Eugene Peterson and Czeslaw Milosz

Eugene Peterson is well known in the Christian world as a prolific author, but more importantly as a sensitive, orthodox, socially-aware Evangelical Presbyterian American, now Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology at Regent College, Vancouver. The Jesus Way. A Conversation in Following Jesus now completes his trilogy on Spiritual Theology , which began with Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. A Conversation in Spiritual Theology , followed by Eat This Book. The Art of Spiritual Reading. All are very accessible, readable and nourishing books.

More interesting is the fact that this final volume - The Jesus Way - contains studies on key Old Testament figures such as Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, (I & II) Isaiah. No false splits, then, between Old and New Testament here! Rather, a discerning of continuities. The final three chapters have the interesting titles of The Way(s) of Herod, Caiaphas and Josephus. Hm!

Most interesting of all, almost, is the final recommendation in his Appendix on Some Writers on Discerning the Way: Czeslaw Milosz, A Treatise on Poetry. A 1980 Nobel Prize winner, but hardly known in England (?), I need to read him. Peterson writes: 'The bottomless pit of evil in which he began and the subsequent exilic conditions of his maturity galvanized his art in discerning God's truth and beauty in the particularity of his life and times.' He concludes his recommendation with the lines that 'One clear stanza can take more weight/ Than a whole wagon of elaborate prose'.

Elsewhere, Seamus Heaney speaks of how Milosz has gone from 'emigre writer to world visionary'. He writes: 'Milosz's poetry, even in translation, fulfils the ancient expectation that poetry will delight as well as instruct. It has a magnificent balance...Milosz dwells in the middle, at times tragically, at times deliciously, for he will renege neither on his glimpses of heaven upon earth nor on his knowledge that the world is a vale of tears.'

An Amazon review of his The Captive Mind (Penguin Modern Classics) says: 'At the risk of overstatement, this is one the handful of books from the twentieth century that genuinely deserves the title "great". It is about the use of coercive power by clear minds in the cause of absurd lies...It serves...as an analysis of... the processes which force, cajole and woo thinking men and women to believe self-eivident lies...This book is a wonder." I need to read it. Recent reports on the terrorist tactics of Ms Harriet Harman in the abortion debate in Parliament indicate that lobbying and threats easily achieve what no rational or irrational argument can.

Eat These Books!