On Reading Well by Karen Swallow Prior

I finished this book* today. I’ve been telling people I’m reading a book about books, which it is, but more. Karen Swallow Prior is a Christian writer, a literature professor at Liberty University. You might think the purpose of this book is to tell you why you should read this particular list of great books. But, the subtitle is “Finding the Good Life Through Great Books,” a clue that this is much more than just a book about books. I have not read most of the books, and likely will not read more of them, but I greatly enjoyed what the author had to say. Prior organizes the books around virtues, using a book to demonstrate the virtues and discussing them in a wonderful, thoughtful, thought-provoking way. The subtitle might just as aptly have been “Finding the Good Life Through Virtues.”

Table of Contents

Part One - the Cardinal Virtues

1.       Prudence: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

2.       Temperance: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

3.       Justice: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

4.       Courage: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Part Two – The Theological Virtues

5.       Faith: Silence by Shusaku Endo

6.       Hope: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

7.       Love: The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy

Part Three – The Heavenly Virtues

8.       Chastity: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

9.       Diligence: Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

10.   Patience: Persuasion by Jane Austen

11.   Kindness: Tenth of December by George Saunders

12.   Humility: “Revelation” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Connor

I like the old-fashioned words such as prudence, temperance, and diligence. I had never seen this kind of grouping of cardinal, theological, and heavenly virtues. “The Aristotelian philosophy of virtue is tied to a sense of human purpose or telos – in other words, humanity’s ultimate end or purpose.” “Human excellence occurs when we glorify God, which is our true purpose.” (both page 23). The idea of virtues fits right into our whole “search for meaning” that I hear about quite often.

Prudence

“Virtue requires judgment, and judgment requires prudence. Prudence is wisdom in practice” (p. 34). “Prudence is wisdom at work on the ground, doing good and avoiding evil in real-life situations” (p. 39). Discussing prudence, and Fielding’s “high moral purpose” for his novel Tom Jones evoked many points for discussion. One is God’s involvement in the world, his providence.

…Most striking is his narrative technique. A highly involved narrator opens each major section of the novel and interjects throughout to offer explicit commentary (as well as humorous asides). One scholar explains that this intrusive narrator is much more than a clever narrative device in that the narrator embodies Fielding’s theology concerning the character of a God who intervenes and is active in the affairs of humankind—in other words, God’s providence (p. 37)

Hmm. Active how? Commentator/observer only or causing things?

Another topic is the concept of vices. Prior lists Tom Jones’ vices as rashness and negligence. “Prudence is love that chooses with sagacity between that which hinders it and that which helps it“ (p. 45). What are my vices, I ask myself. Rashness, defensiveness/wanting to be right, pride. “…Applying wisdom requires the ability to discern truth and then to act rightly based on truth” (p. 45). Discerning is one thing; it’s that acting part that’s tricky.

Temperance

“Temperance is not simply resisting temptation. It is more than merely restraint…One attains the virtue of temperance when one’s appetites have been shaped such that one’s very desires are in proper order and proportion” (p. 53). Prior uses the example of quitting a bunch of bad-for-you foods in order to lose weight, and after some time finds she actually wants grapes for a snack rather than the usual unhealthy foods she usually craves. Her desire changed – temperance.

“Temperance is the virtue that helps us rise above our animal nature, making the image of God in us shine more brilliantly” (p. 53). This reminds me of what I’ve learned about Sabbath practice – rising above animals’ unbreakable cycle of life to stop, break the cycle, and rest.

You have to talk about Prohibition if you use the word “temperance,” and Prior does.

Prohibition grew out of the more moderate movement called Temperance. The American Temperance Society was founded…to temper (or moderate) excessive consumption of alcohol, but eventually to total abstinence (teetotalism). The push toward complete prohibition developed as a reaction against another excess: the growing drunkenness (often resulting in domestic violence and familial neglect) that accompanied the Industrial Revolution (p. 55).

Prior explains Gatsby as “a poster boy for the American Dream” (p. 56) who lusts for Daisy and a “part of a world Gatsby wants to enter but can never be from.” She writes of rising consumerism, “Consumerism does indeed consume us.”

A recent four-year study, for example, found that the lives of the middle class are “overwhelmed” by stockpiled supplies, clutter and toys. Three out of four garages are too full to hold cars, and while the United States has 3.1% of the world’s children, it has 40% of the the world’s toys (p.58).

Temperance is difficult in a world of consumerism. “I want what I want” doesn’t really align with temperance, does it?

More – Justice, Courage, Faith, Hope, Love, Chastity, Patience, Kindness, Humility

I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about each virtue/chapter, but I guess I won’t. I want to mention some of the writing within the Kindness chapter. It revolves around the book Tenth of December by George Saunders, which was one of my book club’s choices, if I remember right, but I did not read it. 

The character Don goes into the woods (on the 10^th of December) to end his life after being becoming sick and weak with a fatal disease to “ease the burdens of those he loves” (p.213). A boy, Robin, finds the coat Don took off and searches for the owner. “When Don spies the boy carrying his coat in search of him, even his weakened mind is troubled at the thought of a child stumbling across the scene of death he is about to create…’That could scar a kid,’ he thinks (pp. 213-14). Then the boy falls through the ice on a pond and Don manages to save his life. They go to Robin’s home and the boy’s mother cares for Don, who realizes a “renewed joy in life.” Then he is reunited with his wife.

Before they reunite, though, “Don pauses one more time to consider whether he really wants to continue living, knowing the days he has left are numbered and will be filled with great pain (p. 217). Quote from The Tenth of December:

Did he still want it? Did he still want to live?

                Yes, yes, oh, God, yes, please.

                Because, O.K., the thing was—he saw it now, was starting to see it—if some guy at the end, fell apart, and said or did bad things, or had to be helped, helped to quite a considerable extent? So what? What of it? Why should he not do or say weird things or look strange or disgusting? Why should the s----- not run down his legs? Why should those he loved not lift and bend and feed and wipe him, when he would gladly do the same for them? He’d been afraid to be lessened by the lifting and bending and feeding and wiping, and was still afraid of that, and yet, at the same time, now saw that there could still be many—many drops of goodness, is how it came to him—many drops of happy—of good fellowship—ahead, and those drops of fellowship were not—had never been—his to [withhold].

Prior says whenever she reads this passage, “it pierces [her] every time” (p. 218). She confesses to being “terribly, terribly afraid of dying.” Afraid of all the things Saunders writes of Don fearing. As Prior says, these fears are natural and normal, but she feels they are heightened for her because her husband’s father killed himself when faced with the fate of dying from a fatal disease. It scarred her husband and all his family.

For those so sick or scared or depressed that they think their loved ones would be better off without them, I so wish for them to know what Don Eber came to know; caring for those bodies we inhabit for a while—whether that care is of our own or someone else’s body—isn’t a distraction from what life is all about. It is what life is all about.

                In lieu of death, be kind to one another.

