Monday

Tony Reinke Writing

Monday is my day off and for me typically the most intense day of writing. I hit the keys with vehemence, like Jillian Michaels is yelling at the back of my head.

But not today. Today is family hike day.

Says William Wordsworth:

UP! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you’ll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain’s head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow. …

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless—
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

Update

Tony Reinke Writing

The emails have slowed from a steady stream to a trickle from readers wanting to know what in the world happened to my list of favorite books of 2009. I take that as a sign that you already know what I am about to say: There will be no list. I did not forget, honest I didn’t. Time slipped away. [Christianity.com did ask for my list of favorite books of the decade (2000–2009) and I’ll let you know when they post it (but expect no surprises).]

I did read books in 2009. Without counting I would guess that I finished twofold the number of books last year than any other single year of my life. For a bibliomaniac it was a hallowed year.

If 2009 goes down as the year of reading 2010 will go down in my life as the year of writing. I am now under contract with Crossway to write a book of my own and have until November before I am guilty of breaching that contract. It is an honor to work with Crossway. For years I have haply photographed and promoted what they publish. Being a contracted author is a great honor. Author; that word seems so out-of-place and foreign; it reminds me of the stun I felt at the word father when my firstborn was still enclosed in the womb.

To date the project has progressed nicely. Being stuck in a blizzard over the Christmas break provided me the final 15 hours I needed to finish the book’s outline and since the beginning of January I’ve been writing the first draft. This morning I finished chapter 3, well finished what Anne Lamott calls the sh[odd]y first draft. Another 22 of those remain. I figure my book will call for about 1,000 hours of labor.

Labor is the word. The labor of writing is articulated well in William Butler Yeats’ poem “Adam’s Curse.” The poem is especially dear to me because my wife is my primary editor. Yeats and his love sit together to edit one isolated line of poetry for hours. “Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.” He says that to work at editing words is at least as laborious as the work of scrubbing concrete or breaking stones in a quarry. As a former carpenter I can say that the mental labor of writing and rewriting (and then pulling the stitches, deleting what you’ve written, and starting all over) trumps the toil of hauling concrete blocks and pounding framing nails into the skeleton of a second story overhang. I’ve done both. Writing is the harder of the two. But writing is also the most magnificent.

So what is my subject matter? I can’t divulge that yet (insert deflating tire hiss noise). In the months ahead I plan to reveal more about the book.

Back to the shadows and to that splendid labor.

Blessings!

Tony

A Friend and Hero

Tony Reinke Omaha, Omaha NE

My friend Robb is one of the most industrious and hardworking men I know. He’s also one of the most entertaining, too, but that’s for another post. Back in Omaha Robb somehow balances his life as a police officer, a fireman, a godly husband and father, and a respected deacon in his church.

This morning I awoke to read that on Friday morning Robb saved the life of a 5 year old boy from a burning home.

Here is the article running in today’s Omaha World-Herald:

Fireman’s blind grasp rescues boy

Seconds before flames entered the bedroom, Omaha Fire Capt. Robb Gottsch handed an unconscious 5-year-old boy to the safety of another firefighter. Gottsch, a 16-year-veteran, and Anthony Brummett, a firefighter candidate, passed flames on their way to the boy’s smoke-filled room early Friday.

They couldn’t see ahead of them in the bedroom, but Gottsch reached onto the bottom of a set of bunk beds and felt a leg.

Pulling 5-year-old Shakir Parnell into his arms, Gottsch turned with Brummett to head down and out of the house at 2827 Laurel Ave. The fire had spread, though, and the way out was blocked.

Gottsch heard glass break, and the smoke cleared a bit. Another firefighter, Adam Ostergaard, had knocked out the bedroom window — a way out.

Gottsch passed the boy through the window to Ostergaard. Firefighters shut the bedroom door to keep the flames from rushing in.

“I hope I gave that kid a chance,” Gottsch said Friday.

Shakir and Demarion Station — a 2-year-old who was carried out of the house before firefighters arrived — were taken in critical condition to Creighton University Medical Center.

They were expected to live, fire officials said.

“It was a frantic search,” Gottsch said. “I just wanted to get the boy out of that smoke-filled environment as quickly as possible. If anyone’s thankful, it’s me.

“I was just the one who found him and handed him out the window.”

Shakir was unconscious the entire time, Gottsch said. The fire captain said he saw no obvious burns to the boy’s skin, but that the boy might have had burns in his airway from the smoke. Demarion appeared to have suffered burns, officials said.

Gottsch stayed behind in the house after handing out Shakir; he thought a man who had gone into the house to try to save the boy still was inside. … Gottsch later learned that heavy smoke had prevented the man he was worried about from going upstairs; he was safe. … Gottsch said he and his crew didn’t do anything “spectacular,” just worked as a team.

Nice work brother!

Christ-Centered Education

Tony Reinke Puritans, Reading

From the “Rules and Precepts Observed at Harvard College”, dated September 26, 1642:

“Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him (Proverbs 2, 3).”

Imagination

Tony Reinke Imagination

The gospel incorporates various strands of detail. Included in the gospel is a complex string of genealogies that run together the most unlikely of folks into a most unlikely ancestry for the Savior. The gospel is also comprised of ancient prophecies often fragmented and scattered throughout the OT and often veiled in obscure language not immediately clear to the eye. All these centuries of time and genealogies of people and prophecies of intent are all interwoven by God into one cohesive plan that points directly to Christ, a plan so subtle and so complex that even man and Satan allied to thwart the Messiah’s progress was nothing more than a self-defeating push that further hastened the Savior’s death, burial, and victorious resurrection. This entire plan was conceptualized by God before sinners sinned, before the world existed. The gospel, it seems to me, is the most glorious expression of imagination.