Sweet Spots

Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You

John Ortberg

–Review by Landrum P. Leavell III, ThD.

“Sometimes the soul gets sifted and shaped in places you could never imagine and ways you could never expect. For me it was in Box Canyon.” (17) Box Canyon is a rocky hideaway tucked between Simi Valley and the San Fernando Valley west of Los Angeles. Two more-or-less famous residents were a cult leader and mass murderer named Charles Manson and a writer and intellectual named Dallas Willard.

John Ortberg read a book by Dallas that moved him more than anything he had ever read. (Makes me think of someone Sweet in my own experience…) As a young pastor in the area of Box Canyon, Ortberg wrote him, was invited to visit and over the years learned that he was a healer of souls. Ortberg had a twenty-plus year relationship with Dallas Willard, a retired professor of philosophy at USC. When they met, all John knew was that Dallas taught philosophy and wrote about subjects such as spiritual disciplines. [His small house “was mostly furnished with books.” YES] Willard had a primary library in his home, a secondary library in another home next door, a tertiary library at USC, his quaternary library in a garage near his home. read more…

Faith In Imagination:

The Fantasy Makers

A Documentary

–Review by Teri Hyrkas

One definition of the word “flight” is: a grouping of similar items, such as a flight of stairs or a flight of geese. In the documentary The Fantasy Makers,(Gateway Films/Vision Video, 2018), we have been given a flight of authors, all of whom are identified with books of fantasy. Fantasy can be a controversial category of literature for some Christians. There are Christians who consider any fiction, and fantasy in particular, to be deleterious to one’s faith. “The Fantasy Makers” documentary provides a strong argument demonstrating that rather than harming one’s faith in God, the imagination can in fact draw one toward God. read more…