That pierces me, too. I think of many things. Jean Vanier and L’Arche, living with and befriending lonely, mentally challenged people. My brother finding so much humor in his life during the 6 months it took him to die of ALS. My mom feeling so ashamed when she came home from a walk around the block with exactly what Saunders listed, s------ running down her legs. My sister and sister-in-law faithfully present for Mom as she declined both physically and mentally with Parkinson’s. My dad, from his own deathbed saying, “Move her closer, closer,” when we wheeled Mom in to his room so he could hold her hand and say, “Hi, sweetheart.” Dad holding my own hand, kissing it, and saying, “I love you so much.” My aunt – my mom’s sister – sitting beside Mom shortly before she died, looking at old photos and knowing exactly what my mom meant as she managed to speak one or two words the memories those pictures evoked. My sister reading Psalm 23 to Mom as she breathed her last breaths, with Mom silently echoing the words. Yes, that is what life is all about.

* On Reading Well, Finding the Good Life Through Great Books by Karen Swallow Prior. Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, MI. copyright 2018.

The Rain in Portugal by Billy Collins

I love Billy Collins' poetry! I think anyone who reads it will love it. Here is the poem that inspired the title of this latest collection, The Rain in Portugal.

On Rhyme 

It's possible that a stitch in time
might save as many as twelve or as few as three,
and I have no trouble remembering
that September has thirty days.
So do June, November, and April. 

I like a cat wearing a chapeau or a trilby,
Little Jack Horner stitting on a sofa,
old men who are not from Nantucket,
and how life can seem almost unreal
when you are gently rowing a boat down a stream. 

That's why instead of recalling today
that it pours mostly in Spain,
I am going to picture the rain in Portugal,
how it falls on the hillside vineyards,
on the surface of the deep harbors 

where fishing boats are swaying,
and in the narrow alleys of the cities,
where three boys in tee shirts
are kicking a soccer ball in the rain,
ignoring the window-cries of their mothers.

Don't you love it? It kind of reminds me of Jabberwocky in Alice in Wonderland except it makes total sense. Collins' poetry often takes unexpected turns, which is a sign of good writing, right?

There's a poem called "Only Child" that I sent to my siblings. And I read this one to Randy, since we commute together.

Traffic       "...watching the next car ahead and in the mirror the car behind." --Graham Greene 

A child on a silver bicycle,
a young mother pushing a stroller,
and a runner who looked like he was running to Patagonia 

have all passed my car, jammed
into a traffic jam on a summer weekend.
And now an elderly couple gradually 

overtakes me as does a family of snails--
me stalled as if in a pit of tar
far from any beach and its salty air. 

Why even Buddha has risen
from his habitual sitting
and is now walking serenely past my car, 

holding his robes to his chest with one hand.
I watch him from the patch of shade
I have inched into as he begins to grow smaller 

over my steering wheel then sits down again
up ahead, unfurling his palms
as if he were only a tiny figurine affixed to the dash.

I can just imagine him sitting in stop and go traffic thinking of and writing this poem. It reminds me of when I rode with my family--4 kids and a dog--in the Volkswagon camper down the unpaved Alcan Highway. My brother Joel would count the cars that were passing us, letting us know when he reached significant number such as 100.

If you think you don't like poetry, or don't get it, try Billy Collins.

Port William novel series by Wendell Berry

I love a book with a map and family tree, don’t you? Anyone who knows me knows I am severely directionally dyslexic and maps do me no good in finding my way (GPS changed my life -- I need words telling me left, right, and straight), but I love maps like the one in this book, Nathan Coulter, the first (I think) book in the Port William novels by Wendell Berry. I have a set of hardcover versions of The Lord of the Rings series, and it has maps like this. They’re a treasure.

I read Nathan Coulter last night. My night was one of those (many) nights where I wake up in the wee hours of the morning feeling quite awake. The novel is short, so I finished the whole thing. I started on another in the series, Remembering. I had ordered two to see if I like them. Now I’ve ordered them all. So much for not gaining more books and spending less on them. I did buy several used, so that kind of counts.

According to the internet, the order of the series is:

Publication Order of Port William Books

Nathan Coulter (1960)
The Wild Birds (1986)
Remembering (1988)
A World Lost (1996)
Two More Stories of the Port William Membership (1997)
Jayber Crow (2000)
That Distant Land (2002)
Hannah Coulter (2004)
Andy Catlett (2006)
A Place in Time (2012)

Publication Order of Port William Membership Books

A Place on Earth (1967)
The Memory of Old Jack (1974)

I don’t know what the deal is with “Port William Books” vs. “Port William Membership Books.” I’ll have to see if Google can tell me.

Nathan Coulter is written in first person, with the person being Nathan Coulter. It starts with him as a young boy, living with his brother, father, and mother on a farm near Port William. On the map you can see the “Coulter Home Place” below the “Coulter Branch” of “The River.” I like the way the “branches” of the river are called that, and named after the family or home it branches off to. It reminds me of the road in Lynden, WA, that bears my maiden name, Kok Road. I was told a woman with the last name of Kok lived at the end of it.

Nathan’s grandfather and grandmother live nearby and are important characters in the book, as well as his Uncle Burley, whose “camp house” is labeled near the top of the map showing the house going through several owners. They own, live, and work on their tobacco farms. Wendell Berry is a tobacco farmer in Kentucky (as well as a novel writer, essayist, poet, and activist for agriculture). As I read the descriptions of the setting, I often imagined it looking like Tennessee, where we visited a few months ago. When Berry described the still air and the heat, I could feel it.

Berry’s writing is phenomenal. Simple but amazing. Spare but rich. I often start books thinking, I am going to read every single word, no skimming, even descriptions, and I start that way but find myself skimming, especially descriptions, in my eagerness to keep reading the story. Remembering, which I have not yet finished, is full of descriptions and inner thoughts that I did not skip and had no desire to. I started underlining beautiful sentences and dog-earing pages but I had to stop because I’d ruin the book. I have to write about a few of them.

Andy Catlett, the main character of Remembering (at least so far) is walking down a hotel hallway in the middle of the night,

going silently past the shut doors of rooms where people are sleeping or absent, who would know which? There is an almost palpable unwaking around him as he goes past the blank doors, intent upon his own silence, as though, his presence known to nobody, he is not there himself.

“an almost palpable unwaking” -- doesn’t that just glow on the page like a gem? Can’t you just imagine it? Doesn’t the whole sentence embody truly being alone? Blows me away.

And in another scene, Andy is walking from the hotel, in San Francisco (where he’s staying for a conference), and comes to a pier.

There, with the whole continent at his back, nothing between him and Asia but water, he stands again, leaning on the parapet, looking westward into the wind.

I pictured the way it feels when I’m standing on the pier in Capitola, when no one else is around. It strikes me with awe every time it happens, and wonder that I can be in this busy, big city and yet all alone on the edge of land that way. I never could have come up with the words to describe it so well as Berry does. “...with the whole continent at his back.” I suppose I could say, nothing between me and Moss Landing but water. Or me and Monterey. Not quite the same ring. If I zoom out far enough in Google Maps, I see I could say, nothing between me and Antartica. That’s a little better.

