Our dear friend, Stephen Bump, puts words to music whenever he studies the Bible. He doesn't have a CD, nor does he promote the songs, but they have been sweet to the congregations who sing them.
When I rerun Chris and Jessie's wedding (oldest son), two songs come to mind. My brother filling the upper space of the room with The Lord's Prayer, the soaring notes of for Thine is the kingdom bringing tears to those around us.
In contrast, the other song was quiet, a song of benediction, written and sung by Steve, with his acoustic guitar.
Now I commit you to God, to the Word of His grace,
which can build you up with the rest of the saints.
This morning we sang Not Ashamed in which the epistle to the Romans is condensed into seven verses. Here is one section of the song. When my flesh is whining and demanding, I'm going to say, "Not obliged, pal."
In Christ no obligation to satisfy the flesh.
In Christ no condemnation as the slaves of righteousness.
We're free to serve our Master, our new Father and our God,
Who has freely bestowed His salvation.
. She and her husband Ed traveled from their home base in Tuscany over five years and put the notes together into this charming book. Their trips took them to mostly Mediterranean places: southern Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Morocco, France, Britain, Greece, Crete, Scotland, Turkey and several locations in Italy.
. The author of 
. The tracks are one-take songs. He sings a Blind Willie Johnson song, 
Jason Elliot (1999) In his skillful illumination of an ancient and noble history long obscured by war, Elliot has done service to a country rarely written about. But it's his lyrical culling of beauty from despair that will resonate long after the last page has been turned.
, Jeffrey Tayler (2000) Faced with an identity crisis in his work and his life, seasoned traveler and journalist Jeffrey Tayler made a bold decision. He would leave behind his mundane existence in Moscow to re-create the legendary British explorer Henry Stanley's trip down the Congo in a dugout canoe, stocked with food, medicine, and even a gun-toting guide.
Isak Dinesen (1937, 1960) At the age of twenty-seven, Isak Dinesen (née Karen Blixen) left Denmark and sailed for East Africa to marry her Swedish cousin, Baron Bror Blixen. Together they bought a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in Kenya. From 1914 to 1931 she managed the plantation, even after she and her husband separated. Her account of those years is transformed by the magic of her prose and her supreme gift as a storyteller into a vibrant re-creation of Africa, filled with her affection for and understanding of the land and its people.
Albert Schweitzer (1933) A brilliant organist, musicologist, theologian and philosopher, Albert Schweitzer, at the age of thirty, turned his back on the dazzling rewards the world offered him in order to serve his fellow men as a medical missionary in Africa. It is a thrilling account of a monumental personal quest, enormous self-sacrifice and extraordinary achievement, told with simplicity, modesty, and humor.
Laurens van der Post (1961) Traveling out of the Kalahari's Central Desert, van der Post traverses the splendid terrain of southwestern Africa and finally encounters the Bushmen. It is only at the end of this physical trek that the real journey can begin; once van der Post has found the tribe, he looks deep into the Bushmen's customs and mythological life. The true odyssey of 
Chinua Achebe (1969) It is a measure of Achebe's creative gift that he has no need whatever for prose fireworks to light the flame of his intense drama. Worthy of particular attention are the characters. Achebe doesn't create his people with fastidiously detailed line drawings: instead, he relies on a few short strokes that highlight whatever prominent features will bring the total personality into three-dimensional life.
edited Alan Ryan Gathering nineteen eyewitness accounts of travelers to the world's diamond capital, this book illuminates the complex culture and racial politics of a country well on its way to becoming one of history's great success stories. As visitors, the authors bring a stranger's questions and curiosity, not a native's assumptions, to their observations. No standard guidebook can offer this intensely personal perspective. 
Dean King (2004) Everywhere hailed as a masterpiece of historical adventure, this enthralling narrative recounts the experiences of twelve American sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of Africa in 1815, captured by desert nomads, sold into slavery, and subjected to a hellish two-month journey through the bone-dry heart of the Sahara. The ordeal of these men--who found themselves tested by barbarism, murder, starvation, death, dehydration, and hostile tribes that roamed the desert on camelback--is made indelibly vivid in this gripping account of courage, brotherhood, and survival.
Beryl Markham (1942) She has written so well, and marvelously well, that I [Ernest Hemingway] was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers.
