The English Patient

Some time ago I picked up a copy of Michael Ondaajte's book The English Patient. I was inspired to pull it off the shelf after a recommendation from Malcolm Kenyon. I'm only a few pages in, but I remember why I so liked Ondaajte's In the Skin of a Lion, which I read in college. He has a powerful way of making me feel. His gift is not in creating the emotional feelings like sad, or angry, or happy; he can make me feel a desert, make me feel exhaustion, make me feel delirium. Many authors can describe buildings, rooms, gardens, relationships, accidents, and injuries. Few can make me feel them. Ondaajte is one of the few.

I mentioned Malcolm recommended The English Patient to me; he is quite the guy himself. He works with Michelle teaching English as a second language here in Bellingham, and he's a poet among a great host of other things. We had a chapbook of his poetry on our bookshelf (I am proud to say, meager though they are, my bookshelves hold untold treasurers!). He is a very gifted poet and a fascinating person to listen to. You can hear him reading some of his poems at poetry night in Bellingham by going to poetry night's podcast site. Two of Malcolm's readings are about a quarter of the way down the page.

Bookends - Twitter and 'The Call' by Os Guiness

Today at lunch I finished Os Guiness' book The Call. I had started reading it a number of months ago, and hadn't picked it up in several weeks. The timing was interesting, because this week I have become interested in emerging social media, web 2.0, twitter, and the like. And Os' writing in The Call is deeply influenced by many historical figures and writings. So today has felt like bookends as I look into the future and into the past simultaneously. The Call was good for me to read, informative and encouraging, if a little difficult to follow at times. The last chapter and the end of the book are almost poetic. And throughout the book the theology is dead on. It has reinforced my belief in the element of tension - the following excerpt is a good example:

People make two equal but opposite errors about life as a journey and faith as the Way. On one side, usually at the less educated level, are those who prematurely speak as if they have arrived. Such people properly emphasize the certainties and triumphs of faith but minimize the uncertainties, tragedies, and incompletenesses. Having come to faith, they speak and live as if they have nothing more to learn. All truths are clear-cut, all mysteries solved, all hopes materialized, all conclusions foregone - and all sense of journeying is reduced to the vanishing point. There are seemingly no risks, trials, dangers, setbacks, or disasters on the horizon. Or so they seem to talk.

On the other side, usually at the more educated level, are those who are so conscious of the journey that journey without end becomes there passion and their way of life. To such people it is unthinkable ever to arrive, and the ultimate gaffe is the claim of finding a way or reaching a conclusion. Like the perennial seekers we met earlier, for them the journey itself is all. Questions, inquiry, searching, and conquering become an end in themselves. Ambiguity is everything.

Yet the Christian faith has an extraordinary balance between these extremes. As those responding to God's call, we are followers of Christ and followers of the Way. So we are on a journey and we are truly travelers, with all the attendant costs, risks, and dangers of the journey. Never in this life can we say we have arrived. But we know why we have lost our original home and, more importantly, we know the home to which we are going.

Perhaps more important to me were the following lines on identity:

God calls and, just as we hear him but don't see him on this earth, so we grow to become what he calls, even though we don't see until heaven what he is calling us to become.

No one has captured this more profoundly than George MacDonald in his sermon "The New Name" from Unspoken Sermons. In his message in Revelation to the Church in Pergamum, Jesus promised " a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it." MacDonald pointed out in good biblical fashion that "the true name is one which expresses the character, the nature, the meaning of the person who bears it. It is the man's own symbol - his soul's picture, in a word - the sign which belongs to him and no one else. Who can give a man this, his own nature? God alone. For no one but God sees what a man is."

Anyway, to summarize, there are definitely gold nuggets in this book, but it's difficult to state in one sentence what they are. More than anything, I was encouraged by this book. I was encouraged about my future, my life's journey, and the call placed upon my life. And I needed that.

General Reflections

I finished reading Maus a number of weeks ago. It was the first graphic novel I'd read, besides a collection of Marvel comics, which doesn't really count. I really enjoyed it, but I'm going to avoid making any grandiose critical pronouncements. I will say that Vladek Spiegelman was a very real and endearing character to me, and my favorite part of the book.

In a weird coincidence Mark Blumenthal, editor and publisher of Pollster.com (a political polling and analysis site I've been frequenting lately) posted this today. Blumenthal's father-in-law, who passed away yesterday, has a very similar story to Vladek Spiegelman, as documented in Maus.

Michelle and I have been watching the Office almost every night. We're already half way through Season 4, which we got less than a month ago. The Office is great because it is so subtle and compelling in the way it engages our culture. I don't know exactly how to explain it, except that I watched the last two minutes of "Survivor Man" twice in a row, totally spellbound. And I need to see "The Deposition" again. I mean, it's totally hilarious, but it's the once-in-a-blue-moon, darn-that-was-poignant, out-of-nowhere-when-you-least-expect-it, rewind-that-I-need-to-see-that-again moments that have me totally hooked.

More good stuff from The Call:

For Jesus, spirituality is plainly not a life of contemplation divorced from a life of action. There is nothing in Jesus' life of either the super-spiritual "Catholic distortion" or the all-to-secular "Protestant distortion" we saw earlier. There is only a rhythm of engagement and withdrawal, work and rest, dispensing and recharging, crowds and solitude, in the midst of one of the shortest, busiest public lives ever lived.
If we are not to be dried up, our secular lives require supernatural refreshment too. But equally, if our supernatural experience is not to become an end in itself and a source of indulgence and pride, we must resolutely descend from the mountain peaks of vision to the valley of ordinary life where our callings take us. The New Testament knows no monasteries or monks, only spiritually disciplined disciples in a demanding, everyday world.

Last but not least, I'm excited to say that Michelle and I are having a girl. We went this weekend to a second hand store and picked out some of her first clothes. I learned that newborns wear pants with their onesies. Hey, it looked like a complete outfit to me.

Payne Hollow - Harlan Hubbard

I finished reading Payne Hollow: Life on the Fringe of Society a few days ago. It's a Thoreau-esque autobiographical book about Harlan and Anna Hubbard's life on the shores of the Ohio river. The most interesting part of the book for me was Harlan's idealism, which I think I share with him in some small degree. Here is an example:

Our objections to an outboard motor are more subtle, and not generally understood by the practical minded. It makes a different craft out of the johnboat, a driven thing, quivering as if in pain. A motor is odorous and noisy. Even a small one spoils to some extent communion with the river. It interferes with your contemplation of sky and water and the distant view. It's noise discourages conversation, but this in some cases may be a desirable feature.

It's not evident in the passage quoted, but he is comparing the outboard to the use of oars as a means of crossing the river. I enjoyed hearing why they did this and that, both the philosophical reasons for their retreat to the land, and the practical means of day to day survival. I would recommend it as excellent reading to any who consider themselves idealists or naturalists. Unfortunately, it seems to be available only regionally. I happened to encounter it through a friend who has lived in Kentucky. I couldn't find it in any local libraries. Of course, the internet will bring it to your doorstep, though I'm not sure Harlan would approve.