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O2: Breathing New Life into Faith (ConversantLife.comŪ)

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As a university minister and as a person seeking to live some good news, I have been waiting for a book like this. Richard Dahlstrom has done something remarkable: he's given us a vision for a vibrant personal spirituality that is deeply connected to something much larger than ourselves. What we've got here is a theological worldview that includes us, too. Many authors have neglected one or the other.

Other books I've read on the spiritual disciplines have offered wonderful methods for living a balanced life, rooted in Christ. But sometimes they stop there, and leave us wondering if there's anything bigger--a purpose and a mission beyond our own individual healing and personal salvation. On the other hand, some of the great scholars of the Christian faith have recently pointed out that the Kingdom message that Jesus and Paul preached was a revolutionary one, dealing with issues of power and justice and government. And sometimes we wonder how our own small lives fit into that global enterprise.

In an uncommon way, Dahlstrom holds these things together. He calls for us to be a people of hope, with our eyes fixed on the Kingdom of God that is coming. He reminds us that God intends to redeem the earth, to make all things new. We're waiting for God's promises to be realized--a new Kingdom in this place that looks like reconciliation, justice, peace, and love. We are part of a redemption story much bigger than our own lives. Dahlstrom reminds us that ever since God's promise to Abraham ("through you all the families of the earth will be blessed"), the mission of God's people has been a mission of blessing. And this is precisely why the spiritual disciplines matter...because God is calling us to be a people marked by a new Kingdom, a new world order. Through us God intends to make the Kingdom visible on earth, for the blessing of all. We make this reality visible in the world by first encountering Christ ourselves, and then by living our lives in a profoundly new way. We adopt a "rule of life" keyed to a new set of values. We inhale intimacy and love and peace. We exhale compassion and generosity. We inhale stillness and solitude and respect for creation. We exhale a fierce restlessness in the face of evil and injustice. And we practice doing it over and over again. In this breathing process we discover the Spirit of God alive in us, transforming and healing us. And we discover our place in the big story of redemption that God is writing for the whole world.

I will be reading and recommending this book for years to come!

"O2: Breathing New Life Into Faith," what a perfect analogy for a faith that is alive and energized with promise at every new breath. Breathing, it is something we all must do, and is so essential that it an involuntary act controlled by our autonomic nervous system. However, breathing can be done in shallow breaths that give us just enough oxygen to live banally, or it can be done in full, deep breaths that fill our lungs to capacity and provide the rich oxygen needed to live vibrantly. This is the life Christ offers us and the kind of faith Pastor Dahlstrom encourages us to practice. Full breaths of life giving faith not only nourish our soul and spirit, but also allow us to exhale needed sustenance into the lives of others.

I have read several books on the spiritual disciplines, but none that truly inspired me to practice them. This book however gave me some fresh ways to think about practicing them that didn't become legalistic. In this busy world, most of us don't need anymore check off lists. Pastor Dahlstrom relies of the freedoms given by God which allow us, in our individual and unique way, to worship and obey God through the act of exhaling and inhaling the disciplines. Certainly, there are things that are common to all of us to fill our lives with the O2 of faith, but Pastor Dahlstrom shows us with theological evidence, humor, examples from his life, examples from the lives of faithful Saints, and from the life of Christ, that there is a multitude of ways to practice these disciplines. Additionally, he writes that there are times and seasons where certain disciplines are practiced more diligently than at other times; and what I found so remarkable about this fact, is that it is okay! Christ gives us the freedom to have seasons with more solitude, silence, and prayer than others, times of deeper Bible study than at other times, times when taking in the breathtaking natural beauty of the world God created is enough to fill us, and times when we focus more significantly on loving others with hospitality, service, and generosity.

This wonderful book is an outstanding piece of work that would benefit a believer at any stage of his or her life. It contains wisdom and ideas that we all need to hear as we strive to become the "Artisans of Hope" that God desires us to be and that this lost and hurting world desperately needs.

I will say this is a MUST read of 2008. As someone who struggles with where I fit into the scheme of life and Christianity, it really did help breath new life into my faith! If you want to buy one book this year to improve your walk with God I strongly encourage you to pick this up and read ALL THE WAY THROUGH IT.

This is an inspirational read that helps us make the connection between the Truths of life and the reality of living it daily. The personal stories of the author give it an intimate and genuine feel throughout. It brought me to tears as I reflected on my own walk in the Faith.

OXYGEN BY RICHARD DAHLSTROM: shows us a beautiful balancing act between INHALING- relaxing in God's creation and EXHALING -taking care of our fellow man and our earth while enjoying the fellowship and beauty of it all. In our crazy world, we could all use a little reminder to just BREATHE.
Read more about Richard Dahlstrom's new book on my blog at h[...]

O2 by Richard Dahlstrom is a blessing in book form. Dahlstrom demonstrates that faith comes in two forms: inward (prayer, praise, reading the Bible, etc) and outward (charity, social justice, hospitality, etc), and only by finding a balance between the two do we find our way to live out faith. He decisively indicts both sides for not pursuing all that Jesus taught and only doing what comes easily. He divides the chapters into inhaling and exhaling and then delves deeply into practices of each. The chapter on how to live in good stewardship of the earth and rebalance your budget is mind-blowing and definitely a must read. I'm definitely hearing God's call to hospitality after hearing Dahlstrom's description of how he and his family have exercised it over the years and it has changed their lives. I am more of an inhaler, so disciplines like solitude and prayer come more naturally to me, but every chapter is a wonderful read and has something for everyone whether it is a strength or weakness of the reader. It's going on my shelf next to Blue Like Jazz.

Richard Dahlstrom's "O2" is a masterful piece that makes good on its promise to agitate the reader's views on faith, spirituality and serving God, in an imperfect world. From the first two sentences: "It happens every weekend. This Sunday, hundreds, even thousands of people will leave their place of worship after the final `Amen' or benediction and never return," Dahlstrom succeeds in shaking up and subsequently, waking up the spiritually sleepy reader. This is a book that entire congregations, of many faiths, would benefit from reading together. If only for the fact that it is a way to open discussion on the topic of the point of faith, where it comes in a person's life, where it goes in our busy schedules and practical steps on how to renew it today - this book is a guide to how to fix what needs mending on the topic of how we live and embody our faith daily.

Dahlstrom uses the analogy of breathing to describe how to sort out the particulars of our faith. He states with confidence that we all share either of two aspects of our faith. We are all either exhaling our faith, characterized by people who are "do-gooders" exhaustively serving others as an expression of their faith; or we are inhailing our faith, seen in the way we nourish ourselves and "pause, ponder, wait and listen" to our inner voices, as we make the big decisions that become the point of our faith, and ultimately the purpose of our lives. With simply titled chapters (Journey, Hospitality, Servitude, etc.) and generous biblical referencing, the reader is able to start and stop at will, read long or short passages as convenient and finish the book with an idea of what was the point of the matter and how to apply the new lessons to their lives.

The only detractor is the font and boldness of the print. It is written in a sans serif typeface with a light print, so light that I was unable to read it after dark, without turning on several lights. It only became an issue when I insisted on reading the book at dusk and dawn, from the convenience of sitting on my favorite flannel quilt. I can't remember when I read a book with this much interest. I also can't remember the last time I slept with a book under my pillow, because I truly couldn't put it down.

Excellent read, applicable, down to earth, tangible ways to live in the world with a balance of the Inhaling Disciplines (prayer, bible, solitude, silence) and Exhaling (hospitality, service, loving people).