a delicate fade

Rating:
Summary: Not a book, but a Confession
Review: "The only sense I ever made out of life was when a man told me the kingdom of God is placed between this world and the one to come. He said it hangs like a curtain between what I can see and the one to come. He said it hangs like a curtain between what I can see and feel (everything fragile and fading, like me) and everything whole. As weak as I am and as blind, it's here waiting to show itself."
Ben DeVries is a new writer on the horizon who wouldn't necessarily consider himself a writer. Ben is an electronic music artist, a Moody graduate, as well as a man aspiring to reach his dreams music-wise and publishing-wise. But as opposed to having a false modesty, the reason he tells me that he doesn't consider himself as a writer is because he is simply explaining his personal story the best that he can. "A Delicate Fade" is that story.
"A Delicate Fade" is not a novel. It isn't really even a biography. It functions as a confessional. The book takes on a form of a tiny, dark space where the author meets with the reader to explain Through 123 pages, DeVries tells his story of his coming to grips with a God who didn't always seem to be what he wanted, and a faith that isn't always where it should be standing. He explains situations throughout his life, including a culminating moment of his college career when, while struggling with doubt and depression, realized some of the most brilliant truths about beauty and angst. He refers to Van Gogh's desire to paint things the way he found them to be beautiful, even if others didn't see them the same way. He refers to Kierkegaard and how the only real despair a man faces is realizing his place between the infinite and the finite.
DeVries writes in a clear style in some places, in others with a somewhat haphazard variation of a stream-of-consciousness style. He peppers his first book with quotes from works that have deeply impacted him throughout his quest of faith. Using the lyrics and music of Nine Inch Nails and the Deftones, films like "American Beauty" and "Patch Adams", and even quoting authors from Lewis Carroll to Sigmund Freud, G.E. Ladd to Leo Tolstoy, Ben is one who sees across the spectrum with a most omniscient viewpoint. He does what so much of Christian culture lacks: seeks to find redemptive qualities in both the "secular" and the "sacred", whether through philosophy, theology, psychology, or the art forms that use them extensively.
The book, overall, verified what I've faced throughout life: the struggle with what I expected my life to be and what it actually came to be. One is never to be satisfied with their perception of the truth and is to constantly seek and find. DeVries gives the notion of rather having a truly sought out faith, fighting to know why one believes, which is better than simply believing for the sake of believing. Perhaps one of the best quotes in the book is when DeVries writes, "It must be difficult to describe something out of yourself. I wonder if I ever really could."

Rating:
Summary: Breathe deeply this fresh air!
Review: A DELICATE FADE, by Ben DeVries, gave me the consistent sensation I was eavesdropping on the inner dialogue of another's soul. He writes with such lucid honesty, it was as if I'd been allowed to slip inside the stream of another's consciousness--a kindred seeker and sojourner--experiencing his thoughts as they were occurring. I felt his internal wrestlings, shared in his defeats, and identified with his questioning.

Ben writes forthrightly. His background is clearly that of an Evangelical; some would say Fundamentalist. Yet he communicates as their discontent product and reluctant critic. Without paying homage to them, he writes with an emotional transparency that discloses their limitations and legacies as his own. Both of which he has inherited and both of which he salvages--if not harnesses (!)--as contributing to his life in ways he passes on to the reader.

Ben offers a perspective that will come alongside those who are disillusioned with the religion of our day and assist them in their groping after hope and faith and God. His voice is one most certainly awaited by the coming generation. He writes as one of them! And those of us from prior schools of thought will do well to listen--whether we are ready or not. Doing so will take us not only inside the twitching curtains that obstruct our understanding of the emerging post-modern soul, but it may even help us pull back our own layers of buried questions and struggles--perhaps forgotten for having been so long conceded or abandoned.

There is an honesty and sincerity here that is at once refreshing and disturbing. It is the frankness one should expect from a kindred seeker after Truth, but which is yet so uncommon that we may have given up looking for it. Many will undoubtedly ask themselves after reading this book why it has taken so long for these thoughts finally to be expressed. Others will marvel that such a young soul possessed the depth of insight to know how to articulate them.

I recommend this book to all those who feel as though others view them as unconventional or disenfranchised--as "on the fringe," when it comes to religion, or church, or Christianity. And I recommend it to anyone who questions, who fights against the creeping shadows of despair, or who feels alone in feeling (however numbly) that Truth and Reality are veiled by a curtain that flutters but never seems to open.

Rating:
Summary: Breathe deeply this fresh air!
Review: A DELICATE FADE, by Ben DeVries, gave me the consistent sensation I was eavesdropping on the inner dialogue of another's soul. He writes with such lucid honesty, it was as if I'd been allowed to slip inside the stream of another's consciousness--a kindred seeker and sojourner--experiencing his thoughts as they were occurring. I felt his internal wrestlings, shared in his defeats, and identified with his questioning.

Ben writes forthrightly. His background is clearly that of an Evangelical; some would say Fundamentalist. Yet he communicates as their discontent product and reluctant critic. Without paying homage to them, he writes with an emotional transparency that discloses their limitations and legacies as his own. Both of which he has inherited and both of which he salvages--if not harnesses (!)--as contributing to his life in ways he passes on to the reader.

Ben offers a perspective that will come alongside those who are disillusioned with the religion of our day and assist them in their groping after hope and faith and God. His voice is one most certainly awaited by the coming generation. He writes as one of them! And those of us from prior schools of thought will do well to listen--whether we are ready or not. Doing so will take us not only inside the twitching curtains that obstruct our understanding of the emerging post-modern soul, but it may even help us pull back our own layers of buried questions and struggles--perhaps forgotten for having been so long conceded or abandoned.

