Justin Giboney

I listened to (and watched) an interview on The Trinity Forum with Justin Giboney, who started The & (And) Campaign and wrote the book Compassion (&) Conviction. I had never heard of him, but wow! What a lot of wise things he said. I will try to remember to come back and link to the interview. Here is a link to a different interview that was good, too, and another. He and his co-author Michael Wear have a podcast, "The Church Politics Podcast." Here are a few things that struck me in the interview. They're not word for word quotes, but things I remember.

• After being in politics a while, I realized that Christian people assumed that if you want to be in politics you are going to have to surrender some of your convictions. That should not be.
• Our faith should impact our political outlook.
• It gives us purpose and mission, connected to everything we do.
• The love & truth of the gospel - what does it have to do with our interactions.
• Christians speak the truth in love.
• We can't be self-centered, we must also be interested in others as much if not more than others.
• Makes us more willing to go against our own interests, to do what is right.
• Our faith demands self-sacrifice, which is different than many others'.
• Walk into what seems a hopeless situation and have hope, to look at others who have hurt you and have love.
• Let go of our desire to get even, to be right, lay it down and yet speak the truth in love.
• We are missing moral imagination -- to see past this moment. Faith, seeing through the eyes of God allows you to see past it.
• Otherworldly, not always rational to give someone the benefit of the doubt, not to seek vengeance.
• We are witnesses, showing the love of God, not winning. Witness over winning.
• Everything is a response, "what-about-ism." That can't be the way of Christians. We have our own set of standards.
• Defend human dignity and promote human flourishing. Stay focussed.
• The government is ordained by God. It is for order and justice.
• The political parties are a tool, not your identity. They are a way to get things done. If someone criticizes your party it's not as if they were saying something about your mother.
• It's good to distance your self from your party or side. List 6 critiques of your own side. If you can't do that you might be getting too entwined in it.
• Whether you're Christian or not, the question is: Is your neighbor worth it? Your neighbor is worth it because you are worth it. If you don't protect your neighbor you're not protecting yourself.
• Justice starts with the Imago Dei, that each person is the image of God.

From a partial transcript of an interview:

MARVIN OLASKY: Okay, so let’s talk about the AND Campaign a little bit. What goes on both sides of the ampersand?

JUSTIN GIBONEY: Yeah. So I would say love and truth. Compassion and conviction. Uh, social justice and moral order. Justice and righteousness. One of the things that we found is when Christians get into politics, they feel like they have to go all the way to the left or all the way to the right. And we say, well, if you go all the way to the left, you understand there’s some convictions that you’re not going to be able to take with you, whether it be sanctity of life or the historic Christian sexual ethic. You can’t take those all the way to the left. And if you go to the right, you know, we would say that you, you’re not going to be able to take your compassion to the right with you. And so what we wanted to say is say, b b but instead of that being an or, right? Because our society separates love and truth, it separates compassion and conviction, for whatever reason. The gospel doesn’t, but our society does. We want Christians to see politics differently and say, no, no, no. When I go into politics, I’m about love and truth, compassion and conviction. I’m not gonna make that false choice. Because that’s really what it is, it’s a false dichotomy. And too often we make that because our ideological tribe or our party forces us into that, uh false choice.

One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder by Brian Doyle

During this pandemic, I have not felt up to reading anything new. I have only been rereading two series of mysteries, one by Louise Penny and the other by Faye Kellerman. However, we just got back from a trip to Lynden, WA, and the first day there, I met my sister in Village Books, a wonderful bookstore in downtown Lynden. I saw this book, One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder by Brian Doyle, and remembered I had heard other authors speak glowingly of Brian Doyle, so I bought it.

It is one of the best books I've ever read! The book is a collection of Doyle's essays. Some are only a page or page and a half long, some are several pages. I devoured every one of them. Then I reread them. Then I read them aloud to my husband and daughter. Then I went on Amazon and put every book he wrote into my shopping cart, but went through and marked some "Save for later" because it was too much. I'm trying to limit the number of books in my library, but I keep discovering amazing authors, and I want them around me.