Berry’s description of Andy walking through San Francisco before dawn, out to the pier, is stunning. I want to say it’s “scrummy,” like Mary Berry on “The Great British Baking Show.”

Later, Andy does some remembering. He imagines scenes of his forefathers and their neighbors. In one part, he imagines two men who will be neighbors meeting for the first time. One says,

“I’ve got two grandboys. Wheeler’s. They’ll be over to bother you, I expect, now that the weather’s changing. You won’t offend me if you make ‘em mind.”

“They’ll be over to bother you…” “You won’t offend me if you make ‘em mind.”

I’ll stop now. I highly recommend these books!

Terrapin...And Other Poems by Wendell Berry

I have a couple other books I want to write about, but right now I am on a vacation in Tennessee and bought a beautiful little book of poems by Wendell Berry, Terrapin...And Other Poems. I got it at an independent bookstore we discovered in a pamphlet about a nearby town. My husband knows how much I love bookstores -- and he likes them, too -- so we went to that town, Franklin, TN.

I love the illustrations in this book. The illustrator is Tom Pohrt. The pictures are realistic but somehow dreamlike, and they literally depict whatever the poem on the preceding or next page is about. You could look at it and think it was a children's book, and I suppose it could be. It's a book of beautiful poems with lovely pictures that illustrate them.

I recently read some words by Nicole Gulotta, who wrote another book I want to tell you about here, Eat This Poem. She said, "food and poetry are calls to linger, appreciate small details, and meditate on the richness of our days." Today, as I picked up this book of poems I thought of that and how good it was that being on vacation offered me the freedom to stop and linger. I took the book outside on my sister-in-law's porch, sat in the porch swing, and read the poems aloud to myself. Several of them made me laugh out loud. All of them were touching. They gladdened my heart, as the Psalmist might say.

Here is one that made me laugh. Take a couple moments to linger and notice the small details.

A Squirrel 

Here's a fellow who leaves his hole
On Sunday to loaf and invite his soul.
He looks into a hollow beech tree
To see what he can or can't see.
The day is bright. He's in no haste,
Although there was one time at least
He should have hurried more than he did.
He should have run to his hole and hid;
Some hairs were missing from his tail
Where a hawk just barely missed a meal.
This squirrel just barely kept ahead
Of what he'd be if he was dead.
He's the proven perfect master
Of his last meeting with disaster,
And now he has that bare pretext
Not to worry about the next.

I especially love the lines

This squirrel just barely kept ahead
Of what he'd be if he was dead.
He's the proven perfect master
Of his last meeting with disaster

I was smiling before these lines, and laughed when I got to them. That word "dead" was so unexpected: "of what he'd be if he was..........dead." I suppose you could get all deep and say how that's true of all of us, just barely ahead of what we'd be if we were dead, but it still just makes me laugh. And master of disaster. That reminded me of when once my dad came in from outside soaking wet, and as he took off his raincoat and hat I said, "Oh, it's raining outside." "Master of the obvious," he said to me. 

There are many other beautiful poems and illustrations. I highly recommend this book.

Inspired by Rachel Held Evans

In Inspired, Rachel Held Evans talks about the Bible containing “some of the most powerful stories ever told.” This book is all about the story!! Evans takes story after story from the Bible, tells them, reflects on them, discusses the questions they raise, and delights in them. It’s like the subtitle says, “Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again.”

My dad read stories from various children’s Bible storybooks to us after dinner each night for years. One version of the book had 3 simple questions after each story. I remember being embarrassed that so often I did not know the answers. I frequently tuned out during the reading, but somehow that was not constant. Those Bible stories are familiar to me, and the older I get, the more I delight in them. (It’s also handy when watching Jeopardy. Contestants’ shoulders seem to sag when they see the category of Bible stories, but in my family we’re happy to see it – finally a column where we’ll know the answers!)

The chapter titles show the focus on stories:

1. Origin Stories
2. Deliverance Stories
3. War Stories
4. Wisdom Stories
5. Resistance Stories
6. Gospel Stories
7. Fish Stories
8. Church Stories

Isn’t it funny that one is “Fish Stories”? The rest sound quite lofty – Origin, Deliverance, Wisdom --, but then, “Fish Stories.”

Evans wrote that she wanted to find a religion where she didn’t have to check in her brain at the door. I could relate to that. I feel that tension she writes about when reflecting on the Biblical stories of killings, massacres, human sacrifice, and genocide.

It was as though I lived suspended in the tension of two apparently competing convictions: that every human being is of infinite worth and value, and that the Bible is the infallible Word of God. (p.65*)

I feel that way often. As Evans says, you often hear Christians saying that’s just how it is, you have to have faith and accept it, times were different back then, and so on. She quotes Eugene Peterson:

“We don’t become more spiritual by becoming less human,” Eugene Peterson said. How could I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength while disengaging those very facilities every time I read the Bible? (p. 69*)

She ends with, “So I brought my whole self into the wilderness with God—no faking, no halfway. And there we wrestled.” I appreciated this view of asking questions about Scripture. It’s not me being a bleeding heart, namby-pamby person not liking the rawness of what I read. It’s me bringing my whole self into the act of studying Scripture.

Evans does wrestle. And no one “wins.” She writes about living with the questions, living with not knowing exactly what everything means, living with the very tension she talked about. One way she describes this relationship with Scripture is by talking about the Jewish tradition of Midrash.

Midrash, which initially struck me as something of a cross between biblical commentary and fan fiction, introduced me to a whole new posture toward Scripture, a sort of delighted reverence for the text unencumbered by the expectation that it must behave itself to be true. For Jewish readers, the tensions and questions produced by Scripture aren’t obstacles to be avoided, but rather opportunities for engagement, invitations to join in the Great Conversation between God and God’s people that has been going on for centuries and to which everyone is invited. (p. 23*)

I love that. “Great Conversation.” That’s worship, right? Worship is a dialog between God and his people. Approaching the Bible as a conversation between me and God fits right into the definition of worship.

Before discussing midrash, Evans tells the story of how, when she and her sister were little, her father brought home a flannelgraph board with sandpaper-backed paper cutouts of biblical characters. (Remember flannelgraph?) She and her sister played for hours with those characters, re-enacting Bible stories and also imagining more.

We invented conversations between Abraham and Isaac as they descended Mount Moriah. We embellished the details of Ruth’s courtship with Boaz. We imagined what happened to Zacchaeus after the “wee little man” from our Sunday School song climbed out of his sycamore to follow Jesus.

That use of their imagination reminded me of the Jesuit practice of contemplative meditation. That’s what you do in that practice – imagine yourself in the Bible story. And Evans saw how it resonated with the age-old Jewish tradition of midrash.

