therapy

--This post was written on 1-17-10--

Dear Friend,

Is your life busy right now?? Recently it seems like free weekends are hard to come by. Not just for my family, but it seems like this goes for just about everyone I know. Dealing with this “business” is for another conversation. Regardless, we all have various forms of therapy. What I mean by this is when life gets stressful, and you just need to get away, where do you go? What do you do? For example, my wife will often go to one of her favorite stores and browse the aisles looking at clothes. All she has to tell me is where she is going, and I know that she just needs to get away for a little bit.

My therapy comes from the aisles of Barnes and Noble. For the past 7 years, I have constantly been in school -- working my way through college, then working on my masters, and in just weeks, I will begin working on another masters. It seems like I have constantly been reading books, articles, and papers that have been assigned to me. So I long for those moments at Barnes and Noble, moments when I pick out books that I would read if I had the time or the opportunity.

Barnes and Noble is huge, and the store has these nooks marked off. Some of these nooks are filled with pages of Biographies, History, Religion, Cooking, etc, etc. So I make my way through all the various nooks and crannies picking out books that I would like to read. I always tell myself that I can’t buy any of the books, but normally I convince myself that I have to at least purchase one or two. Then I have a rule, no books can go on my bookshelf unless I have either read it or it is a reference book of some kind. So at the foot of my bookshelf are stacks of books that I hope to read one day. This is my therapy.

So whenever I have a week off for spring break or a couple weeks for summer, I normally pick up a few of the books off the floor and try and finish them before the next semester begins.

This past December I finished my time at Phoenix Seminary, and I knew that I had a two-month break before I started at Talbot Theology Seminary. TWO MONTHS!! During this time, Lolly and I have been getting things in order to move to California, and we also just got back from our honeymoon yesterday. But during this time off, I have had the opportunity to read some books that normally only see the toes on my feet as I look for a dictionary of some kind.

As Lolly and I were flying home yesterday, I began to wonder if anyone else had read the same books that I had read the past couple months. And then I got to thinking about how fun it would be if we got together and had some coffee or tea and spoke about the book.

I am assuming a lot here…biggest assumption being that you would even want to join me for a discussion. I am putting myself out here because I value what other people think. And if you have read the book, I think it would be interesting to hear what my friends thought of the book. Here is what I am going to do. I am going to list most of what I have read these past couple months, and if you would like to get together, contact me through an email. And even if you don’t live in Arizona, that’s no problem because neither will I beginning on January 22nd. Likewise, if you don’t live in Fullerton California, we could talk on the phone, through email, skype, iChat…

…Books (in no particular order)
1. Lone Survivor
by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson

2. The Real Benjamin Franklin
by Andrew M. Allison

3. The 5000 Year Leap
by W. Cleon Skousen

4. Meet the Rabbis: Rabbinic Thought and the Teachings of Jesus
by Brad H. Young

5. Follow Me to Freedom: Leading and Following As an Ordinary Radical
by Shane Claiborne, John Perkins

6. The Justice Project
by Brian McLaren, Elisa Padilla, Seeber Ashley Bunting

7. Going Rogue
By Sarah Palin

heart.soul.mind.
kyle diroberts