In the foreword, David James Duncan quotes Pico Iyer, who said:

Almost nobody has written with the joy, the galloping energy, the quiet love of conscience and family and what's best in us, the living optimism.

"Galloping energy" is right. Many times I pictured the words in his sentences galloping and crowding and bumping into each other like beagles running and tripping over their long ears, full of joy, breathless to say what is tumbling out of his mind.

Here is an example from an essay named "Illuminos," about his 3 children (a daughter and twin boys).

The third child held hands happily all the time, either hand, any hand, my hands, his mother's hands, his brother's hands, his sister's hands, his friends, aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and teachers, dogs and trees, neighbors and bushes, he would hold hands with any living creature whatsoever, without the slightest trepidation or self-consciousness, and to this day I admire that boy's open genuine eager unadorned verve. He once held hands with his best friend during an entire soccer game when they were five years old, the two of them running in tandem, or one starting in one direction unbeknownst to the other and down they both went giggling in the sprawl of the grass. It seems to me that angels and bodhisattvas are everywhere available for consultation if only we can see them clear; they are unadorned, and joyous, and patient, and radiant, and luminous, and not disguised or hidden or filtered in any way whatsoever, so that if you see them clearly, which happens occasionally even to the most blinkered and frightened of us, you realize immediately who they are, beings of great and humble illumination dressed in the skins of new and dewy beings, and you realize, with a catch in your throat, that they are your teachers, and they are agents of an unimaginable love, and they are your cousins and companions in awe, and they are miracles and prayers and songs of inexplicable beauty whom no one can explain and no one own or claim or trammel, and that simply to perceive them is to be blessed beyond the reach of language, and that to be the one appointed to tow them along a beach, or a crowd, or home through the brilliant morning from the muddy hilarious peewee soccer game is to be graced beyond measure or understanding; which is what I was, and I am, and I will be, until the day I die, and change form from this one to another, in ways miraculous and mysterious, never to be plumbed by the mind or measures of man.

(By the way, did you wonder, as I did, what "bodhisattvas" are? According to the interwebs, they are: In Mahayana Buddhism, a person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so out of compassion in order to save suffering beings. That made me laugh, to think of little kids being persons who could reach nirvana but were sticking around to help the rest of us.)

Our modern poet-saint, Mary Oliver, said of Brian Doyle's essays, "They were all favorites." True! It makes it hard to write or talk about this book and say why I like it. It makes it hard to decide what to write as an example or read out loud to someone. How can I choose?! Some crack you up, some choke you up, some make you stop, reread and ponder, some make you feel what awe feels like. The subtitle is "Notes on Wonder." I think wonder includes all of these -- the laughter, the tears, the pause, the awe.

One of the essays that cracked me up is named "20 Things the Dog Ate." I wish I could quote all 20 for you, but I have chosen two.

1. Ancient Squashed Dried Round of Flat Shard of Beaver

Sweet mother of the mewling baby Jesus! You wouldn't think a creature that likes to watch Peter O'Toole movies would be such an omnivorous gobbling machine, but he has eaten everything from wasps to the back half of a raccoon. And let us not ignore the beaver. Speculation is that beaver was washed up onto road when overflowing lake blew its dam, was squashed by a truck, got flattened ten thousand times more, then summer dried it out hard and flat as a manhole cover, and the dog somehow pried it up, leaving only beaver oil on the road, and ate it. Sure, he barfed later. Wouldn't you?

4. Yellow Jacket Wasps

Every summer. Even though he gets stung again and again in the nether reaches of his mouth and throat and jumps up whirling around in such a manner that we laugh so hard we have to pee. He cannot resist snapping them out of the air as if they were bright bits of candy, then making high plaintive sounds like a country singer on laughing gas. I have to pee.

I could go on and on. My heart and soul have been lifted by this book. It's become trite to say that something is perfect "for these strange times we are in." Still, I do think this book is a good one for this coronatide, with the pandemic on top of the huge reckoning we are going through regarding our racial relations. This book touches you and takes you deep, but it's a pick-up-and-put-down-er-of-a-book. The essays are short, so it's easy to read one or two and come back to it later.

