Lenten Resources: Wilderness, the Cross, and What to Read | Byron Borger

In this Lenten conversation, host Tressa Spingler sits down with longtime bookseller and friend of Upper House, Byron Borger of Hearts & Minds Books, to explore how the church year—and especially Lent—can shape our discipleship. They reflect on wilderness imagery, repentance, almsgiving, contemplative reading, and what it means for Jesus to meet us in our “low places.” Byron introduces a rich range of Lenten books—from devotionals and art‑driven prayer resources to weighty theological works on sin, the cross, and Holy Week.

In This Episode

• Why Lent is a season of wilderness, repentance, and preparation
• How traditions like Anglicanism and Lutheranism shape our imagination of sacred time
• The power of silence, solitude, and contemplative reading
• A new theological work on sin by Timothy Keller
• Fleming Rutledge’s classic writings on the crucifixion and death of Christ
• Creative Bible studies integrating art, QR‑coded media, and peace/reconciliation themes
• Art‑driven prayer resources for seasons of depression or disorientation
• Reading as a spiritual discipline during Lent

About Our Guest

Byron Borger is the owner of Hearts & Minds Books in Dallastown, Pennsylvania. Learn more or subscribe to his Booknotes newsletter at: heartsandmindsbooks.com

List of books mentioned in the episode

• Rhythms of Faith: A Devotional Pilgrimage Through the Church Year — Claude Atcho (WaterBrook, 2025)
• Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just — Claude Atcho (Brazos Press, 2022)
• A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance — Diana Butler Bass (St. Martin’s Essentials, 2025)
• Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal — Esau McCaulley (IVP Formatio, 2022)
• What Is Wrong with the World — Timothy Keller (Zondervan, 2025)
• The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ — Fleming Rutledge (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2015)
• The Undoing of Death — Fleming Rutledge (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005)
• Why Did Jesus Have to Die?: The Meaning of the Crucifixion — Adam Hamilton (Abingdon Press, 2025)
• Liberated at the Cross: Peace and Reconciliation in God’s Kingdom — Crystal Acevedo (IV Press, 2026)
• May It Be So: 40 Days with the Lord’s Prayer — Justin McRoberts & Scott Erickson (WaterBrook, 2019)
• Prayer — Justin McRoberts & Scott Erickson (WaterBrook, 2019)
• In the Low: Honest Prayers for Dark Seasons — Justin McRoberts & Scott Erickson (Baker Books, 2025)
• Walking in the Wilderness — Beth Richardson (Upper Room Books, 2020)
• Pauses for Lent: 40 Words for 40 Days — Trevor Hudson (Upper Room Books, 2015)
• Pauses for Advent — Trevor Hudson (Upper Room Books, 2017)
• Pauses for Pentecost — Trevor Hudson (Upper Room Books, 2018)
• Lent in Plain Sight: A Devotion Through Objects — Jill Duffield (Westminster John Knox Press, 2020)
• Advent in Plain Sight: A Devotion Through Objects — Jill Duffield (Westminster John Knox Press, 2021)
• Christ in Our Midst: Daily Lenten Refle

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This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Anyone that's interested in kind of construing a worldview, an imagination of how we think about life and time and the world, we have to ask this question: what's wrong? Where are we in history? What the heck is going on? And so we finally have to ask the question, what's wrong with the world? Of course, G.K. Chesterton famously answered a letter to the editor. There was a contest in the London paper, and he wrote an essay back, as people were invited to do. And it was two words. He wrote back, I am. What's wrong with the world? Me.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Well, welcome to the Upwards Podcast. My name is Tresa Spingler. As a first-time host, I'm so glad to have the delightful, resourceful Byron Borger today with us to share on what we should be reading as we dive into the wilderness place, the desert place with Jesus in this season of Lent. Welcome, Byron.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Well, thank you, Tessa. It is uh chilly here in central Pennsylvania. And I bet it is up there too. Um, and uh we are just kicking off the new year and moving into Lent already. I can't believe it.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

I know, I know. It's just come so soon. And, you know, with all of our New Year's resolutions coming into January, um, it's just so nice to know that we have Lent to look forward to to dive in to uh yeah, the desert places with Jesus. Um and so many people have been met in the desert places as we look through history of Moses with the burning bush and Hagar, and um just was reflecting on that today as as we were leading up to this podcast and um just the inheritance that we have and the promise that we have within Lent, even though it is a barren place, but the Lord meets us there.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Not everybody uses the wilderness metaphor for Lent. Um, some people use the language of the journey to Jerusalem, you know, following Jesus on the way of the cross. In the Catholic tradition, they do the stations of the cross, even in Holy Week. And so you end up with this focus on Jesus, certainly in the wilderness, but also heading to the cross. So there's a lot of talk uh during Lent around uh kind of repentance, not just meeting God in hard times or in wilderness spaces, but also uh doing some self-reflection to ask what it means to repent, to become more Christ-like, to give ourselves to his ways as he walks towards the self-sacrificial uh ethos of his whole life. You know, we give ourselves away. And so giving to the poor, almsgiving, has always been classically a part of the Lenten tradition, fasting and those kind of things as well. So I was not raised in a really highly liturgical family, and some of this is newer to me, uh, as our bookstore here in Pennsylvania uh tries to be ecumenical. So we've learned a lot from other traditions, episcopalians and others who are Lutherans, who have been strong in the liturgical calendar in the church year. So that's something that means a lot to us as we think about this stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Yeah, absolutely, Byron. I I too have not been um seeped in the Lenten traditions um until recently of just being in an Anglican tradition the last seven years and um just soaking in those spiritual disciplines that I just didn't really know existed, but um get to to just learn more about. Um, I think silence and solitude, I'm I'm an extroverted person. Um, and I, you know, I was like, I'm not sure. Like I'm a little scared to go into silence and solitude. Um, but it's just been such a sweet thing to like soak in um in these last seven years as my church has made that available to me and given me the resources to be able to do that and to like sit and and be and and to really gain from that spiritual discipline.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

