This week, I am posting a sermon which I originally preached in 2003 at Parkville Presbyterian Church where I was a seminary student intern.

Hebrew Bible lesson, Ruth 1:1-18

New Testament lesson, Mark 12:28-34

Ruth is moving to a new town, actually a new country.

 It can be hard to move, even if you’re looking forward to the move. It’s hard to leave friends and familiar routines. When you get to the new town, you have to find a place to live, you have to find a new grocery store and you have to find where they keep the chocolate milk in the new store. You have to find a new gas station. You have to figure out which day is trash day. You hope you can find a new pediatrician before one of the kids gets sick. There are a thousand things that you did in your old home that you have to do in your new home but they’re all different and difficult because you are in a new place. Even if you are excited about the move, the actual moving and resettling is hard and stressful. Most of us don’t move for the “fun” of it, we move for a reason. A new job, to be closer to family, a better climate; lots of reasons, but we have a reason. So why did Ruth move? Why does Ruth follow Naomi? It’s not because Naomi was begging her to come along. In fact, Naomi gives Ruth every reason not to come.

     In their culture to be a widow and childless is to be in a precarious position. Women had no inheritance rights. Their security was found in their husbands and children. Think of other Bible stories about widows. I can’t think of one who is not in dire straits. Naomi is widowed, childless and she is living in a foreign land. Her situation could not be much worse. So she decides to return home. Her daughters in law want to come with her. Naomi reminds them, she is not going to marry again. She is not going to have more sons. None of the means available to women in her time for personal security will exist for her.

Naomi has nothing to offer Orpah and Ruth, she cannot offer them well being. Their best option is to return to their mother’s homes. There, perhaps, another marriage can be arraigned and their future secured. Orpah is obedient to her mother in law, as their culture expected her to be. And although she was sad, reluctantly she went home. But Ruth is not obedient; she does not follow society’s expectation. She does not obey her mother in law. Instead Ruth declares her loyalty to Naomi,

“Where you will go, I will go,

where you lodge, I will lodge,

your people shall be my people,

and your God, my God

Where you die, I will die- there I will be buried”

     Ruth has just proclaimed her intention to radically change her life. She will live with Naomi, even though Naomi has just told her there is no future for them together. But why?

   She will change her homeland and cultural identity. But why? She is a Moabite and the Moabites have historically been Israel’s enemy. Remember in Deuteronomy, Moabite men are excluded from the congregation because the Moabites denied food and water to the Israelites during the Exodus. The king of Moab hired Balaam to curse Israel. The Moabites have been one of the oppressors of Israel. Ruth may be willing to make the Israelites her people. But will they accept her?

    She will worship Naomi’s God.  But why? She can’t just add the Lord to the Moabite gods she grew up with. She must renounce her gods and her faith. She cannot worship them and God. She must worship only the one God of Israel.

    She will be buried with Naomi. But why? In their time it was very important to be buried in ones’ homeland. Remember Jacob’s request to be returned home from Egypt after he died? And Joseph takes his remains home. And before Joseph dies he also requests to be returned home. And the Israelites take his remains home.

     Ruth’s commitment is, when you think about it, extraordinary. The Rabbis’ place Ruth alongside Abraham for her decision to follow. And they point out that Ruth, unlike Abraham, does not have a direct revelation from God. Ruth in Jewish tradition is the ideal convert. But why? Why does Ruth make such a drastic conversion ?

Why does she follow Naomi?  Is it something about Naomi?

  It’s certainly not that Naomi is perfect. She’s not a one dimensional, too holy to be real character. After Ruth declares her intention to journey with Naomi, the text tells us Naomi, “said no more.” Now it could be that Naomi has simply accepted Ruth’s decision to come along, but some scholars suggest that Naomi is mad, so mad she stops talking to Ruth. They think that Naomi knew it would be hard enough to return home widowed and childless, after being gone ten years and now she has a Moabite widow tagging along with her.

 And when Naomi returns home and is greeted by her friends, you can hear her pain,

“Call me Mara, (call me bitter),

for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me,

I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty;

why call me Naomi when the Lord has dealt harshly with me

and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”

      So why does Ruth follow Naomi?

 Is it something about Naomi? I think it is.

