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 Reflections Through Scripture and Gregorian Chant — (Paraclete Press, 2025)
• Wardrobes and Rings: Through Lenten Lands with the Inklings — Julia Golding, Simon Horobin & Malcolm Guite (Canterbury Press Norwich, 2025)
• The Art of Lent: A Painting a Day from Ash Wednesday to Easter — Sister Wendy Beckett (InterVarsity Press, 2022)
• Celebration of Discipline — Richard Foster (HarperOne, 2018)

Well, welcome to the Upwards podcast. My name is Tressa Spengler. 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. Happy 2026.

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

yes. I know, I know. It's just come so soon. you know, with all of our New Year's resolutions coming and coming into January, it's just so nice to know that we have lent to look forward to, to dive in to the desert places with Jesus. 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 just was reflecting on that today as we were leading up to this podcast and 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.

Not everybody uses the wilderness metaphor for Lent. 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 during Lent around kind of repentance, not just meeting God in hard times or in wilderness spaces, but also

So bye.

Yes.

Mmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

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 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. As our bookstore here in

Yeah, absolutely, Byron. I...

Pennsylvania 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.

I too have not been seeped in the Lenten traditions until recently of just being in an Anglican tradition the last seven years and just soaking in those spiritual disciplines that I just didn't really know existed but get to just learn more about. think silence and solitude, I'm an extroverted person and I was like, I'm not sure, I'm a little scared to go into silence and solitude.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

But it's just been such a sweet thing to soak in 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 sit and be and to really gain from that spiritual discipline.

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 helped 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 kinds of churches. And so we're sort of on our own trying to piece together and sometimes even at odds where we're

Huh.

Hi. Mm.

trying to be in solitude and our church is doing something spiffy. Our church, God bless them, I love our church. I'm a Presbyterian. 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.

Yeah. You

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 was like, no, 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 churchical calendar a little bit, that's beautiful. Those Anglicans do that well, so that's good.

Yeah, yeah, it's been so sweet and every year I feel like is different and just going deeper and deeper into those traditions. but Byron, we're so glad that you're here just to have these resourceful conversations of books that you know about and are seeking out. We'd love to hear just, yeah, your first book that you would maybe recommend that we could dive into with this Lenten season.

Yeah. 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 devotional, some of which are new and which are very, very cool.

sure. Absolutely. Hmm.

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. name is Claude Aczko, and Claude's book is called Rhythms of...

I don't know if you know this, he's a scholar of African American literature. He wrote a book called Reading Black Books. He's an Anglican priest and a professor of literature. So as an African American, that's reading black books is a great, great resource for Christian literary people and English majors and stuff. But this is just a daily devotional. It's on the company called Waterbrook, a standard evangelical press. And he does this devotional as a pilgrimage through the church year.

beautiful cover. Mm.

Yeah. Mm.

So he starts, of 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, 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 that.

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. 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.

Hmm. Hmm. Wow. Hmm.

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.

Sure. Hmm. Mm-hmm.

sets us different because we begin to think about time differently. You the calendar is based on the Roman Empire. And 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 to feast and holy days we have as a civic life are all based on Caesar.

And the Christian calendar might be a counter to that, might help erode that, might be subversive, if you will. And so it is 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, 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.

Hmm. Hmm.

Hmm. Yes.

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 McCully, who's 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, there's one on Epiphany, there's one on Pentecost, there's one on Lent. And the Lent one is by Esau. This was the first one, and Esau McCully wrote it. He edited and curated the whole series. And other writers, West Hill and Tish Warren and others have done the other volumes. But the Lenten one is the one that he did, and the subtitle is called

Hmm. Hmm.

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 and how it can shape our spiritual lives, where it came from, why the church started doing it, and kind of how we do it, why 40 days, you know. And so it's not a devotional in the sense where you read a little bit each day or each week like the other two, and like some other ones we'll get to shortly.

Right.

But rather, this is sort of the overview of what Lent even means. So it is a great little book, Esau McCauley in its fullness of time series. And the next one then, of course, to read right after it is the Easter one, Eastertide. And it's a wonderful, book on the season, the liturgical cycle for Easter. So anyway, I wanted to mention that one first. I don't know if any of that makes sense. if your folks up there at Upper House are learning to live into these rhythms of the church year,

Yeah, absolutely.

Some probably not, and some like yourself really are interested in this.

Sure. 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 this calendar specifically? And for me too, the visuals of in the church of the colors of the season and using my imagination in that way and from that historical perspective, yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

An old friend of ours who died a couple of years back, name is Marva Dawn, and Marva was a Lutheran 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 ethic. 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

Mm-hmm.

