Update and Recommendation

Yesterday, I sent the manuscript of Honey of Souls: Cassiodorus and the Interpretation of the Psalms in the Early Medieval West off to Liturgical Press and received confirmation that it had arrived.

Whew.

That’s a big weight off, and it must come with thanks and gratitude to Barbara and Bill who painstakingly read through it and offered advice and corrections small and great! And, obviously and always, thanks and gratitude to my beloved M and the girls for whom this book has been more difficult than the others.

There’s more work to be done on it, of course, and I have no doubt the editors will recommend many more changes—all to the good—but at least it’s off my plate for now!

I do have volume 2 to go: Psalming Christ: Praying the Psalms with Cassiodorus and the Church Fathers, and I hope to be posting more of that here as I hack through the remaining parts of that work.

Today, however, I’m taking a break from all that. I learned just last night that my colleague David Peters would be at Virginia Theological Seminary today to give a presentation on his latest book, Post-Traumatic God: How the Church Cares for People who have been to Hell and Back. I haven’t read it yet, but was blown away by his Death Letter: God, Sex, and War which contains his journals that he wrote on his return from service in Iraq as he struggled with what he saw and did there, the break-up of his marriage, and wrestling with the breakdown of what most of us know as “normal” life. It’s a brutally honest and intimate account that offers insight into a soldier’s life for those of us who will never know those experiences. M has been working with a veteran in very similar circumstances—multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, marriage collapsed while overseas, trying to pick up the pieces while dealing with PTSD—and these books have been tremendous resources in her work.

If you do ministry, I would recommend these—whether you know you are working with veterans or not. If you’re in the DC/NoVA area, I encourage you to come join us at his talk (today at 1PM). (And, of course, stop by and say hi!)

((And, no, nobody has asked me to review or promote these books—just David himself!))

 

1 thought on “Update and Recommendation

  1. Sophia Twaddell

    Congratulations on submitting your manuscript.
    Thank you for the book recommendation. One of my fellow students, also an Iraq vet, is writing his thesis on just war so I have sent him a link.

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