Ruth lived with and observed Naomi for at least ten years. Ruth saw Naomi’s actions day in and day out, in good times and in bad. Ruth saw Naomi lose her husband and all her children. After these losses, Naomi feels she must send the rest of her family, her daughters in law, away. But even as she tries to send them away, Ruth hears Naomi entrust them to God and ask God’s blessing on them.

     What an amazing person Naomi must have been. I think Ruth was able to convert, to give up her people, her homeland and her gods because of the faithfulness, the loving kindness she saw day after day, year after year in Naomi’s life. The loving kindness. The Hebrew word is Hesed. It means loving kindness but it means more. Hesed is a kind of steadfastness, a loyalty. It is to care for another with whom you are in relationship. It’s a care that goes beyond what is expected or required. Hesed is frequently used in the Bible to describe God’s acts of mercy and grace.  It is an attribute, a characteristic of God. It’s an extraordinary commitment.

     Actually this little Book of Ruth, its only four chapters, is full of people performing acts of loving kindness and loyalty. After Ruth and Naomi return to Bethlehem, Ruth goes to glean or gather grain in the barley harvest. As it turns out she gleans in the field of Naomi’s kinsman, Boaz. Boaz notices Ruth and after learning who she is, he ensures she is able to gather enough grain. He instructs his harvesters to leave a little extra for Ruth. Boaz and Ruth end up getting married. They have a son, Obed. And Obed becomes the father of Jesse. And Jesse becomes the father of David. Who becomes King of Israel. The story is a wonderful tangle of relationships, each person caring for the other. Ruth for Naomi, Naomi for Ruth. Boaz for Ruth. Naomi for Boaz and on and on. And through it all God is working through regular people, day after day, year after year. It’s a nice story, with a happy ending.

      But, this story raises an uncomfortable question for me. If someone watched my life, or your life, and they are watching, if someone was watching my life, would they see in me the faithfulness, the Hesed, that Ruth saw in Naomi?

     I can think of people I have known who were like Naomi. All Saint’s Day is an appropriate time to recall those faithful people we have known. I remember my father in law, Walter Lloyd Jones. He pushed his church, a large middle class church in a changing downtown, to feed homeless people on Sunday mornings because other food programs didn’t operate on weekends. So First Presbyterian Church of Flint, Michigan offered Sunday morning breakfast to the homeless and my father in law invited them to church too. He also devoted his latter years to a jail ministry, and in spite of painful arthritis and a failing heart, he went to the county jail twice a week because he cared about the prisoners and what would happen to them.  We can be thankful for the witness of his life and of so many others like him.

     Perhaps you can think of others who live faithful lives. Like the kindergarten teacher who daily loves a roomful of wiggly five year olds and helps them discover how wonderful it is to learn. The neighbor who shovels your sidewalk just because he was outside first. The receptionist who is patient with a customer who is confused. The desk clerk who is kind to an angry person and tries to solve a problem she didn’t create.

     If someone was watching my life, would they see in me the faithfulness Ruth saw in Naomi. When things get difficult at work, the boss is unfair, or the workload escalates what do my co-workers see?  When the line is long and the service poor and the store is too hot, what do the people around me see? When it’s those difficult couple of hours in the late afternoon, the kids are home, and they’re hungry and tired. Its time to start dinner and homework and then the juice gets spilled. What do my children see?

     In the gospel lesson today, Jesus tells us we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our strength and to love our neighbor as our self. It seems to me that must have been what Naomi did; love God and neighbor even as she lived as a stranger in a foreign land, even when she lost those most dear to her. Ruth must have seen the loving kindness of God in Naomi’s life.

          For us as Christians, in a sense; Jesus is our Naomi. Jesus is the one who shows us how to live. Jesus is the one we are to follow, the One for whom we forsake the false gods of our culture. Jesus is the one who calls us to live as strangers even in our own land. As Naomi and Ruth walked home to Bethlehem together, Jesus walks with us. And even death does not separate us.  For some people, the only way they are going to meet Jesus is through you and me. If someone were watching my life, who would they see?  

     The One who is truly God and also truly human shows us how to be most truly and fully human. As Ruth looked to Naomi and followed, will we – day in and day out, in good time and in hard times- will we look to Jesus and follow him?

