Road trip

I’m writing this five days into a road trip H. and I are taking, from Manitoba to B.C., then down the Oregon Coast, eastward to Denver, Col., to visit my brother and his wife, then back home to Winnipeg by mid-September. The first day, across the prairies, was the familiar section of the drive, not uninteresting, but too often done and too well-known to be really interesting, so we added some interest by reading aloud in Shop Class as Soul Craft by Matthew B. Crawford, which is the first book in this year’s “Take and Read” session with Paul Doerksen of MBCI. I’m probably going to have more to say about this book once we’re finished and we have the book discussion, but just to say now, it’s great!

We took the # 3 highway through the Rockies, stopping for brief visits with my aunt and a friend in Lethbridge at the gateway to the route. Our drive through the mountains was wonderful. For a good while the last day we drove blissfully along a section of the # 3A, not realizing we were off the route we intended. This error in reading road signs cost us several hours time, but since it’s a holiday, we enjoyed the unexpected detour and also the ferry ride that got us back on track. “And it’s free!” the woman at the little grocery where we stopped to inquire about our situation, once we realized we’d gone off course, announced. Apparently it’s the only free ferry in the province; I guess that’s why she was so eager to say so. Still, it was a long day, and that night, in bed, I felt my brain was still turning into the corners of all those winding roads as we traversed one mountain range after the next.

Yesterday we helped our daughter move into more permanent digs in Vancouver, in rain that was pouring buckets all day, and now we’re in Tsawwassen with our son and his wife and their four children. This morning H. and I took the oldest two of them to the local bird sanctuary. Our grandson, 8,  is amazing with birds: four times he had a chickadee land on his hand just by patiently waiting for it. He and his sister each have more energy than two of me would have, but they’re growing up into it well. Not only did they remember their mother’s instructions to thank us for the outing, but at lunch at the DQ, after he’d started his meal, our grandson said, “Just to get the lunchtime conversation started, what was your highlight from the bird sanctuary, Grandma?” Well that both impressed me and made me proud. Isn’t it wonderful when children learn the arts of conversation?

Travelogues (this sketchy, I mean) aren’t the richest of blog posts, I confess, but we’re travelling, and I just wanted to let you know. Friday it’s off to Oregon. Next time I’m near a computer (we don’t bring one along), I may stop by again.

More from Stanley Hauerwas

Hannah’s Child, by Stanley Hauerwas, which I reviewed in the previous post, is one of those books I could not read without a pencil at hand, to mark spots I especially enjoyed with a tiny check mark in the margin, rather like notching a tree, I suppose, in case I wanted to come back and look again.

Here’s a quote or two from those markings.

On the influence of John Howard Yoder:
Yoder forced me to recognize that nonviolence is not a recommendation, an ideal, that Jesus suggested we might try to live up to. Rather, nonviolence is constitutive of God’s refusal to redeem coercively.

On the contingent nature of our existence:
To say that our lives are contingent is to say that they are out of our control. Being “out of control” is the central image that runs through The Peaceable Kingdom and much of my work… the image came to me because of the influence of Yoder, who taught me to think that following Jesus means you cannot anticipate or ensure results. Learning to live out of control, learning to live without trying to force contingency into conformity because of our desperate need for security, I take to be a resource for discovering alternatives that would otherwise not be present.

On friendship:
What it means for me to be a Christian and to be a friend has become so intertwined that I cannot untangle one from the other, nor do I wish to.

An interesting — surprising? — observation on institutions:
I have learned… that the patience and time it takes to build and sustain institutions like the church and the university are themselves an alternative to war.

And last, on having a novelist’s eye in his writing as ethicist, for what it also says about the novelist’s task:
We are complex creatures constituted by contradictions we refuse to acknowledge. The novelist must help us see our complexity without providing comforting explanations…. Reading novels will not necessarily make one better able to see without illusion, but it can help.

