Living word by word

Festival reflections

I'm still reflecting on the orgy of words and thoughts from the Festival of Faith and Writing. I always come away from this event determined to read more and to write more, but it was wonderful to hear Katherine Paterson's closing charge on Saturday night: go play. Good advice for sabbatical, though illness this week -- our child's and our babysitter's --  has made some of those plans a little harder to carry out.

It's always fascinating how the in-person voices and egos of these writers compare with their writing. Generally speaking, it seems that the best writers (not necessarily the most successful) are the most likable and consistent with what you read on the page. I'm also drawn to the older ones, like Katherin Paterson, because in general they seem to have gotten over themselves. There's also, I have to say, a preponderance of Anglicans and Roman Catholics among these writers. Not so many Lutherans.

Yann Martel was the most memorable in speaking about claiming faith in a secular world -- humble, smart and activist in his own way. He has started a "book club of two" with the Conservative Prime Minister of Canada. Every two weeks he sends the PM a classic work with an explanation of why it is important. His argument: if we have the right to ask our leaders about their taxes and finances, we have the right to know what is informing their imaginations. Check it out here. (That's Stephen Harper in the photo, not Yann Martel).

from the festival

I'm having a lovely time in Grand Rapids at the Festival of Faith and Writing. Great talks from Mary Gordon, Michael Chabon, Mary Karr, Franz Wright, Jon Muth. . .oh, my goodness, so much. It's like trying to get a drink from a fire hydrant.

One odd thing, perhaps a sign of how I should approach the sabbatical. . .

My cell phone -- newly replaced after Johann's attempted swim last week -- was working fine at home. Here, I can call, the call goes through, and I can hear my friends and loved ones on the other line just fine. But they can't hear me. Will just gives the report from home, and I have to hang up. My friends here at the conference tell me where to go to meet them. But I can't reply.

So maybe that's the point, for these first few days, at least: shut up. Just receive.

wild awake

   Sunday night I went to see Mary Oliver at  the State Theatre. It was a magical evening -- an almost-full house gathered simply to hear an aging, unassuming woman read her spare poetry for an hour. For once, the standing ovation felt completely natural and deserved.

I was also struck, having never heard her speaking voice, how much the voice I've heard in my head as I've read her work matched the one I heard from the stage. She is clearly a writer who has, as they say, "found her voice" and translated it to the page perfectly. She's also one of those writers whose work is so spare, so simple and so direct that you walk away thinking, "I could do that." But, of course, I can't. Making it sound that easy takes fifty years or so.

She confessed that her work is shifting a bit in recent years more toward the human landscape, and that she is more willing to speak directly about situations of injustice and violence in her poetry. She got the most raucous applause for a poem in which she imagines taking her dog to the White House, where Donald Rumsfeld would get down on the floor and play like a boy, "for once, a rational man." But clearly, the natural world is still Oliver's first love, and her attention to it the gift she offers to us all.

Until Thirst was published, few people would have called her a religious poet. Now that she occasionally invokes God or prayer or a biblical scene in a poem, she brings to humankind the same attention and compassion.  "Gethsemane"  reflects on how the natural world is always "wild awake." But then she shows true compassion for the disciples, and all us humans, so often not attentive to holiness:

Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not

keep that vigil, how they must have wept,

so utterly human, knowing this too

must be part of the story.

I am so grateful Oliver is still waking early, wild awake to God's grandeur around us.

Zen cross

One of our favorite picture books, Zen Shorts, offers a zen master in the form of a panda bear named Stillwater. He befriends three children and tells each one an appropriate Zen tale as they deal with questions of fate and forgiveness. Jon Muth’s watercolors and ink drawings are a delight.

The story of the “Farmer’s Luck” has been running through my head as I contemplate Good Friday coming up. In this tale, a series of events befall a farmer, and after each one, his neighbors respond with sympathy or joy.

 “What good luck!” they say when wild horses appear on his land.

“Maybe,” he replies.

“What horrible luck!” they murmur when his son breaks his leg trying to ride one of said horses.

“Maybe” the farmer replies.

“What good luck!” they say, as the army shows up to conscript young men into war, and the son with the broken leg remains free.

“Maybe,” the farmer replies, and Muth’s lovely ink illustration shows the son ensconced in a La-Z-Boy in front of the TV.

 The story captures for me the uncertainty that the cross casts across all our assessments of what is really going on in the world. As far as I know, the English language is the only one that calls this Friday “Good.” In German, French and Spanish it is simply called "holy."