I love hearing that. It's your church that has helped you move in this direction. That's the way it ought to be. You know, our community of faith and the congregation of which we're a part help shape who we are and the kind of lifestyle and practices that we embody in our own lives. And so if your congregation is inviting you as a community to do that stuff, that's really good. There's some of us that are not part of those kind of churches. And so we're sort of on our own, trying to piece it together and sometimes even at odds where we're trying to be in solitude and our church is doing something spiffy. Our church, God bless them, I'd love our church. I'm a Presbyterian. Um, but we always do this big Christmas festival, Christmas cantata in the middle of Advent, when again, there's themes. Advent and Lent are not all that different. You're longing to get out of exile, you're waiting for Jesus to come, you're hoping for the second coming. And so there is this sort of call to John the Baptist, to repent, to be somber, to give to the poor, to think about justice. And we're longing and waiting. And then we do this big splashy thing just because that's what churches do. And it always is like, no, I I don't need that from my church right now. They know I think that, so I'm not gossiping. But that your church has invited you to think about the liturgical calendar a little bit. That's beautiful. Those Anglicans do that well, so that's good.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Yeah, yeah. It's been it's been so sweet. But Byron, we're so glad that you're here just to have these um resourceful conversations of books um that you know about and are seeking out. Um, would love to hear just, yeah, your first book that you would maybe recommend that we could dive into with this Lenten season.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Well, I'll tell you what, you know, as a bookseller, we just get all kinds of books, and some are old and some are new, and I don't even know where to begin. There's so much Lenten stuff. Well, if you don't mind, Tressa, what I'd like to do is I'd like to highlight a couple books just in the beginning that aren't even about Lent as such, but seem appropriate for this time of year. Then I've got some that are more Lenten, exactly, like Lenten devotionals, some of which are new and which are very, very cool. But if I could start out just real quick, I'm gonna name two books, and I might even have named these the last time I was with you talking about Advent and the Christmas season, but there are two devotionals that have come out just this year, so they're still new around the church year, helping us read a little bit each day for the liturgical calendar by authors that are about the liturgical calendar. The first is, in fact, an Anglican priest. His name is Claude Achko, and Claude's book is called Rhythms of Faith. I don't know if you know this. He's a scholar of African-American literature. He wrote a book called Reading Black Books. Uh, he's an Anglican priest and a professor of uh literature. So, as an African-American, that's reading black books is a great, great resource for Christian literary people and uh English majors and stuff. But this is just a daily devotional. It's on the company called Waterbrook, a standard evangelical press. And he uh does this devotional as a pilgrimage through the church year. So he starts a course in Advent. So the first couple of pages are Advent, and then he goes into the time of Epiphany, and so you get that. And then you move into the time, of course, eventually of Lent. And it is really, really good. So somebody could get this, order this from us, uh, and then start at the Lenten part, right where you're starting, and then follow it through to the next Advent season. You don't have to start at the beginning of the book at page one, although you could. But I would highlight the Lenten pieces of this and read just a little bit each day. He's a great, great thinker, brings lots to the table. Another book that is just like it that also came out right before Christmas that came out this fall, is by Diana Butler Bass. And Diana is a friend of ours, she's an Episcopalian, um, and she wrote a book called A Beautiful Year. I don't know if you've heard of this, but it's 52 meditations. So instead of every day, it's every week. So there's 52 longer biblically based reflections, what she says on faith, wisdom, and perseverance. She knows well the troubles of our time, the stuff about ice and all the kind of controversies and polarization in our churches and the dangers going on, democratically speaking, in our civic life. So she didn't hit that head on, but she is convinced that following the liturgical calendar, she says this in the beginning, uh, sets us different because we begin to think about time differently. You know, the calendar is based on the Roman Empire. And uh a lot of people think about the Roman Empire, actually. It's kind of funny. And as she thinks about the Roman Empire, you realize that our sense of time and the gods that we have and the calendar months that we have, the feast and holy days we have as a civic life, are all based on Caesar. And uh the Christian calendar might be a counter to that, might help erode that, might be subversive, if you will. And so it is uh just a beautiful book about a beautiful year following the church calendar, but through it all, she's convinced that as we root ourselves in these biblical stories, following the life of Jesus in through Lent and so forth, uh, that it will really rock our world and it'll help us see and imagine the world differently. I think she's right. So both of these books invite us into that sort of rhythm of the church year, of which Lent is a part. So before we talk about Lent, we have to at least understand what we even mean, how it fits into the bigger rhythm of the entire church calendar. Another book that helps do that, and I've talked about these here at Upper House before. I love your podcast. I'm so glad people are listening in, but you may get tired of me saying this. But Esau McCulley, who's a, again, a black Anglican priest, he teaches at Wheaton, has a series of books called The Fullness of Time. It's a little set of hardbacks, and you may know these, these are fantastic, on the different seasons of the church year. So there's one on Advent, you know, there's one on Epiphany, there's one on a Pentecost, there's one on Lent, and the Lent one is by Esau. This was the first one, and Esau McCulley wrote it. He edited and curated the whole series. And other writers, Wes Hill and uh Tish Warren and others, have done the other volumes. But the Lenten one is the one that he did, and the subtitle is called The Season of Repentance and Renewal. And each of these little books try to make a case for what this season is about, what you can learn from it, how it can shape our spiritual lives, where it came from, why the church started doing it, and kind of how we do a why 40 days, you know. And so it's not devotional in the sense where you read a little bit each day or each week, like the other two, uh, and like some other ones we'll get to shortly. But rather, this is sort of the overview of what Lent even means. So it is a great little book, Esau Macaulay in this fullness of time series. Uh, and the next one, then of course, to read right after it is the Easter one, Eastertide. And it's a wonderful, wonderful book on the season of the liturgical uh cycle uh for Easter. So anyway, I wanted to mention that one first. Yeah, I don't know. Any of that sort of makes sense in it. Your folks up there at Upper House are learning to sort of live into these rhythms of the church year. Some probably not, and and some like yourself really are interested in this.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah, and I love that historical perspective, kind of taking a step back and just really seeing the whole picture. Like, why is it that we have taken on these this calendar specifically? And um, and for me too, the visuals of in the church of the colors of the season and and using my imagination in that way and from that historical perspective, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