I am so sorry that I never got to see or hear Brian Doyle in person. He died in 2016 of complications from a brain tumor. He was a devout Catholic who also, according to his friend David James Duncan, "sometimes audaciously, challenged his tradition." Like the Jesuits teach, and my Reformed doctrine emphasizes, he personifies seeing God in everything, recognizing that "there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine! '" (Abraham Kuyper). But there is not even a tiny echo of preaching. He hardly mentions the word God (although there is one essay called "God Again," where he writes about a US Post Office clerk, "God was manning the counter from one to five, as he does every blessed day. He actually says every blessed day and he means it. You never saw a more patient being.")

I have read often that many of us are in a meaning crisis, unable to figure out a purpose in life. I will end with an excerpt from "The Final Frontier." May we all reach it - "humility, the final frontier."

Of course you do your absolute best to find and hone and wield your divine gifts against the dark. You do your best to reach out tenderly to touch and elevate as many people as you can reach. You bring your naked love and defiant courage and salty grace to bear as much as you can, with all the attentiveness and humor you can muster. This life after all a miracle and we ought to pay fierce attention every moment, as much as possible.

But you can not control anything. You cannot order or command everything. You cannot fix and repair everything. You cannot protect your children from pain and loss and tragedy and illness. You cannot be sure you will always be married, let alone happily married. You cannot be sure you will always be employed, or healthy, or relatively sane.

All you can do is face the world with quiet grace and hope you make a sliver of difference. Humility does not mean self-abnegation, lassitude, detachment; it’s more calm recognition that you must trust in that which does not make sense, that which is unreasonable, illogical, silly, ridiculous, crazy by the measure of most of our culture. You must trust the you being the best possible you matters somehow. That trying to be an honest and tender parent will echo for centuries through your tribe. That doing your chosen work with creativity and diligence will shiver people far beyond your ken. That being an attentive and generous friend and citizen will prevent a thread or two of the social fabric from unraveling. And you must do all of this with the certain knowledge that you will never get proper credit for it, and in fact the vast majority of things you do right will go utterly unremarked. Humility, the final frontier, as my brother Kevin used to say. When we are young we build a self, a persona, a story in which to reside, or several selves in succession, or several at once, sometimes; when we are older we take on other roles and personas, other masks and duties; and you and I both know men and women who become trapped in the selves they worked so hard to build, so desperately imprisoned that sometimes they smash their lives simply to escape who they no longer wish to be; but finally, I think, if we are lucky, if we read the book of pain and loss with humility, we realize that we are all broken and small and brief, that none amongst us is ultimately more vulnerable or rich or famous or beautiful that another; and then, perhaps, we begin to understand something deep and true about humility.

That is what I know: that the small is huge, that the tiny is vast, that pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy, and that this is love, and then there is everything else. You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath you draw. Humility is the road to love. Humility, maybe, is love. That could be. I wouldn’t know; I’m a muddle and a conundrum shuffling slowly along the road, gaping in wonder, trying to see and say what is, trying to leave shreds and shards of ego along the road like wisps of litter and chaff.

 "All you can do is face the world with quiet grace and hope you make a sliver of difference." As Brian would say, And so: Amen.

How to Read Poetry

The Beginner's Guide To Reading (And Loving) Poetry

Emily Torres

How To Read Poetry

My first experience with poetry was sugary-sweet and dripping in rhyme. Dr. Seuss’s melodic stories captured my youthful attention, and I loved listening to how the words bounced off the page to form music of their own.

When I began writing poetry as a preteen, I invested my allowance in a rhyming dictionary. I rhymed the words “love” and “above” more often than I’d care to admit (with an occasional “dove” in there, too—WHY). I put my whole heart into poems I can only laugh about today; I’m amused and heart warmed by the complexity I was trying to express with my ten-year-old vocabulary.

