Sweet Spots

Rings of Fire

by Leonard Sweet

–Review by Vern Hyndman

One of the amazing benefits to studying with Dr. Leonard Sweet is that on occasion Len will invite participation in his books. Here’s probably no one more careful to footnote the contribution of others, and over the years I’ve leaned into Nudge and Bad Habits, with honorable mentions other places. Social media is Len’s open invitation to participate, of which I avail myself several times a week (day, sometimes hour). Those who know me well will understand why Bad habits. Other times Len offers a preview of what he’s writing, after having been sworn to secrecy. This book review honors that secrecy while offering an exciting foreshadowing of what is to come.
Len is a master semiotician, maybe best described by the ancient Tribe of Issachar; “they read the signs and knew what to do.” Len is a futurist. Rings of Fire is the most recent book of a series of books over the previous decades. Faith Quakes (1994) germinated from a multi-faith meeting Len and others attended with Mikhael Gorbachev. Soul Tsunami (1999) illuminated the future of a church that who couldn’t spell or define tsunami entering the unknown of the 21st century. Today most of us can spell tsunami, and we all have video images etched in our memories of exactly what tsunami means. Len was ahead of his time. Carpe Manana (2001) helped make sense of a digital world.
Fasten your seatbelts.
The rate of change is increasing. The title Ring of Fire is borrowed from the name of a 25,000-mile horseshoe-shaped arc of 75% to 80% of the world’s volcanoes. The world is now one global ring of fire.
Ring of Fire provides helpful categories of change that is on the horizon. There is no place to hide from the change, the church needs to be fiery.
Len often says the worst mistake to make is a categorical mistake, to be looking and expecting in the wrong category. First-century Jews looked for a military messiah and many missed the baby who saved the world in an epic categorical mistake. How can we, the church, avoid categorical mistakes if we’re blissfully unaware of the categories?
In your mental ramblings, do you consider the ripple effect of having become a cyborg? This topic is a bit late, given how far we’ve already transitioned, but are you vaguely interested in what cyborg living will mean? Is cheating with a machine cheating in your marriage?
We are struggling with alternative marriage, yet have you considered how the rights of an artificial intelligence (AI) being might work when asking the church to marry a human cyborg? What if the AI’s arguments are more persuasive than anything you can muster? Is unplugging the machine hosting the AI murder? Movies like “Her” have explored this concept, and yet it hasn’t been a common post-prayer meeting conversation. Let’s start the conversation. Ring of Fire will kick the conversation off.
Ring of Fire may be the first introduction some folks have to semiotics; reading symbols and signs. “How well do disciples of Jesus know how to communicate in symbols? One wonders if the most important division within Christianity today is not left and right, liberal and conservative, but symbolists and literalists, literalists who have a hard time understanding a messiah who came not parsing texts on vellum but speaking in signs and stories.”
Let me tease you; Ring of Fire delves into topics with the following keywords, at least in my advanced copy… sexularism, ecological extinctions, collapse of nation states, sacralization, suicide culture, gender and gendering… Chinafication, wrongful life, reproduction crisis.
Maybe the most powerful thing that Len has taught me in graduate work including both a masters and now a doctorate, is to “stand under” an author; that it’s important to read the entire work and be able to reiterate it to the author’s satisfaction before criticism is valid. Celebration before cerebration. For many folks, Ring of Fire will be the first look into an unimaginable future. To know the future is only partially a revelation by the Spirit; there is hard work in reading a vast variety of works, of understanding dead people and their context, and of resonating with a world-wide multiple-generation populace, of staying current, and playing with technology for the sake of curiosity. Becoming a semiotician is to be a farmer who plows his fields every day; who remains open and fertile while others are along for the ride and not necessarily attentive.
Ring of Fire is “bring your audience to work” day for semioticians, the ride-along event that informs but also hopefully invites and inspires.
Please consider pre-ordering your own inspirational invitation.

Barking Up the Wrong Tree
Summary by Eric Barker (2017)
ISBN: 9780062416049
–Review by Douglas Balzer