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 Marber was a wonderful person, but she always dressed in the colors of the liturgical calendar. She didn't make a big deal about it, but if it was Len, she was wearing something purple. She came and visited our store. We met her at conferences and you should always notice.

Yeah. Absolutely. yeah. You

that she even dressed with the colors that she would see in church. So that's kind of a Marv Adon story. One of the seasons 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 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.

yeah. Yes.

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 in the world,

Mm-hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right, right.

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? And of course, GK 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. Well, if sin is really the problem of the world, how do we think about that well?

Yeah, Mm.

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, as another writer, Plantinga 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.

Wow, wow, yeah. Mm-hmm.

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, I just think this is really, really a powerful book in the nature of sin. He looks at different metaphors in the Bible of the sin is illness, that it's brokenness, that it's slavery. And he asks how sin is healed. And in this time of let we long for this question of

Yeah, that's right.

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 our own lostness. And so that's what this Keller book's about. I just wanted to share it. It's 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.

yeah.

on the nature of the crucifixion. is by an Episcopal priest named Fleming Rutledge, and many of our listeners know it and I've mentioned it before. It is a big, wonky, 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 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. 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 Toltein. 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.

Tressa S. (15:55.795)

Wow. You

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 the 40 days of Lent, but you could start at this Lent. 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.

Wow. Yeah.

And so if you like her sermons, she has some good ones. But this is her theological work. I thought, well, gee, if we're talking about Lent, you got to at least lay that out there. Now, another book that she wrote for Lent, and this is actually a Lenten read, is called The Undoing of Death. I would say, along with her Advent book, this is one of my all-time favorite books. It is a collection of sermons from a career in ministry as she preached in New York City on the themes of the death of Christ.

Hmm. Wow.

It is particularly about Holy Week. So that means, you know, the Last Supper, the crucifixion, Holy Saturday, what the heck's going on there? Christ is dead and in the grave. Easter, moving on into the hour of glory, as she puts it, the post-resurrection stories as well. So there is some Easter stuff in here, but most Easter tithe, as she would call it. But it's Maundy Thursday. It starts with a Sunday before Easter.

Mm-hmm.

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.

incredible, Byron. Wow, yeah, these are just, again, just zooming out and just seeing different perspectives of the Holy Week experience and 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, so lovely.

Yeah.

Now, Fleming is 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 is 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 named Adam Hamilton.

Yeah. Hmm.

And Adam Hamilton is sort of an ecumenically minded, mainline denominational folks like him. Evangelicals tend to like him. A big independent mega church 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,

Hmm. Yeah.

even though words fall short, how does the cross speak? How do we understand the cross? 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. It's a skinny book, so it's not that heavy.

Hmm. Hmm.

But he looks at all the different kind 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 multifaceted 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 New Testament scholar and evangelical tradition, he says, who knew that atonement theory discussions could be so stimulating and personally challenging? Do typical understandings of Jesus's death

Hmm.

shortchange God into someone who just demands recompense. In a rare feat, Pastor Adam Hamilton jettisons 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

Hmm.

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

please. Absolutely. me.

go this route and read one of these big heavy theological books. This is a brand new Bible study guide. It's published by IntraVarsity 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 Pax or Pax ministry has put out four books like this, little Bible studies. And if you're listening in, you're gonna miss this, but if you're watching.

You can see there's like super graphics and artwork in it and cool kind of 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 Q &A, 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 piece of the alienated problems of humanity.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Hmm.

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

Hmm. Hmm.

with QR codes to boot is a six week Bible study guide, Peace Interactable Insiliation in God's Kingdom. It's put together by Crystal Acevedo, who I met about a year ago. has another Bible study guide. She goes to Derwin Gray's church, African American leader down in Carolinas. She's on the pastoral team of that church. And 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 a great tool for anybody that kind of wants a Bible study guide that's a little different and a little colorful. So that's pretty cool.

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

yeah, yeah. The other ones that they did, they did another one on peace and justice themes, not on the cross necessarily, but on God's kingdom by a black poet named, his name's Escaping Me Drew, who 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 in the QR codes. And then there's another one on migration.

wow, yeah.

on people moving and God moving people all over the world in the Bible and the world today with immigration issues. And so 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. Kudos to InterVarsity for doing such a good job on those. I think they're fantastic.

Wow. Hmm. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Well, everybody talks about Lent being 40 days, you 40 days in the wilderness. My favorite singer songwriter, you mentioned music, is a guy named Bruce Coburn. 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...

