We’re now staying with our friends the Armes, who’ve very generously opened one of their spare rooms to us until their kids need them again around Christmas. We’re hoping, as always, not to even need it that long, but it’s nice to have a little stability for a while.
Cassie’s already got an in at a coffee shop that’s a five minute walk away and needs help for the next month or two, so that’ll be great if that works out. I’m still writing, reading, and studying Japanese, and considering applying to nearby jobs myself, as long as I can find someone else in need of (relatively unskilled) short-term help. But I’m also considering doing online college and trying to get a bachelor’s degree; that’ll open up English teaching jobs to me in Japan, and then obviously more potential jobs to me here.
In the meantime, I’ve been doing a lot of reading, so I figured it’d be fun to go over some of the things I’ve read in the last couple months.
Most recently I’ve read the Gap Cycle, by Stephen R. Donaldson – a five-book sci-fi series from the early 90s. I really enjoyed it; it’s simpler than a lot of other sci-fi from its era, softer on science and heavier on character. It starts off pretty rough and horrifying but it uses the horror deliberately and helps the characters grow from it. It’s not particularly deep, borrowing most of its theming quite deliberately from Der Ring des Nibelungen, but I appreciate any stories that include the transformational power of radical forgiveness and the destructiveness of holding on to grudges.
On the nonfiction side, I’m juggling several surveys of Japanese history and culture; Modern Japan (A Very Short Introduction) by Christopher Goto-Jones was true to its name quick and easy to digest, if a bit surface-level. Japan by Boye Lafayette de Mente was… well, I kind of stopped reading it because it was contained some obvious inaccuracies. His Etiquette Guide to Japan seems better, but I’m still taking it with a grain of salt.
Speaking of books I stopped reading, though, I also couldn’t get through Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird, by Henry Lien. I think it may be useful as an introduction for someone who hasn’t really been exposed to Eastern storytelling structures, but halfway through it just hadn’t told me anything I didn’t know, or given me any perspectives that I wasn’t already familiar with.
I’m also working on Modern Japan, by Mikiso Hane, which is very in-depth, very comprehensive, and very dry, so it’s slow going but definitely worth the effort. (It was getting partway through her book that help show how off-base Lafeyette de Mente’s book was!)
I devoured John Mark Comer’s Practicing the Way and then God Has a Name, in that order. Practicing the Way is an excellent look into what the Bible seems to expect Christian lifestyles to look like, and asks why our lifestyles don’t look like that and what steps we can take to change that. (As a bonus, he cites like a billion different books along the way, giving you lots of recommendations for further reading on any particular part that interests you.) God Has a Name is an in-depth look at Exodus 34:6-7, the most-quoted passage of the Bible by the Bible:
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
It takes it line by line, examining what that means, how it was interpreted by the rest of scripture, and what it means for us today. Very good, highly recommend it.
Other than that I’ve been reading through the Bible itself, trying to cover-to-cover it in a period of a couple months. I’m in Chronicles now. One of the things that’s standing out to me the most this time through the Old Testament is just how lenient God is towards the Israelites. Like, there’s this common perception – even among many Christians – that the God of the Old Testament is more wrathful and less forgiving than the God of the New Testament, but it’s hard to see that in how he treats his people. He’s so quick to forgive people who even just pay lip service to him, it’s crazy. Someone will openly flout his commands, he’ll punish them somehow, and they’re like, “Oh dang, I’m sorry!” and so often he just immediately relents, even though they go right back to rejecting him in the next sentence. The main change that gives the difference in reputation between the Old and New Testaments is that he opened up the definition of “his people” to include everyone who wants to be included – except even that was pretty clearly the case in the Old Testament, with several stories of outsiders and even enemies of Israel who recognized his authority, submitted themselves to it, and who were blessed for it.
Other than that, it’s been a source of constant reassurance and, like, embarrassment, how much I can relate to the Israelites – especially in the Torah, during their time in the wilderness. Cassie and I are in our own period of wilderness, and it’s so easy to forget the cool things that God did for us yesterday when we face the troubles of today. It’s embarrassing how much reminding I need of his provision and the effectiveness of his plans. Cassie read through Job the other day and the final few chapters were a good reminder of how small we are and how silly it is to doubt him. I’m eternally grateful for him being merciful and gracious towards me when I complain at him, and I continue to count on his steadfast love and faithfulness.