One of the questions I get most often is “What’s the origin of this book?” or its variation, “Where do you get your ideas?” I really should have a more fluent and coherent answer figured out by now, but I usually fumble around with a whole bunch of things that threw themselves into the mix — like a wish to feature Winnipeg (my home city), an interest in the notion of secrets, and my research in Mennonite history.There’s a short answer too: it’s not the story of anyone I know. The disclaimer “this is a work of fiction” among the data at the front of the book isn’t just there for appearances. I may also note that, at some point, a character or an incident, something like a starting block, lands in my head and may begin to act as a magnet for other characters and incidents. Sometimes I probably make the process sound more deliberate and calculating than it really is, as if I’m a fiction engineer. At other times, I probably make it seem hopelessly airy-fairy, as if I write in a trance.

Since this week’s group is still fresh in my mind, I feel like I should add another piece to the “origins/ideas” answer. What an interesting, beautiful group of women! I see them again, in the circle by the fire — E, L, A, D, P, T, M. And the stories that emerged in our conversation!

Reading gives us bits of our own lives, and in talking about what we have read, we share these stories even as we consider the stories of the book. Since family and secrets are themes of my novel, this evening’s discussion brought out the most incredible other characters and events. Real life really does trump fiction. In book clubs where people have been together long enough to form strong bonds of knowing and affection, such as I sensed at this one, there is a confessional dynamic to the conversation as well.

I don’t borrow from people I meet at evenings like this for my writing, certainly not consciously. (I want that to be clear!) Not only would that inhibit discussion, it would betray trust. But there are things that are given me indirectly. I find the rich diversity of being human and life with others confirmed. I think that gestures, words, impressions are deposited in my mind. These details may be “forgotten” but build into a store of knowledge.

More important are the truths that emerge beneath the specifics of the stories we share. Truths of emotion, belief, will, intuition, and body. Back at the mostly solitary act of writing, they are like anonymous tips that help me crack the mysteries of my projects-in-progress. Being with the book club was a rich slice of real life that inspires my work.

Yet another reason — and for me the most compelling one, though it is quite controversial — is the decision to tell the story from the perspective of Mrs. Thatcher’s current dementia.

The movie opens with a frail, old woman tottering away from a grocery store. In the next scenes, we see Mrs. Thatcher breakfasting with her husband Denis, then telling him what he’ll wear for the day. Soon we realize that Denis Thatcher, in fact, is dead, and that his frequent “presence” is a function of his wife’s current confusion.

Some of her memories are still quite vivid, however, and so we see her life through a series of flashbacks: her rise to power, her challenges and successes, her opinions. The Falklands War and subsequent economic upturn grant her an interval of acclaim, but for the most part, she is an unpopular prime minister. She retains the leadership for about 11 years, then is ousted by her own party.

The Margaret Thatcher we see in these flashbacks is unbending, driven, and difficult to like, though admirable for the strength of her convictions, her tenacity, and the barriers she broke. She seems to be constantly directing, lecturing, or hectoring those around her, who are usually men.

But all this through the lens of dementia – what effect does that have on the life of the woman, on how we perceive her story? Does her condition in old age become what this movie is about, and if so, what story is it telling us? Is it a story of comeuppance – ah, how the mighty are fallen! – that she who was so powerful, so seemingly uncaring at times, is now reduced? Or, is it a story of profound humanity that arouses our compassion?

The point about dementia is that capacity for self-reflection, which might yet alter or heal aspects of the past, is drastically reduced. In many ways, Mrs. Thatcher still acts as she did in her earlier life, seeking to order and control. Those around a person with dementia are left to react, to “put up.” Well, such was the case in her earlier life as well. This makes me wonder whether the dementia, as a narrative device here, acts as a kind of tragic mirror to all the ways in which she was always “unaware.”

At the same time, the elderly Mrs. Thatcher in the movie returns repeatedly to memories of her husband Denis, and their interactions, also of happy family times at the beach. She asks the Denis Thatcher she imagines being present, “Were you happy, Denis? Tell me the truth.” Is there, in the weight of these memories, a sort of reflection, after all, that either re-orders priorities, or perhaps reveals them more clearly than the public persona did?