A theologian’s memoir

In 2001, TIME magazine named Stanley Hauerwas “the best theologian in America.” Hauerwas found the designation absurd, he said, responding that “‘best’ is not a theological category.” But there it was, he was thus named, and he was famous.

Hauerwas’ memoir, Hannah’s Child, which I recently enjoyed, seems an attempt to come to terms with that particular “Stanley Hauerwas.” He puts “the great man”in his place, as it were, by thoroughly reminding us of his unlikely qualifications as low class Southerner and hardworking bricklayer’s son (where he learned the earthy language he only reluctantly dropped many years into his theological career — “I hated the hyprocrisy that niceness cloaks”), and of his impatience yet slowness at knowing “how to be a Christian.”

“I live most of my life as if God does not exist,” he confesses. (Something most of us probably will have to confess as well.)

“[B]y writing I learn to believe,” Hauerwas also says, early on in the book. One feels that he is doing that with the topic of his life as well, picking his way as truthfully as he can, reaching some understanding as he goes about who he is and who he has been.

About his writing (which is prolific) — Hauerwas says, similarly,

My writing is exploratory because I have no idea what I believe until I force myself to say it. For me, writing turns out to be my way of believing. (136)

And another time,

Writing is hard and difficult work because to write is to think. I do not have an idea and then find a way to express it. The expression is the idea. (235)

This awareness of what he’s up to in writing seems a figure of one of Hauerwas’ key contributions as theologian: the expression is the belief. His work, he says, “was to demonstrate the link between the truth of what we say we believe and the shape of the lives we live.” He doesn’t consider “belief” of much value detached from what we do.

For a while, as I read, I jotted down every time I came across a phrase something like “I had no idea” or “I am not sure” or “it never occurred to me” or “I did not understand.” They are frequent, and one might get the impression from them that Hauerwas bumbled through life, knowing very little of anything. Not true, but they do express his sense of being an outsider, of life’s surprises, and of his debt to others for that which he’s been able to learn and teach. He expresses his gratitude easily — for his friends, his son Adam, his second wife Paula. His first marriage, to a woman who was mentally ill, was difficult, and there have been other conflicts along the way. Some of these wounds still seem raw, at least judging by how he nurses them in these pages.

One looks to life writing, however, not for perfection, but for honesty and grace. And there’s plenty of both evident here. I found myself challenged by Hauerwas’ life, and was fascinated by how he works at describing what it means to be him.

What it meant first off, as his mother with her “white-trash energy” informed him, was to be the answer to her prayers. She had married late and like the biblical Hannah, she was desperate for a child. Mrs. Hauerwas prayed a prayer like Hannah’s and was also given a son. He wasn’t thrilled to be told, as a youngster, that he was “destined to be one of God’s dedicated.” It was fine for her to pray the prayer but did she have to tell him about it?

Along the way, of course, being him meant a lot more than that, but in the end, Hauerwas comes back to his mother’s prayer, and himself as its answer.

However, I am quite sure, strange servant of God though I may be, that whatever it means to be Stanley Hauerwas is the result of that prayer. Moreover, given the way I have learned to think, that is the way it should be.

Weather, links, a new header

Mid-August, the days noticeably shorter, the nights cooler, and we’ve got more tomatoes ripe on the vine than we can possibly make sandwiches of. Yes, it’s the feel of autumn in the air.

Which reminds me — I was chatting with an editor/writer friend yesterday who was telling me about an article she’s working on, how she’s trying to get the “hook” (first sentence, paragraph) right. Which reminded her of how often people who write for publications like the educational newsletter she edits will simply begin with the weather. Late summer and signs of fall, principals and teachers are beginning to think about school, etc. etc., and in spring, well, the weather’s heating up and the kids are restless, ready for their holidays, etc. etc. Weather is just so convenient as a place to begin, whether it’s conversations at the supermarket or in our writing.