Edited Alan Ryan (1997) Inspiring and unforgiving, Alaska is vividly revealed in this collection of twenty-eight eyewitness reports from intrepid travelers to America's last great frontier. An enraptured John Muir first glimpses Glacier Bay in 1879. John McPhee encounters 
O.E. Rölvaag (1925) A classic story of a Norwegian pioneer family's struggle with the land and the elements of the Dakota territory as they try to make a new life in America. / A fiercely woven tapestry of harsh texture wrought by a master sure in his choice of strong fiber and of color, telling with heroic gesture and intricate design its legend of simple people struggling in the eternal coil of unwitting life.
Andrew Nelson Lytle (1975) "Now that I have come to live in the sense of eternity" are the words with which Tennessean Andrew Lytle opens his lively family chronicle, 
Caroline Gordon (1931) A dynamic narrative of how a powerful Southern family came to lose its way, it is a tale of dynastic complications and self-dispossession, stewardship and the failure of the proprietary spirit. Penhally treats the Southerner's relationship to the land, his rooted-ness to place, and the consequences of its loss.
Albert Murray (1976) Stomping the Blues is one of the three best books ever written on music. / Murray is possessed of the poet's language, the novelist's sensibility, the essayist's clarity, the jazzman's imagination, the gospel singer's depth of feeling.
Isabella L. Bird (1873) Women were scarce enough in the West of the late nineteenth century, and a middle-aged English lady traveling alone, by horseback, was a real phenomenon. It was during the autumn and early winter of 1873 that Isabella Bird made this extended tour of the Rocky Mountain area of Colorado, when she was on her way back to England from the Sandwich Islands. / Delightful letters by an English spinster who recorded a considerable portion of the real West.
William Kittredge (1992) This is the story of a grandfather whose single-minded hunger for property won him a ranch the size of Delaware but estranged him from his family; of a father who farmed with tractors and drainage ditches but consorted with movie stars; and of Kittredge himself, who was raised by cowboys and saw them become obsolete, who floundered through three marriages, hard drinking, and madness before becoming a writer.
and 
James A. Crutchfield (1994, 1999) Here you'll read about the volcanic eruption that formed Crater Lake, the haphazard deal that led to the founding of Portland, and the reckless decision that resulted in the Great Tillamook Burn. / You will uncover the avalanche at Ozette, follow a massive manhunt from Tacoma to the wheat fields of eastern WA, and witness the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
(1809) From 1804 to 1806 Captain Lewis and Captain Clark led their intrepid expeditionary crew on an 8,000-mile trek--from the mouth of the Missouri to the Pacific outlet of the Columbia River. Paddling in canoes and riding on Indian horses, the "Corps of Discovery" confronted breathtaking mountains, white-water rapids, charging buffalo...a natural world never before seen by white men: Edenic landscapes, mysterious native peoples, and the first descriptions of hundreds of plants and animals (coyotes, bighorns, prairie dogs, jackrabbits, kit foxes, and 
Vardis Fisher (1965) Strange, that people can find so strong and fascinating a charm in this rude, nomadic, and hazardous mode of life, as to be estranged themselves from home, country, friends, and all the comforts, elegances, and privileges of civilization; but so it is, the toil, the danger, the loneliness, the deprivation of this condition of being, fraught with all its disadvantages, and replete with peril, is, they think, more than compensated by the lawless freedom, and the stirring excitement, incident to their situation and pursuits. 
John Muir (1894) This book reflects three aspects of John Muir's remarkable life: first, as one of the leading figures in the fight for land and forest conservation; second, as a practicing geologist who saw in pre-historic glaciation one of the vital forces in land formation; and third, as an eloquent essayist who celebrated the beauties of the mountains of California for millions of readers. Muir describes here the glacier meadows, the incomparable Sierra terrain, the exhilaration of mountain climbing.
Bob Welch (2005) My Oregon is Bob Welch at his finest. It is a literary journal to the soul of a state, reminding us that the virtues of a place are found not only in trees and mountains and beaches, but in people. Full of heart and humor, this collection of essays belongs on the shelf of everyone who calls Oregon home.
William O. Douglas (1950) In 1949, after a fall from a horse broke all but one of his ribs, the busy 51-year-old Douglas had time to write about the profound influence nature had on his life. "These pages contain what I, as a boy, saw, felt, smelled, tasted, and heard in the mountains," he begins. What follows are evocative, compelling tales of the grandeur of the mountains and the solitude of the individual. "I learned that the richness of life is found in adventure," Douglas writes. "It develops self-reliance and independence. Life teems with excitement. This book may help others to use the mountains to prepare for adventure."