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Two notes:

A quite belated thank you to the people of Parkville Presbyterian Church for all your kindness. They were ( and I’m sure still are) a wonderful church, welcoming and encouraging myself and other seminary students.

I’m giving a presentation tomorrow afternoon( Humans, Animals, and God: Rethinking Creation) at the Midwest Popular Culture/American Culture Association Annual meeting in Detroit. If you are going to be there too, please introduce yourself. I’d like to meet you.

A week of postings about Christianity, Animals, eating humanely, Christian animal advocacy, and what it means to be created in the image of God has begun at Deep Church.  Please vist Deep Church this week and share in the conversation.

Yes, these all really do have something in common. Let me explain.

I don’t know about you, but I have been amazed to hear, read, and receive via e mail claims that the health care reform bill before Congress mandates euthanasia of the elderly or impaired (among several other odd and unsubstantiated claims). I’m not going to link you to these reports because, in my opinion, they have already received too much attention. I will however give you the link to the actual bill, HR3200 and you can check the various claims for yourself ( Here is your clue, page 424, section 1233, Advance Care Planning Consultation. The link is to the pdf version of the bill which means there is a search function available.  By the way, www.thomas.gov is the place to find the text, status, sponsors, any bills before either branch of Congress, and to find out what Congress has been up to.)

If you look in the bill, euthanasia, “death panels” and so on, simply aren’t there. What is there are provisions for you to be able to speak with your doctor, nurse practitioner, or physician’s assistant about what sort of medical care you want at the end of you life or if you become incapacitated.

My purpose here isn’t to debate health care reform. Rather what I’ve been wondering about for the past couple of weeks is why do otherwise smart people fall for outrageous distortions?  The current health care “discussions” are not the only place this happens.

Unless you have been isolated from the media this summer ( and lucky you, if you have been) you have also heard about the so called “birthers”. These are people who continue to believe that the President is not a US citizen in spite of evidence to the contrary. What is going on here?

As I thought more about this, it occured to me that I have seen this phenomina before. For example,  Brian McLaren in his book The Secret Message of Jesus, writes about something like this. He  says that for a significant portion of his Christian life, he  read the Gospels as being about personal salvation and simply didn’t see the larger social justice message. It wasn’t that he didn’t read the Bible, he read it often and carefully. But for a long time, he found what he expected to find and nothing else.

I found McLaren’s comments particularly interesting. I read the Bible without an evangelical worldview to shape my reading and my experience was essentially the opposite of his. I found very little about personal salvation and alot about social justice.  It seems that the particular worldview we bring to the text matters enormously.

This isn’t apparently just a modern phenomena. Here’s  an example from this month’s Smithsonian magazine. In the article “Galileo’s Vision”the author David Zax talks about how scientists in Galileo’s time believed Aristotle when he wrote that all objects in the sky were “perfect and immutable spheres” This meant that astronomers didn’t necessarily think it was important to actually look at the sky with a telescope.

These satellites of Jupiter are invisible to the naked eye and therefore can exercise no influence on the Earth, and therefore would be useless, and therefore do not exist,” proclaimed nobleman Francesco Sizzi. …Some who did deign to use the telescope still disbelieved their own eyes. A Bohemian scholar named Martin Horky wrote that “below, it works wonderfully; in the sky it deceives one.”

Others looked through a telescope but worked hard to reconsile what was supposed to be there with what they saw. Very simply put, oversimplified actually, this was part of Galileo’s problem. Others looked at the same evidence he did and saw what they thought they were supposed to see.

I’m sure you can think of other examples of this phenomena.

I find this really interesting, this human ability to only find what we “know” we are supposed to find, to see what we believe we should see.  I’m no psychologist or sociologist, I don’t have the foggiest idea why we do this. If you are one and can explain this to me, I would appreciate that.

 I  also don’t know how we overcome this. Politely pointing out the error of their ways doesn’t appear to work. Neither does telling other folks that they are stupid or delusional. Not to mention the problem of how do we know that what we think we know is in fact correct. If others are capable of staring reality in the face and seeing something false, surely you and I can be mistaken too. So, readers, how do we talk to each other about these things? How do we move forward together toward reality. And how do we know it when we see it?

I’d like to know, what do you think?

