I got a lot of books for my birthday and I am looking foward to reading them (please note that my reading of these books is not an endorsement of any of these authors):

1) The Jesus of Suburiba: Have we Tamed the Son of God to Fit our Lifestyle? – Mike Erre.  Mike is the pastor down at Rock Harbor in Costa Mesa.  I went to their church a lot while I was down at Azusa Pacific and I really enjoyed it.

2)  Jesus wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile – Rob Bell and Don Golden.  This was a gift for my birthday from my friend Wes.  I have never actually finished a Rob Bell book yet.  I started both Velvet Elvis and Sex God, but didn’t have time finish them.  Because I didn’t own them, I was never able to come back to them.

3) The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant – J.D. Crossan.  Crossan is the most liberal of my authors I am reading right now.  I started reading this book at Archives earlier last semester.  I really enjoyed the first two pages, and am interested to see where Crossan lands at the end of this book.  Sarah was with me when I was first reading it and, as a good girlfriend, logged it in her memory and bought it for me all the way from China.

4) Surprised by Hope – N.T. Wright.  I am also interested to read this gift from Sarah (two books must mean that she really loves me).  I loved “The Challenge of Jesus” when I first read it.

5) The Fall of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation – Arthur Ferrill.  I was reading about the fall of Rome on wikipedia and his theory sounded very intersting, so I bought the book.

On top of all my reading for my credential classes, I don’t know when I’m going to have time to read all of these, but I look forward to some interesting interaction with these texts here on the blog…

I have always been intrigued by the mystery of Gatsby:

‘I think he killed a man,’ [Jordan said] and had the effect of stimulating my curiousity.  I would have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang from the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New York.  That was comprehensible.  But young men didn’t–at least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn’t–drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound

The phrase ‘only in America’ comes to mind thinking of a place where even Jets and Sharks can come together reminiscient of a Shakespearan Romeo and Juliet.  Only in America can Gatsby rise from nothing and become “something.”  While the phrase is utterly flawed and corrupted by the nostalgic tendencies, I wonder also if the idea of ‘only in America’ also deteroriates our trust in tradition.  The great innovator of the twentieth century–Henry Ford–noted that history and tradition are “more or less bunk” and the only thing that we should give a “tinker’s dam” about is the here and now.  Robin Williams performance in The Deat Poet’s Society emphasizes the American love of carpe diem.

And yet, Williams performance and the mystery of Gatsby raise up a central point about Western Civilization: have we so valued this rising from the ashes–coming from nowhere–that the places we come from really become nowhere and nothing.  Joe Biden emphasizes his rise from the working class and Barack Obama call for a world where we don’t see things in terms of red states and blue states.  But this is exactly the question: Should the red states abandon their traditions and their values for the politics of ‘change.’

Who is Gatsby?  Are we to know the traditions that shaped him?  Are we to know the traditions that shape our lives?  Or do we now live in a Western traditionless world where the mystery of Gatsby will reign?