For readers, who are often busy and mostly grazing through all those pages of print we writers and publishers impose on them, opening with the weather is generally boring and won’t “hook” anyone. Which is why good editors like my friend simply scroll a few paragraph into the piece and see that there it is, the beginning — the hook! (Yes, this often works, especially with new or inexperienced writers.)

My inner editor being lazy or off-duty this morning, I started with the weather too, but what I actually had in mind to say was just a couple of disparate things, and that’s it for this lovely sit-outside-on-the-deck perfection of a Friday.

1. Back in April, I reflected on an article in the MB Herald concerning the B.C. conference and Mark Baker. Here’s a news update on that subject.

2. Someone over at CMU Press put together a great set of questions about This Hidden Thing, for book club discussion or study. My thanks to them, and this simply as an FYI for anyone interested.

3. I may (or may not) come back to more postcard excerpts from my grandfather’s postcard album in the header of this blog, but for now, a slice of a photo our daughter-in-law took recently. Her husband (our son) was posing beside his grandmother (my mom) when they were here in Winnipeg several weeks ago to attend a wedding. She caught their faces, yes, but also their hands. I think it’s a beautiful photo and very evocative too of my blog title and theme, of that awareness that we build our lives out of what’s given to us in so many ways, including intergenerational bonds. Of the bones of inheritance (for better or worse) and love.

Here’s the larger photo. (You can view more of D.’s work at her blog, listed under my “Family and Friends.”)

Hands, grandson S. and grandmother T. Credit: Dayna Dueck

Sustained reflection on another’s life

The death of an elder in the family circle pulls us out of our ordinary routines and obligations (including the blogs we write) and forces us into sustained reflection on that person’s life. In this case — my aunt’s death (see previous post) — it was a good experience.

M. Harder burial, Aug. 16, 2010

Not that this reflection was particularly organized as a formal activity, though some parts like the eulogy and service certainly were. Most of it happened in the course of planning, hosting siblings from out of town, and attending the viewing and funeral and burial. The reason we were doing out-of-the-ordinary things such as coming together was (Aunt) Margaret’s end, and so of course we shared round the death stories, and gave voice, for several days in a row, to our memories, questions, even speculations. When a few of us met, ostensibly to work on the eulogy, one cousin did most of the work (you can’t really write by committee) while the rest of us combed our late aunt’s photo albums and swapped stories the pictures provoked. On Sunday, with siblings and my mother gathered at our house, we pressed Mom for opinions about her late sister (and also her living ones), and we paged through some diaries Margaret left behind, reading nuggets aloud to one another. The open mic time at the funeral lunch yielded a further variety of reflection about this one woman’s life.

My brother who emceed that session reminded us that we really don’t know other people very well. It’s true. Even in the case of those we feel we know, the communal sharing and reminiscence that the rituals of death “force” upon us can enlarge and fill in the portrait. It’s an old saw that it’s too bad all this, especially the nice things that are said, happens only after the person dies. Yes, also true, but then again, perhaps because life is multi-faceted and necessarily busy, it’s the only way it really works. Death compresses the exercise of knowing, intensifies the reflection. For one week, it was all about someone else. The stew of things I’ve remembered and heard about my aunt will nourish me now as I pick up my regular routines.

Unexpectedly

Unexpectedly, yesterday, and for the second time in less than a year, I had the privilege of keeping company at the deathbed of an elderly relative.

My aunt Margaret Harder, 84, was admitted to hospital from the personal care home on Saturday; yesterday morning, tests revealed she had a blood clot in her lungs. Her last years have been a continuing story of failing health and memory, an unhappy story of changes and losses of all kinds, and it was determined that the best course — and the one she wanted — would be to respond with palliative care. She died at just before nine in the evening.

My aunt was a teacher. Once, as a young student, her hair got caught in the teacher’s jacket button when he bent to look at her work. Was he cross? At any rate, he frightened her, and Margaret decided then that when she was a teacher, no student would ever be afraid of her. I’m sure no student ever was. She was not without authority, but above all, there was gentleness in her. She also lavished on us, her nieces and nephews, and our children in turn, great kindness and generosity.