Michael White, at The Guardian, who “knew” Margaret Thatcher, calls Streep’s interpretation “remarkable and sensitive” but dislikes its “cruel portrait of old age, loneliness and decay. “ Max Pemberton at The Telegraph was “sickened,” he says, by the “cruel, thoughtless voyeurism,” and is incensed that the film was made before Mrs. Thatcher’s death. Although he has “direct experience of the reality of dementia for the sufferer and their family,” and considers the movie “faultless in its depiction of dementia,” he believes it “chillingly insensitive.”

I too have direct experience of the reality of dementia. Unlike Mr. Pemberton, I don’t think respect of Mrs. Thatcher requires us to turn away from the face of her dementia, while freely viewing her face as she gives orders about miners on strike or the Falklands War. Since the movie, I’m mulling the life of this woman, wondering about the parts and how they add up, what they mean. I find resonance here with experiences of dementia in my family. I came away from the story feeling newly attentive, newly full of questions, both discouraged and encouraged by what remains in the lives of dementia sufferers and how that illumines, contradicts, undoes, or re-forms the rest of their history.

Have you seen The Iron Lady? What did you think of it?     

Then we come across a quote from John Koessler, written some years ago about the coming of the Lord, and — quite seriously — it says everything that’s true for us today, everything we would want to say.

Meanwhile joy, like the Day of the Lord, had a habit of showing up unexpectedly, as if it were a thief intent on catching me unaware. It stole upon me at inexplicable and inopportune moments, while driving in the car or making the bed, only to vanish as soon as I became aware of its presence… When I looked for it on my own, particularly in church, it eluded me. I came to understand that this is often the way of joy. A glimpse of heaven refracted through the shadows of earthly experience, joy prefers to inhabit the periphery of our spiritual vision.

As we drove into the park, however, one kilometre after the other, and seemingly the only people there — for we passed no one at all — the darkness felt very thick indeed and seemed to get thicker. The park is not lit, and the sky was clouded. The city was far away, just a glow on the horizon. Suddenly it felt weird, this idea, and lonely, just us and our car lights out here, trying to find a suitable fire pit near the road where we could stop.

The fire pits are a lot harder to see in the dark, H. remarked. Yes. We kept driving, along the huge circle the road makes through the park. Distances seem longer in the dark, too, we said.

Eventually we came to an area that we thought we recognized as having fire pits. We stopped and H. turned the car to the side a little to direct the car lights over the area to our right. No pits there, but what was that, to our left? Not just a fire pit on a slight incline beside a stand of pines, but one with a faint red glow in it. A pit with fire?

Master fire-maker H., who got some start-up help last night

We got out and checked. Yes, indeed, red-hot embers. There was no one there so we claimed it as ours to use. How quickly a hearty fire is achieved when it’s already started, when there are ashes sizzling with life and heat. We soon had a good blaze on, and soon that blaze had pushed back enough for us to roast our smokies, have our supper. Food — even a roasted smokie that has fallen onto the ground — tastes delicious in the dark and cold, and when all you can hear are your own voices, the wind, and the crackling flames. We ate and we talked about the year past, and the one lying ahead.

The snow around the pit was trampled hard and several picnic tables had been pulled into the area, so I’m guessing it may have been a rendezvous or warm-up spot for some people doing snow sports earlier. And who knows whether leaving a fire a-glow, even in a metal pit in winter, is the right thing to do. All I know is that the bubbling remains of it — as if waiting for us, biding their time — added something special to the evening, some poetry if you like, or a reminder about the new year and our travelling into its unknowns. It was wonderful not only in a practical sense but as a metaphor of life’s journey as well. If it’s true that faith is longing, desire, intention, the fire of which we dream and want to set or keep a-light, is it not also true that we will meet Fire already lit for us, to draw us near, to guide and to help us?

Last evening, we attended a Longest Night Service in our church. We hold this service to acknowledge that not everyone experiences the Andy Williams hit, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” at Christmas. People may be lonely or mourning the loss of someone they loved. They may be sick or struggling with mental health issues or addictions. They may be unemployed or financially stressed. And, while experiences of darkness may be very personal, they also encompass places of current crisis such as Syria or the Philippines.