An old friend of ours um who died a couple of years back, his name is Marva Dawn, and Marva was a Lutheran uh writer that wrote lots of books on worship and liturgy and so forth. And as a Lutheran, she knew that well. She has a book on children's ministry. She also had a pretty vivid social ethics. She did her PhD at Notre Dame. And because she's visually impaired, she often would tell the story that she couldn't go to church unless somebody took her. And nobody seemed to be able to pick her up and take her to her Lutheran church. So she went with the Mennonites. She didn't become Anabaptist, but she studied with Mennonite folks enough to really get this vision of peace and justice and nonviolence and simple living, which resonated with her anyway. So Marva was a wonderful person, but she always dressed. She didn't make a big deal about it. But if it was Lent, she was wearing something purple. She came and visited our store. We met her at conferences, and you just always notice that she even dressed with the colors that she would see in church. So that's kind of neat Marva Dawn story. One of the seasons uh in the church year where we do call ourselves to repentance, where the church calendar invites us to think about that, is this time of Lent. And so I thought it wouldn't be be bad to name a brand new book. And this is a little weird because I think it's a fun book. It's an interesting book, but it's on the doctrine of sin. So if it's all right to talk about a good read that is actually on sin, it's the new Tim Keller book. And you know Timothy Keller, a late Presbyterian pastor in New York. What is wrong with the world? Is the name of the book. The subtitle is the surprising and hopeful answer to the question we cannot avoid. Anyone that's interested in kind of construing a worldview, an imagination of how we think about life and time and the world, um, we have to ask this question, what's wrong? Uh, where are we in history? What the heck is going on? And so we finally have to ask the question, what's wrong with the world? And of course, G.K. Chesterton famously answered a letter to the editor. There was a contest in the London paper, and he wrote uh an essay back, as people were invited to do, and it was two words. He wrote back, I am. What's wrong with the world? Me. Well, if sin is really the problem of the world, how do we think about that well? And so does it feel like our world is sometimes just falling apart? Well, why is that? And Keller explores the doctrine of our brokenness, the alienation we feel from each other and creation itself, because of uh, as another writer Planning put it, sin is the vandalization of shalom. God made the world good and it was beautiful, and there was harmony, and there was shalom, and yet it is vandalized by our rebellion. And so Keller tries to explore the brokenness of the world, and if anyone can do that in a concise and clear and thoughtful way that is both biblically faithful and relevant to the cultural day, um, I just think this is really, really a powerful book in the nature of sin. He looks at different metaphors in the Bible, that sin is illness, that it's brokenness, that it's slavery. Uh, and he asks how sin is healed. And in this time of Lent, we long for this question of how do we make things right? Well, we do it through Jesus. And we meet him in the wilderness. We meet him in his vulnerability, we meet him in his in our own lostness. And so that's what this Keller book's about. I I just wanted to share it. It's brand, brand new and might be a good book to read over Lent, particularly if you like sort of thoughtful stuff like that. Another book that is perfect to read during Lent, although it's not a Lenten book as such, is probably the most important book that I think has been written in, certainly in the 20th century, on the nature of the crucifixion. It is by an episcopal priest named Fleming Rutledge, and many of our listeners know it, and I've mentioned it before. It's a big wonk and fat thing called The Crucifixion. The crucifixion, understanding the death of Jesus. Now, she is a liturgical preacher. She was an episcopal priest all of her life, and she has collections of sermons. In fact, I'll mention one in a minute, uh, around the church calendar. So she was a good preacher, but she was also a theologian, and this is her kind of magnum opus of her theological work. Um, she would say, if you asked her, her favorite book is one that she wrote on Lord of the Rings. She wrote a book about Middle Earth and the theology of Tolkien. Um that's she said that was her favorite book. But this is by far the one that she's most known for. It is really big, it's like 630 some pages, I think, and it analyzes the crucifixion from every imaginable point of view, wow, taking into consideration all the biblical texts and all the theological interpretations that have happened through history. You could hardly get a more comprehensive book. And I don't even know if you can finish it in uh in the 40 days of Lent, um, but you could start it this way. And so I wanted to commend Fleming Rutledge and her massive magnum opus on the crucifixion. She has a couple of sermon collections like The Seven Last Words of Christ or The Final Three Days of Christ. Uh and so if you like her sermons, um she has some good ones, but this is her theological work. And I thought, well, geez, if we're talking about Lent, you gotta at least lay that out there. Now, another book that she wrote for Lent, and this is actually a Lent and read, is called The Undoing of Death. I would say, along with her Advent book, this is one of my all-time favorite books, is a collection of sermons from a career in ministry as she preached in New York City, um, on the themes of the death of Christ. And it's particularly about Holy Week. So that means uh, you know, the the the Last Supper, you know, the crucifixion, Holy Saturday, what the heck's going on there, Christ is dead and in the grave, Easter moving on into um the hour of glory, as she puts it, the post-resurrection stories as well. So there is some Easter stuff in here, but most uh Easter tide, as she would call it. But it's Monday, Thursday. It starts uh with the Sunday before Easter, commonly called Palm Sunday. And then she looks at Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of Holy Week, and she has sermons on those. And so these are reflections that they culled from the variety of sermons she's preached over her career and put them into one big volume. I think this is my favorite book to read during the time of Lent. I pull it out every year.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Oh, incredible, Byron. Wow, yeah. These are just again, um, just zooming out and just seeing different perspectives of the Holy Week experience, but then also getting to the nitty-gritty of our sin and our humanity and what does that mean? And so, wow, yeah, this is just both lenses zoomed in and zoomed out. So lovely.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

