Wholeness Wheel - Intellectual Well-Being

“As we seek intellectual well-being, it’s important for us to stimulate as well as rest our minds…” (from the “wholeness wheel” explanations).

I began reading when I was 4 ½ years old. My first passion was the Bobbsey Twins series. Since then, I have found that when I need to relax, books carry me away from my life to new places and times. Just as the Bobbsey twins’ trips around the US and the world taught me about places I had never been, both fiction and non-fiction books bring me to places known and unknown. Here are my most recent recommendations (in no particular order):

1. Bruce Feiler’s series Walking the Bible, Abraham, and Where God Was Born. Feiler’s journey through Bible lands parallels his own spiritual journey from being a non-practicing person of Jewish heritage to a believing, practicing person living his Jewish faith. (non-fiction)
2. Faye Kellerman’s mystery series featuring the husband/wife team of Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus. The first novel is The Ritual Bath. Along with the dead bodies, if you read the series from the beginning, you walk with Peter’s journey from the adopted son of Southern Baptists to his reconnection with his Orthodox Jewish birth family and his marriage to Rina Lazarus, a practicing Orthodox Jewish widow.
3. Pete Hamill’s Snow in August. Set in post World War II New York City, this is the story of an Irish Catholic boy who encounters a Jewish Rabbi refugee from Europe and how their relationship enriches them both. It also introduced me to the mystical Jewish tradition of Kabbalah.
4. Peter Tremayne’s mystery series featuring Sister Fidelma, an Irish religieuse (nun). The mysteries are set in the 600s AD and, along with the mysteries to be solved, I learned about the struggle between the Irish church that had developed independently after the fall of Rome, and the Roman Catholic Church of that time that is trying to remake the Irish church in its image. Because Peter Tremayne is the pseudonym of Peter Berresford Ellis, a scholar of this time, the detail is fascination and incredibly intellectually stimulating. The first novel in the series is Absolution By Murder.
5. Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book, is a mystery where the main character is a Jewish religious text, the Sarajevo Haggadah. Although fiction, the story is inspired by a true story. I traveled with the “book” from modern times all the way back to its 15th century beginnings.
6. Donald Miller’s Through Painted Deserts was lent to me by one of my former confirmation students. It is the story of Miller’s road trip with a relative stranger, and the way he rediscovered his Christian faith. The student also lent me Searching for God Knows What, by the same author, which is my next read. (non-fiction)

One of the ways I have discovered new authors is to seek out books set in a place I will be traveling to, or places I wish I could travel to! So, when I visited my brother and sister-in-law in New Mexico, I discovered authors Tony Hillerman, and David and Aimée Thurlo. When I attended the meeting of the Diakonia of the Americas and Caribbean, in Trinidad, I discovered authors V.S. Naipual and Chalo Chinidad. Even if they don’t become favorite authors, there is something about reading a novel set in the place I am going to be, or the place I am.

Feel free to send the names of books or authors that you have enjoyed and wish to share with fellow readers! It would be fun to find out what our colleagues’ “top ten books to be stranded with on a desert island” are! After the Bible, what would you bring with you?  I’ll work on mine, for a future entry!

Cheryl Erdmann, Deaconess

Health & Wellness > Wholeness Wheel > Intellectual > Reflections from TF

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