“Do you have to sit in a velvet housecoat, surrounded by mahogany bookshelves and a crackling fire, to be considered ‘someone who reads poetry’? ”

As I grew and my language developed further, I began reading the poetry my teachers fed to me in high school. Enchanted by the depths of Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson, I wanted more. But reading poetry outside of a structured academic space proved complicated for me—how do you read, enjoy, analyze, and remember the pieces you most love? Do you read 10 poems in rapid succession? One at a time? Do you have to sit in a velvet housecoat, surrounded by mahogany bookshelves and a crackling fire, to be considered ‘someone who reads poetry’? How do you even start?

“There is no proper way to start,” says Pádraig Ó Tuama, host of Poetry Unbound, a new poetry podcast from The On Being Project. “Poetry is a vast ocean. In fact, it’s multiple vast oceans. And each ocean has thousands of beaches leading into it. Nobody will know everything about all the poetry. So if you’re interested, start where you are.”

“Poetry is a vast ocean. In fact, it’s multiple vast oceans. And each ocean has thousands of beaches leading into it. Nobody will know everything about all the poetry. So if you’re interested, start where you are.”

— PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA

How To Choose What Poetry To Read

Poetry is a personal experience—for both the writer and the reader. The world is full of lyrical collections and melodical prose, and the poetry canon is growing more vibrant each passing day. Where does one even begin?

Poetry anthologies are an excellent place to start because they offer a range of voices within time periods, places, or topics. Ó Tuama recommends “The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry” edited by Ilya Kaminsky, and also navigating local bookstores and publishers, like Bloodaxe Books, that feature poetry arranged by topic.

To continuously feed yourself new poetry, you can find local literary magazines, subscribe to Poetry Magazine, or sign up for daily poetry emails here or here. For thoughtful and immersive audio poetry, we love the Poetry Unbound podcast, guided by Pádraig Ó Tuama. He recommends starting with the poems featured on that podcast, and also shared some of his other favorite poets: Marie Howe; Eavan Boland; Raymond Antrobus; Ilya Kaminsky (especially “Deaf Republic”); Joy Harjo; and Lorna Goodison.

Once you find a favorite poet, Ó Tuama suggests following the trail of their influences: “A quick online search might help you find out who the poetic influences on your favorite poet are. Reading Raymond Antrobus’ recent book of poetry ‘The Perseverance’ led me to read more of Caroline Bird’s work, a poet he thanks and admires enormously. Reading Seamus Heaney might lead you to Patrick Kavanagh. Reading Tracy K. Smith might lead you to Emily Dickinson.“

How To Read A Poem

You’ve selected the poem you want to read—congratulations! Now it’s time for the business of reading it. 

1. EXAMINE THE TITLE AND THE SHAPE OF THE POEM.

Before I read a poem, I examine the way it takes up space on the page. I find single-page poems with neat stanzas appealing—although a concrete poem (a poem formatted in a specific shape) is always playful and attention-grabbing. Perhaps meandering and novelesque text immerses you, or maybe you prefer short poems that could fit neatly on a box of tic-tacs.

Next, read the title of the poem—how does it make you feel? How does the title fit the shape of the poem? If the title is sad, let the shape of the poem inform the nuance of the emotion—if it’s short and sparse, maybe it’s coming from a place of desolation or desperation. Long chaotic forms might mean it’s coming from a place of confusion or anger.

Now, remove your expectations and begin reading.

2. READ THE POEM AS YOU NORMALLY READ ANYTHING.

“Notice where in the poem you react—maybe your stomach churns at a particular phrase, or you hold your breath at a certain line. Explore the feelings that come up as you read. ”

Reading poetry doesn’t require a highfalutin approach; you can read as you’d read anything else. On the first pass through, absorb whatever it is that arises upon first impression. Notice where in the poem you react—maybe your stomach churns at a particular phrase, or you hold your breath at a certain line. Explore the feelings that come up as you read.

“I listen to myself, and wonder what the poem is drawing out of me,” says Ó Tuama. “What is it that the poem knows about me that I don't yet know about me? Maybe it provides a bit of comfort for a part of my life that's comfortless. Or maybe it provides challenge where I need it.”