Now, Fleming is uh getting up in years. She's a good friend, and I respect her so much. Maybe she's got another book in her, I don't know, but she has written these great resources for people that maybe don't want an Episcopalian view, or maybe they've already grappled with her work. There's a book that just came out, again, just a couple of weeks ago, brand new, by a very popular writer of today. He's a United Methodist guy uh named Adam Hamilton. And Adam Hamilton is sort of an ecumenically minded, mainline denominational folks like him. Evangelicals tend to like him. Um, a big independent megachurch here is using one of his books, which is kind of exciting. His brand new one is called Why Did Jesus Have to Die? And as we meet Christ on our journey through the wilderness, we know where it's leading. And Lent leads up and prepares us for a holy week. And so he's asking, even though words fall short, uh, how does the cross speak? How do we understand the cross? I mean, the gospel is summarized by the great apostle Paul when he wants to talk about the whole kingdom of God and gospel and atonement and all that stuff. He just says the cross. It's almost shorthand for all that the Apostle Paul believes. So how do we get that? What he does in this book is he looks at various sort of theories of atonement. And I don't want to get in the weeds here too much theologically. And it's a skinny book, so it's not that heavy, but he looks at all the different kinds of schools of thought about what Jesus did on the cross, what his blood accomplishes, how his death is redemptive. And there's different ways people have said that and different texts that people draw on to explain it, this text or that Bible verse or this passage or this story, this theologian or that idea. He kind of puts them all together and in conversation and sort of comes up with this sort of, they're all sort of right, and we need all these different perspectives. We can't say it's just this or just that, but we need a kind of multi-faceted understanding of this glory of the cross, and we still don't understand it, even having put all that together. I just think this is a great book. Scott McKnight, who's a respected uh New Testament scholar in the evangelical tradition, he says, who knew that atonement theory discussions could be so stimulating and personally challenging? Do typical understandings of Jesus' death shortchange God into someone who just demands recompense? In a rare feat, Pastor Adam Hamilton jettison's corrupted approaches to the death of Christ, explains the various theories, and shows the importance of bringing them all together. This various approach to the death of Jesus, and then he explains how it's going to help us follow Jesus today. So the end result of understanding these doctrines of the cross is to glory in it so that we might be more faithful in our walking the way of Jesus. So I think that's going to be a useful resource to read. If you're interested in theological stuff and wondering what Lent is really all about, this couldn't be a bad book to go with. Can I name one more about the cross while we're kind of on this theme of the cross? Again, if you're looking for a resource to use during Lent, and you're part of a small group, and maybe your small group doesn't want to kind of go this route and read one of these big heavy theological books, this is a brand new Bible study guide. It's published by Intervarsity Press, and it's part of a series that they've done out of an organization that is called PAX, P A X, which I guess is Latin for peace. And this POX or PAX Ministry has put out four books like this little Bible studies. And if you're listening in, you're going to miss this. But if you're watching, you can see there's like super graphics and artwork in it and cool kind of uh multicolored pages and journaling exercises. It's a very neatly designed, slightly oversized workbook. And there's QR codes in it that you link to with a QR code just using your phone, and it'll take you to a message, a sermon, a testimony, a song. There's various sorts of resources that they offer to make this a pretty engaging small group resource. In other words, it's not just QA, but there's some art in it, there's some testimony in it. And this is a study called Liberated at the Cross, Peace and Reconciliation in God's Kingdom. As the Apostle Paul teaches so beautifully that the cross brings together people that are warring and is the peace of the alienated problems of humanity. And in this age when there's injustices and wars going on, we can't do our theology out of context as if the broken world that we live in doesn't exist, as if the daily newspaper isn't really shouting the headlines that it does. So we need resources like this that begin to help us see the kind of practical application of this beautiful kingdom vision of the cross being the tool to bring about God's reconciliation on earth as it is in heaven. So this very colorful, very creative, very artful, uh with QR codes to boot, is a six-week Bible study guide, peace and reconciliation in God's Kingdom. It's put together by Crystal Acevedo, who I met about a year ago. She has another Bible study guide. She goes to Derwin Gray's Church, African American Leader down in the Carolinas. She's part on a pastoral team of that church. And uh I really respect her and I really like this book. So I haven't gone through it yet. I don't have a small group to go through it yet, but this is brand new and they get a great tool.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