Yeah. Hmm.

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?

Wonderful. You know, that sounds so familiar, yeah.

He does really interesting graphics and they're often very sparse, kind of like silk screens or something, 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.

Yeah. Hmm. Hmm.

And it is not a treatise on prayer. It is hardly even a devotional. It is really like nothing but prayers. And they're almost like, I say they're like the Coens of Eastern religions. They're almost like axioms or nuggets to ponder. They're poetic and prayers. There are a few little meditative reflections in here, but mostly they're these like paragraphs. Like you can see there.

It's Yeah, yeah. .

matched 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

Wow. Hmm.

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, kinda, art book, kinda. 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.

Yes. That's Wow.

And so again, Justin gives you just a paragraph, like you can see here, 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, 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 people may order them through our bookstore. I like them during Lent. Now here's another one that they just did. It just came out the end of last year.

Hmm hmm hmm

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 Low. In the Low. 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.

Yeah.

And what they do in a fairly colorful, creative way is use these art pieces and little reflections, some litanies and liturgies, 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 OK. 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. The drawings are remarkable.

Yes. Mm hmm.

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 Lent. If you've got college students you're working with up there, they really resonate with college students, with young people who kind of like this graphic style and like these short pithy poems that Justin has put together. It's not...

Byron Borger / Hearts & Minds (29:36.646)

Fleming Rutledge. You know, it's not dense theology. But man, there is something about those artful books that I think are really useful.

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

Yeah.

I hope people can see it. Yeah, and I didn't do a good job at showing it, but we've got them here. Everything was 20 % off when they ordered from us. And so we're happy to send these out. These guys are really cool. I'm going to 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.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

thinking Christianly about their careers are turned 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, Erickson comes as well. So we're gonna feature that in the low with college students in a couple of weeks down in Pittsburgh. That's gonna be fun. You you've mentioned walking in the wilderness. 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 close to your heart?

wonderful. Yeah, I think. I know, no, we're jumping right in here. We're friends now. Yeah, I think, you know, there's a lot of ways I could answer that. you know, I am thinking in my mind right now of this image that was on a bulletin.

Or am I asking, we've just met, so maybe I shouldn't be so bold.

during Lent last year of just Jesus and it's just these stark pink and blues of just him in the valley. And he has these eyes of just 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, the times that I have met my humanity, I've met my grief right in the face.

Hmm.

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 it's just been a real image I've been reflecting on. And when I think of Jesus, I think of that picture that hangs in my kitchen. So yeah, it's just been a powerful image that has walked with me this year.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

beautiful. I had a customer in our bookstore once and they said, you know, I like Lent better than I like Advent and they felt bad about it. They said, 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.

Hmm.

Sure.

but it's actually fairly somber. But if you don't get that at Advent, you certainly get it at Lent. The brokenness of our humanity, that 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 Lenten experience, even if they're not part of a church that talks like that.

Right. Yes, yeah.

They need their humanity affirmed, their brokenness affirmed, and they're in the low sometimes. And again, that's okay. So that's why we talk about those things during Lent. 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, 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.

Hmm. Hmm.

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. there's even, it breaks it down to a single word. So it's really user friendly, but it's 40 days of walking in the wilderness, seeking God during Lent.

Wow, Hmm.

And it invites us just to pause and to connect and to find in our hungers even, it's a time of fasting. And so in the wilderness, even a fasting and of longing for something better and wondering about our desires, 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. It's called 40 Days.

Right. Hmm.

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 size. 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 sea or ask.

Wow. Wow. Okay.

He'll just give you 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, of the

Okay. Hmm.

of the movement against apartheid back in the day, Alan Bozak. So he knows these African-American, African leaders from South Africa. And he is a white, I think 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. he gives you, instead of a closing prayer, he gives you a daily practice of ways to practice something.

Yeah.

to embody this word in your own rituals. So it's worth doing. It's really, really neat. There's another Lenten book that kind of reminds me of that. It's 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.

Hmm.

And it has got each, I mentioned that Trevor Hudson had done this thing a word a day, just one word. Well, this is a thing a week. She gives you one thing, an object, dirt, cross, bread, a coin, 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.

Mm-hmm.

So it's Lenten Plainsight, devotion through objects. She did one on Advent like this too, and it was called Advent in Plainsight, 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 that comes from that thing. Coins or bread, you know, is one of them. I think one of them is oil, thinking about anointing oil.

Wow. .

