering” the Coptic Orthodox Church and its people for the first time, I feared to encounter a bit of condescension, a typical “Western gaze” at the mysterious “Eastern Christians,” or perhaps a pitying and stereotypical look at Egyptian poverty. Thankfully, my fears were mostly unwarranted. Mosebach, inspired by a photograph of one of the 21 Coptic Martyrs of Libya in 2015, he takes a visit to Upper Egypt to discover the world that produced the men who stayed faithful to the end.

I know this world intimately. I have traveled to villages just like Al-Aour and have worked on community development projects, sometimes living in them for weeks at a time. I’ve done workshops with young people in Samalout and visited the hospital run by the bishop Mosebach met on his visit. I enjoyed his observations of the church and village life. While most Western observers can be surprised by the way Orthodox Copts bow and kiss the hands of clergy, Mosebach makes the astute observation that these acts are just as much an act of self-respect by a minority community: “Their priests represent laws over which the state, in its unfriendly neutrality toward Christians, has no influence.”

I found in some places Mosebach might perhaps have been almost too charitable, too idealistic. The author is genuine in his impression that what he finds church life in Upper Egypt is closer to what the Early Church might have been like, but it’s important to understand that this is a little oversimplification – Christian practice does change and adapt over time, and the Coptic Orthodox Church is not exempt, although it might be slower to do so than other churches.

However, he is right that what is unchanged is the community’s stubborn insistence and fidelity to their faith in Christ, and he portrays this honestly, attending liturgical services and working to understand how the church shaped them. “The rite,” he writes, “was the air they breathed, and air is something we only really think about –those of us it’s keeping alive—when it’s absent.”

Perhaps what astounds Mosebach, and most others who encounter the persecuted Church, is how the perpetrators of violence are forgiven.

In the many conversations I had, never once did anyone call for retribution or revenge, nor even for the murderers to be punished. It was as if the families wanted nothing whatsoever to do with them, because the martyrs’ sheer splendor outshone them.

There are a few inaccuracies in Mosebach’s observation and analysis of the Coptic Orthodox Church – details that don’t take away from the overall benefit of the book to readers in getting a general picture of what the Church is like in Upper Egypt, but still might slightly distract a knowledgeable Coptic Orthodox reader (for example, he identifies the second reading in the liturgy as a reading from the Early Church Fathers, when it is actually a reading from one of the non-Pauline epistles; in another example, he points out that the Coptic liturgical language eventually incorporated Greek, but it was actually likely the opposite, or a parallel development – the earliest Christians in Egypt probably spoke Greek).

One who is doing research on the Coptic Orthodox Church might not use this book as a definitive resource, but I don’t think that’s what Mosebach wants for his readers anyway. Rather, his purpose is to immerse us into the world of the 21 Martyrs and provide readers the religious, economic, and cultural context these men emerged from to demonstrate their awe-inspiring faith in Christ to the entire world.

Purchase this book from Plough here and from Amazon here. To enter a giveaway for a free copy of this book, subscribe to my email newsletter and then comment below with the title you want to be entered for and why you are interested in this book.

The Heart’s Necessities: A Life in Poetry by Jane Tyson Clement with Becca Stevens

My friend and fellow writer Allison Backous Troy, a lover of poetry, reviewed this beautiful book for me:

I had never heard of Jane Tyson Clement, but as soon as I read some of her work in this collection, I was immediately reminded of Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose own sense of meter and lyrical voice can be heard in Clement’s work:

But I can say

when I am old, that once the world was true

and I was fearless and was not alone,  

and broke the barriers of blood and bone  

into the reigns of a brighter star.

I was also reminded of Luci Shaw, whose decades of poems are kindred spirits with Clement’s love of landscape, relationship, and inner life.

This book is a slow, engaging stroll through the life of a woman who faced World War II, pacifism, and Christian faith with poise and vulnerability. And it’s a great introduction to metered poems for readers who are more familiar with free verse – there are lots of sonnets here, and lots of poems that seem to be inspired by Emily Dickinson (and still wholly Clement’s voice). The juxtapositions of biography, poems, and reflections by the musician Becca Stevens are seamless and inviting.

Becca Stevens’ own experiences with these poems are a welcome opening into exploring how a poem, or a series of poems, influences a life – it’s a great companion piece for those who teach poetry, because Stevens’ essays are great examples of how an artist, and a person in everyday life, engages on a personal and craft level with another artist’s work. This is a wonderful introduction to poetry for a personal devotional, for fans of the aforementioned authors, for Mother’s Day, and for anyone who is looking to be introduced to a writer whose prose and life are gentle, rich surprises.

Purchase this book from Plough here and from Amazon here. To enter a giveaway for a free copy of this book, subscribe to my email newsletter and then comment below with the title you want to be entered for and why you are interested in this book.

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