Yeah, and so engaging. As a music listener, I'm so curious of what the songs are on those QRs. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

So the other ones that they did, they did another one on peace and justice themes, uh, not on the cross necessarily, but on God's kingdom, by a black poet named uh Drew, who uh has a lot of very cool spoken word pieces and stuff in there. And then there's one on mental health issues, and there's vivid artwork in it and so forth, and the QR codes. And then there's another one on migration, on people moving and God moving people all over the world in the Bible and the world today with immigration issues. Um the migration one, the mental health one, the peace and justice one, and then the one on the cross and whether the cross can be the power that changes the world. They are the four in this new Pox series. Uh, kudos to Inner Varsity for doing such a good job on those. I think they're fantastic. Well, everybody talks about Lent being 40 days, you know, 40 days in the wilderness. Um, my favorite singer, songwriter, you mentioned music, is a guy named Bruce Coburn, and he has a song called 40 Days in the Wilderness that I was just listening to this morning. It's not exactly a Lenten song, but it kind of is. This journey of 40 days of moving towards some hard stuff. There are a pair of authors that have done two 40-day books, and they aren't exactly Lenten, but they're 40 days. And then they also just did a brand new one. So I'd love to tell you about those. It's a guy named Justin McRoberts, who is a singer-songwriter, and a poet and a spiritual director. Great guy. And then an artist, a visual artist named Scott Erickson. Have you ever seen Scott Erickson's work online or anywhere? You know, that sounds so familiar. Yeah. He does really interesting graphics, and they're often very sparse, uh, kind of like silk screens or something, and they're they make you think. He's a really curious guy. He and Justin did this book years ago called May It Be So 40 Days with the Lord's Prayer. And it is not a treatise on prayer. It is hardly even a devotional. It is really like nothing but prayers. I say they're like uh like the coins of Eastern religions. They're almost like axioms or or nuggets to ponder. They're poetic and prayers. There are a few little meditative um reflections in here, but mostly they're these like paragraphs, like you can see there. Yeah. Match with a picture, like you can see there. They're two-color, black and gold often. And these pictures are just, they really make you think. And then the little devotional that goes with it, these are amazing. And they have been told by people that have read them that they've said, I've read five or six books about how to pray. And then I read this thing, and all of a sudden I started praying. Like I learned how to enter into silence and ponder deep things and offer the deepest longings of our heart to God, sometimes without even words. Like this really got me praying, as opposed to books more conventionally about prayer. So this is a 40-day prayer book kind of art book kind of. I think it's ideal for Lent. And then they did another one that is just called prayer. And it is an invitation to intimacy with God during rough times, and sometimes our communication with God, we don't even know what to say. And so again, Justin gives you just a paragraph combined with an art piece done by Scott Erickson. So Justin's a good writer. Scott Erickson's an interesting artist. And these two 40-day books, I we sell them at Lent. I mean, they're not exactly designed for Lent, but we tell people about them at Lent all the time, and they people mail order them through our bookstore. I like them during life.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

