Newsletter - August, 2000

Prayer was the theme of this year's Family Camp and the hottest selling book was EXPERIENCING THE DEPTHS OF JESUS CHRIST $8.95. Written in the late 1600's the book was publicly burned, with author Jeanne Guyon denounced as a heretic and imprisoned in Bastille. Here's the original title: SHORT AND VERY EASY METHOD OF PRAYER; WHICH ALL CAN PRACTICE WITH GREATEST FACILITY AND ARRIVE IN A SHORT TIME, BY ITS MEANS, AT A HIGH DEGREE OF PERFECTION. Among others this book influenced the Quakers, Moravians, John Wesley and Watchman Nee.

Ted requested WOULD YOU NOT TARRY ONE HOUR by Larry Lea for his talk, so I ordered a couple. Unfortunately I was tarrying someplace else the Friday before camp when they tried to deliver the books. An interminable button punching phone call later I arranged to pick them up Monday. I was there. The books, however, tarried on the truck. I arranged to forward them to camp. Ted talked while the books tarried in Fresno. I loved his seven needs met in the Lord's Prayer. I wrote them down. I lost the list. How about: Paternity, Presence, Priorities, Provision, Forgiveness, Protection, Partnership. (Power? Praise?) The books finally made their way back here. Very adventurous volumes. $12.99 A way to spend an hour with The Lord's Prayer.

NOTE: Free shipping for all e-mail responses (USA) to newsletter offerings. (A special service soon be part of a membership campaign.)

If you were intrigued by Leslie's talk on praying with icons, you might want Henri Nouwen's BEHOLD THE BEAUTY OF THE LORD. $9.95 It comes with four icons and meditations that accesses them. His RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON $16 does a similar thing with Rembrant's painting. (If anyone is sitting on a stack of Nouwen's books that you're finished with, I have several folk who would love to snatch-up used copies.)

A used HB Oswald Chambers book in pristine condition wandered in last week: PRAYER, A HOLY OCCUPATION. "And where were you tarring?" I grumbled at it, sure that someone at camp would have been thrilled to buy it. I priced it at $4 and while placing it on the shelf, noticed Bro Lawrence's PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD. What? I didn't take that? What was I thinking?

"One box," is probably what I was thinking. "Just one box." Special thanks to Fr. George, RR John-David (that doesn't stand for railroad), and Melissa & Melinda for the bags and boxes of books they brought to camp. M&M brought the great score of children's books and Fr. George always brings rare treasures that aren't in the normal run of donations.

One of those rare treasures, ignored and forsaken through the week, is a little tattered and taped paperback, entitled A GANDHIAN ROSARY ("Being a thought for each day of the year gleaned from the writings & speeches of Mahatma Gandhi") I've had it sitting on the desk, and have enjoyed it all week during off (or on) moments. Here's today's offering: "What does communism mean in the last analysis? It means a classless society--an ideal that is worth striving for. Only I part company with it when force is called to aid for achieving it. We are all born equal, but we have all these centuries resisted the will of God. The idea of inequality, of 'high and low,' is an evil, but I do not believe in eradicating evil from the human breast at the point of the bayonet. The human breast does not lend itself to that means."

I can't wait to tell my son the economics graduate that what with e-mail orders, family camp sales, and those folk who divined (!) when I happened to be in the store, we made more money during the three weeks we were 'mostly closed' than we usually make when open. Thanks be to God for each and every one of you.

Blessings,
Alliee +