To me, “holy” seems a better fit with the mystery that is the cross. Is it “good” that Jesus died? Maybe. Yes, we can say, God accomplished our salvation on the cross. But no, to call such torture and injustice ‘good’ is a bit of a stretch.

 As a lens for looking at our own suffering, the cross puts a great big “maybe” on all those things we simply declare bad, unfortunate, outside the pale. If God can be at work on the cross, then maybe even those moments when God seems most distant to us are not what they appear.  Maybe – maybe – they are where God is at work most profoundly, most powerfully.

Lent is coming

Those of you who know me know I’m a calendar/ reading of the day/ devotional junkie. Or at least, when I buy such books I imagine that I would use them regularly if I just had the right one. I know this is just another form of consumer fantasy, but I can’t help myself.

Anyway, here are the faves for this upcoming Lent

Reflecting the Glory by N. T. Wright

OK, this one is old, but Tom Wright is one of the most accessible serious exegetes around, someone who manages to bridge the evangelical/liberal gap and really digs into the text. Although this book fits well into the Lenten/ Easter cycle, it doesn’t have to be read that way.

 

Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter

I’m excited about this resource because of the authors compiled here: G.K. Chesterton, Madeleine L’Engle, Dorothy Day, and a few 20^th century authors who are still living, like Frederick Buechner. Rather than arranged around days, this one is organized by theme, moving from passion to resurrection. More than 40 reflections, fewer than ninety, so it won't take you all the way through the Easter season.

 Living Simply, an ELCA Hunger Calendar

Just what it says. We're going to use this one at home because it's full of tangible actions we can do with my kids. 

 And here’s a fun one for those of us with  China on our minds: Brushstrokes: a series of meditations on Chinese characters  written by an Episcopal priest who has lived in China for nineteen years. Makes me want to learn Chinese calligraphy!

The Golden Compass redux

The Christian Century has a cover article about The Golden Compass (the book -- they don't really cover the film) titled "The Enemy Church." The first book of the trilogy doesn't fully play out Pullman's theological challenge, so it's no surprise that any protest about the film was short-lived. I agree with Chris' comments below that Pullman's primary problem seems to be with original sin. It's a disagreement shared by a lot of people I know, even though many Christians would agree with GK Chesterton that sin is the one doctrine of Christianity for which there is empirical evidence.
        Pullman's characterization of the church as authoritarian and oppressive is no surprise either to most of us. We're accustomed to seeing the church as a pure caricature in the movies. And, quite honestly, we can agree with most atheists that historically the church has done a lot of Bad Things. Add to that the fact that Pullman's world is purportedly a fantasy world, a parallel universe of sorts in which the pope is John Calvin and people's souls walk about with them in animal form.
            If Pullman wants to criticize the historical church, have at it. Christians can at least agree that the church has often betrayed its own mission. If he wants to argue that we'd all be better people if we didn't believe in sin, well, there you have a matter to talk about, and I'm not sure the straw man of the Evil Church that he raises in His Dark Materials series helps advance that argument.

China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power

    I'm thoroughly enjoying Rob Gifford's China Road, which follows the NPR Beijing correspondent from Shanghai along China's east-west artery to the "Wild West" of China. I picked it up, in part, because he actually spends time in Henan province, the place I'll be traveling with eleven high school youth this summer. Henan is, shall we say, not a glamorous place, and Gifford's tales from that location are not the sorts of things the folks in Beijing want the world to see. But Gifford has a wonderfully warm style that helps us see both China's charms as well as its historical baggage and potential downfalls.
           The most pleasant surprise, though, has been that Gifford reports on religion in China with a frank confession of his own Christian faith. How often do you hear that on NPR? It's not a major focus of the book, but I am so grateful that he included the vignettes he did, such as the story of stopping in at a rural church's Sunday service and finding himself asked to preach.  I appreciate it when people with an audience as big as Gifford's can simply and unapologetically say they are religious, and in Gifford's case his journalism seems the better for it.

my year in books

I love lists, and every year I resolve to read some of the top picks from the New York Times Book Review list of “ten best.” I am usually a year or two behind on these “best of” books (as you'll see below), and I don’t read nearly enough to justify generating my own list of top ten recommendations. But here are the ones that resonated with my year. (I feel churlish, of course, leaving out some of the best fiction, but in terms of influence on my life, this is where I was this year. . .)