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SPEAKER_02 27:58

Now here's another one that they just did. It just came out at the end of last year, and it doesn't say 40 days. I don't even know how many days are in here. It's more brightly colored, and it's called In the Love. In the Love. What they mean by that is for people that are going through seasons of depression or hard times or bad feelings. The subtitle is Honest Prayers for Dark Seasons. And what they do in a fairly colorful creative way is use these art pieces and little reflections, some litanies and liturgies, um, to ask ourselves why do we feel badly? And what they kind of say throughout this is that you're not depressed because you're broken, you're depressed because you're human. Humans go through this. It's okay. We can get through this together. It's part of the human experience. When sad things happen, we feel sad. When outrageous things happen, we should be outraged. When hard stuff happens, we have hard feelings. That's okay. And so this in the low is a season of hard times, but they say we go through them because we're human, not because there's something wrong with us. So I really, really like this. And again, the art is blue and black. Uh, the drawings are remarkable. The poems are short or prayers, I guess we should call them. And then there are some longer litanies and so forth. But just throughout it, there's this very evocative graphic design and these very short pieces. So I think people could use those during land. If you've got college students you're working with up there, uh they really resonate with college students, with young people who kind of like this graphic uh style and like these short pity poems that Justin has put together. Um, it's not Fleming Rutledge, you know, it's not dense theology. But man, there is something about those artful books that I think are really useful.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Absolutely, Byron. Yeah, it's so nice to just sit in the simplicity of the wilderness and the simplicity of our humanity and and ponder together. So, oh wow, thank you so much for for sharing that beautiful art too. I I hope that people get to watch this instead of just audio just to see.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

I hope people can see it. Yeah, and yeah, I didn't do a good job at showing it, but um we've got them here. Uh everything is 20% off when they order from us. And so we're happy to send these out. These guys are really cool. I'm gonna be with them at a conference in Pittsburgh the middle of February. It's called Jubilee, and we've been doing this Jubilee conference for 50 years now in Pittsburgh, helping college students integrate faith and learning, thinking Christianly about their careers. It's run by the CCO, a campus ministry that sort of focuses on that stuff. But Justin comes every year to that event and speaks at it, and many years uh Erickson comes as well. So we're gonna feature that in the low with college students uh in a couple of weeks down in Pittsburgh. That's gonna be fun. You know, you mentioned walking in the wilderness. Um, do you mind if I put you on the spot and ask you why that resonates with you as a Lenten image, why this wilderness thing is something that comes uh close to your heart? Or am I asking, we've just met, so maybe I shouldn't be so bold.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

No, we're jumping right in here. We're friends now. Yeah. Um I think, you know, there's a lot of ways I could answer that. But, you know, I I am thinking in my mind right now of this image that was on um a bulletin during Lent last year of just Jesus. And it's just these these stark like pink and blues of just him in the valley. And he has these eyes of just like piercing, just looking at me in the valley. And I cut it out and I put it on my kitchen cabinet. And it's been up all year. And the times when I just have felt the lowest, um, the times that I have met my humanity, I've met my grief right in the face. I'm able to just go to that image and I see Jesus in the valley in the wilderness. And there's color, yes, but his eyes are where I meet him. And um, it's just been a real image I've been reflecting on. And and when I think of Jesus, I think of that, of that picture that hangs on in my kitchen. So it's just been a powerful image that has walked with me this year.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

That's beautiful. I had a customer in our bookstore once, and they said, you know, I like Lent better than I like Advent. And that and they they felt bad about it. They said, Is that is there something wrong with me? And I said, you know, in our humanity, in our brokenness, yes, it is very good news that Jesus is going to come back and make things all new someday. So there is a hopefulness to Advent. But I think sometimes we think of Advent as just counting down the days till Christmas, like the shopping list, you know, and it becomes kind of happy. But it's actually fairly somber. But if you don't get that at Advent, you certainly get it at Lent. Uh the brokenness of our humanity, the Jesus who has solidarity with us, who's going to die, who walks through the wilderness. It's pretty front and center. And so when you say when you were at your lowest, Lent made sense to you, that picture made sense to you. That is absolutely true. And I think there are more people out there now that need a Lent in experience, even if they're not part of a church that talks like that. They need their humanity affirmed, their brokenness affirmed, and they're in the low sometimes. And again, that's okay. Uh so that's why we talk about those things during Lent. There's a there's a book called Walking in the Wilderness by a woman named Beth Richardson that I really like. It's published by the upper room. And again, uh, it's one of these kind of books that is a devotional. So it gives you a psalm, often a psalm of lament, to read, and then it invites you to maybe write your own lament, and then it gives you a little exercise. So it is a very engaging but brief kind of discipline to use during the 40 days of Lent. It gives you a reflection and a closing prayer, of course, as it always does. It even gives you a word to carry on your heart for that day. So there's even it breaks it down to a single word. So it's real user-friendly, but it's 40 days of walking in the wilderness seeking God during Lent. And it invites us just to pause and to connect and to find in our hungers, even Lent is a time of fasting. And so in the wilderness, even of fasting and of longing for something better and wondering about our desires, where we're going through these sort of rituals, if you will, of preparation. So this is a nice little tool. Another one that I really like is again, it's short and pithy. 40 words for 40 days is the subtitle. It's called Pauses for Lent. It's by Trevor Hudson. And he did one, Pauses for Advent, and he has one called Pauses for Pentecost. So he's working on these little compact sides. If you're watching, you can see it's just a thin little compact book. And each meditation is a reflection on one word. If we had time, I'd read a couple on peace or forgiven or treasure or water or bread or see or ask. He'll just give you a phrase and then do a little meditation on it. Short, sweet. Trevor Hudson, by the way, was friends with Dallas Willard. And some people might know that name as a great master of spiritual formation and a philosophy professor. So he's influenced by Willard a bit. He's a white guy that lived in South Africa and was part of the anti-apartheid movement in his own way. So he was friends with the likes of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela and some of the great leaders of the movement against apartheid back in the day, Alan Bozak. So he knows these Afghan leaders from South Africa. And he is a white, I think the United Methodist guy in South Africa, but he's come to the States from time to time, and he came to be sort of influenced quite a bit by Dallas Willard. So I like this, and it's just a pause for each day of Lent, short and sweet. And he gives you, instead of a closing prayer, he gives you a daily practice of ways to practice something to embody this word in your own kind of rituals. So it's uh it's it's worth doing. It's really, really neat. There's another Lenten book that's kind of reminds me of that. I was kind of on a theme here. There's a book, and I maybe mentioned it with you guys last year. I don't even remember if I did, but it's called Lent in Plain Sight. It's by a woman named Jill Duffield, D-U-F-F-I-E-L-D, Duffield, Lent in Plain Sight. It's published by WJK, Westminster John Knox. And it has got um each I mentioned that Trevor Hudson had done this thing a word a day, just one word. Well, this is a thing a day a week. She gives you one thing, an object, dirt, a cross, bread, a coin, um, shoes or sandals. And so she picks an item and uses that item as a window into thinking about the theology of the Lenten experience. So it's Lent in Plain Sight, a Devotion Through Objects. She did one on Advent like this too, and it was called Advent in Plain Sight, a Devotion Through Objects. And it was fantastic. And this Lenten one, so she gives you a reading for each week around that item, around that theme, coins, bread, you know, is one of them. I think one of them is uh is oil, uh, thinking about uh anointing oil. Uh the last one is coats, towels, and thorns. So anyway, I like this a lot. And again, if anybody doesn't just want to do a regular daily devotional, want something just a little clever, a little interesting, uh, this looks at these objects and uses that as a kind of a way into the conversation. There's uh inside the book, there's a code where you can go online and find all kinds of digital resources, music and songs and stuff that you can use to create worship services. If you're a pastor or a pastor campus minister putting together an informal service around these themes, you can use some of the litons and stuff that she's created online. Oh, that's a great resource. So that's yet another one. I got even more, but man, I wonder uh is this uh stuff that seems to be resonating with anybody out there?