In this service, we sang, sat in silence, heard Scriptures from Isaiah 40 and John 1, and prayed together. We lit “our” candles from the Christ candle already lit in our midst. Then our pastor reminded us of a paradox: while possibly the worse time of the year for many, for them — and for all of us — it actually is the most wonderful time of the year. What’s wonderful about it? Immanuel: God with us.

There is no better time to welcome Christ than in the heavy dark of winter, and Christ is come.

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:78-79)

The other day, in fact, I told H. that I feel almost happier than I think I have a right to. Good health; warm, comfortable home;  loving husband and children (grown up!) and grandchildren; no one (that I can think of) I’d want to avoid if I saw them approaching; both of us involved in meaningful daily work.

My work, which takes up a good chunk of each day, is a writing project — a third novel — that I’m enjoying very much. I was recently awarded a Manitoba Arts Council grant  in the amount I’d applied for, to assist me through the next half year or so as I try to complete a near-to-ready draft of it. Not only is the financial support most welcome, but the commitment I’ve made through the application process and then its acceptance is a tremendous motivator. I’m entering this stage of the project with a rough first draft that’s lumbering and messy and full of holes. All I’ll say for a tease is that the novel has an odd uncle and an archivist in it. That may sound as dull as dust, but I think odd uncles and archivists quite fascinating, actually. — To Manitobans, whose tax dollars support the arts in this way, thank you, thank you!

My swell of gratitude also includes good news that came to me earlier this fall, namely that Turnstone Press, a great local literary house, has accepted a collection of my short stories for publication. They’re looking at a possible release date of fall 2012. The fifteen stories in this collection have gathered over time, some previously published, others new. Putting it together felt quite different from finishing a novel, but I’ll ruminate on the difference some other time. No firm title yet, for a tease.

I’m not sure how much happiness, actually, is anyone’s “right,” but I know many people struggle along without one or more of the blessings I mentioned on my list. I also know that levelled hills and smooth paths cannot be assumed or demanded on pilgrimage. But if able to to walk them a while, they’re a great gift. Not to mention the same old, same (wonderful) old of Christmas.

In this attractive addition to a growing library of discussion about homosexuality underway within some branches of the Mennonites church, Kraus, who is professor emeritus of Goshen College, argues for inclusion in the church for those of all sexual orientations, with the same moral guidelines (mutual affirmation, respect, and affection) for the sexual fulfillment of all. He considers the matter through the lens of the “image of God,” as seen in the Creation accounts and throughout Scripture.

Our creation in God’s image points us to relationship, he says. “God’s will for the human family is defined in the Bible as shalom, which is a human reflection of the Trinitarian image of God; and while the inherent spiritual and social meaning of shalom does not change, its cultural shape and assumptions do change…”

Kraus’ six-chapter essay begins with “orientation.” While there is debate over orientation, Kraus finds the science on the matter compelling and insists that the church must take this developing knowledge seriously. Individuals do not choose their orientation. Furthermore, the understanding of sexual orientation as an essential part of being human – part of the created order — is theologically grounded; homosexuality does not deserve the moral shame and stigma it has been burdened with.

The work of theology, of interpretation and faithfulness to Scripture, is a work of deconstruction and reconstruction. (In the historical narrative, we see this in Jesus’ new visioning of the law; the early church’s huge shift to include “unclean” Gentiles; changes around slavery and race, which involved theological arguments not unlike today’s around homosexuality; and elevation of women in the face of literal scriptural indictments.) Kraus argues, in fact, that it is precisely the church’s work to present a “kingdom alternative” in culture, not as a power option but to “spell out the pragmatic implications of love toward those we instinctively fear.” This is the church’s spiritual genius.

Kraus challenges the Augustinian theological tradition, especially its view of creation, the fall, and sexuality, which has defined heterosexuality as God’s intention and same-sex sexuality as a moral deficit by default. This tradition has undergirded (though inconsistently) much of the church’s approach to sexuality.

At times, the essay feels repetitive, and there are some minor typos in the book, but I very much appreciate its reiterated argument and the use of the “God’s image” lens on the subject. Especially valuable, at least for me, is Kraus’ explanation of Jesus’ statements about marriage and eunuchs (Matthew 19:1-12) as a critique of a cultural priority on progeny; it’s the first I’ve encountered that brings these teachings together in a way that makes sense to me.