For many years, my aunt taught special needs students — those with physical challenges like muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy. Yesterday afternoon, George, one of her former students with whom she remained in contact, came to the hospital. It was moving to watch him express his gratitude and affection for her and to see her lift her hand to his, the only time in the day that she made a gesture of this kind. He held her hand a long time.

During my aunt’s last hours, I couldn’t help but think of the next-to-final scene in Pilgrim’s Progress, where Christian and Hopeful must cross a cold, rushing river to reach the Celestial City. Margaret was not in pain, nor did she seem uncomfortable, but my, what a great deal of hard work it was to get across that last cold river! Yet she seemed to understand what it was for, and where she was going, and as far as we could tell, she was not afraid. And she got there, finally, resolute and well.

I thank God for the life and death of my aunt Margaret Harder.

Thoughts on Anne Rice’s “un-conversion”

As news of Anne Rice’s un-conversion (to Christianity, not Christ) ricochets around the media, I find myself also reflecting on what she has done.  And on the larger questions her action raises to my mind about speaking up, staying in, or getting out of the places we belong but find ourselves in disagreement with.

First thoughts, first reaction to reading  Rice’s words: admiration.  She said:

In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

The next day she added,

I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being ‘Christian’ or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For 10 years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

And then she explained further,

My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

(Source for Rice quotes, The Guardian).

I know little about Anne Rice beyond the facts that she is the author of hugely successful vampire novels, turned Christian, turned author of novels about Jesus and a conversion memoir. I have no idea if I need to be cynical about her words or not. What I hear in her statements is a list of refusals I resonate with completely “in the name of Christ” (except for the Democrat one, as I’m Canadian and have no need of either Republican or Democrat), and I hear the word “conscience” and then, in an NPR radio interview, I hear Rice saying this was no quick or easy decision, no flash in the pan, and that it’s “painful.” So I take her at her word, and find myself thinking, “Thankyou! That took courage!”

Second thoughts: more admiration.

Summer days

MHV windmill

H. and I went  to Pioneer Days at the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach today. We’ve been at the Village various times over the years, and it’s always a great way to spend a day. This time, among the “attractions” on offer at Pioneer Days such as demonstrations of spinning, bread baking, blacksmithing and more, yours truly was reading from This Hidden Thing in the site’s Lichtenau Church. (It’s one of two churches at MHW; as curator Roland Sawatzky said, “Any good Mennonite village has to have at least two churches!”) It was good to visit with some folks we know, but also to meet new readers and to know that besides locally, copies of the book are heading to Toronto and to Pennsylvania!

Lichtenau church, where readings and book launches are held. It's the first church built by Mennonites of the 1920s emigration from Russia.

After the reading, it was time to indulge in a waffle with sauce — cooked outside in an old cast iron mould, one-and-a-half minutes per waffle we were told. A waffle fills an entire plate. Then we listened to “3 Mol Plaut,” a group that sings in Low German. I probably understood less than a quarter of what they sang, and got even fewer of the jokes, but H., who grew up with the language, could be heard chuckling throughout. Low German lends itself to any number of plays on words. (Actually, it often sounds amusing to me even when I don’t catch on.) We didn’t stick around for the supper-hour tribute to Elvis, however; not sure how that works in this context!

Last year at this time we were down in Paraguay for the Mennonite World Conference and an extended visit to family in the Chaco, but this summer, except for a quick trip to a nephew’s wedding in Saskatoon last weekend and my few days at a conference in B.C., we’ve been at home. H. had a pleasantly light July, work-wise (he’s a drywall contractor) and it’s been lovely, sitting on the front porch or back deck (depending on the sun), watching the tomatoes ripen, reading, and catching up on home projects. August will be busier for both of us, but what a treat these summer days have been so far. — (Thank You, thank You, thank You!)