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Absolutely. All these tangible things of music and you know, objects and word, just even one word, um, just to be able to engage our hearts and our imagination um and on such a practical way. Yeah, Byron, this is so engaging.

SPEAKER_02 38:16

Now, can I tell you about just a couple more? We have enough time. There's one or two that are just really unique that just came out this year. I have not used this, I've hardly even looked at it yet. It just came. It's by a company called Paraclete, and it's called Christ in Our Midst. Christ in Our Midst. The subtitle is Daily Lenten Reflections. Get this through Scripture and Gregorian Chant. Ooh. The Paraclete Press, which is a publishing house, also publishes CDs back in the day when they did CDs. They had a huge CD collection of Gregorian chant long before it became hip. And then back in the 90s, it became kind of kind of hip for a little while, and everybody was buying Gregorian chant, and they became known as sort of one of the main uh producers of Gregorian chant stuff. Well, what they do here is they give you the biblical texts that are from the chants, and then they give you a QR code where you can listen to it, and they even give you the musical items, uh, so you can sing it yourself if you follow the shape notes. Um, and then you can scan that particular Latin phrase that's the Gregorian chant. It is really interesting, and I think I want to do it this year. I have not uh looked at any of the QR codes to listen to any of them yet, although it's from their albums and I've got many of their CDs. So I can imagine the great choral Gregorian chant work that they're doing and how those particular hymn texts, song texts, uh, and then they have a biblical text and a reflection on that Bible verse. So that's pretty darn unique. Uh that not only is it linked to music, but it's linked to Gregorian chant for crying out loud. Yeah. So that's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

That's great. I think for our students who are studying for exams, Gregorian chant is the best soundtrack for you know your good study days. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:01

You probably have heard of the poet Malcolm Geit. Malcolm Geit is a beloved poet from the UK, and uh he's got uh a Sir Galahad uh epic poem coming out later in the in February uh or March, but he just collaborated with two other British authors, and they just released a book. We got it in from the UK called Ward Robes and Rings through Lenten Lands with the Inklings. So the Ward Robes, of course, is an allusion to C.S. Lewis's Chronicles, and the Rings, of course, is the Lord of the Rings stories. So they're drawing on the inklings, and what's interesting is they draw on other inklings like Dorothy Sayers. Um, they have a few others of the inklings in here as well. It's mostly Lewis and Tolkien, but they do this reflection, um, and then they even tie it to other literature that weren't part of the inklings, like John Milton. They link the creation stories of the magician's nephew with Paradise Lost.

unknown 41:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 41:08

And then they have a reflection, and it is just fascinating the way they draw on the writers in the Inklings writing group and use that stuff for a Lenten devotional. And we have it here, and we couldn't be happier.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

Wonderful, Byron. And can you hold it up one more time? That is just such a stark and beautiful. Oh, wow. Yeah, it almost looks like a lino cut. Yeah. Oh, with that lion. Wow. So beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

There is a book called The Art of Lent that we sell every year, where um Sister Wendy Beckett, who was a Roman Catholic nun that was an art historian, and they take great paintings um from the some of the great museums of the world.

