"Don’t miss the table of contents," is the first instruction in picking up Markings/My Own. It is a tantalizing outline, daring the reader to enter into musings on the Gospel of Mark: "Fish and chips," "No pigs in the peaceable kingdom?" or "Grain and Whine." This is vintage Omar Eby, signaling what is in store for those who are ready to be prodded, startled, even outraged, and finally blessed by these insightful meditations on how the Son of God reveals himself to his disciples. "‘We must plunge into experience and then reflect on the meaning of it,’" says Eby, quoting from a favorite author. In this work, the reader is swept into both the New Testament experiences of Jesus and his followers and into the world of a witty, gritty writer who intertwines personal memoir with reflections on the biblical story. These meditations are refracted through the hopes, desires, and struggles of one man very much in touch with his humanity. With ruthless honesty and teasing provocation, the writer reveals a deep reverence for God’s mysterious way with his creatures. This is a story of inherited faith but also an account of a hard-won faith. Heightening a sense of the search for the divine in the ordinary is the particularity of place. From Capernaum to Jerusalem, from Paris to Mogadishu, from the Shenandoah Valley to the Serengeti Plains, from a retired professor’s back garden to the African savannas, the traveler on the journey of faith is irresistibly pulled along. These meditations on the Scripture signal an immersion into experience itself, which God honors through this writer/poet’s renderings of the sights, sounds, yearnings, delights, and fears of everyday life. Of particular interest to those who draw sustenance from the creative work of artists, writers, and musicians are the references to artists who help us mourn and celebrate life, who give us insights into the deeper meaning of our existence, and who thus urge us to noble callings and faithful commitments. These "markings" are a literature lover’s feast. I found myself watching for the references to the greats: Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Blake, John Milton, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Bunyan, John Donne, Ben Jonson, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Alexander Pope, Francis Bacon, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning, Samuel Coleridge, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Ben Franklin, Francis Thompson, John Keats, W. B. Yeats, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Goethe, Thomas Mann, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Mann, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville. It becomes a game—the hunt for these rich literary citations. But there are more: Joseph Conrad, C. S. Lewis, E. M. Forster, John Updike, Samuel Beckett, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Ciardi, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, Kahlil Gibran, Graham Greene, Reynolds Price, Harper Lee, Thornton Wilder, James Baldwin, J. B. Priestley, James Weldon Jones, Annie Dillard, Frederick Buechner, Mitch Albom, and Kathleen Norris. We understand the gospel story better when we catch glimpses of what Jesus becoming one of us means in our setting. Here Mark’s Gospel, with a cast of wonderfully human characters, is writ large through the perspective and personas of Omar Eby—author, Anabaptist, colleague, descendant, friend, horticulturist, grandparent, gourmand, teacher, mentor, missionary, music lover, parent, pilgrim, poet, seeker, sinner, and spouse. This book is for reflectives who find their souls nurtured by the music of Mozart, Bach, Handel, Randall Thompson, or Andrew Lloyd Webber. The references to Michelangelo, Monet, Van Gogh, Constable, Bruegel, Hieronymus Bosch, or Salvador Dali become for the reader a persuasive example of how the creative spirits and artists among us nourish the soul and accompany us on the journey of faith. Rounding out these strands of literature, art and music are the frequent acknowledgements of those spiritual seekers who continue to inspire or challenge the pilgrim’s search for God: Nietzsche, Bonhoeffer, Freud, Ernest Becker, Teilhard de Chardin, Kierkegaard, Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, Charles Sheldon, John Howard Yoder. These lists are more than samplings of sources, both past and present, from which Omar Eby draws to examine a life—his life. These individuals, as well as nature, become companions along the way. "The physical world embodies a spiritual world, concealed from those who have eyes only for the glitter of Broadway or the glitz of tele-evangelists," Omar Eby observes. "Saints discover that all living and growing manifestations of nature give glory to God by being exactly what he has destined them to be." This book will appeal to a wide range of readers—to lovers of Scripture, to seekers of understanding, to the person who responds to a clever turn of phrase or appreciates the discomfort of introspection. Markings does not offer pious niceties. With a bent toward survival by wit and a love of the outrageous, the author conveys, paradoxically perhaps, a gracious witness to the incomparable ways of God among humankind. A keen observer of nature and human nature—acquainted with the ache of the human spirit, its beauty, sorrow, disappointment and hope—Omar Eby shares the consolations of remembering and imagining. Fellow pilgrims seeking comfort and renewal will not be disappointed in joining the author in search of life-giving Word. This is a book of witness and worship and I commend it to all those fellow travelers on the journey of faith. —Lee Snyder, President Markings orders:
|
|||||||
| Click here to explore joining InnerCircle readers club and receiving occasional updates and special discounts. | |||||||
