Customer Reviews

Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle: Living Fully, Loving Dangerously

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For me this book is about the wrestling. On each page Kent Annan is struggling and grasping and sweating and squirming in ongoing matches with himself, a ravaged country, his future, and God. I was exhausted and strangely comforted reading it.

I am one of those cliché minivan Costco moms, but I, too, am wrestling. I squirm when I think about the subtitle of this book "Living Fully. Loving Dangerously." I struggle trying to figure out how to love the poor from my cozy home in the suburbs. I am afraid to enter into danger and fight against being pulled into it. I am seeking to learn what God wants me to do in this scary, broken world.

But Kent Annan does not condemn or shame in this book. His honesty and vulnerability feel like an invitation to consider riskier obedience, enlarged faith. This book gave me a safe place to repeatedly ask myself what I am willing and not willing to do for God. I am wrestling. But I finished the book feeling hopeful and curious. What will following Jesus look like for me?

I loved this book. I was stunned by small details: taking four different modes of transport to get from home to work; watching wealthy folks on a cruise ship at port in Haiti, from behind a chain-link fence; a poor Haitian, a new acquaintance, paying 14 cents on behalf of a couple of Americans for their taxi ride; an explosion of generosity from poor Haitians on a bus for an even poorer countryman, left destitute by a flood -- the weaving of 'the good' and 'the bad' seen daily, often minute by minute in this frustrating, marvelous, angry, beautiful, sad and vibrant country.

Kent Annan is a remarkable tour guide, not just of Haiti, but of poverty and plenty, of good intentions and good actions, of what it means to truly live an abundant life, no matter where you live.

This book is very readable, despite its challenging content. I've wanted to know more about Haiti for a long time. It's so close to the U.S. after all, yet before I read this book, I wouldn't have been able to tell you very much about it. Kent Annan's book is an inspiring, challenging, and hopeful way to do just that: learn about our neighbors, how they've been loving, and how we can learn from them. I love Annan's honesty--this book is about real people in a real marriage working out what it means to take Jesus seriously. You won't expect to chuckle out loud as much as you do, as well as tear up at some of the examples of humility and generosity Annan's Haitian friends display. I got a bunch of copies of this book to give as Christmas presents this year because I know it will be a meaningful gift to my family and friends during a season that makes that eye of the needle seem smaller than ever. I highly recommend it!

Kent Annan has a flair for friendship, for taking one day at a time, for accepting the curveballs that come at you in life, for serving the poor, for living his faith.
But, his book is not as good as that. The best parts reminded me of a less interesting version of Tracy Kidder's House, in which Kent goes through the difficulties and vicissitudes of having a house built in Haiti. Overall storyline was fairly flat: He and his new wife are not 100% sure about going to Haiti. They slog through some uncomfortable times, but meet lots of people they like. They have a daughter and move back to the United States, because they are not 100% sure about having a family in Haiti.
Along the way Kent has semi-interesting dream encounters with rats as evil, and recounts regrets about not being able to help a woman with cancer. In the hands of a vastly more skilled writer, the whole book could have turned on either of these themes (I imagine), and provoked a lot of thought.
Towards the end of the book Kent talks about lessons learned. One of them is more or less that the fully examined life never gets anywhere -- most of us only need to decide to get off our butts, which will give us the opportunity to figure out just enough to learn as we go. Or something close to that. But a really good author (*at some point*) really does fully examine his or her experience so it is cast anew for all the rest of us. At least for me, that didn't happen here.

I will teach a course in Radical Christianity next fall and have been looking for books for the class. This book will definitely be on the syllabus. Annan's book is interesting, challenging, beautifully written, and meaningful. It will provide fodder for many excellent discussions, I am sure.

Annan's memoir is both good-humored and dangerous, realistic and hopeful. You may very well find yourself transformed with the author, or at least seeking such a transformation, which is no small step. Scales fell from my eyes that I didn't even know were there. Reader beware.

Kent Annan is a gifted writer, thinker and humanitarian. He writes in an exquisite, highly descriptive style of the motivations, positive and negative, for making a difference in the lives of others. His eye for detail, his heart for helping, his head for fascinating self-revelation, his sense of humility and humor make this a basis for examining our own lives. Very highly recommended.

I read it so quickly. It was so well written and I just couldn't put it down!

This book does a good job of giving an aid worker's perspectives on a life of service in Haiti. From harrowing morning commutes to tearjerking encounters with the limited availability of health care, Annan faithfully shares his experiences, so this book works especially well as a handbook for anyone looking to volunteer in Haiti after the earthquake (although the book was published shortly before the earthquake). Also, when Annan shares his own fears and inadequacies, he sounds authentic, and I liked him a great deal.

My concern with the book, though, is that it is marketed, from the title to the little images on the cover, as a book about Christianity, but it contains very little that is specifically Christian. Yes, Annan makes it clear that his choice to start this new life in Haiti is motivated by a desire to live in a way pleasing to God, but any kind-hearted aid worker from any spiritual background could have written almost the same book (for an example, see Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa). Except for a notation that Annan and his wife enjoy reading psalms to each other in the evenings, some appearances at a local church (which is described more for its impact on community than its particular spiritual underpinnings, and a non-Christian aid worker wanting to understand the community would likely have the same observations), and a few vague references to the more socially progressive parables (the Good Samaritan, the widow's two mites, etc.), this book has its focus almost exclusively on external actions and one man's internal ponderings without much description of the Jesus being followed. At one point, Annan takes the admirably humble step of really listening to illiterate farmworkers' insights about God, but he doesn't share them with the reader, and the only memorable view that he does share about God's character is that Annan finds God to be notoriously unfaithful when it comes to physical protection (an understandable view, but a provocative one that then goes unexplored).

If this book had not been presented to me as a Christian book (Jesus in the title; endorsements from high-profile figures like Shane Claiborne and Brian McLaren - who is overly generous in comparing Annan to Donald Miller and Lauren Winner and even Claiborne - and I was loaned the book by a Christian friend), I think I would have enjoyed it as an unusual perspective of life in Haiti before the recent earthquake. As a Christian book, though, I find this work to be disappointingly lacking in anything that separates it from secular humanism, and I really wanted something more.

I was compelled to purchase this book after a nearby villager shared with me the story about about this man and his wife who lived with this peasant family.
There was a man by the name of Kent and his wife Shelly who moved to Haiti and lived for months with this family. The motive was questioned at first, because it's imaginable for someone to leave the comfort in the US to come live somewhere with no electricity and running water.
This man was humble and compassionate. He worked side by side with the poor, attentively listened to their story, and eventually, he and his wife formed such a strong bond with the people, it was really sad to see them leave.
I was truly moved by their story. Excellent book.