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, this looks at these objects and uses that as a kind of a way into the conversation. 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,

that's a great resource. Yeah.

or pastor, campus minister putting together an informal service around these themes, you can use some of the litanies and stuff that she's created online. So that's yet another one. I got even more up at man. I wonder, is this stuff that seems to be resonating with anybody out there?

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

Exactly.

Now can I tell you about, just a couple more, do 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 Pericleat and it's called Christ in Our Mitz. Christ in Our Mitz, the subtitle is Daily Lenten Reflections, get this, through scripture and Gregorian chant.

We do.

Yes. Ooh.

The Paraclete Press, which was 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 producers of Gregorian chant stuff. Well, what they do here is they give you the biblical texts that are from the chants.

Wow. Yes.

And then they give you a QR code where you can listen to it. And they even give you the musical items. So you can sing it yourself if you follow the shape notes. 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 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, and then they have a biblical text and a reflection on that Bible verse. So that's pretty darn unique. Not only it's linked to music, but it's linked to Rikori and Chan for crying out loud. So that's kind of cool.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

That's great. think for our students who are studying for exams, Gagorian chant is the best soundtrack for your good study days.

There you go. You probably have heard of the poet Malcolm Geit. Malcolm Geit is a beloved poem from the UK. he's got a Sir Galahad epic poem coming out later in February 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 Wardrobes and Rings.

Yes, absolutely.

wow. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

through Lenten lands with the Inklings. So the wardrobes, 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. They have a few others of the Inklings in here as well. It's mostly Lewis and Tolkien.

Okay, okay.

but they do this reflection. 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. 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 lit and devotional. Wardrobes and rings through Lenten lands.

Julia Golding, Simon Horobin, and Malcolm Gait. It's published by Canterbury Press in the UK and we have it here and we couldn't be happier.

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

Isn't that neat? Yeah.

There is a book called The Art of Lent that we sell every year where Sister Wendy Beckett, who was a Roman Catholic nun that was an art historian, and they take great paintings from some of the great museums of the world, and she does a little devotional on them. Some of them are medieval paintings or Renaissance paintings of biblical stories.

Okay. wow. Smart history. Sure. Right.

And some are contemporary that are not linked to a particular biblical text, or you wouldn't know that it was, until she tells you about it. And as she writes about these, it's just a beautiful, beautiful Lenten resource to consider this 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.

Yeah, getting some Lectio Divina in our Lenten practices. Yeah. That's wonderful, Byron. Well, any last resources?

There you go. 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 going to do ones before too long where some of these books will be listed as well. And so 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.

Sure.

There's a lot of good ones from other years that would be very appropriate to know about too. go back through some of our older Book Notes newsletters and you'll find Lenten lists every season.

Lentenless. 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.

Is there a favorite spiritual discipline Byron that you like to incorporate or read during your Lenten journey?

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 spiritual disciplines, along with prayer and solitude and journaling and worship and those sorts of things, fasting. And so I would say reading

But not just reading as I regularly read and I try to read Christianly all the time, but finding some space for a 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 try to build time in for some of that sort of quiet space.

Yes. Mm hmm. Mm-hmm.

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 lifestyle. talking about them, I was once talking about a book on prayer and an author said, you know, Byron,

Hmm. Okay.

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 readers when 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 praying, but no, it isn't. So you have to actually apply this stuff and live it out. So that's part of the part of the journey.

That's right. That's right. Well, Byron, thank you so much for giving us the resources in order to live it out and to be on this journey together.

It's been so lovely getting to know you this evening. And yeah, we're just so grateful for your time and your recommendations today. just for our listeners, all the links to these books today that Byron talked about will be available in our show notes. And then obviously what Byron had said about his links. And Byron, remind me just a little bit more about your bookstore, just the name of the bookstore and where you're located and where we can find your bookstore online.

It's called Hearts and Minds. Hearts and Minds is in a town called Dallas Town, Dallas Town, Pennsylvania. Hearts and Minds is online at www.heartsandminds.com. You have to spell out the A-N-D, heartsandmindsbooks.com. And at heartsandmindsbooks.com, I got a little website. can order anything you want, anything you type in, we can get it. And then I have these book notes, newsletters people subscribe to, and they go out every week.

and those book notes 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 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, 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 this newsletter that my wife and I do.

You

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

Now you're talking. That's what I love to hear. It'll feel like a wilderness sometime. I review all kind of books of 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 folks checking it out.

Absolutely Byron. Well thank you so much again. and yeah we'll be hopefully having you the next calendar and we'll see if it's Advent or the next Lent.

Thank you.

Hope so, thanks.