Please Read Eugene

"... learn the unforced rhythms of grace." - Matthew 28

Eugene Peterson (Source photo: Clappstar / Creative Commons)

Dear Friends,

I first encountered The Christian Century when I was in seminary. It seemed like the most interesting publication in the Claremont School of Theology library by a mile. I sent in a subscription card during my first week as a pastor, and have rarely let my subscription lapse in my nearly twenty-one years of ministry. I started pitching articles unsuccessfully when I lived in California and broke in by invitation in 2010 thanks to Jason Byassee putting in a good word for me.

I’ve since written many, many articles for the magazine. A handful stand out to me as favorites: my review of John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed, an essay about being very depressed on a retreat in the woods, an anguished exploration of pain and incarnation. I’ve written at least a dozen biblical reflections and a handful of hot takes.I’ve reviewed enough books to fill at least one full shelf. I’ve written about marriage and I’ve written about sex.

None of the pieces published in all of those years have generated as much response as my latest essay about, of all things, Eugene Peterson.

Why would an essay about Eugene Peterson spark such passionate feedback? I think it’s because it’s actually about God, because Eugene Peterson was actually about God.

It begins:

I am sitting in a study overlooking Flathead Lake in Montana. The west wall is lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling. What surely must be complete collections of Wendell Berry’s and Karl Barth’s works catch my eye; I suspect the volumes of Church Dogmatics are first editions. The lowest shelves hold Eerdmans’s Theological Dictionaries of the Old and New Testaments, stretching on for 27 thick tomes. There are bookshelves on the east side of the study too, below windows that let in so much morning sunlight I nearly need sunglasses indoors. Ceramic tiles depicting the Stations of the Cross line the windows, the handiwork of the Benedictine monks of St. Andrew’s Abbey in the Mojave Desert. My friend Eric Peterson invited me to write here for the week. This is the study where his father, Eugene, wrote books.

You can find the rest here.

Thanks for reading.

Peace,

Katherine