3. RE-READ FOR MEANING. 

If the poem captivates you or rouses your emotions, you can uncover even more information on a second read through. Half of the time, I dive right into a re-read. Otherwise, I add a bookmark to remind me to read it again later and move on to the next poem. 

“You might come back years later to a particular poem, only to find that it connects to your heart in ways it didn’t before.”

If you didn’t feel a connection to the piece, it’s okay to skip over re-reading the poem (although I do recommend giving it another read-through). You might come back years later to a particular poem, only to find that it connects to your heart in ways it didn’t before.

The second read-through is where I look up definitions and pronunciations of words I don’t know and examine any footnotes. If there’s historical context or the poem is referencing a specific event I’m not familiar with, I’ll look that up, too. Having this knowledge adds weight to the poem, and makes each reading feel like a reverence. (Rita Dove’s “Parsley” is a devastation and opened up a part of history I had never learned.)

I look for little clues I may have missed—word choices that bolster the metaphor, repetitions that indicate a deeper theme, or unusual line breaks that alter the meaning of a phrase. Here is where I also consider the speaker of the poem. Is it the poet themselves? Is it an omniscient being, or a single narrow perspective? Who is the audience of this poem? This will further illuminate its meaning (and the intention). 

Look, too, for where the poem offers a moment of surprise. Ó Tuama explains it like this: “Sometimes a poem has a ‘turn,' a place where it pivots on itself. This might be expected, or it might be shocking. Nicole Sealey has a gorgeous love poem in her book. It's a beautiful love poem, and the final line says, ‘how I'll miss you when you're dead.’ It's shocking, it's powerful, and makes you re-read the entire poem.”

4. RE-READ FOR SOUND (OUT LOUD, IF YOU CAN).

Next, try reading the poem out loud or search for readings of the poem online. This is where the music of a poem emerges, and you can feel the shape of each word and line as you move through it.

“Often contemporary poetry is called 'Lyric Poetry.' The word 'lyric' comes from the word 'Lyre' referring to how ancient Greeks used to recite poetry while strumming on the lyre, a musical instrument like a small harp,” explains Ó Tuama. “These days people don't strum little harps while reciting poetry, but poetry is still called 'Lyric'—meaning it has music in it. You can hear the music too: in the sounds of the words, perhaps the vowel sounds, or the rhythm, or rhyme, or the spaces in between words. So I try to listen to the internal music of the poem.”

Rhyme is the easiest to spot, although slant rhymes and internal rhymes can be more difficult to catch on the first read-through. Recurring sounds add emotional impact—sharp, quick vowel sounds like “eye,” “aye,” and “eee” can add energy, while longer sounds like “ooo,” “eh,” and “uh” can slow the pace and add depth. 

“Sound is no accident in poetry, so consider how word choice, rhythm, and cadence make the poem feel.”

Alliteration is another easy device to identify, where there’s repetition in the first letter of each word (think “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”). This method is one of my favorites, and it reminds me to pay close attention to why and how those exact letters are being used. Sound is no accident in poetry, so consider how word choice, rhythm, and cadence make the poem feel.

Pay attention to punctuation, too. When a line breaks in the middle of a sentence, I like to take a minuscule pause (shorter than the length of an inhale). If that feels awkward, you can read the poem like a normal sentence and allow periods and commas to inform breath. Allow yourself the chance to read it a few ways and at varied paces so that you can settle into the natural flow of the poem. If it’s a poem you want to ruminate on, record yourself reading it and listen back a few times.

5. ADD CONTEXT TO PAINT A FULL PICTURE.

Finally, return to the beginning. How does the title play with the rest of the poem? Does the shape of the poem have anything to do with its meaning? Dig into the author’s history; look at the publication date and consider the world around the poem when it was first released. Consider where the poem lives: Was it released as part of the author’s poetry book, or was it published in a literary magazine? If you’re reading it as part of a collection (such as Best American Poetry), why do you think this particular poem was selected? Who selected it?

“I’m always interested in what the hunger of the poem is. Why did this poem need to be written? What is its intelligence? What is it yearning for?”

— PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA

“I'm always interested in what the hunger of the poem is,” Ó Tuama says. “Why did this poem need to be written? What is its intelligence? What is it yearning for? Treating the poem with this kind of curiosity, I find it draws on parts of my own story.”

You can also take a look at the form of the poem to infer a little more meaning. The sonnet, for example, is a traditional form for love poems. Writers can use form as a nod to adjacent themes or as a way to highlight the contrast between the theme and form. I am enchanted by the villanelle form, and Elizabeth Bishop’s One Art is a villanelle I’ve enjoyed returning to since I first read it a decade ago.

There’s always more to learn from a poem you love; just when you think you’ve gleaned everything from its meaning, it can strike you with a new insight. Bookmark or note the poems that inspire you, and revisit them when you’re feeling lonely, homesick, or untethered. Which poems are those, you ask? You’ll know which ones speak directly to your heart when you read them.💛

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.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

I am re-reading Bird by Bird. How does someone write about how to write and be so funny? I read the passage below to Randy last night and I could barely get the last word out, I was laughing so hard. So true. So funny.

Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind—a scene, a locale, a character, whatever—and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind. The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys. They are the voices of anxiety, judgment, doom, guilt. Also, severe hypochondria. There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: food that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk. There is a vague pain at the base of your neck. It crosses your mind that you have meningitis.

Shameless: A Sexual Revolution by Nadia Bolz-Weber

I was reading several other books when the book Shameless: A Sexual Revolution by Nadia Bolz-Weber came in the mail. I started reading it and finished it the next day. I am not actually sure why it captivated me that way. I do not spend a lot of time thinking about sexual shame, but it did enter my life through an experience a few years ago. Not my own experience of sexual shame, but dealing with it when a close friend was working through it. Maybe that was the fascination for me.

Regardless, I liked Shameless. I’ve been a fan of Nadia Bolz-Weber for quite a few years. I was eager to read what she had to say about this subject, in particular pornography since I’d read one of her tweets about that which caused me some concern. I was afraid she would say that pornography is perfectly fine, and that was not my experience. I’ll write more on that soon.

In the beginning of the book, Bolz-Weber tells the story of talking to a parishioner, “a large transwoman,” and telling her she (Bolz-Weber) had recently read her Christian sex-ed book from forty years ago. She said,

“It taught me that God’s plan is for everyone to be a hetero-sexual, cis-gender Christian who never has sex with anyone until they marry their one true love and make babies...I mean, I do think there are genuinely those kinds of people out there…” The parishioner held up her hand and touched her thumb to the rest of her purple nail-polished finger. “Sure there are. And this is how small that circle is.”

Bolz-Weber makes the point that few people on this planet fit in that circle, and says,

So my argument in this book is this: we should not be more loyal to an idea, a doctrine, or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people. If the teachings of the church are harming the bodies and spirits of people, we should rethink those teachings.

She talks about Martin Luther and how he looked at the harm the church had inflicted on his people’s spiritual lives and decided to teach people the “story of God coming to humanity in Jesus of Nazareth, and speaking to us the words of life,” which freed them from the harm their church had done.

Luther was less loyal to the teachings of the church than he was to people, and this helped spark what is now known as the Protestant Reformation.

She concedes that the church is not the only place where harmful ideas about sex and the body are taught, but she claims, “as harmful as the messages from society are, what society does not do is to say that these messages are from God.”

Another important point Bolz-Weber makes is 

...we must also bring concern to our consent and mutuality. Concern moves us close to the heart of Jesus’ own ethic:love God and our neighbor as ourselves. It requires us to act on another’s behalf. It reframes the choice entirely outside of our own self-interest in a way that consent and mutuality alone do not.

Here is where she talks about failing to show concern when your behavior hurts others, such as hurting your spouse if you commit adultery, taking advantage of someone who isn’t in position of their full facilities, and so on. Concern for yourself is also a factor.

Bolz-Weber brings in this need for concern in the proposal for a sexual revolution:

It’s time to pay attention to what is happening to the people around us, and to our loved ones, and it’s time for us to be concerned.