Wrong assumptions, mistaken, misleading, or misguided we have all come to the wrong conclusion about other people. It can be an embarrassing and humiliating experience. The metaphor of barking up the wrong tree applies to this experience. We all must be honest and admit we have barked up the wrong tree.
The author Eric Barker (no pun intended with the last name) writes, “We spend too much time trying to be ‘good’ when good is often merely average. To be great, we must be different. More often being the best means just being the best version of you.”
What I found reading Barking Up the Wrong Tree turns the conventional advice on its head. For example, looking at both sides of familiar arguments for peoples success, like confidence, extroversion, or being kind, the author has reached the conclusions it is definitely other influences deciding if we win or lose, and unexpectedly we control more of them than we think.
Illustrating this we find self-deprecating humor is a terrific way to start anything: a talk, a YouTube video, a relationship, a standup comedy routine, and, in Eric’s case, even a blog. When Eric Barker studied Japanese in college, he learned on the first day of class that his last name means “idiot.” Wow, how do you respond to finding out your name means “idiot” in another language. My personal experience with my Hispanic friends is if you annunciate my shortened version of my first name, Doug, it sounds like “dog” in Spanish. It has become a nickname for amongst my friends. But I did like Eric. He took what most would have made as an offense, he took as an opportunity for the perfect icebreaker? It works. So, after a decade of blogging, his blog still reads “I am an idiot” in Japanese: bakadesuyo.
Eric’s behavior has provided him with the fodder to publish his first book, Barking Up The Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong. In his book, he shares, a collection of his most surprising lessons.
So, if you are feeling lost in a sea of confusing advice, here is a more balanced perspective that helps you consider your own wants and needs!
Lesson 1: How good your grades are only predicted one of your abilities, and it is not one that matters in the real world.
Most people envy the valedictorian at the high school graduation, the one who gets to give the commencement speech. They are usually top of their class, and most of their fellow students expect them to have unprecedented success in life. It is rarely the case.
A study by Boston College tracked 81 valedictorians after their graduation in 1981. 15 years later, they worked hard and learned a lot, but not even one changed the world in earth-shattering ways. Now, contrast with the surprisingly large number of college dropouts on the Forbes 400 list, and an idea starts to emerge that maybe being good in school doesn’t matter so much, after all. Oh, I can hear it now so many people cringing after reading this line. I must admit, after 12 years of college and university, there is some truth to Eric’s assertion.
Now, it is crucial to know Eric would undoubtedly agree, as performing well on any kind of standardized test, whether it’s in high school, college, a job interview, or elsewhere, only proves one thing: you’re good at following rules. Our education system turns people into excellent sheep, not necessarily outstanding thinkers.
The real question is, what do you need to succeed in the real world, then? Eric says it is a mix of creativity, passion, obsession, vision, and commitment. He addresses the fact life is messy, so you need a lot of perseverance to see your goals through because life rarely goes according to your plan.
Lesson 2: Extroverts are likely to earn more, but it is easier for introverts to become experts in their fields.
Beyond grades, there is the introvert vs. extrovert debate. It is a huge topic when it comes to personal success. Some argue, “your network is your net worth,” while others celebrate introverts’ capacities for single-tasking. So, which one is it? Honestly, the answer is not so black and white; it is a whole bunch of grays.
Both introversion and extroversion have something going for them. Yes, extroverts tend to make, on average, slightly more money. For example, people who occasionally go out for a social drink earn up to 14% more. If you enjoy people’s company, you will naturally form more relationships, you make friends more quickly, and tend to end up with a better network.
Introverts, well, it is a different story. They are more likely to become an expert in their field. Why? Since they spend more time in private, it is easier for them to put in the hours they need to develop profound domain ability. This holds true even for more extroverted activities, such as sports. A surprising statistic is 89% of top athletes are introverts.
Once again, what matters is not what is better, but that you know who you are, so you can act so.
Lesson 3: Working more works, there is no denying that.
Work has been, and always will be, the one variable you fully control.
How talented you are, how many lucky breaks you catch, what your circumstances are, your impact on these are limited. Unquestionably, you can move, change friends, and switch jobs, but beyond that, what is left? Putting in the time. But you should know even IQ has diminishing returns, according to the author. A University of Lausanne study found people’s capacity for good leadership did not just level off, but declines as their IQ went beyond 120 points.
Nevertheless, according to another study, the top 10% of workers in complex jobs create eight times as much valuable output as the bottom 10%. Some of this can be attributed to intelligence, being gifted, etc., it is the result of hours of work and learning the rhythm of the job.
Now, whether this insight puts a lid on your productivity, because you have family commitments, for example, or is a baseline for flourishing, as you currently have lots of time, you can use it to make better choices in the realm of life’s tradeoffs in a deliberate fashion. Barking Up the Wrong Tree is the book to help you along in the journey.
A final takeaway –
The author Eric Baker is dedicated to helping people to be their best. He takes a refreshing approach where he weighs the pros and cons of success myths and realities and brings you to the sweet spot. Our reality is life is not black and white but filled with more muted colors and gray areas. I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Eric Barker’s book Barking Up the Wrong Tree and take advantage of his experiences. I think you will find it worth the investment.
Now, may you live your best life!

Wendell Berry and the Given Life
By Ragan Sutterfield

–Review by Landrum P. Leavell III, Th.D.

The book jacket notes that for over fifty years, Wendell Berry has been helping seekers chart a return to the practice of being creatures. Through his essays, poetry and fiction, Berry has repeatedly drawn our attention to the ways in which our lives are gifts in a whole economy of gifts. The author refers to Berry as the “St. Benedict for our times.” It’s a pretty apt description. “Like St. Benedict, he provides a vision that many people respond to not only with their minds, but with their lives.” (4) The book is chock-full of quotes from all his writings, saving you lots of time and money, if you are inclined to a great distillation of his voluminous works. It synthesizes Berry’s vision for the lived moral and spiritual life that helps us remember our givenness. This vision is grounded in the knowledge that our lives, and our world, are gifts.