John McPhee (1986) If you like to read about geology, you will find good reading here. If, on the other hand, you are not much engaged by the spatial complexities of the science, you could miss a richness of human history that has its place among the strata described. This is the story of an isolated ranch, soon after the turn of the century, and of the geologist who grew up there, at home with the composition of the high country in the way that someone growing up in a coastal harbor would be at home with the vagaries of the sea.
Andrew Garcia Throughout the long nights, by lantern light, on this little mountain ranch, Garcia wrote a story that took place in a land so vast and varied that it is almost impossible to comprehend. / 
Bill Bryson (1998) Back in America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings.
Bill Bryson (2000) Australia is a country that exists on a vast scale. It is the only island that is also a continent and the only continent that is also a country. Despite being the most desiccated, infertile, and climatically aggressive of all inhabited continents, it teems with life. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in extremely nasty ways than anywhere else: sharks, crocodiles, the ten most deadly poisonous snakes on the planet, seashells that actually attack you, and the unbelievable box jellyfish. It's one tough country
Ivo Andric (1945) A great stone bridge built three centuries ago in the heart of the Balkans by a Grand Vezir of the Ottoman Empire dominates the setting of Ivo Andric's novel. Spanning generations, nationalities, and creeds, the bridge stands witness to the countless lives played out upon it...War finally destroys the span, and with it the last descendant of that family to which the Grand Vezir confided the care of his pious bequest--the bridge.
Susanna Moodie (1852) When Roughing It in the Bush was published in 1852, it created an international sensation, not only for Susanna Moodie's glowing narrative of personal incident, but also for her firm determination to puncture the illusions European land-agents were circulating about life in Canada. This frank and fascinating chronicle details her harsh--and humorous--experiences in homesteading with her family in the woods of Upper Canada.
Edited by Alan Ryan (1859-1992) The Reader's Companion to Cuba offers nearly two dozen captivating eye-witness "reports" from visitors to Cuba's shores, among them Anais Nin's introduction to the "Fairyland" of Havana, Langston Hughes's surprising rumba party, an excursion around town with Fidel behind the wheel, Tommy Lasorda's baseball interview with pistol presiding, and Thomas Merton's pilgrimage to Our Lady of Cobre--a trip "nine-tenths vacation and one-tenth pilgrimage."
H.V. Morton (1927) Currently in its 40th printing with its original publisher in the UK, this is the book that one British newspaper has called "travel writing at its best. Bill Bryson must weep when he reads it." Whether describing ruined gothic arches at Glastonbury or hilarious encounters with the inhabitants of Norfolk, Morton recalls a way of life far from gone even at the beginning of a new century.
Andrea Levy (2004) Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmer's daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve.
Frances Mayes (2006) Spain, Portugal, France, British Isles, Turkey, Greece, North Africa...Weaving together personal perceptions and informed commentary on art, architecture, history, landscape, and social and culinary traditions of each area, Mayes brings the immediacy of life in her temporary homes to the reader. Will be savored by all who loved 
Jan Morris (1992) For the most part, the pieces in Locations are not meant to tell readers how somewhere looks, or feels, or sounds, as most travel writings used to be, but simply present an individual response to a place--a wanderer's response, offering no advice, expecting no emulations, and (whatever the intentions of some of my patrons) certainly not hoping to contribute to the leisure industry. I gave the book its title partly because I liked the filmic sound of it, but partly because it did not sound like the title of a travel book, but just of a book about places here and there, seen by somebody who happened to be around.
Leslie Thomas (1983) This is Leslie Thomas's vivid and personal account of his odyssey around some of the most fascinating islands of the globe. Descriptive, evocative and liberally sprinkled with anecdotes, Leslie Thomas's narrative, accompanied by his own color photographs, enables the reader to feel the unique mystery and character of each island as he himself has experienced it.
Hilaire Belloc (1942) The old security is gone. It does not follow that we ought to attempt an understanding of foreign people today. Probably if we tried to do that things would get even worse; because they would become more perilous. And yet one can't help wishing, at least I can't help wishing, that people in this country knew more about other people. The great bond woudl be religion; but of that bond people today know nothing. A secondary and much feebler bond is travel. 
Christine de Pizan (1405) Written in 1405, The Book of the City of Ladies is a history of Western civilization from the point of view of women. Christine de Pizan, the author of this remarkable volume, is considered France's first woman of letters. She wrote more than twenty distinguished works, nearly all concerned with two themes: the political life of her country and the defense of her sex. 