I read an article in Christianity Today by Wesley Hall, saying that Bolz-Weber is doing away with the need for confessing sin and forgiveness (absolution) that attracted him to Bolz-Weber in the first place. I did not find this to be true in my reading. Bolz-Weber did not, as far as I saw, specifically address the topic of absolution. She did, however, talk about not hurting others in sexually related behavior and, as I already noted, the need for concern. I think that did not go far enough for Wesley Hall and most likely others. Hall speaks specifically about sexual purity as a scriptural category and “that the biblical rules against, say, premarital and extramarital sex are still binding on believers today.” Bolz-Weber has several things to say about purity.

But no matter how much we strive for purity in our minds, bodies, spirits, or ideologies, purity is not the same as holiness. It’s just easier to define what is pure than what is holy, so we pretend they are interchangeable.

and

Purity most often leads to pride or despair, not to holiness. Because holiness is about union with, and purity is about separation from.

Bolz-Weber brings up alcohol and the temperance movement. This has always been interesting to me -- the conflict between insisting on absolutely no alcohol (teetotalling) and drinking responsibly. And add in the fact that some people must give up alcohol completely or they cannot control themselves. Bolz-Weber herself is a recovering alcoholic and talks about her desire to drink even after decades of sobriety. She describes it as a switch that gets flipped. For some reason if she drinks alcohol, that switch flips and she cannot stop.

Bolz-Weber uses that same switch flip concept when she writes about pornography. And she talks about how some people can eat a piece of chocolate cake once in a while, then return to a balanced diet, while others cannot control their eating. “Same with video games. And exercise. And nail biting.” She writes,

But if you find that when you eat chocolate cake a switch gets flipped and suddenly you have no taste for anything else, to the extent that you desire only cake, cake might not be good for you. Still, I will not sit here and say that no one should ever eat cake and that it destroys people’s lives, just like I would never say that people should not drink because alcohol destroyed my life. Or that no one should ever view erotic imagery because [someone] has developed destructive behaviors around it.

Bolz-Weber says she does not have answers, but she won’t join in the moral outrage about porn, and goes on to note that the consumption of porn is ubiquitous and many who express outrage about it are very likely themselves secretly watching porn. “I believe we can apply an ethic of concern here by acknowledging the potential harm without shaming the behavior entirely.”

She brings up 1 Corinthians 10:23 where Paul says all things are lawful but not all things are beneficial. This is all very interesting to me. I am no Biblical scholar, but I cannot find a verse explicitly saying premarital sex is a sin, or even specifically forbidden. There are, rather, verses about marriage being holy, faithfulness between spouses, and many other verses that might be read to imply premarital sex is not allowed. They speak to all the ways that sexual desires and actions can be harmfuL. I wonder, though. Maybe premarital sex is like so many other things, something to pay attention to, to discern whether it is giving glory to God, life-giving to yourself and others, asking if the behavior is compulsive or bringing yourself or your partner more deeply into the sacred. That is hard for me to think. My inclination is to believe premarital sex is something God would see as sinful. It can be forgiven, of course, and good can come of it, but I have always thought it was sinful, regardless of the context. need to ponder it more.

I find it helpful to think of the purity movement in a similar way to the temperance movement. Why does the church (not all) build up a big teaching in regard to sexual purity for women, and not do the same for drinking (and also not do the same for men -- again, typically)? You don’t hear of wearing a “non-drinking ring” as you do a purity ring. You don’t hear of assemblies where everyone is lectured on the way that not drinking is holy. You don’t hear of “non-drinking father-daughter dances,” and all the other teachings, rituals, and emphasis often put on sexual purity. Of course, churches certainly preach against drunkenness, and I’m sure there are some churches where people sign a promise not to drink at all similar to the purity pledges, but I think there is no doubt the lesson of purity is preached and taught and given special attention in a way unlike other beliefs, and it has harmed a lot of people.

