Letters from Sacred Agent 007

The 75 letters were culled from hundreds of short essays written to people around the country who regularly or occasionally attended the Hampton Beach Community Church on their vacations. The author is of the opinion that these "letters" must be of high quality since more people will read them than will ever hear one of his many sermons. The letters were a part of a monthly church newsletter called The Link which contained a prayer list, announcements and humor. The subject matter of the letters was determined by the impulse of the author. They might be about current issues (9/11 for instance), experiences of the author in the military, the family, religious themes, or new findings in cosmology and physics.


Book Review

A collection of 75 gently entertaining letters from a monthly church newsletter. As Windemiller (Which Reminds Me: Memoirs of an Octogenarian, 2005, etc.) tells it, he was serving as a chaplain in Korea during the Korean War, when Ian Fleming was busy creating Secret Agent Double-O Seven. Seeing a happy coincidence between the words "Secret" and "Sacred," Windemiller began calling himself "Sacred Agent Double-O Seven," and the sobriquet stuck. While it is a stretch to imagine James Bond writing thought-provoking letters to people, encouraging them to turn to God and Christianity, that very incongruity forms the fun heart of these letters. Windemiller takes his profession seriously, but not so himself. An aficionado of comics, he cites Peanuts, Lil'Abner, Calvin and Hobbes and others. His interests are eclectic; they include Model-T Fords, diets, parenting, natural disasters and other topics. He often digresses to trace the history of a word he's using, appealing to readers with an etymological bent. This is perfect for someone a church pastor, for instance who could use a volume of safe, small anecdotes for making various points. The author mentions a lamplighter on a foggy Paris night that Robert Louis Stevenson, as a little boy, describes to his mother. Stevenson tells his mother that he is watching a man making "holes in the darkness." Windemiller makes the point in the same letter that it really doesn't take much to light up someone else's darkness. A mother asks her son to bring the dog's dish from the patio into the house. The boy goes to the door and then asks for help from his father. The father says that the dish is really not heavy and questions why his son needs help. The boy answers, "Because it's too dark to go out without a father." An intelligent, unpretentious little book, just right for someone in the mood for simple Christian doctrine.

--Kirkus Discoveries