If you have kids, certainly by now at this point in the summer someone has said -at least once- “I’m bored”.  Let’s be honest,at one time or another,  you have probably said it yourself. So in the midst of the boring days of summer, let’s think a little about boredom.

 We live in a culture where boredom is a bad thing.  Things that are boring are repetitious, dull, uneventful. We are supposed to crave the new and exciting. Variety, we are told, is the spice of life. Pick up a magazine or watch TV to learn about the new ways to grill, new summer salads, new vacation spots.  There will be new styles to wear this fall and new ways to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving.

Children who complain about being bored in the summer at my house get sent outside.  And just like me, when I was sent outside because I was bored, my children discover all sorts of things to do once they move through “boring” and come out on the other side.

Boring is commonplace, universal in scope, yet, oddly there are an infinate number of ways to be bored. Each of us has the ability to be bored in unique ways. I find TV watching to be boring. Considering the amount of TV people watch, I hold a minority opinion. On the other hand, I can sit on my back porch and look at my backyard for a long time and be quite interested in the small things I notice.

“It’s boring” is one of the reasons we don’t like to practice the…   well fill in the blank for yourself-  piano, spelling words, Greek grammar paradigms, putts, backstrokes.  Malcolm McDowell in his book Outliers ( by the way, well worth reading) notes that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become proficient at basically anything. 10,000 hours is a lot of scales, a lot of vocabulary study, a lot of computer programing, a lot of surgery, a lot of parenting. 10,000 hours is a lot of boredom.

Preparing for ones violin recital can be boring. Believe me it can be  boring to listen to someone prepare for a violin recital. One of my son’s violin teachers told him that he need to practice his piece until it was boring and then past that point. As the recital date gets closer, I find myself humming the recital piece and liking it. It becomes a favorite piece of music- after I’m done being bored by it.

“It’s boring” is also one of the arguments against a set liturgy or fixed prayers. Saying the same words every week, people claim just causes the rote mouthing of empty words. But I suspect (for Protestants, I don’t have sufficient experience in other traditions to comment.) part of our problem is we are unwilling to remain bored.

I once attended a church where we recited the Apostle’s Creed after the sermon every week. And once I had said it enough to memorize it, it was boring.  But only for a while. Then one day as I spoke the words, I realized the Apostle’s Creed was a way I could speak about things that are important to me with the community of faith.  Something about the practice of saying those words with the Church ( and I don’t just mean the people who were in the same room with me) shaped me and I didn’t even know it was happening. When we attended a church that didn’t recite the Creed, I missed it. It had become an important statement of faith for me. Often when I said those words each week a certain phrase would stand out and become a source of reflection.  I had recited the creed until it was boring and then past that point.

What lies past the point of boredom? A solid grounding in the basics. Musicians practice scales, athletes practice moves, language students practice grammar. The basics of anything, music, sports, language, faith provide the foundation we build on.

What lies past the point of boredom? Intimacy. The words, the music, the action becomes a part of us. We are shaped by the practice.

What lies past the point of bordom? Meaningful engagement. The musician engagement of the music is in conversation with the composer and the other musicians who had played the music. The faithful recite the Creeds and become part of the larger church. They are linked to the past, the present and to the future.

Often we when something becomes boring, we think it’s time to quit. But perhaps boring is the last obstacle before real understanding occurs.

So, dear readers, when something is boring is it time to quit or time to push on and see what lies beyond boring?

I’d like to know, what do you think?

Today, July 10, is the 500th anniversaryof John Calvin’s birth.

John Calvin evokes a lot of emotion for a dead guy. People either love him or hate him.  Calvin is either the greatest theologian who ever lived or as  the “father” of  Calvinism the source of most of what is wrong with the western world today. John Calvin is, of course, not really any of the stereotypes depicted above. He is much more interesting and much more complex than that. 

Even though I am Presbyterian I attended a United Methodist seminary, Saint Paul School of Theology. It was a wonderful experience but I didn’t expect to learn much about Calvin and Reformed theology there. Imagine my delight when in one of the required courses we spent a semester with Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.  Normally when this particular professor taught this course  he had the class read Tillich. My United Methodist classmates were eagerly expecting Tillich and  got Calvin. I- the lone Presbyterian- was the only happy one in the class.