 Winter:
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

The beginning of 2007 was marked by a number of deaths, many of them tragic, touching me, my congregation, and my clergy colleagues.

Joan Didion’s memoir of her husband’s sudden death and the ensuing grief is the best window I’ve seen into what death does to the heart and mind of a mourner. Absolutely a must read for anyone trying to understand the grieving.

Spring:

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan

I’ve long been a fan of Michael Pollan’s journalism on food production and its political and environmental implications, but this book blew me away. I learned more than I ever wanted to about what is wrong with our relationship with food and farms in this country, but I also felt affirmed in taking a basically human approach to what I personally eat. Yes, what we eat is political. But we are cultural, social beings as well, and Pollan never loses sight of the many roles food plays in our lives. This book was a tremendous comfort as I sorted through some new health issues in my life and experimented with some nutritional solutions for them. Pollan has some spirited defenses of food as food (which I expect we’ll hear more of in his new release in January), not as a list of nutritional elements, and his writing kept me from feeling like I’d stepped out into a netherworld of supplements and ingredient lists.

Summer:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling

What can I say? Our high school youth mission trip departed the morning after Book 7 was released, and I spent a week with teenagers absorbed in a 700-plus page book. I didn’t get around to reading it myself until August, but I enjoyed it and look forward to the day my own kids will read these books. Rowling is no J.R.R. Tolkien, but ultimately her tale is also one of redeeming love. What’s not to like?

Fall: 

Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sara Miles

I’ve been itchy at work lately, trying to move my congregation to think about its mission differently, and struggling to help Baby Boomers understand that their own issues with faith don’t necessarily resonate with younger generations. Sara Miles’ memoir of her own conversion to Christianity and involvement in food pantries is one I’ve been passing around. For socially concerned Christians who usually find themselves reacting against the fundamentalisms of their own childhood, Miles’ fresh lens on the church brings new clarity about the treasures and the pitfalls of life in community that we so take for granted. Here is a woman who wasn’t put off by Holy Communion, but actually drawn to Christianity by it, and saw in it a calling to share bread with all God’s children.  Her account of her marriage to her partner at San Francisco’s city hall, though a sidelight to the main narrative, brought me to tears.

What's next for 2008? Expect to see more fiction (I have a sabbatical coming up!) and something about China, where I'll be traveling in July.

The Golden Compass

A friend of mine noticed that I'm reading Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass and asked if I had an opinion about the call for a boycott of the upcoming movie. I don't yet, but I was motivated to finally read the book because:
a) it's a genre I usually enjoy
b) I know a lot of kids at my church are reading it
c) a lot of people will see the movie
d) New Line Cinema is promoting it by transfiguring the ring from LOTR to a compass in its previews
e) I heard years ago about Pullman's atheist agenda, and decided I'd better investigate for myself

I'm not done with the book, and suspect that the full agenda of Pullman's anti-Paradise Lost tale will become more evident only in books two and three. So I don't have much to say yet, except that Alan Jacobs, who I respect enormously for defending Harry Potter among the evangelical set years ago, has voiced serious concerns about Pullman. OK, Jacobs is a C.S. Lewis fan, and Pullman decidedly is not, so they are already in different camps. But Jacobs is not a knee-jerk "It's not explicitly Christian, therefore it's bad" kind of critic. You can hear his thought on Mars Hill Audio, here.

Mars Hill Audio, by the way, is sort of public radio (Ken Myers formerly worked for NPR) for conservative Christians. It's very intellectual and thoughtful, and I subscribed to it for a while back when it was in CD format, but stopped when they started doing apology for the war. They did some wonderful programs on Tolkien when LOTR was emerging in film.

the night before St. Nicholas

It's the night before St. Nicholas, so we'll be setting out the shoes by our kids' bedrooms tonight. My own mother used St. Nicholas as a way to "take the edge off" the gift anticipation that sets in this time of year. I'm not sure it's totally necessary in my children's case, since we have November and December birthdays in addition to Christmas. But our German roots call us, and it's great fun to have an excuse to buy a new Christmas book early in the month.

This year, I'm excited about a new book for the Feast of Stephen, Wenceslas. Our other book based on the popular carol has lovely illustrations and just the text of the carol. This one has lovely snowy illustrations but a re-telling of the story from the perspective of the page.

This time of year makes me so grateful to have children at home who still love to be read to.