Evans talked, too, of the Bible not being clear, although, often enough, you certainly hear that it is. (We’ve heard how it’s clear on the issue of women in church, homosexuality, slavery, and on and on.) Evans wrote, “The truth is, you can bend Scripture to say just about anything you want it to say. You can bend it until it breaks,” and goes on to give examples of how we can find verses to support anything, including directly opposing views. Then:

“This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not, What does this say? but, What am I looking for?”

If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm. With Scripture, we’ve been entrusted with some of the most powerful stories ever told. How we harness that power, whether for good or evil, oppression or liberation, changes everything. (pp 56-57)

(Side note: I’ve fallen in love with the word “balm.” I think I’ll make that my “word for the year” – now that the year’s half over. Maybe one of my words for my life. God is a balm for healing. Jesus is a balm for healing. The Bible is a balm for healing. May I be a balm for healing.)

Evans intersperses her writing about the Bible with personal writings – poetry, stories, even plays – inspired by Scripture. You can see her delight in the Scripture through these chapters. One of my favorites was the screenplay about Job, and his friends “Eli, Bill, and Father Z” (Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite). Eli gives Job a sympathy card and says.

Eli: We got this for you, man. It’s not much, I know, but under the circumstances, we just…we wanted to do something.

Job wakes from his stupor, takes the card, and opens it.

Job (reading the card, deadpan): Remember, God will never give you more than you can handle.

He puts the card on the table and falls back into a daze. Eli seems satisfied, but Bill makes a face.

Eli (to Bill): What? What’s wrong with the card?

Bill: It’s a tad cliché, don’t you think? “God will never give you more than you can handle”? What’s that even mean?

Eli: It’s just a card, Bill. It’s not a theological statement.

Bill: Everything’s a theological statement. You of all people should know that.

And it goes on.

I could write a lot more about Inspired. It’s a delightful book. Full of serious insights, humor, and love for the Bible.

* All quotes from the paperback version, copyright 2018, published by Thomas Nelson.

On Living by Kerry Egan

The other day my daughter told me a friend of hers is a cousin to an author named Kerry Egan. She said she told her friend that I probably knew this author. Turns out I had heard of Kerry Egan and I looked it up -- Kerry Egan was at the Faith & Writing Festival this year. I remember wanting to go to her session but there were so many good ones at the same time, I did not make it to her talk.

The book is called On Living and it is stories of people who are dying. Egan is a hospice chaplain. There are many stories she cannot tell because they are the private stories of the people Egan served. but there were also many people who asked Egan to share their stories in the hopes it would help others.

I think being a hospice chaplain is a beautiful vocation. While my brother was dying, the hospice chapter he was in had a chaplain. It was wonderful to pray with her and to know she was there. We had our own chaplain  in the family (my dad), but the chaplain still was an important part of our experience during Dan's dying days. My niece is becoming a hospital chaplain and will, I'm sure, soon have many stories, too, of people dying or going through some of the most trying moments of their lives.

I finished this book several days ago, and one thing I remember the most is that Egan said she was a loving presence to the people she served. In some cases, she would even imagine love emanating from her and enveloping the person. Isn't that beautiful? It's a way to serve -- and to love -- even when the person may be totally unaware of you.

Egan seems somewhat ambivalent about her own faith. She did not openly profess to be a Christian, but there is no doubt she is called to this work, and that she believes in "things beyond our ken," to borrow from a "Sound of Music" song. She gave several examples of that. And she does talk about her belief in God, so there is faith in her life.

The first story quotes a woman she is visiting who says, "I always wished I could meet a writer, and tell him my stories, so other people could hear them and not make the same mistakes I made." She laments that she never did meet a writer. Egan at first did not say anything because, even though she had written a book years before, "I wasn't here as a writer now." She listened as Gloria, her client, repeated several times how she had "prayed and prayed and prayed" for a writer to tell her stories. Finally, Egan writes, "It was getting ridiculous. I hesitated for one more silent minute, then said, 'Gloria, did I ever tell you I was a writer?'" Gloria was overjoyed and absolutely certain that "the Holy Spirit sent [Egan} to [her]."

Egan said that Gloria's request was what inspired her to write this book. She wrote, "Almost always, their stories were about shame or grief or trauma: My child died in my arms...My wife left me for another man while I was a soldier...I killed someone...My husband beat my children and I did nothing to stop it because I was afraid..." and on. Egan said she didn't know if she was wiser from hearing the stories, but she "[does] know that it can heal your soul."

She also wrote, "When I started working in hospice, I didn't yet understand that everyone -- everyone-- is broken and crooked." Isn't that sad? Reading this has contributed, I think, to the empathy I feel toward others, even when I don't like them for whatever reason. Of course, I fail to be kind and show empathy over and over, but I do believe I have gotten better at it, and knowing that everyone is "broken and crooked" is a part of the reason I've grown.

Egan is very vulnerable in her writing. She doesn't just tell the touching, amazing stories, she also tells of times when she failed to respond in the way that was best for the client, or when she failed to show up, out of fear or uncertainty.

Egan wrote about the shame and embarrassment she felt when someone mocked her for her answer to what chaplains do: "Mostly we talk about their families," and mostly she listens. But, Egan says, "What I didn't understand [then]...is that people talk to the chaplain about their families because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives. That is how we talk about the big spiritual questions of human existence."

I was struck by this:

The meaning of our lives cannot be found in books or lecture halls or even churches or synagogues. It's discovered through these acts of love. If God is love, and I believe that to be true, then we learn about God when we learn about love. The first, and usually the last, classroom of love is the family.

And: "The spiritual work of being human is learning how to love and how to forgive."

I don't want to write the stories Egan heard and tells. She does a much better job of telling those stories than I could. She also writes about the many things she learned as she took those stories to heart. One was secrets. It has struck me, too, as it did Egan, that there are elaborate, big secrets in families that, amazingly, are kept secret for years and years. Egan wrote that when people told her their secrets, it wasn't really a confession, like you would give to a priest, but it was an unburdening. I remember a friend who confessed a secret and said, "The truth really does set you free." Until then, I had never thought of that meaning of the saying.

Egan also wrote of regret being a harbinger of hope -- another thing I had never thought of. "Hope is the belief that better things are possible. Regret shows us what those better things we hope for are...It's an unasked-for chance...to imagine what else could be."

Egan wrote about "living in the gray," and how being kind sometimes -- often -- makes you see that most things are not black and white. She relates a story of a client's husband who finds out what hospital worker is stealing medication, but he knows she does it to sell it in order to care for her family. She writes, too, of her own gray story, when a woman in a store condemns her as a bad mother, not knowing that Egan was suffering from postpartum psychosis.Then Egan herself says condemning words to that woman, causing the woman to cry, and Egan realizes now that she herself was making a judgement about that woman, as if it were black and white.

