The Christian Century

The world will always be fascinated with Vincent van Gogh. It doesn't matter that his sunflowers are on mugs, t-shirts, calendars and billboards, or that psychologists have spent years studying every facet of van Gogh's emotional and mental instability.

The Chatelet Apprentice, by Jean-François Parot. I've been re-invigorating my French with the mystery novels of  French diplomat Jean-François Parot. (Several titles are available in English.) As police commissioner Nicolas Le Floch works to solves crimes in 18^th-century Paris, author Parot expands the plot with descriptions of the era's culture, political intrigues and haute cuisine.

While on retreat recently, I picked up Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time to Keep Silence. I was making my own transition from noisy life and noisy mind to four days of retreat when I came upon Fermor's description of his retreat at a French monastery in the '50s.

"In the ordinary course of human affairs countries churn slowly. . . and then there are moments of special upheaval, when empires depart, when ideologies rotate. . . . India was in the midst of such a moment. The meanings of destiny, family, love, class--of what it means to be Indian--were being defined anew by millions of people, all at once."

Eugene Peterson's new memoir, The Pastor, will be out in February (Century subscribers can read the excerpt from the book in the February 8 issue.) If any pastor has claimed the vocation, it's Peterson, who has grounded and inspired pastors for many years with books that include Under the Unpredictable Plant and The Contemplative Pastor.