Books I Read in 2023, Vol. VI

 

PRAYING LIKE MONKS, LIVING LIKE FOOLS: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer
Tyler Staton

It's time to experience prayer in its purest form  -  a vital, sustaining, powerful connection with God that is more real and alive than you could have ever imagined. In these pages, Tyler Staton  -  author, pastor, and US national director of the 24-7 Prayer movement  -  addresses common roadblocks to prayer and gives you the confidence to come to God just as you are.

The coolest thing about this book is that I saw it on a list of books that my daughter-in-law was getting ready to read and I asked her to tell me about it when she was done...not knowing that she had already got a copy for me. The second coolest thing is that it didn't fill me with guilty feelings about the shape my prayer life was in, but gave me motivation and practical suggestions on how to DO something about it. This is an easy-to-understand book, but now I need to let it affect my actions and not just my brain.

First line: It's eerily quiet tonight in the city that never sleeps.

Page 56/Line 5: Calling God "Father" is dismissable today.

Last line: It looks less like intensity, and a lot more like joy.

PRETTY BABY Brooke Shields: A Review and a Recommendation

 

Beloved and I watched the two-part ABC News/Hulu documentary, PRETTY BABY Brooke Shields, and hoo-boy!

There was the standard chronological rundown of her career, starting with commercials as a baby, quickly followed by her highly-sexualized commercials as a child...and teen...and on and on. The movies Pretty Baby, Blue Lagoon, and Endless Love all focused on her character losing her virginity...at the ages of 12, 14, and 15.

The documentary rightly wonders if these movies could even be made today, especially Pretty Baby and Blue Lagoon, but in the final few minutes, in a conversation between the now 57-year-old Shields and her two daughters, an interesting observation about the similarities between what was done to Shields and what today's social media "influencers" are doing to themselves hits home.

While a few of the images shown are adult-ish, and the subject matter is definitely for the mature of mind and heart, both my thumbs are up for this doc, and both my eyes are wide open in amazement at how Shields has managed to live through it all with a fairly healthy self-image.

There are some important parent-child conversations to be had based on this piece of work.