In Hall’s article he wrote:

Bolz-Weber is out to set Christians free from the angst and humiliation churches have often foisted on them because of their sexual proclivities and behaviors. But the way the book goes about doing so is by rejecting wholesale the idea of “sexual purity” and, with it, the need to confess sexual transgression. In one of the book’s most straightforward moments, Bolz-Weber sums up her message like this:

I’m here to tell you: unless your sexual desires are for minors or animals, or your sexual choices are hurting you or those you love, those desires are not something you need to “struggle with.” They are something to listen to, make decisions about, explore, perhaps have caution about. But struggle with? Fight against? Make enemies of? No.

The message of Shameless, in short, is that feeling like a transgressor never bears the seeds of redemption, and the way to flourishing lies in throwing out any standard that isn’t giving you life.

What if you substituted “drinking” for “sexual” in the quote from Shameless?

I’m here to tell you: unless your drinking desires or your drinking choices are hurting you or those you love, those desires are not something you need to “struggle with.” They are something to listen to, make decisions about, explore, perhaps have caution about. But struggle with? Fight against? Make enemies of? No.

I don’t think when you make that substitution, you would then draw the conclusion that “feeling like a transgressor never bears the seeds of redemption, and the way to flourishing lies in throwing out any standard that isn’t giving you life,” the way Hall does with sexual desires. Bolz-Weber is not saying sexual desires are never sinful. We would not say drinking is never sinful. Nor many other behaviors. As noted before, what Paul says applies to sexual desires, drinking, and many things, all things are lawful but not all things are beneficial (1 Corinthians 10:23).

i think it is good that Bolz-Weber is showing concern for those who were hurt by the church’s actions towards premarital sex, and doing what she can to show them the love of God, to promote healing. I understand a strong reaction to what seems radical and differs so much from what we have been taught. I cannot, however, believe that it means Bolz-Weber’s message rejects the need to confess sexual transgression, any more than it rejects the need to confess all transgressions. I see no reason to think she has changed her mind on that. Her message is, rather, that premarital sex is like other desires and actions. It is not always sinful, but can be. It does not need to be singled out and used to harm people the way it has been in the past. And we in the church need to understand the consequences of that history, and work toward healing the hurt.

x

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.

Poetry links

Poetry

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LSlxfr6hDs4AX4JburbXzbmIOQYcYHNX?usp=sharing

Books I Read in 2019

I plan to continue to write longer pieces about some books I read, but I want to have a list of all the books I read in a year, so I am starting this page to do that.

Books I Read in 2019

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!

Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church by Philip Yancey

I am still reading this book but wanted to write about one particular passage right now. I might come back to write more when I finish the book.

On page 106 of my version, Yancey writes about "an impromptu sermon Martin Luther King, Jr., gave one day." He was responding to the tiredness of the students and volunteers in the movement. "King sensed the students' temptation to become bitter, and then to turn on opponents in the same spirit of hostility they had been receiving--to become the enemy, in other words." He said:

A big danger for us is the temptation to follow the people we are opposing. They call us names, so we call them names. Our names may not be "redneck" or "cracker"; they may be names that have a sociological or psychological veneer to them, a gloss; but they are names, nonetheless--"ignorant," or "brainwashed," or "duped" or "hysterical" or "poor-white" or "consumed by hate." I know you will all give me plenty of evidence in support of those categories, and I remind you that in many people, in many people called segregationists, there are other things going on in their lives; this person or that person, standing here or there may also be other things--kind to neighbors and family, helpful and good spirited at work.

You all know, I think, what I'm trying to say--that we must try not to end up with stereotypes  of those we oppose, even as they slip all of us into their stereotypes. And who are we? Let us not do to ourselves as others (as our opponents) do to us: try to put ourselves into one all-inclusive category--the virtuous ones as against the evil ones, or the decent ones as against the malicious, prejudiced ones, or the well-educated as against the ignorant. You can see that I can go on and on--and there is the danger: the "us" or "them" mentality takes hold, and we do, actually, begin to run the risk of joining ranks with the very people we are opposing. I worry about this a lot these days.

(From The Call of Service) 

Yes, I, too, worry about this a lot these days.

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.