Scotto Sisters (1989) 
Thad Carhart (2000) Walking his two young children to school every morning, Thad Carhart passes an unassuming little storefront in his Paris neighborhood. Intrigued by its simple sign--Desforges Pianos--he enters, only to have his way barred by the shop's imperious owner. Intertwined with the story of a musical friendship are reflections on how pianos work, their glorious history, and stories of people who care for them, from amateur pianists to the craftsmen who make the mechanism sing.
M.F.K. Fisher (1964) Here she not only celebrates, in her uniquely perceptive, evocative fashion, Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, but also gives us 'my picture, my map, of a place and therefore of myself'. Weaving together topography, history, folklore and personal memoirs with the looks, the sounds, the smells and the tastes of her chosen cities, M.F.K. Fisher provides the traveler, the gourmet and the lover of France and fine writing with unforgettable portraits of two remarkable and highly individual towns.
James R. Gaines (2005) [Frederick] worked hard and long to draw "old Bach" into his celebrity menagerie. The king had prepared a cruel practical joke for his honored guest, asking him to improvise a six-figure fugue on a theme so fiendishly difficult some believe only Bach's son could have devised it. In a fever of composition, [Bach] used the coded, alchemical language of counterpoint to write 
G.B. Edwards (1981) Ebenezer Le Page, a man of the Channel Islands tells his story, and from the moment we meet him, in mid-sentence, we are spellbound: he is funny and contrary with a furious loving attachment to the past and an old man's querulousness towards the new. / Imagine a weekend spent in deep conversation with a superb old man, a crusty, intelligent, passionate and individualistic character at the peak of his powers as a raconteur, and you will have a very good idea of the impact of 
E. M. Forster (1924) Ranked among the greatest novels of the twentieth century, A Passage to India is the classic account of the clash of cultures in British India after the turn of the century. With careful crafting, exquisite prose, and a well-developed sense of irony, Forster reveals the menace lurking just beneath the surface of ordinary life, as a common misunderstanding erupts into a devastating affair. Mr. Forster possesses the secret of all poets, which is intensity of perception.
Madhur Jaffrey (2005) This memoir is both an enormously appealing account of an unusual childhood and a testament to the power of food to prompt memory, vividly bringing to life a lost time and place. Included here are recipes for more than thirty delicious dishes recovered from Jaffrey's childhood.
Frank Delaney (2005) Ireland travels through the centuries, interweaving Ronan's quest for the Storyteller with a richly evocative unfolding of the great moments of Irish history, ranging from the savage grip of the Ice Age to the green and troubled land of tourist brochures and political unrest. Along the way, we meet foolish kings and innocent monks, fabled saints and great works of art, shrewd Norman raiders, strong tribal leaders, poets, politicians, and lovers. Each illuminates the magic of Ireland and the eternal connection of its people to the land.
Maurice O'Sullivan (1933) Maurice O'Sullivan was born in 1904 on a remote island off the Atlantic coast of Ireland--the Great Blasket. In this classic book he tells the story of his youth, and of a way of life which belongs to the past. 
Denis Donoghue (1990) 
Lorenza De' Medici (1996) For those who imagine Italian food to consist of pizza, pasta and tomato sauce, this book will be a revelation. It encompasses the culinary traditions of the whole of Italy - a country diverse in landscape, climate and traditions, but blessed with a wonderful array of ingredients and a people imaginative enough to make the most of them. The food is uncontrived but delicious, fresh and full-flavored.
Ursula K. LeGuin (2008) In The Aeneid, Vergil's hero fights to claim the king's daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. LeGuin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills. / An elegant echo chamber for a canonical work, a reading of an epic poem, and a rewriting of that poem.
Hilaire Belloc (1902) 'The only book I wrote for love.' So Hilaire Belloc described this fusion of anecdote, humour and reflection, all grouped around the story of his pilgrimage to Rome. Meet the Commercial Traveler, the Hungry Student, the Man in the Fur Coat and many more; taste the local wines and ales from the Moselle to central Italy, and view the scenery, laboriously traversed but exquisitely described. Included also are dialogues with a pompous reader, the author's sketches and a preface to end all prefaces!
