Since I strained my eyes permanently doing all the reading I did when I was pursuing my degree in Church History, I only use my eyes to read serious stuff. And, I do read a decent amount of the serious.
However, in addition to the serious, I am a huge fan of popular fiction.
It was more than 20 years ago that I checked my first audio book out of the library. I did it hoping to find an enjoyable way to pass the time when I had to travel alone from Findlay back home to Lancaster County. And, it worked. Amazingly well!
My first book was Dick Francis', DECIDER, which was on the bestseller list at the time.
In recent years, I read-via-audio about 20 bestselling novels per year. I have a list of authors I go to as soon as a new book by them is released on audio. Among them,
Michael Connelly, author of the Harry Bosch series and, more recently, my favorites, the Lincoln Lawyer series,
David Baldacci, probably best known for his King and Maxwell books, though he's not done one of those in a while,
Lee Child, who writes the Jack Reacher novels,
Harlan Coben, the author of my once-favorite, Myron Bolitar novel. (Novels featuring Myron eventually fizzled and got pretty lousy by the end.)
John Grisham, whose stuff I either love or can't stomach these days,
And, since I became avid with this sort of entertainment,
Three of my favorites have passed on to the big library in the sky:
Dick Francis, whose DECIDER convinced me that this sort of entertainment is for me,
Robert B. Parker, who literally died sitting at his desk typing the Spenser novel, SILENT NIGHT but who also wrote the Jesse Stone series, which I enjoyed. Spenser was a TV series back in the, I don't know, 80s? 90s?. All of the Stone novels written by Parker were made into movies starring Tom Selleck, and,
Vince Flynn, who died only at the age of 47 of cancer. He was the author of the Mitch Rapp series.
There are other authors I enjoy, including Randy Singer who writes so-called Christian fiction novels of the legal thriller genre and who I've heard called the "Christian John Grisham," though sometimes he's better.
Because I go through so many novels, in the past few years I've had to search for new authors to put on my list and I've had some success. I like Tess Gerritsen, creator of the Rizzoli and Isles characters and Lisa Gardner whose police woman, DD Warren, is okay.
Most recently, I tried out a Linda Castillo novel featuring her main character, Kate Burkholder.
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At this point, let me be clear: I'm not recommending the Burkholder novels to anyone. I've knocked off three of them so far. All of them involved murders. The author creates very vivid descriptions of the murder victims. One of the novels I "read" involved the murder of a large family and there was much more gore than I appreciate. The most recent book involved the death of a man whose corpse was discovered 30 after his death who appeared to have been injured in a fight and died by being eaten alive by pigs.
Kate Burkholder is the police chief in a small town in Holmes County, Ohio. (If you know of Holmes County, you can guess where this is going.) Kate is thirtysomething, unmarried and shacking up with a guy who is also in the law enforcement field. She is not Miss Marple nor Jessica Fletcher.
She is moral in a twenty first century way. She's an honest cop. In the last novel, she got knocked up and was determined to keep the baby, even when her beau initially reacted very negatively to the news that he was about to father a child with her.
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Here's what I love about these novels:
They are set in Amish country in Ohio and each of the cases brings the reader into contact with Amish characters, with Amish culture and with the religion of the everyday Amish man, woman and child.
The author is clearly very familiar with the Amish. Kate, the main character, was born and raised Amish but has left the faith. Kate speaks Pennsylvania Dutch and often converses with the Amish in their tongue in short passages that the author publishes in Pennsylvania Dutch and then translates into English.
As someone who lives among the Amish in Pennsylvania, I see Castillo's depiction of the Amish nonromanticized, realistic and neutral. In fact, while the Amish are generally victims of crime in the books, in one I've finished Amish committed the crime and engaged in a conspiracy and, in the end, one of them ended being murdered by another Amish person in a way that is plausible in any piece of popular fiction.
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Most fascinating to me is Castillo's references to the Amish "ordnung," or the set of rules that the Amish live by and are at the center of their culture.
Castillo's Holmes County Amish are, as I know them to be here in Pennsylvania, deeply convinced that Christianity is a way of living that impacts the totality of life, not merely what a person does on Sunday morning.
While there are customs and traditions that make the Amish distinctive, the New Testament Gospels form the core of their understanding of what it means to be a Christian. And, while the sense of community is strong among the Amish, Amish community doesn't exist for its own sake. Community exists with the ordnung--the rules for living--at its center.
How refreshing. How Jesus-focused!
I am not interested in riding around in a buggy and wearing one of those hats. I don't want to attend a gathering in which to speak English is forbidden. I don't want a way of life in which the way I trim my beard is considered to be an act of righteousness or a sin.
On the other hand, I've had more than enough of a religious culture centered on the survival of my denomination or of my region or my local congregation. I long to live among others for whom following the teachings of Jesus entails more than attending the Sunday morning show and, perhaps optionally, joining a small group.
In many ways, I'd take what the Amish have over the lowest-common-denominator evangelicalism that the leadership in my own tradition settles for. There has to be more to the life of the Jesus follower than that!
Much, much more.
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Interestingly, in the founding days of my own group, its founder, John Winebrenner, published something not too different than an ordnung. He created a 27 point description of the faith and PRACTICE of the Church of God.
Very interestingly, in those days issues of belief and the way of life those beliefs engendered were understood to be intimately and inseparably connected. One of them could not exist without interdependence on the other.
I long to live in community, not with a group of churchgoers, but with people who share a Jesus-focused understanding of what we all think and how we all must live.
And, it feels to me as if no one I know in my "faith tradition," beyond the small community of gatherings I participate in, seems to share that desire.
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