More on the start

There is a strong autobiographical character to this project. At the heart of the venture is my personal work. Using those old shibboleths, it is my search for meaning, purpose, and understanding. That is the specific and existential motivation for the project.

To complete the project there are a number of areas I will need to cover and a number of tasks I will need to complete along the way. I have to to remember, recollect, and recount my past. Understanding the past is vital to understanding the present. But, still, ahead of the past, is the very real at hand: My everyday life. This project is embedded in the fabric of my daily life. I am living the project as I work on it.

So? What do I do? How do I live? What is the meaning of the world? How do I explain and relate to the social, political, and cultural world I live in? What is God’s will? Is that a relevant question? How do I love? Maybe this is the only question that counts. How do I love in my everyday life?

But for now here are some areas I will need to cover in this project.

• Tell my story
• Jesus: who is he (history, faith, creed), incarnation or flesh-taking, creator and creation
• The creed
• God
• Church, community
• Justice, politics, public policy
• Culture: inclusive myth prevailing in a particular space and time
• History
• Science
• Linguistics
• Empiricism, rationality, commonsense
• Democracy, religion, pluralism, freedom, truth, and God
• Anthropology: My Anthropological View
• Postmodernism

Here are some authors and books that will need to be reread and rethought. This list is mostly composed of books I read in the past. I will get to the more current ones later. I am focusing on the past just now and these are ones that come to mind at the moment. This list is just a start.

• James Sire: The Universe Next Door
• Francis Schaeffer: The God Who Is There; Escape From Reason; He Is There and He Is Not Silent; True Spirituality; Death in the City; Pollution and the Death of Man
• Edith Schaeffer: Hidden Art
• Udo Middleman: Proexistence
• Soren Kierkegaard
• Thomas Merton: No Man is an Island; Contemplative Prayer; The Silent Life; The Seven Story Mountain
• Elisabeth Elliot: Through Gates of Splendor
• Frederick Fyvie (F.F.) Bruce: New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
• C. S. Lewis: The Problem of Pain; Mere Christianity; Miracles; The Abolition of Man;
• J.I. Packer: Knowing God
• H. R. Rookmaaker: Modern Art & the Death of a Culture
  Nicholas Wolterstorff; Art in Action; Educating for Responsible Action; Reason Within the Bounds of Religion; Until Justice and Peace
• Robert Short: The Gospel according to Peanuts
• Rosemary Haughton
• Malcolm Muggeridge
• Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
• Dorothy Sayers: The Mind of the Maker
• Pascal
• Calvin Seerveld: Rainbows for a Fallen World
• David James Duncan: The River Why
• Wendell Berry
• Eric Wolf: Envisioning Power
• Robert McC. Netting: Smallholders, Householders; Balancing on an Alp

Francis Schaeffer is very important, as is Wendell Berry. Annie Dillard is important, as is J. I. Packer. These are disparate types, but in my imagination they relate to each other through the agency of my life and thought. Also, in a way, this comprises my “favorite books list.”