Life among the Lutherans
by Garrison Keillor
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Book Summary Information
Author: Garrison KeillorEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-08-01
ISBN: 0806670614
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
Book Reviews of Life among the Lutherans
Book Review: Garrison's Gospel: Sweet, Sad and Triumphant
Summary: 5 Stars
Life is good every Saturday evening when Garrison Keillor begins his melodious radio monologue, "It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon" on A Prairie Home Companion. So when his new book, Life Among the Lutherans, arrived this week, I was ecstatic. I savored every short chapter of Lutheran life among the Norwegian farmers and dysfunctional families in fictitious Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. It was delicious--and I'm not even Lutheran.
Pastor Ingqvist suffers fools willingly, but he faithfully reads Sanctity Fair to keep up professionally. "A sermon should have a good beginning and a good end, and they should be as close together as possible." Dorothy, at the Chatterbox Café, recently hung a memorable sign on the cash register: "This Is Not a Real Job. This Is Only a Test. Had This Been a Real Job, You Would Have Received a Raise, a Promotion, and Other Signs of Appreciation."
All-thumbs Lawrence Bunsen (Cliff's 22-year-old son), narrowly survived his two years at Bunsen Motors, but is leaving for California. "Lawrence is enormously strong but not mechanically gifted, which is a bad combination." Keillor nets it out with wordsmithing insight. "Being a child of one of the owners, he had job security, but for two years they've had to keep an eye on him and to anticipate disaster and to practice preventive management. They sent him off with a glowing recommendation. Our revenge on the West Coast."
After 20 years at Lake Wobegon Lutheran, the church board usurped his budget for the annual winter ministers retreat in Florida (the funds went to the needy instead), so Pastor Ingqvist quietly flies to Dallas to interview for the $85,000-a-year airport chaplain job. Their inter-denominational pitch: "We're trying to promote a concept of community here. We want people to see DFW as a destination in itself." No contest. Ingqvist decides he does have a soft spot in his heart for those Lutheran loonies and so he turns the DFW job down.
Humor. Pathos. More humor. Irony. Kingdom insights. Funny kingdom insights. And read-out-loud (even to strangers), laugh-out-loud stories. Like the 24 Lutheran ministers on a junket, "Meeting the Pastoral Needs of Rural America." Picture the clergy (all of them) slip-sliding into Lake Wobegon from the newly christened Agnes D. pontoon boat. Splash.
I started at the back of the book (page 167) where a former Wobegonian was tacking his "Ninety-five Theses" to the church door. "But then something in his upbringing made him afraid to pound holes in a good piece of wood," so he slid the neatly typed manifesto (mostly complaints about his Lutheran childhood) under the door of the local newspaper. The 95 declarations are worth the price of the book (well, actually there are only 87 theses--the editor lost a few pages).
Folks at Lake Wobegon Lutheran say, "We don't come from a siesta culture. It's a work-for-the-night-is-coming culture." (What kind of culture exists at your church, company or organization? And is that good or bad?)
And what about this? Keillor writes, "Scripture says, `Be still and know that I am God.' This is not the organist's philosophy. Organists despise stillness. They're sitting there with the organ equivalent of a 300 hp Ferrari and they want to put the pedal to the metal and make that baby fly." (Who's the customer here?)
I could go on and on. Garrison's gospel is sweet, sad and ultimately triumphant. This is a joy to read and impossible not to read out loud to a friend or willing spouse. When you finish this treasure, you'll want another one. Soon.
Summary of Life among the Lutherans
Based on Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon monologues, Life among the Lutherans is a collection of stories about the struggles of ordinary people in an imperfect world, the life and work of the pastor who leads them, and the church to whose high standards they aspire in the small town they call home.The stories in Life among the Lutherans reflect everything Keillor fans have come to expect of this master storyteller. Some are familiar, including the quintessentially Lutheran "95Theses" from Lake Wobegon Days, others are new. Laugh out loud about the church directory filled with photos that are just plain awful. Share the moment when Pastor Ingqvist receives a leather-bound copy of his sermons. Keillor's command of every little detail of life in Lake Wobegon is bound to entertain, surprise , and make readers even those who aren't Lutheran - feel right at home in the mythical community where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."
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