Lit: almost larger than life

Lit: A Memoir, by Mary Karr, moved on to my “must read” list mainly through the high esteem in which blogging colleague Shirley Showalter over at 100 Memoirs holds both the book and its author. (Here, her review, and warm letter to Karr after they’d met.)

I reserved the book at the library, but when I arrived to pick it up, I realized I’d made a mistake in my order. It was the large print edition. I still manage just fine with regular print, so reading it this way wasn’t that comfortable, physically. I had to hold the book somewhere near my knees to get a decent distance from the big type, and sometimes after an extended period of reading, my eyes felt curiously maladjusted. I found myself rubbing them to get the familiar proportions of my environment back.

None of which is important, except that this seemed a kind of metaphor for the experience of the story as well. Lit is powerfully absorbing. Mesmerizing. The life it describes is about as large — in its intensity and visceral impact — as it gets without beginning to feel unreal. But it’s real enough; Karr is known to be scrupulous about writing fairly and accurately.

This book picks up where two earlier memoirs — The Liars’ Club (about her childhood) and Cherry (about her teen years) — leave off, with Karr’s education, marriage, becoming a drunk, getting sober, writing a bestseller, finding God. Karr has a lot to work through because of the damage her dysfunctional parents inflicted, and the damage she’s inflicting on her husband and beloved son Dev.

The plot may sound maudlin, like one of those too common grovel-to-glory accounts, but there’s something different about how Karr handles her material (and I don’t mean just her rather earthy language). I think it’s that she took the advice her friend Tobias Wolff (of This Boy’s Life) gave her:

Don’t approach your history as something to be shaken for its cautionary fruit…Tell your stories, and your story will be revealed…Don’t be afraid of appearing angry, small-minded, obtuse, mean, immoral, amoral, calculating, or anything else. Take no care for your dignity.

Such writing follows much the same path an alcoholic has to take to sobriety — facing, listing, confessing “my sinfulness in all its ugliness.” It’s a stance Karr maintains throughout. Interestingly, by taking no regard for cautionary fruit, she ends up being instructive — an example — anyway. She’s very good at describing growth, conversion, transformation, call it what you will, those small moments (that eventually add up) in which the soul opens a little, or shifts perhaps. Such as when she kneels in front of a toilet in the hospital, after checking herself in following a near suicide attempt:

If you’re God, I say, you know I feel small and needy and inadequate. And tonight I want a drink.

The silence fails to say anything back. I glare at it. It feels like judgment, the silence. And at that silence I give off rage; I start a ranting prayer in my head that goes something like this: Fuck you for making me an alcoholic. For making my baby sick all the time when he was so tiny…. And my daddy withering into that form. What pleasure do you get from… from smiting people?

I feel something stir in me, a small wisp of something in my chest, frail as smoke. It is–strangely–the sweetness of my love for my daddy and my son. It blesses me an instant like incense.

My eyes sting, and I blurt out, Thanks for them.

I feel the stillness around me widen a notch.

Karr’s writing reminds me of Anne Lamott’s, another writer who seems larger than life, raw and revealing, yet not diminished for all her carelessness of personal dignity. It’s an art perhaps, such honesty, and certainly the poetic language is, but it seems a gift as well. At any rate, I recommend the book. Unless you really need large print, read it in regular, however; Lit is quite strong enough without the additional shout of those great big words.

Pumps, the problem with poverty alleviation, and more

If you’re interested in development issues, you may want to check out my brother’s new blog, Raspberry Jefe, listed at my site under “Family and Friends.” Opener posts include discussion of what’s wrong with poverty alleviation, the math about treadle pumps, and why IDE (the organization where Al works as CEO) doesn’t have beneficiaries. Posts of a more personal nature are part of the mix as well, including an explanation of his rather marked fondness for raspberries! — And no, I’m under no obligation to mention the site, but I think it’s good stuff — and relevant — and some of you may enjoy it as well.