i used a tag to intro my next posts

i saw this from April and I'm shamelessly copying.

1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post text of sentence on your blog. Please include book and author along with these instructions.
5. No digging about for the "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! (I know you were thinking about it!) Just pick up whatever is closest.

My sentence is "As I look back now on the cloister of Southern fundamentalism in which I grew up, I wonder if perhaps I suffered from a narcissistic disorder (perhaps all adolescents do?)"

The sentence is from the chapter Leo Tolstoy and Feodor Dostoevsky, from Philip Yancey's book Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church.

I've been trying to find Soul Survivor for the longest time. It's original release date was sometime near the Sept. 11 tragedy on the US. And like most things back then, the book's release took a backseat as a nation sat in grief and surprise.

The first time I saw Soul Survivor was years ago -- as an ad to another book. and its original title was "Soul Survivor: How I survived the church" which was pure badass, if you ask me. I kept looking for it but as i've said, unforseeable circumstances delayed its release.

Leah generously gave me the book just the other day, and i've hungrily started to read it. Instead of the diatribes against the church that i was expecting, Yancey took but a couple of pages to establish those wounds and then moved on to the people that has nurtured his faith.

I should have expected it from the author who wrote "What's so amazing about grace?" -- he concentrated on the healing part, and not on digging up old wounds.

If I were to be asked about the people who influenced my faith, Yancey would be among the few on top of the list. And in this book Yancey talks about those that influenced him. These are people I've heard about but don't know. Martin Luther King Jr. Mahatma Gandhi. Leo Tolstoy. G.K. Chesterton.

So in the next few days, as I read the chapters devoted to this 13 people, I will write about them and tell them to you. Who knows, maybe there's someone out there viciously wounded by his/her own church that would find comfort in those same people. I may not be able to give light like those luminaries, but i could always point people into their direction.