The class was unhappy enough the professor felt he needed to defend his selection of the Institutes. He told us that we didn’t have to like Calvin but because Calvin’s thought was so important to Western protestant Christianity we needed to be familiar with Calvin’s work.  That meant we needed to read Calvin for ourselves and not simple accept uncritically what others said about Calvin. 

Forty some reluctant United Methodists and one happy Presbyterian dug into the Institutes . My Methodist colleagues discovered John Calvin’s writings were not what they had expected.  Calvin starts by pointing out that our knowledge of ourselves and our knowledge of God are intertwined. We cannot fully know who we are as humans without the knowledge of God and we cannot know about God without understanding ourselves.  Calvin repeatedly points out how God makes God’s self known in the wonder of creation. Calvin writes about God who wants to be in relationship with us. And so  God comes to us in ways that we are able to understand. God reveals God’s self to us in nature, in Scripture and in Jesus. Calvin talks about how much God loves us.

Well, this was not the harsh, joyless double predestination, TULIP Calvinism they were expecting. While none of my Methodist friends became Presbyterian, many of them did develop a respect and even a sort of affection for John Calvin. (Just as I now have respect and affection for John Wesley.)

The point of this story is to encourage you to dip into Calvin’s work. You could be quite surprised by what you find.  For someone who lived and wrote in the 1500s, Calvin is fairly accessible to modern readers. Calvin didn’t write for scholars and theologians. He wrote for regular people. He wanted people to understand their faith and to think  clearly and logically about what the developing protestant church taught.

What Calvin believed should not be confused with what later “Calvinists” have done. I’m not sure that Calvin would be pleased with everything that has been labeled as “Calvinism”. That is why it is important to read Calvin for yourself.

Additionally we need to remember that 16th century Europe was a very different place and time than the world we live in.  It helps to understand Calvin and his writing if you know something about his life and the times he lived in.

If you search the web for resources about John Calvin, it can be difficult to separate the good from the bad. Here are two places to begin.

From the Presbyterian Church USA, Calvin Jubilee

From the Calvin College , H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies

There are many biographies of Calvin, but here are two to get you started, A Life of John Calvin:A Study in the Shaping of Western Culture by Alister McGrath  and John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait by William Bouwsma.

 You can read the Institutes  on line, along with much of Calvin’s other works at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library site. But much better, in my opinion to own your own copy to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest”.

It’s a big book, the Institutes, you may want to begin with something more accessible such as Calvin’s Institutes: A New Compend or Calvin for Armchair Theologians.

A lot of things have been written about John Calvin and his writings. Some more reliable and helpful than others. But as my seminary professor said, Calvin is important enough to protestantism and western thought that you ought to read him for yourself. 

I’d like to know, what do you think?

I’m on vacation this week. That means I’m on vacation from writing as well. It only seems fair that you, too, have a vacation from reading what I write.  This week I have a selection of interesting websites you might want to spend some time with.

The BioLogos Foundation is dedicated to the idea that science and religion are compatible. They are particularly interested in issues surrounding the origin of life.

The folks at BioLogos also have a blog at BeliefNet, “The Science and the Sacred” that is worth your time as well.

For those of you who are involved in education or facilitating discussion about the relationship between faith and science, “Test of Faith” may be a helpful resource for you. I have not seen the movie or the book, but if the scientists involved in this project are any indication of quality , they should be good resources.

Dr. Jeff’s Blog on the Universe is interested in “getting you emotional about science”. If you just simply think science is fascinating and particularly if you are a teacher or have kids this site could be for you.

Of course what stroll through the Internet would be complete without a stop, or two at YouTube.

Here are rapping physicists on Rare Isotopes;    And Henri the cat:

Enjoy.

This post is inspired by Group Writing Projects and the “Red Letter Believers” .

I am not a person who rests a lot. I rarely take naps. If I sleep too long, I wake up stiff and sore. I make “to do” lists and love to cross things off. Most of my life I have been goal driven. From an early age I wanted to be a veterinarian. I discovered it was difficult to become a veterinarian, particularly back in the dark ages when I was a girl. There were obstacles to overcome, but overcoming those obstacles is a topic for another day.  Just note, rest is not how one overcomes obstacles. Hard work- that can overcome obstacles. 