John Grisham (2007) Yes, Italians do play American football, to one degree or another, and the Parma Panthers desperately want a former NFL player--any former NFL player--at their helm. So Rick reluctantly agrees to play for the Panthers--at least until a better offer comes along--and heads off to Italy. He knows nothing about Parma (not even where it is), has never been to Europe, and doesn't speak or understand a word of Italian. To say that Italy--the land of opera, fine wines, extremely small cars, romance, and 
Barry Lopez (1986) It is a celebration of the artic landscape and of the animals that live there...of the Eskimo...a story of movement...a story of light--solar and lunar rings, halos, and coronas; the pale green and soft rose of the aurora borealis; the distant mountain that is actually a looming, and entirely convincing, mirage. Unique in its vision, it is a book that asks what it means to live well. In the integrity of that land one finds an answer.
Frederick A. Cook (1913) Cook, allegedly the first man to reach the North Pole, recounts his adventures at the top of the world, his meetings with Eskimos and his hunting of musk ox, plus his subsequent debates with Robert Peary after he had returned to his homeland. / Cook must be considered an extraordinary personality in Polar history...he was a Bonaparte on the ice to his rival...
James Howard Kunstler (1993) In elegant and often hilarious prose, Kunstler depicts our nation's evolution from the Pilgrim settlements to the modern auto suburb in all its ghastliness. 
Thor Heyerdahl (1950) Kon-Tiki is the record of an astonishing adventure -- a journey of 4,300 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean by raft. Intrigued by Polynesian folklore, biologist Thor Heyerdahl suspected that the South Sea Islands had been settled by an ancient race from thousands of miles to the east, led by a mythical hero, Kon-Tiki. He decided to prove his theory by duplicating the legendary voyage.
William F. Buckley, Jr. (1987) Each Buckley voyage is distinctive, yet each is an enhancement of earlier journeys. And a journey with Buckley is inevitably an expedition into oddly assorted experiences and comedy, into observation and illumination--into wit and reflection, and into friendships that overcome friction. Here the irrepressible, eloquent, enjoyable Buckley guides us through his beloved Azores, and the the Galapagos ("the Bronx Zoo at the Equator"), about which he inclines more to Melville's view than to Darwin's...
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1962) First published in 1962, it is considered one of the most significant works ever to emerge from Soviet Russia. Illuminating a dark chapter in Russian history, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is at once a graphic picture of work camp life and a moving tribute to man's will to prevail over relentless dehumanization, told by "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy [and] Gorky."
Sholem Aleichem (1883) Of all the characters in modern Jewish fiction, the most beloved is Tevye, the buoyant, compassionate, philosophical, Bible-quoting dairy-man whose life story formed the basis for the musical 
Colin Thubron (1983) Everywhere he went he struck up fascinating acquaintances, and clearly possesses a deep talent for inspiring confidence and eliciting those views and experiences which can illuminate a whole life in a few paragraphs..A book to warmly recommend to anyone with the slightest interest in Russia and her people. / Colin Thubron is an ideal guide. Well informed about icons, architecture, and history, he is also wonderfully articulate...especially in descriptive passages, the language becomes a grave and stately music.
H.V. Morton (1929) There is, I think, something to be said for books written by an explorer who admits frankly, as I do, that he knew nothing about Scotland when he set out, because then commonplace knowledge comes freshly with an air of discovery, and those readers who are also ignorant are possibly stimulated to go forth and perform the same trick of progressive absorption.
Alexander Smellie (1903) This book is not a dull history but a series of brilliant sketches. It has the breathless excitement of a historical novel, but it is all true. / Alexander Smellie was indeed the very man to write this book. One of the best expository preachers of his day, an exceptionally well-read man, and endowed with a rare, happy saintliness, he penetrated deeply into the inner significance of Covenanting times...
Wallace Stegner (1964) Wallace Stegner has written the best single volume to appear on the Mormon migration westward...His sensitivity to human beings and his ability to understand the spirit motivating the oft-persecuted Latter Day Saints allow him insights missed by earlier writers. Stegner draws on scores of printed and unprinted diaries kept by the Saints, and has used these very personal documents to pinpoint events that take on new meaning when viewed through the eyes of commonplace mortals.
John Heatwole (1998) 
George Borrow (1901) Wales signifies a land of mountains, of vales, of dingles, chasms, and springs. It is connected with the Cumbric bal, a protuberance, a springing forth; with the Celtic beul or beal, a mouth; with the old English welle, a fountain; with the original name of Italy, still called by the Germans Welshland; with Balkan and Vulcan, both of which signify a casting out, an eruption...
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