Because I love books...

1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

Testimony to Bricolage

The wonderful pastor mentioned in this essay wanted me to record the story of my faith journey, but since I'm awful without a script, I had to type out what I need to record...

I’ve lived an entire life of bricolage. I like to think that my faith journey started on July 9, 1979, which just happens to be my birthday. I was born to two Hindu parents, but I was born in a Lutheran medical center, St. Mark’s to be exact…

I was raised in a Hindu household, but it was pretty challenging to be Hindu in Midwestern America. Not that there was anything wrong with that. It’s just hard to find a temple community where there isn’t that large of a Hindu population. My parents gave my brother and me gifts for Christmas, simply because other kids at school received gifts on December 25th. I ate jellybeans in the spring, dyed eggs, and wore bonnets. This was just part of the bricolage, taking parts of the culture around me and making it my own.

The real shift came when I was in college. I attended local churches out of curiosity. Some of those experiences were comical; some were not so great. I had a close friend who was in really involved in LSM, and she invited me to a couple of dinners at her church. I was kind of apprehensive, given my past experiences, but I trusted my friend. And honestly, as a college student, I would go anywhere that had free food. Home-cooked free food… But along with that free food came something I was so unfamiliar with. Fellowship. Koinonia. Breaking bread with others and sharing our lives, trials and tribulations with one another.

The shift continued into graduate school. I met a nice boy, and we were going to get married. Bricolage yet again played a part in my life. The nice boy and I were going to get married in a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony, and a traditional Lutheran ceremony. At that point, the nice boy and I had to throw tradition out the window because we couldn’t find old, classic traditions in a Hindu-Lutheran marriage.

Because we were getting married in the church, I wanted to know more about it. The nice boy and I found a wonderful pastor to marry us. The pastor was even more wonderful because in the two years before the wedding, he met with the nice boy and me almost once a week (keep in mind, almost once a week for TWO YEARS) to answer any questions I had about being Lutheran. And believe me, over two years time, you can ask lots of questions. Lots of basic questions, lots of silly questions, but also lots of questions that really look at what can make someone Lutheran? What makes someone Christian?

I attended church regularly. I found a home, somewhere that was not just a sanctuary in name, but in emotion. At one particular service, the congregation sang “I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry.” The best way to describe the feeling when I heard the hymn was feeling God in my heart. I finally made room for Him in my life, in my head, and in my heart. Listening to the lyrics moved me to tears, especially

“When you heard the wonder of the Word
I was there to cheer you on;
You were raised to praise the living Lord,
to whom you now belong.”

“I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry” was sung at my baptism, where I became a child of God, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.

Bu my story of bricolage doesn’t end there. I’m now attending Fuller Theological Seminary. Part of my reasoning of attending Fuller is bricolage. Because it is a non-denominational seminary, I hope to hear other stories about faith journeys, but from different Christian backgrounds, and different walks of life. I also want to share my story.

This Lutheran Life, Part I

For those of you who are unaware, I've started a new, scary, and exciting adventure. On March 31st, I became a seminarian. Yep. Some of you may be scratching your heads wondering what happened, weren't you a Hindu? In all honesty, I cannot amputate the Hindu part of myself unless I get a lobotomy. But I'm also embracing my Lutheran faith, although I'm still pretty wobbly, and defense on some discussions ends in me trailing off, "Well, I don't know..."

Ending a discussion with, "Well, I don't know...?" tends to annoy me. Part of my reasoning of attending seminary is to find out the basic question of why? Why am I here? What is my purpose? I know seminary won't answer these questions, and that these questions will probably never be answered, but I still want to try to understand why God sent his only son to die on a cross for humanity.

Pretty heavy, huh?

Whenever I'm on campus, I'm reminded of Jesus's death every day. There's a statue in front of the library of Jesus being nailed to the cross. I'm so accustomed to seeing Jesus as a glorified art form, looking lovingly at his disciples, hugging a lamb, surrounded by a glowing light. Walking by the statue everyday kind of terrifies me. Jesus's expression is of pain and torment. His right hand has already been nailed to the cross. His left is still free, but someone is in place with a nail touching his left wrist, mallet raised in the air ready to strike. It's very... human.