Egan told a story of a woman who asked for a medicine man--a shaman--to help with her healing as she died. When they found a shaman, she came to the client's room and told Egan to stand in a corner and "be strong." As the shaman commands the evil spirit in the client to leave, Egan feels a powerful evil presence coming near to herself, and understands why she was told to be strong. Then, later, they find out the client's story was a sham, yet Egan knows something happened in that room. It is true there are mysterious, un-understandable things that we hear of and experience. They are not only unable to be understood because they defy laws of physics or natural rules we all know, but also because they don't seem to follow any logic in who experiences them. Why should one person feel comfort as they die, seemingly from the presence of a loved one who has passed away, while others do not? Why should we hear, see, or feel supernatural things in one instance, and not in another? It truly does not make sense.

Egan concludes by saying:

It doesn't have to be that life is beautiful but it must end. It can be that life is beautiful...and still, as much as we may not want it to be so, it ends. It can be both beautiful and, by the very truth that it ends, full of loss and tragedy and trauma. The two can coincide. They do coincide.

It reminds me of what I hear Krista Tippet often talk about, living "yes, and," living in "the space between" black and white, as Egan calls it. "I've learned that it's far more interesting and ultimately peaceful to live in the space between."

Everything Happens for a Reason...And Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler

I was happy to see that Kate Bowler would be at the Faith & Writing Festival this year because, not only had I read her book, Everything Happens for a Reason...And Other Lies I've Loved, but I also listened to her podcast, "Everything Happens." Both were excellent!

Kate wrote a book -- I think it was her doctorate -- on the prosperity gospel. I had not heard that term before, although I was certainly familiar with the concept. The person I associate with the prosperity gospel is Joel Osteen -- believing that if you believe in God the right way, and say and do the right things, then you will prosper. On the flip side, if bad things happen, something you did must be wrong, and God is sending those bad things because of it.

Kate met with many leaders of the prosperity gospel as part of her research. She also grew up in a church and family within the prosperity gospel community.

The book tells the story of how Kate was at a wonderful time in her life, at the age of 35, when everything seemed right -- she had married her childhood sweetheart, she just got the perfect job (a professor of Divinity at Duke), and she and her husband had a newborn son that they had waited and prayed for. Then she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.

One of the most vulnerable, and memorable, things she said was that she had not thought that she herself believed in the prosperity gospel, but she realized when this devastating thing happened to her that she did have a form of a prosperity gospel. It had to do with fairness. Kate wondered if there was something American about it -- that we American's feel the world should be fair, that we should get what we deserve. When she was given the horrible news that she would likely die soon, it seemed so unfair!

Wherever I have been in North America, I have been sold a story about an unlimited horizon and the personal characteristics that are required to waltz toward it. It is the language of entitlements. It is the careful math of deserving, meted out as painstakingly as my sister and I used to inventory and trade our Halloween candy. In this world, I deserve what I get. I earn my keep and I keep my share. In a world of fair, nothing clung to can ever slip away. 

I remember my brother Dan talking about how he felt when his son was born with birth defects. First he was angry with God and he asked, "Why me?" He certainly had not done anything to deserve having anything but good happen to him, and, of course, neither had his wife. Dan said, though, that after a while he started thinking, "Why not me?" Why would it make sense for this to have happened to someone else? That's something that I've thought back to many times. It's so true, isn't it?

And look at the quote above, "It is the language of entitlements." We hear that about millennials, don't we? They are so entitled. Yet it's true, isn't it? It is our tendency to think life should be fair, and that means we are entitled, too.

Kate's dark humor made the book a joy to read in spite of its heavy subject.

I became certain that when I died some beautiful moron would tell my husband that "God needed an angel," because God is sadistic like that.

Why? God, are you here? What does this suffering mean?

At first those questions had enormous weight and urgency. I could hear Him. I could almost make out an answer. But then it was drowned out by what I've now heard a thousand times, "Everything happens for a reason" or "God is writing a better story." Apparently God is also busy going around closing doors and opening windows. He can't get enough of that.

Isn't the word "apparently" funny sometimes?

As you can tell by the fact that Kate Bowler came to the Faith & Writing Festival at Calvin in April, she has not died from colon cancer. She participated in a clinical trial of a drug and it seems to have been effective. She still has Stage IV cancer but this drug now makes it a chronic condition rather than a death sentence. She lives 3 months at a time -- getting tested every 3 months. It's hard for me to imagine.

I highly, highly recommend this book. It's a pretty quick read. It ends with a list of things not to say, and things to say when you are talking to people in situations like hers. It's practical and funny and deep and sacred and joy-giving and loving all at once.

Of Mess & Moxie by Jen Hatmaker

I'm kind of late to the party with Jen Hatmaker. She's written 12 books and many people have known and loved her for years. I knew the name but had never read anything of hers until now. I had heard a little bit about the "fall from grace" that Jen experienced a couple years ago but did not know any particulars. (Jen said in an interview that she supported same-sex marriage and believed LGBT relationships could be holy. The Christian publishing company she worked with dropped her, and she was vilified by many of her previous fans.)

Anyway, I enjoyed Of Mess and Moxie. It reminded me a bit of Anne Lamott's writing, in that she is often hilarious. Three times before even getting halfway through the book, I had to run to the bathroom because otherwise I'd have peed my pants! (I've grown to accept that there are times I will be sitting on the toilet laughing my fool head off.)

Here is one of the stories that caused one of my fits of hilarity, I think because it strongly reminds me of myself:

Anyway, when Sydney was in fourth grade, she had a field trip to . . . something somewhere. Listen, I am good at other things. I knew driving parents had to follow the buses pulling out at 8:30 a.m. Great. I showed up to the school parking lot with all the other moms ... 

Two buses pulled out, and I got in line behind the other cars and put my mind on autopilot as we headed south down I-35. ... later, I started thinking, Good night! Where are we going? What was this field trip? Something about government? Or maybe astronomy? I pulled alongside the buses just to make sure I hadn’t lost the caravan, but sure enough, our school name was emblazoned on the side. 

After an hour and a half, we pulled into the San Antonio Zoo, which I surely didn’t remember as a pertinent detail. I parked, sauntered over to the buses, and watched the entire fifth grade contingency pile out. Which was delightful. For fifth graders. But my kid was in fourth, and I had inadvertently followed the wrong bus—not to the correct destination ten minutes from school, but to another city.

That is SO something I would do!

Jen is a very "regular" person, too. People call her "relateable." That's another way she is like Anne Lamott. She writes about Sandi Patty, a Christian singer, requesting prayer for a procedure on her vocal chords. Jen writes:

I hollered: "Not her voice, Lord! Anything but her voice! Take her legs!"

One should rethink asking me to pray for a person's needs.

She writes about how life can be hard, even for children, and says:

We can have it all in place, all in check, all under our thumb, and they are still not exempted from Jesus's statement: "In this world you will have trouble" (John 16:33). It is the most awful situation. What a horrible system.

We can relate, right?

I really appreciated what Jen wrote about forgiveness. 

Forgiveness.