There is an honesty and sincerity here that is at once refreshing and disturbing. It is the frankness one should expect from a kindred seeker after Truth, but which is yet so uncommon that we may have given up looking for it. Many will undoubtedly ask themselves after reading this book why it has taken so long for these thoughts finally to be expressed. Others will marvel that such a young soul possessed the depth of insight to know how to articulate them.

I recommend this book to all those who feel as though others view them as unconventional or disenfranchised--as "on the fringe," when it comes to religion, or church, or Christianity. And I recommend it to anyone who questions, who fights against the creeping shadows of despair, or who feels alone in feeling (however numbly) that Truth and Reality are veiled by a curtain that flutters but never seems to open.

Rating:
Summary: A Courageous Exploration of the Darker Side of Faith
Review: Twenty-something musician Ben DeVries knows firsthand the searing pain of a "dark night of the soul." In this stream-of-consciousness narrative, he invites the reader to explore with him a journey through doubt to glimmerings of hope. His journey isn't straightforward linear reading. Rather, DeVries swirls together a kaleidoscope of observations, images, angst, poem fragments and quotes that are best taken in small bites rather than gulped.

DeVries grew up the son of evangelical Christian missionaries, where God was as much a part of life as breathing.

all my life I've heard about salvation, how it can find us only when we need it the most. I've heard about brokenness and how God can heal us only when we're breaking apart and small. I've known this but not that it would happen to me and not that it could feel so much like pain or that need could feel so much like despair.

Yet, in his battle with depression, he questions the meaning of his life.

I wonder if this is all my life is: a default survival and some days not even that. it seems different from what it was supposed to be and from what I asked for. maybe I don't want it anymore.

He knows with his head that God still exists, yet in his heart he feels the aching void of the absence of God's presence.

I've always been told that God is what I need the most, that only he can fill this hole inside of me. but it keeps getting bigger and more removed from the rest of life, and even he doesn't seem to want to be there when I need him the most.

As he shares quotes from such diverse sources as Rainer Maria Rilke, Lewis Carroll, Leo Tolstoy, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Nine Inch Nails, DeVries seeks reassurance that others have experienced what he has and that his brokenness is temporary. He expresses gut-wrenching vulnerability, although some passages flirt with self-absorption.

some days I hold on to sadness because it's my only comfort. it's there when everyone else goes away, and I'm lonely then but not as much as when they dismiss me when I need their empathy the most.

Yet, readers who have experienced the same unrelenting dark night of the soul will forgive him for these moments as they empathize with DeVries' agonized, candid observations on suffering and his wrestling with doubt.

all my life I've heard about salvation, how it can find us only when we need it the most. I've heard about brokenness and how God can heal us only when we're breaking apart and small. I've known this but not that it would happen to me and not that it could feel so much like pain or that need could feel so much like despair.

In his search for authenticity as a creative writer and musician of faith, DeVries discovers that:

we think that the farther we go into the spiritual life the more we will fit the mold of someone who has the right to be here. but our position was always a gift to begin with and nothing is changed about that now. we're still little children, but at least we have a place to belong.

DeVries refreshingly eschews easy answers. His courageous exploration of the darker side of faith should resonate with readers looking for a companion to walk alongside them on their own journeys through the dark night of the soul to the light of God's love.

--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby

Rating:
Summary: A Courageous Exploration of the Darker Side of Faith
Review: Twenty-something musician Ben DeVries knows firsthand the searing pain of a "dark night of the soul." In this stream-of-consciousness narrative, he invites the reader to explore with him a journey through doubt to glimmerings of hope. His journey isn't straightforward linear reading. Rather, DeVries swirls together a kaleidoscope of observations, images, angst, poem fragments and quotes that are best taken in small bites rather than gulped.

DeVries grew up the son of evangelical Christian missionaries, where God was as much a part of life as breathing.

all my life I've heard about salvation, how it can find us only when we need it the most. I've heard about brokenness and how God can heal us only when we're breaking apart and small. I've known this but not that it would happen to me and not that it could feel so much like pain or that need could feel so much like despair.

Yet, in his battle with depression, he questions the meaning of his life.

I wonder if this is all my life is: a default survival and some days not even that. it seems different from what it was supposed to be and from what I asked for. maybe I don't want it anymore.

He knows with his head that God still exists, yet in his heart he feels the aching void of the absence of God's presence.

I've always been told that God is what I need the most, that only he can fill this hole inside of me. but it keeps getting bigger and more removed from the rest of life, and even he doesn't seem to want to be there when I need him the most.

As he shares quotes from such diverse sources as Rainer Maria Rilke, Lewis Carroll, Leo Tolstoy, Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry and Nine Inch Nails, DeVries seeks reassurance that others have experienced what he has and that his brokenness is temporary. He expresses gut-wrenching vulnerability, although some passages flirt with self-absorption.

some days I hold on to sadness because it's my only comfort. it's there when everyone else goes away, and I'm lonely then but not as much as when they dismiss me when I need their empathy the most.

Yet, readers who have experienced the same unrelenting dark night of the soul will forgive him for these moments as they empathize with DeVries' agonized, candid observations on suffering and his wrestling with doubt.

all my life I've heard about salvation, how it can find us only when we need it the most. I've heard about brokenness and how God can heal us only when we're breaking apart and small. I've known this but not that it would happen to me and not that it could feel so much like pain or that need could feel so much like despair.

In his search for authenticity as a creative writer and musician of faith, DeVries discovers that:

we think that the farther we go into the spiritual life the more we will fit the mold of someone who has the right to be here. but our position was always a gift to begin with and nothing is changed about that now. we're still little children, but at least we have a place to belong.

DeVries refreshingly eschews easy answers. His courageous exploration of the darker side of faith should resonate with readers looking for a companion to walk alongside them on their own journeys through the dark night of the soul to the light of God's love.

--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby