Best this month
By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Dinesh (Madhur Mittal, left) and Rinku (Suraj Sharma) win the Million Dollar Arm contest in India.
find new baseball players and, hopefully, also get up to a billion fans for the sport. They bring back to Los Angeles two gifted 18-year-old athletes. Along the way Bernstein must give up his narcis- sism, his pursuit of money and fame, and operate under a different set of values. Director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real
Million Dollar Arm Here is a sports movie with spiritual messages. JB Bern-
stein is a driven sports agent who comes up with an out- of-the-box plan to save his failing agency. He convinces a Chinese multimillionaire to finance a trip to India so he can
Picnic In this simple
but elegant book for children ages 2 through 5, a boy and a girl who live in a house at the top of the hill decide to go on a picnic. They invite Sheep, Pig and Duck who live at the bottom of the hill to go with them. A series of inter-
Author bio:
The Brussats publish the website www.SpiritualityandPractice. com where you can find more information about the items reviewed in this column.
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www.thelutheran.org
ruptions throw them off course. A bull chases them, and they are forced to hide in the woods. Sheep’s hat blows away in the wind, and Pig’s ball gets away from him and lands in a pond. Then Duck loses his scarf. All of these diversions make them very hungry. They eat in silence and play games until it’s time to go home. Author John Burningham has factored into this story things for young readers to do and look for. This inter- act ive style works wel l (Candlewick Press, www.
Candlewick.com).
Girl) and screenwriter Tom McCarthy (The Sta- tion Agent and Win Win) have embedded mean- ingful themes in the movie, including the impor- tance of community, the blessings of friendship, and the lessons that can be learned from strug-
gle. The superb cast, led by Jon Hamm, Lake Bell and Alan Arkin, infuse even the melodramatic moments of this saga with memorable impact (Walt Disney Pictures, PG—mild language, suggestive content).
O Taste and See Bonnie Thurston was a college and seminary pro-
fessor for 30 years and is the author of many books on theology and spirituality. Today she is a poet living a solitary life in the hills of West Virginia. In this paper- back, she reflects on Psalm 34:8—“O taste and see that the Lord is good”—which she believes “contains in min- iature the whole process of coming to and growing in faith.” With a succinctness that
is the result of many years of studying and processing the Bible, Thurston discusses the goodness and gracious- ness of God. We can see God’s imprint in human beings, ani- mals, plants, and all beautiful places and things. We can also approach God through tast- ing, which means to partake of something. By living in tune with Psalm 34:8, we learn, as Bene- dictine monk David Steidl-Rast
reminds us, that “every sensuous experience is at heart a spiritual one, a divine revelation” (Paraclete Press, www.
paracletepress.com).
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