A further bonus of this small volume are the other voices that appear in it. The writers of the foreword (Martin Lehman) and three “complementary reflections” (Cynthia Lapp Stolzfus, Mary Schertz, Richard A. Kauffman) all agree with Kraus and his call to full inclusion, but each contributes uniquely and compellingly to the conversation. Lehman has stories, as well as a reflection on Elohim (the plural name of God) and “the presence of God as social being” so pervasive in the New Testament. Stolzfus responds with encouragements as pastor of a congregation that has welcome lesbian, gay, and bisexual members for 25 years.  Schertz urges that we also take the cross of Jesus – “suffering love” — seriously in these deliberations. (Also intriguing – as an argument for diversity – is her suggestion that it is “more difficult for the Spirit to move in groups of people who think alike.”) Kauffman proposes the so-called Wesleyan Quadrilateral as a tool for theological reflection on this topic and any other, which makes explicit that  besides biblical revelation, sources of truth include tradition, reason, and experience.

C. Norman Kraus offers this books with an invitation for analysis and dialogue. I hope it will accomplish precisely that. I hope it will hasten recognition within the church of our common fallenness regardless of orientation and sexual fulfillment under identical moral guidelines.  That it will, in other words, conserve and foster the biblical vision of shalom.

—-

Disclosure: I requested, and received, this book for review from Cascade Books, a division of Wipf and Stock.

Sue Sorensen’s novel A Large Harmonium (Coteau Books) takes us through a year in the life of Janey, a professor of English, who is also wife to Hector, a music professor, and mother to Little Max. The child is, let’s just say, a challenge. Janey’s life is full of challenges, in fact, as lives tend to be, and her voice as she describes them is often very funny, sometimes despairing, but most of all compelling. I really enjoyed this book. Sorensen teaches at Canadian Mennonite University; no Mennonites, however, she asserts in her acknowledgements, “have been harmed” in the novel’s creation!

I also enjoyed — at a rather slower pace, as poetry usually demands — Sally Ito’s new collection of poetry, Alert to Glory (Turnstone Press). This is a collection that calls us to attentiveness, and practices it. The words often pile up, deep and thick with thought, and arresting in their images. Many of the poems tackle Christian themes. Four poems for Advent, for example, pair contemporary themes for the four Sundays (hope, peace, joy, and love) with their traditional themes (death, judgement, heaven, and hell). Hope, then, is “a bruised flesh of wing awaiting deliverance, remembering flight.” There’s also a section of “mother” or domestic poems in this collection which are simply delightful.

Here, a few lines from the title poem (illustrated on the cover by Ito’s uncle, Gen Tsuboi):

…it begins in the seeing, alertness before the glory
in the bit sound of hammer pound, from the spark and spray
of smithies in the watery forge behind the eye
where tears spring like iron to shoe the horse of sight’s delight;
alertness, the soul’s beam, light tunnel of praise…

Image from 1990 Newsweek issue on the family

I was doing some research at the public library the other day, paging through LIFE magazines from 1970. Ecology — as in acid rain, etc. — was an issue of great public concern at the time, with predictions that within a decade people would be wearing gas masks to survive pollution. Even more urgent, though, was “population pollution.”

I remember this, of course, and know that my generation was profoundly shaped by it. But I had forgotten the details, and now I saw them again. A biologist saying, for example, “Each American baby represents 50 times as great a threat to the planet as each Indian baby.”

A sense of dread about the future was forming already in the 1960s. Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968 and used the image of a disease: “We can no longer afford merely to treat the symptoms of the cancer of population growth; the cancer itself must be cut out. Population control is the only answer.”

In LIFE, Feb. 20, 1970, Robert Ardrey wrote a passionate and stinging piece called “Control of Population” in which he pointed out how nature limits the number of nearly every species and said  it was time that man [sic] did the same. We might either adapt “a sane and humane program of population control,” he said, or face “death by stress.”

Ardrey went on, “We must consider enforced contraception, whether through taxation on surplus children, or through more severe means such as conception license, replacing or supplementing the marriage license.” Abortion should be freely available, he said, and aid refused to countries who “fail to control their numbers.” Alongside ads for cigarettes, Maidenform bras, and long sleek automobiles, there were articles about abortion,  vasectomies, new fears about the Pill, and a students’ crusade for ZPG (zero population growth).