Sutterfield knows Berry and does a great job at citing, then giving commentary, on Berry’s prose. For example, Berry writes, “The disease of the modern character is specialization.” Sutterfield follows, “It is by dividing our lives and our concerns that we are able to invest our money in coal companies while giving our charity to fight climate change.

“This, for Berry, is the absurdity of modern life. The division of life allows us to avoid the tragedy of our situation and our choices—it enables us to pretend to be in control, to live as gods, while ignoring the obvious examples to the contrary. ” (10)

A tremendous introduction to Berry’s work, Sutterfield has compiled a dozen central themes from Berry’s vast body of work, which call us to an aliveness in our world. In the chapter, Humility: Coming to Terms with Reality, the contrast between hubris and humility is laid out: “Hubris is always poised to learn its opposite the hard way—humility not through reflective wisdom, but by humiliation with a great deal of damage along the way.” (14) Berry has called out other thinkers for their statements typifying what he calls, “ignorant arrogance.” In the novel, Jayber Crow, Berry writes, “To counter the ignorant use of knowledge and power, we have…only a proper humility.” (15) This humility is a going down and acceptance of our limits, but also an embrace of our reality.
For Berry, the practice of propriety is one of the key outgrowths of the virtue of humility. “The idea of propriety makes an issue of the fittingness of our conduct to our place or circumstances, even our hopes.” We are each a part of a context outside of which “we cannot speak or act or live.” (16) He writes of our entangled boundedness, for our own lives are really never our own. Humility teaches us the good of this entanglement, even as pride tries to escape our embeddedness, usually by ignoring it.

Affection is a key theme in Berry’s work and with it the metaphors of marriage and divorce. After all, love can never be general or abstract—it is only concrete and particular. You can’t love a forest in general any more than you can love people in general. Berry branches out, no pun intended, as he takes up the tension between the general and particular in relationship with the desire to care for the planet. [This is one of a number of points where I believe we need people/writers like Wendell Berry. Speaking for myself, I have a general care for the planet, God’s creation, and try to do my part recycling, etc. But voices like Berry’s help us push deeper down to look at our specific consumptive patterns.]

In one of his best-known essays, “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community,” Berry writes, “Sexual love is the heart of community life. Sexual love is the force that in our bodily life connects us most intimately to the Creation, to the fertility of the world, to farming and the care of animals. It brings us into the dance that holds the community together and joins it to its place.” This communal nature of love that makes marriage possible and crucial. “Lovers must not…live for themselves alone. They must finally turn from their gaze at one another and back toward the community.” (31)

In the chapter on Economics, Berry contrasts the two economies, the Kingdom of God, “the Great Economy,” and the small economy, i.e. Industrialism, GDP, etc. An interesting aspect of Berry’s economics is the idea of proxies, the ways in which we allow others to do things for us or on our behalf. He says this is what most people in the developed world have given to the corporations to produce and provide for food, clothing, and shelter. He also has a lot to say about choices…

The chapter on Work has a lot to say about tilling and keeping the creation. I don’t think I’m the only one who struggles with the concept/command to Sabbath, but I love reading about it! This chapter, Sabbath: Delight and the Reorientation of Desire, is great. Sabbath “invites asks us to notice that while we rest the world continues without our help. It invites us to find delight in the world’s beauty and abundance.” (65) Sweet has talked for years about coming apart so you don’t come apart. Sutterfield says, “On the Sabbath, we are able to be apart from our achievements.” Berry writes that Sabbath rest is needed, in part, “in order to understand that the providence or the productivity of the living world, the most essential work, continues while we rest…. From the biblical point of view, the earth and our earthly livelihood are conditional gifts.” Sutterfield follows, “We stop so that we can learn again that we live not by bread we have earned, but from the sustaining breath of God that we share in the great exchange of all being.”

What great language the chapter, Stability: Becoming Native in an Age of Everywhere, has. Berry tackles the problem of restlessness. His book addressing this is titled, The Unsettling of America. Sutterfield writes, “To take the spiritual journey of discovering our place we must escape the thinking that the world is small.” Berry’s words: “The life of this world is small to those who think it is, and the desire to enlarge it makes it smaller, and can reduce it finally to nothing.” (80-81) Some writers think the entire planet has become home ground. Berry would counter: “The reality that is responsibly manageable by human intelligence is much nearer in scale to a small rural community or urban neighborhood than to the globe.” You can’t save the world, but you can save the Red River Gorge.

Other chapters include Membership: Joining the Community of Creation, Language: Truth and the Work of Imagination, Peaceableness: Living in Harmony with the Whole of Creation, The Prophet: Lament, Imagination, and the Renewal of Religion. There is also an Afterword where Berry answered in writing six questions Sutterfield has offered him after writing the book.

This is a superb distillation of Berry’s work. It offers much to listen to, learn from, chew on, and share. Check it out.

You’re welcome.