Oh, it is so terrible, isn’t it? Just awful. It is the one thing we don’t want to give. Maybe it helps to discuss what forgiveness is not first. Let it be said: forgiveness is not condoning evil, not forgetting, not brushing something under the carpet, not a free pass. It does not mean minimizing the injury and, consequently, your pain. It doesn’t shrink an offense down, making it smaller in memory, in impact. It doesn’t shrug off loss with a “no real harm, no real foul” response. It does not mean conceding, surrendering to a different version, or yielding your right to dignity. It never communicates that this didn’t happen, it didn’t matter, or it didn’t harm. 

Furthermore, it might not mean reconciliation. Some breaches are restored and relationships mended, but some are not safe. They may never be safe. The other person may be entirely unsorry, and there is no path to harmony. Forgiving chronic abusers does not include jumping back into the fire while it is still burning; that is not grace but foolishness. Forgiveness operates in an entirely different lane than reconciliation; sometimes those roads converge and sometimes they never meet. 

Forgiveness is a one-man show. 

One last thing: forgiveness rarely equals a one-and-done decision. Very few decide one day to forgive and never have to revisit that release. In most cases, it is a process that takes months and sometimes years of work, and just when you think you have laid an offense down, it creeps back up in memory and you have to battle it anew. Just because this work is stubborn does not mean you are failing or will never be free. Forgiveness is a long road in the same direction.

I especially like that line, "Forgiveness is a one-man show." It's been free-ing for me to realize that. Like Hatmaker says, the person you forgive may not be sorry, and may not even think they need to be forgiven. I've had cases where it's not just that they aren't sorry, they don't even realize I'm hurt or upset with them -- I forgive them before they even know. And I don't mean to brag (in case that sounded like bragging), I just mean that the other person can be totally uninvolved in the act of forgiveness.

Another good line, which she quotes from Anne Lamott, "Earth is Forgiveness School." This also speaks to what Jen says about forgiveness not bring a "one-and-done decision." That is another thing I've discovered. Often, I feel greatly relieved that I've forgiven someone but, disappointingly, I find I have to keep making the decision over and over.

I like Jen Hatmaker and plan to read more of her books. I admit I like Anne Lamott more. I admire many of the female theologians and writers. I love it that they have become a kind of band of sisters. Anne Lamott, Jen Hatmaker, Nadia Bolz-Weber (the Sarcastic Lutheran), Sarah Bessey, Shana Niequist, Brene Brown, and more. It's great!

Dorothy Day - The World Will Be Saved by Beauty - An Intimate Portrait of my Grandmother by Kate Hennessy

I read this book because my brother Joel mentioned he had read it, and I was curious about Dorothy Day. I'd heard of her but did not really know who she was or what she did, other than she'd helped the poor with some kind of house for them.

Kate Hennessy, the author, and as you can see by the subtitle, granddaughter of Dorothy, wrote the book with her unique perspective of having grown up with Dorothy Day as her "granny" and Dorothy's daughter Tamar her mom.

The book explores the relationship and lives of both these remarkable women. They were very different. Dorothy Day loved to talk and she participated fully in the world. She was arrested several times for participating in walks and marches. She gave and gave and gave -- her time and her money and her care. Tamar, her daughter, had what I would call a rather rough childhood. Dorothy loved her, but Tamar was in and out of schools and also lived in various homes at different times, as Dorothy went on speaking tours. Day was sometimes quite critical of Tamar. And Tamar was resentful that her mother did not encourage or help her to get a degree. Day felt that degrees were "bunk," and even though she encouraged others to pursue education, she did not encourage Tamar in that way.

Tamar had some resentment towards Day but a huge, steady love. Tamar married early and had seven children. Day stayed with Tamar and her family for many long visits, becoming a vital part of the children's growing up, as well as of Tamar's life.

I found this book engaging. When I was a kid and my mom would take us to the library, as I chose books I would often open several spots and see if the book had lots of quote marks -- conversations. It was a good sign if it did that it would be interesting. This book has lots of conversations. It's not just narration of what happened, but a story of the lives of Dorothy, Tamar, and Kate, the author, herself.

Day started the Catholic Worker, a newspaper. She reported on strikes, lynchings, the life of sharecroppers, Hitler's persecution of the Jews, and more. "She wanted a paper not only for blacks and whites but written by both, to impress on her readers that the paper was for all workers."

The first house, in New York, inspired many more. It was a home for people who were on the fringes - homeless, poor, sometimes mentally ill. The house (this and its other iterations throughout the years) was called the Catholic Worker, like the paper, and it was a kind of by-product of the paper. Once people started reading the Catholic Worker, people who were inspired by her ideas came and took on various jobs for the paper. Others in need showed up and Day could not not help them. The houses were ramshackle and often beyond poor - commonly infested with rats and bedbugs. But it was a community. Tamar said she grew up in the Worker. Although her life was hard, she said, "It was the world that taught me that people weren't always so kind and hospitable. Growing up at the Worker, I thought everyone was good and kind."

One of the things that kept coming to my mind while I was reading this book was the fact that there is a movement to make Dorothy Day a saint. Having grown up a pastor's daughter, I knew that people called by God were truly "ordinary" people like me (although I did think of my dad as rather saintly, too). This book made that clear again. Dorothy Day made mistakes, she lived a rather rough and ready life, her daughter both loved and resented her, she was not some kind of superhuman saint, in the way the stories of saints can sometimes make you feel they were. Recently, having learned of MotherTeresa's struggles of faith, it brought that fact home again. The saints are people. I guess it is their dedication to God's work that makes them saints.

As I wrote this, I thought of the parallel truth of Jesus as fully human and fully God. Those statements can't really be facts in the way we think of facts. Yet they are true. One of the things that makes Jesus the central figure in my life, my Savior, is the fact that he was human. I can turn to him with anything and he understands, because he was human, too. Yet, he must be God, too.

For Day, her faith was vital. She went to mass every day. "The church was the community, she felt, and Mass became a time to stop and take note of the sunlight and of her fellow humans, to take a breath and feel God touching the heart and the mind. In such moments of peace and stillness, all her fears and questions would fall away, the path would rise up to meet her, and the calling would feel so clear it was as if it had all been taken out of her hands."

Dorothy Day came to the end of her life surrounded by her family and friends. She spent some years in a simple cottage by the beach, which she loved. Her final days were in an apartment in the city. Throughout her last days, she still tried to answer correspondence but was often confused. She told stories to her loved ones and read.

The subtitle of the book is "The World Will be Saved by Beauty," a quote from Dostoevsky's book, The Idiot, that Day often quoted. I purchased the book but have not read it yet. I've read some online articles about the quote and the book. I feel like there's a lot to these words, and I need to think, read, and meditate on them. I like this quote from one article, by Michael D. O'Brien:

The beauty that will save the world is the love of God. This love is both human and supernatural in character, but it germinates, flowers, and comes to fruition only in a crucified heart. Only the heart united with Christ on the Cross is able to love another as himself, and as God loves him. Only such a heart can pass through the narrow gate of the Cross and live in the light of Resurrection. The good news is that this resurrection begins here and now.