These were topics of interest also to the church. In the theologically conservative Mennonite denomination we were part of at the time, a paper at a 1967 study conference addressed “Christian Responsibility in Relation to Planned Parenthood,” which to my knowledge came out positive for contraception. A 1973 article by David Waltner-Toews in the denomination’s paper, “Overpopulation and Anabaptist Values,” urged intelligent control in light of the “grim picture” of over-population, noting that Anabaptist values such as caring community validated such a stance.

So, we took it seriously and responded by having small families. Many of our friends stopped at two; some of us braved three. The few couples who had four or even more were considered very courageous indeed — or foolish.

I’m not remembering and saying all this in order to render an opinion on family size. I grew up in a large family and then had a small family, and our children are making their own family decisions, and I’m grateful for all of them. Good and faithful families come in all sizes.

Nor is my look back particularly critical, even if, as Denyse O’Leary claims in a ChristianWeek column in 2007, “the nearly universal 1970s expert freakout on overpopulation was simply wrong.” It may sound slightly defensive, in fact, though I hope in an explanatory way. The point is, we who started our families in the 70s did so within a particular milieu, one that posited fear and urgency about population matters, an urgency that combined with other societal changes such as the role of women and progress on human rights. One easily forgets, until immersed for a few hours in some artifacts of the past like magazines, how comprehensive “current” culture was/is, how it shapes us, how we make our worlds within it, whether reacting for or against.

History rarely consoles, I find, but is enormously necessary for understanding ourselves and other generations. Today the challenges of Western countries around population involve an aging demographic and low birthrates. It’s a world my generation will have to take some responsibility for making, yes, just as our parents acted on postwar optimism to create the swarm of Boomers presently turning into elders. Humbling, for all of us.

Last evening, in front of my computer, I enjoyed the Giller gala streamed live via CBC online. This is my equivalent of watching the Grey Cup or some such sports competition, I suppose, though at only one hour long it hardly pays to get out the popcorn. I’d managed to read four of the six Giller-nominated books by last night and felt that much more invested in the stillness and tension after “the envelope please.” (It’s the richest of the Canadian prizes, at $ 50,000.) Esi Edugyan won it for Half-Blood Blues. While I’ve only begun her book, it’s been immediately obvious that it’s going to be an excellent read. It tells the story of some black jazz musicians in the Third Reich.

The video profiles/interviews with the six nominated authors were full of small treasures, from Michael Ondaatje’s “books are places of discovery and curiosity” to Patrick deWitt’s revelation that he got his wife to change the password to the computer so he can’t get at the internet, which distracts him. Talk about discipline — or the measures one must take to stay on track. He had realized, he said, that he wasn’t getting anything useful from it for his writing in any case!

Speaking of Patrick deWitt, I’ve read his The Sisters Brothers since last writing, and enjoyed it a lot. Well, not so much all the dead and gruesome bodies, I’m afraid, but I kept reminding myself that it’s a western, and you know how that is, everyone’s hand constantly at their holster. But it’s a bit of a switch too,  apparently, though I’m not expert on the genre, and that may have been what I liked — a rather philosophical narrator, second brother Eli, who becomes increasingly tired (though not cured) of the violence. It’s a book about siblings, really, and is often quite funny. Who can’t relate to Eli’s “I could not sleep… and instead spent the rest of the night rewriting lost arguments from my past, altering history so that I emerged victorious.”

In the meanwhile, I also read Marina Endicott’s The Little Shadows, another tale of siblings but very different in pace and tone. It’s about three sisters (Aurora, Clover, Bella) and their mother Flora who take to the road as a singing act in the early twentieth century. It’s long (527 pages) and quite leisurely (a.k.a slow) and contains more detail about vaudeville than one might have imagined being curious about, but is warm and quite wonderfully written. It’s up for the Governor General’s prize, next week, along with Half-Blood Blues, The Sisters Brothers, The Free World (Bezmozgis) and Touch (Zentner).

This is all I’ll say here about reading the lists. It’s been a great tour and I’m glad I took it.