SPEAKER_03 41:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 41:59

And she does a little devotional on them.

SPEAKER_03 42:02

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02 42:02

Some of them are medieval paintings or renaissance paintings of biblical stories, and some are contemporary that are not linked to a big particular biblical text, or you wouldn't know that it was until she tells you about it. And as she writes about these, um, it's just a beautiful, beautiful Lenten resource to consider this a sort of page-a-day picture. Then she also has another one for Holy Week that you use throughout Holy Week. Just meditating on these famous paintings. That's a pretty nice resource as well.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

Yeah, getting some Lectio Divina in our Lenten practices. Yeah. That's wonderful, Byron.

SPEAKER_02 42:40

Well, if anybody is interested, I do a new Lenten list at our booknotes newsletter every year. And you can go back and find older ones, other years where I've named my favorites. I'm gonna do ones before too long where some of these books will be listed as well. Um if they want to see the annotations and the prices and our discounts and stuff, they can go to our booknotes newsletter and send us an order if they want or ask questions if they want. Um, there's a lot of good ones from other years that would be very appropriate to know about, too. So go back through some of our older booknotes newsletters and you'll find Lenten lists every season.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

Lenten lists. Okay, wonderful, Byron. Well, wow, I've learned so much today. This has been so glorious. It's been so good to have you, Byron. And I have one question for you since you put me on the spot, since we're becoming friends. Um, is there a favorite spiritual discipline, Byron, that you like to incorporate or read during your Lenten journey?

SPEAKER_02 43:37

Oh my. Well, it's kind of cheating, I guess, but I believe that reading is a spiritual practice. In Richard Foster's wonderful book, The Celebration of Discipline, he's listing all these practices, both Godward and inward and outward. And study is historically always been one of the great uh spiritual disciplines, along with prayer and Solitude and journaling and worship and those sorts of things, fasting. And so I would say reading, uh, but not just reading as I regularly read, and I try to read Christianly all the time, but finding some space for more contemplative reading. You mentioned Lectio, reading carefully, reading reflectively, some of these artful things. I try to build time, not always real good about it, but I try to build time in for some of that sort of quiet space. That's one of my favorites is just reading carefully and quietly. I've got all these resources in front of me, and I skim them now, like so I can tell you about them. But that's not really the same as using them devotionally myself. So I need to build some time into my schedule to actually, like you and others listening in, to actually grab one of these and actually use it wisely in my own in my own lifestyle. Um, so talking about them, I I was once uh talking about a book on prayer, and an author said, you know, Byron, you know, talking about my book is not the same as reading it. And reading my book is not the same as actually doing it. You know, the reason we read books about prayer is so we can actually pray. And I sometimes think that if I read the thing, then I don't have to do it because reading is almost as good as uh praying, but no, it isn't. So you have to actually apply this stuff and live it out. And so that's part of the journey, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

Well, Byron, thank you so much um for yeah, giving us the resources in order to live it out and um to be on this journey together. It's been so lovely getting to know you. We're just so grateful for um your time and your recommendations today. And just for our listeners, all the links to these books today that Byron talked about will be available in our show notes. Um, and then obviously what Byron had said about his um his links. Um and Byron, remind me um just a little bit more about your bookstore, just the name of the bookstore and and where you're located and where we can find um your bookstore online.

SPEAKER_02 45:51

It's called Hearts and Minds. Hearts and Minds is in a town called Dallastown, Dallastown, Pennsylvania. And uh Hearts and Minds is online at www.hearts and minds. You have to spell out the A and D, Heartsandmindsbooks.com. And at Heartsandmindsbooks.com, I got a little website. You can order anything you want, anything you type in, we can get it. And uh then I have these booknotes newsletters people subscribe to and they go out every week. Um, and and those booknotes are all archived. So if you want to find something I've written about or reviewed or commented on, you can usually dig back through older stuff and find either uh books I've done or sale items we've had or reviews I've done, often quite long reviews. People say my book notes are too long, uh, but I like gabbing about books, man. And so it's so fun to be able to do that. And if you subscribe to book notes, you'll see in your inbox every week uh this newsletter that uh my wife and I do.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

Yeah, and maybe that can be my own Lenten practice is just going and reading your reviews.

SPEAKER_02 46:52

Now you're talking. That's what I'd love to hear. It'll feel like a wilderness sometime. I review all kinds of books of uh some hard stuff, cultural analysis of things going on in our world. And so some of the books aren't even always fun, but they're really important, we think. We curate and you shouldn't have to fret about wondering what to read. We give you the list of what is best any given week. And so we hope it's a useful service. We'd really appreciate um folks uh checking it out.

SPEAKER_00 47:17

Absolutely, Byron. Well, thank you so much again.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

Yeah, and um, we'll be hopefully having you in the next calendar, um, and we'll see if it's Advent or the next lent.

SPEAKER_02 47:28

Hope so. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Thank you for tuning into the Upwards Podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. For more information about the S. L. Brown Foundation and Upper House, please visit slbf.org. Go in peace to be a light on our campuses, in our churches, and in our businesses, so that all may flourish.