Some of what I read reminds me of what people say of Flannery O'Connor, who is a greatly revered writer with a strong faith. In her stories, there is a seemingly broken person (like the "idiot" in Dostoevsky) who is actually like Christ. In turn, this reminds me of the Biblical verse that says, "For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength." (I Corinthians 1:25). Maybe these all get at what Dorothy Day was saying when she quoted, "The world will be saved by beauty."

In the Shelter by Pádraig Ó Tuama

I heard of Pádraig Ó Tuama (pronounced Pah-drick O Two-ma) listening to his interview with Krista Tippett on “On Being.” In that interview, he spoke of saying “Hello” as a prayer.

In In the Shelter, I learned more about that. Ó Tuama tells about going to a Taizé retreat and the Taizé monk has several people read the story of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples in the upper room (in John) in several different languages. The monk noted that Jesus greeted his disciples by saying, “Peace be with you.” 

The Taizé brother suggested that we pause for a moment and consider the words “Peace be with you” that the resurrected Jesus says to his locked-in followers. The Taizé brother said that, in a real sense, we can read that as “Hello.” After all, it’s the standard greeting in Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic.  

The disciples were there, in fear, in an upper room, locked away, and suddenly the one they had abandoned and perhaps the one they most feared to be with them was with them, and he said hello. 

Hello to you in this locked room. (p. 10)

Throughout the book, Ó Tuama does that – he tells a story or writes about something, and then ends it with “Hello to … something.” I find that use of “hello” very helpful. A while ago I wrote to my family about the fact that, ever since my brother died 11 years ago, Nov. 4, 2006, the Fall season brings on a kind of melancholy for me. I love the Fall so the first time it happened to me I had said to a friend that I didn’t know what was wrong with me, I felt sad for no known reason, and I was crying easily. She said, “Didn’t your brother die in the Fall?” and went on to say that sometimes our bodies somehow hold that memory. I think she was right. And this year, with the death of both my parents, it seems more acute – even though they died in winter at the beginning of the year. I find it somehow helpful to think to myself, “Hello grief. Hello sadness. Hello melancholy.” I’m not sure why it helps, but it does.

In another story kind of about saying hello (p. 14), Ó Tuama writes about a National Geographic story he read where a photojournalist wrote about a tribal group she’d lived with who “had no word for hello. Instead upon seeing someone, one simply said, ‘You are here’.” Then he writes, “The answer, as I recall it, was equally straightforward: ‘Yes I am.’ Whether by fact or fiction, it remains that for decades I have thought of the words ‘You are here’ and ‘Yes I am’ as good places to begin something that might be called prayer.

These phrases – “You are here” and “Yes I am” – made me think of hinani, the Hebrew word for “Here I am” that I have written about and thought of often. Things keep attracting me to that concept, of saying “Here I am” to God, ready for the mission you will give me.

One of the things I loved about In the Shelter and Pádraig Ó Tuama is that he loves The Lord of the Rings. He quotes from those books quite a few times. I love those books, too, so it gives me a lot of joy to see the words and stories from them used as ways to discuss deep things such as faith and prayer.

Ó Tuama writes some interesting things about religion. In one place (p. 24), he writes, “Religion had rarely been something that gave me hope for happiness. Effort certainly…” That made me sad. I hear that so often, where people obviously think that being religious is a matter of effort, of following rules.

It reminded me of a time with my grandma (Grace Kok, my dad’s mom). For the year my dad was in Vietnam we lived next door to my grandma, in Lynden, WA. This was a time when CRC churches pretty much all had “night church,” an evening service. Sometimes my grandma wouldn’t feel up to going to church in the evening, and instead she’d listen to the service as it was broadcast over the radio. I sat with her and listened to the service this night. Afterward, Grandma said that she was always disappointed when ministers gave sermons that did not talk about the joy of Christianity. She said something like, “Why don’t they talk about how happy it makes you?”

Don’t you love that? I didn’t think that much about it back then, but I think about it often now. Just the other day I was talking to a friend who has left the faith she grew up with. I forget exactly what my friend said, but like my Grandma I responded with something like, “It’s too bad the way people think religion is a bunch of rules. It’s all about Jesus’ love, so much love. It gives me so much joy.” As Pádraig Ó Tuama would say, hello to joy.

Pádraig Ó Tuama also writes about religion needing to know that it may not always be right (p. 193). He recalls a Peanuts cartoon where Snoopy is writing a book of theology.

Charlie Brown comes along and says, “…I hope you have a good title.” Snoopy looks up, in a superior fashion, and indicates that he has the perfect title. He resumes typing and the title of his theological oeuvre appears in typeface in the sky. “Have you ever considered that you might be wrong?”

…It is evidence of religious integrity to be fluent in living well with the questions underneath our hope. “Let us cling to you,” we say to our Jesus, and he answers, “Have you ever considered that you might be wrong?” He says, “No, do not cling to me.” He says, “Live well” and “Change” and “Learn.” He asks, “What are you doing with your power?” and he answers, “Do not miss the mark again.” He praises those who act and criticizes those who focus only on their words. He tells stories that do not end and ends stories that do not start.

Hello to the gift of being wrong.

Hello to the need for change.

In another part of the book (p. 74) he tells a story that pierced my heart. He says, as far as he can remember it, it’s a “transcript of something a twelve-year-old girl said one day.” The girl talks about a story told by a woman at a church event who “said that she was going to tell a story about God that the children would love” (p. 73).

She told us this story about the station master of a train station. The station master saw that a train was coming along and saw that the line was broken. If he didn’t change the line that the train was on, then the train would go off a cliff and everyone would die. So he needed to change the line, but he saw that his son was playing on the other line, the safe one. So he had to decide if he’d save the people or save his son. He saved the people.

The woman ended the story and said: “That’s what God’s love is like. He saved us instead of his son.” She said, “That’s a story I know the young people will love.”

I thought it was a stupid story because it just made me worry that my daddy is going to murder me.

Ó Tuama goes on to say:

The clarity of this girl’s analysis of the story was compelling…It was clear that she was, as we’d say in Cork [Note from Mavis: Pádraig Ó Tuama is Irish.], not backwards about being forwards – she said what she thought when she thought it. I thought she was marvelous. I asked her if she sometimes got into trouble in school for saying what she thought. She looked at me, as if amazed that I might have perceived this about her character, and said, “All. The. Time.” I said, “Well, take it from me, you’ve got good things to say, keep saying them,” and she looked puzzled but pleased.

Hello to being right. It’s not always easy.

This whole passage makes me happy “on many levels,” as people are wont to say. First, as I said earlier, that train story is heart-piercing, don’t you think? It’s like a cruel trick question. And for that woman to think it would be a story “the children would love.” Seriously? Ha!