 So I worked hard, for a long time. Worked hard in vet school. Worked hard at my job to be a good veterinarian. When I entered seminary, I worked hard there too. I didn’t need to be the best; but I wanted to do my best. Between family, work, school, and church there wasn’t much time for rest. Many of you reading this know exactly what I mean. My story isn’t unusual, especially for women.

It took moving to a new state to get me to rest. Not the move itself; there was nothing restful about that. We made the decision to move. Put one house in one state on the market. Decided where to live in a new town. Bought a house in a new state in one week. Packed and moved. All in about a month. But after we unpacked, got my husband off to his new job, my kids off to their new schools, and found a grocery store so we could eat- I found myself in an unfamiliar situation. I really didn’t have anything to do.

I had one final paper to finish for my degree. But otherwise, I had no job- a first in 20 years. We were new in town, so no church responsibilities, no school responsibilities, and no friends yet. I had nothing to do. Really I had nothing to do. People who knew me well were certain I would be bored silly in no time. But the most interesting thing happened.

I had time, lots of time to rest. I actually got enough sleep. (I really recommend enough sleep, it makes you feel really good). My stress levels dropped and I was noticeably more patient. Alright, that’s a nice way of saying, I wasn’t as cranky, hard to admit but true. I had time to read. And read what ever I wanted. And if I didn’t like the book, I just didn’t finish it. What a change from reading for school and work where you need the information and have to finish.

But here is the best thing that happened. I had time, lots of time for God. I could read and pray and think and sit as long as I needed to. I had the time to reflect on what I had done and to consider what I believed God wanted me to do next.  So I sat, and thought and prayed and rested. I noticed the leaves change and watched the snow fall. I caught the first, early signs of spring. I enjoyed the summer days. I watched the leaves change. I watched the kids grow. I sat in the sun with the cat.

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that every day was ideal- that I was never cranky- that I became some holy person. No, not even close. But I had the space and the time to rest. To rest in the best sense of the word.

Perhaps the most amazing thing is that I recognized this as a special time in my life. Usually, I don’t figure that out until its too late. But this time, because I recognized this as a season of rest, I could embrace it. I could cherish it. I could live it without anxiety or worry. I knew it wouldn’t last forever. I knew at some point, I would leave that time behind and move on to the next thing God had planned for me. I uncharacteristically had enough sense to appreciate my time of rest. And for that I am very grateful.

I have been out of town this week and away from reliable Internet access. So for this week; here is an idiosyncratic list in no particular order of books to read.

Surprised by Hope : Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church,  N.T. Wright.   Lots in the blogging world about this book. My two cents? Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest.

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, Louis Menand  This book explores how our American way of thinking was shaped by  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey. Begins with the Civil War and ends 1919. Fascinating look at history, culture and ideas.

Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens, Douglas W. Tallamy  The title says it all. A readable yet detailed discussion of how what we plant in our yards affects insects, birds and the environment. Read this before you go to the garden center this spring.

Speaking of Sin:The Lost Language of Salvation, Barbara Brown Taylor. A small book that gives important concepts and language back to 21st century Christians.  “Abandoning the language of sin will not make sin go away. [It] will simply leave us speechless…. (page 4). Well written, thoughtful, thought provoking.

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust  Immaculee Ilibagiza with Steve Erwin. One woman’s story of survival, faith and forgiveness.

Longitude: the true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time, Dava Sobel This is the story of how the “longitude problem” was solved in the 18th century. In an age of exploration, sailors had no way of determining longitude. The greatest scientific minds could not solve the problem until unexpectedly one clockmaker did. A great story.

America’s God: from Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, Mark Noll.  A history of religion and America that takes both religion and politics seriously. A thorough and detailed look at history that helps explain much about why religion and politics are what they are today.

American Creation: triumphs and tragedies at the founding of the republic, and Founding Brothers: A revolutionary generation  Joseph Ellis  Two very readable histories of our country’s early years. American history is much more complex and interesting than I remember from high school.

Well, this should be enough to keep you out of trouble! Please add your favorites to this list. There are always more great books to read.

Thanks for checking my blog. This is a work in progress. The first post should be here by February 15 and every Friday thereafter.