Then the twelve-year-old girl’s conclusion – “It just made me worry that my daddy is going to murder me” – cracks me up.

And Pádraig Ó Tuama’s admiration for her forthrightness, I love that. I myself often get in trouble for saying what I think when I think of it. It’s so great when someone finds that to be a positive trait! Hello to being “not backwards about being forwards.”

I could go on and on about this book, but already I’ve written quite a long blog entry here. I feel like this book is “an embarrassment of riches.” There’s so much in it, so much to soak in, so much to enjoy, to savor, to tuck into your heart. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

As you can see, I used my post-it note method again.
Testimony to it being an embarrassment of riches!!

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

I don't know why I didn't do this long ago, but I just looked up the definition of "Bardo".

(in Tibetan Buddhism) a state of existence between death and rebirth, varying in length according to a person's conduct in life and manner of, or age at, death.

Interesting. Maybe if I'd looked that up first, I would not have been so surprised at this book. We chose it for our book club. In a way, I felt kind of freaked out about it, but in another way it was really good, with lots to think about.

As I'd read in short blurbs about the book, the entire book is about one night, the night after Willie Lincoln's death when Abraham Lincoln, his father, visited him in the cemetery where he (Willie) was buried. (I think I thought "Bardo" must have something to do with graveyards.)

It's strangely written, with little separate paragraphs, with tiny names and sources typed after. At first I thought this must be some kind of thing the author was doing before each chapter, or at the beginning of the book. But it went on so long I finally looked further, and this style of little paragraphs (although a few went on for a page or so) went on for the whole book.

The rest of this blog entry is a spoiler. I want to write about the book and remember it.

Most of the paragraphs are what the dead people in the cemetery are saying. The two who "speak" the most are Hans Vollman and Roger Bevins, III (always written in small letters, "hans vollman" and "roger bevins iii"). The definition of "Bardo" makes sense as I realized that these people were dead but calling themselves sick. They were, I believe, around and, in a limited way, still interacting with the world, hoping that they would return to the world, somehow, someday. Hence, they were "sick," not dead, and their coffins were "sick boxes."

Not to put too fine a point on it, they were ghosts. They did not call themselves that but they certainly fit my definition of ghosts. Willie, too, is a ghost, but he does not realize it. When his father comes, he expects his father to hug him and talk to him. He is agitated as he realizes his father cannot hear, see, or feel him.

You get a very real sense of Abraham Lincoln. Many of the small paragraphs are from records of people who knew Lincoln, often people who worked closely with him, even servants who lived with him and the family.

A few times during the course of the story, Willie, or Hans or Roger, and once a whole bunch of the ghosts, inhabit Abraham Lincoln. They attempt, by all thinking concentratedly of the same thing together, to persuade Lincoln to do something they want him to do.

When he is inhabiting his father, Willie does not try to get his father to do something, though; he just feels much of what his father feels, and hears his father's thoughts. This is how he realizes he is not sick, he is dead. His father, Abraham Lincoln, says (thinks) it, and therefore it must be true. Willie becomes joyous when he realizes he is dead. He jumps around, "hopping with joy now, like a toddler too full of water." He says,

I was good. Or tried to be. I want to do good now. And go where I should. Where I should have gone in the first place. Father will not return here. And none of us will ever be allowed back to that previous place. (p. 298)

So accepting death is good. Lots to think about there. Like Roger Bevins says, "It gave me pause."

When he shares that they are dead with all the other ghosts, many of them believe/realize it, too. When they accept that they are dead, they actually, somehow, really die. They leave this state of being a ghost. When they go, there's an explosion of some kind. The author calls it a "matterlightblooming phenomenon." What an interesting word. Reflecting on that word is one of the many areas of further thought in this book.

Of course, now I wish I had underlined and flagged pages when something especially struck me. I've been doing that in my non-fiction reading. But I was lazy, basically, and wanted to keep getting on with the story.

There's much about Lincoln's suffering as he grieves. In his thoughts (which the ghosts hear as they inhabit him), he questions whether he should have let Willie ride the pony he loved. Willie rode that pony all the time, including once when he was exposed to cold for a long time, became sick with a cold and then typhoid, resulting ultimately in his death. Lincoln also thinks about the criticism from others regarding a big celebratory party he and his wife held, while Willie was lying deathly ill in a room above the party.

Lincoln thinks about how many others are experiencing this same loss -- of their sons -- because their sons are dying on the battlefield. It seems like he realizes he has to make their death worthwhile, by making the war worthwhile. He begins to think that he must take a "bloody path" and perhaps cause even more suffering, but the bloodiest way may be the best way.

He must (we must, we felt) do all we could, in light of the many soldiers lying dead and wounded, in open fields, all across the land, weeds violating their torsos, eyeballs pecked out or dissolving, lips hideously retracted, rain-soaked/blood-soaked/snow-crusted letters scattered about them to ensure that we did not, as we took that difficult path we were now well upon, blunder, blunder further (we had blundered so badly already) and, in so blundering, ruin more, more of these boys, each of whom was once dear to someone. 

Ruinmore, ruinmore, we felt, must endeavor not to ruinmore....

We must, to do the maximum good, bring the thing to its swiftest halt and--

Kill.

Kill more efficiently.

Hold nothing back.

Make the blood flow.

Bleed and bleed the enemy until his good sense be reborn.

The swiftest halt to the thing (therefore the greatest mercy) might be the bloodiest.

Must end the suffering by causing more suffering. (pp. 306-7)

More to think about. It reminded me of those who say the atom bombs at the end of the war with Japan were the best way to end the war, even though they killed so many, because more would have been killed if we had not dropped the bombs.

Another ghost character, the Reverend Everly Thomas, has a long passage about a memory of what appears to be the judgement after death. One fellow dead person is sentenced to a beautiful place; the next one to a horrible place full of demons. When Thomas is judged, he, too, is sentenced to the horrible place. He escapes and does not go, but now he is in this ghost state (although he knows he is dead), and "is ignorant of what sin [he] committed." (p. 194) Again, food for thought. How can you be unaware of your own sin and the reason you would be sent to hell? That doesn't fit in with what I believe about the assurance of God's grace.

Near the end, once Willie has truly left (with the "matterlightblooming phenomenon"), Abraham Lincoln seems to have resolved his grief, and made it so he could resume life again.

There in his seat, Mr. Lincoln startled.

Like a schoolboy jolting suddenly awake in class.

Looked around.

Momentarily unsure, it seemed, of where he was.

Then got to his feet and made for the door.

The lad's departure having set him free. (p. 302)

He accepts his sorrow, realizes many others have sorrow, and he "must do what he could to lighten the load of those with whom he came into contact..." (p. 303)

One of the book club members sent a link to a page where it talks about the book receiving the Man Booker Prize. One of the judges has a video and says that Lincoln in the Bardo may seem a bit disconcerting at first, and it certainly was for me. As I went on, though, I was caught up in it, and discovered how rich it was, how it told many stories, and how it gave me so many things to think about.