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Excerpt from ‘Strangers and Sojourners,’ IV

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[Nathanael and Stephen, grandson and grandfather, are talking about Jonah MacPhale, a cheating townsman.]

Stephen: “I’ve told Jonah MacPhale to his face many a time what I think of his practices. It’s like water running off a loon’s back. He just laughs and calls me a good old mick. But I don’t believe you can give up on people, write them off, you know, like so many do.”

[Then Stephen tells a story about the fighting when he was a young man in Ireland.]

Nathanael: “But it was war. Ireland and England were–”

“War? Oh, yes. Men are always at war with one another. But it doesn’t make it right. You see, when I looked down at that face as they were carrying him off the mountain, I saw something that scarred me for the rest of my days. His head was all busted, but I saw.”

“What, Grandpa? What did you see?”

“I saw my own face.”

“Huh?”

“I looked at his broken face, and it was my face. Do you understand, lad?”

“No.”

“I pray you’ll never have to.”

They sat side by side, unable to move.

“All my life, I’ve despised Jonah MacPhale,” said the old man. “But you see, I was wrong. Each of us chooses one form of betrayal or another. Some betray people. Some betray truth. We kill or steal or twist things up with a gun or a word, and all because we’re frightened little creatures. I can’t abandon Jonah to his fate. He is me, if you can understand, boy. And someone has to be there if his soul ever opens up long enough to ask why or cry for help.”

“You’re too good, Grandpa. He’s a rotten, corrupt sort of person.”

“I’m not good. And it may be he’s not yet doomed.”

~from Strangers and Sojourners, by Michael O’Brien, Part 3, Chapter 32

Excerpt from ‘Strangers and Sojourners,’ III

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[Anne’s sister Emily came to visit from England. They’re catching up after twenty years of living in separate countries.]

Emily: “When I left the Party I was an empty shell. Then I met a good man, and he loved me. His love healed me. And that taught me everything. It’s why, I think, Anne, that the world can only be saved person by person, one by one. It’s the slow way but the true one.”

“You must miss Colin very much.”

“Yes, very much.”

She faced Anne, touching her own heart. “But you see, I have him here, always.”

Anne looked up at the mountain.

“I too have a good man. He loves me, my husband. But I’m not healed. Can you tell me why?”

“I don’t know why. But I know this: the healing begins when you abandon your demands for love and choose instead to give love, no matter what the cost. Madness, isn’t it? But a madness that works.”

“Perhaps for some, Emily.”

“No. For everyone. But first you have to forgive. Can you forgive Stephen for failing to love you as you wish?”

~ from Strangers and Sojourners, by Michael O’Brien, Part 2, Chapter 20

Excerpt from ‘Strangers and Sojourners,’ II

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[Anne and Edwin, the priest, are talking.]

Edwin: “I could have been the forerunner, even better than your garden variety rebel, a father of the revolution! Pretty intoxicating stuff, and I almost fell for it. In fact, I did fall for it. But it cost a ruined life to pay for my eyes to be opened.”

“Good heavens, have you killed someone?”

“No. Nothing so uncivilized as that. I…well, one can kill the thing one loves in a thousand ways. You can be on fire with passion for its beauty and ignore the hidden truths of a being, a soul. You can do all kinds of permanent damage thinking you’re making a beautiful creation, a free relationship.”

[Later, talking about his living at a subsistence level:]

“The little scraps that are left cover my food and firewood, and there are a few coins in the collection basket on Sundays. In Vancouver I was comfortable, respectably employed, influential…and quite wretched. [Here] I’m poor, but there’s a curious joy in this poverty.”

“Is this not,” Anne said carefully, pausing, “is this not just, perhaps, another romantic dream, this heroic poverty of yours?”

He laughed.

“Romantic? Nope, it ain’t romantic! It’s reality, and most of us don’t like much reality. Exotic images, impressions, good feelings, and above all, the illusion of being in charge, that’s what attracts us. Poverty is helplessness, vulnerability. You discover you aren’t God. You learn to live with certain kinds of pain that won’t go away.”

~from Strangers and Sojourners, by Michael O’Brien, Part 2, Chapter 18

Excerpt from ‘Strangers and Sojourners’, I

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[Anne] no longer wished to be a person of quality, if by that word was meant a view from immense height upon an inferior humanity. Perhaps she would never cease to be an elitist, she thought, but it would be an elite of the merciful, the lovers of song and story, of children, of beauty, and of truth.

Precisely how that was to be defined and, further, how it was to be transmitted to her children was another matter. There was the immediate question of Ashley and that mind of his, so hungry for ideas. She knew that the fields and forest would teach him a wisdom that no city child could possess. But there was more to life, and she was determined to winnow it out for him. She saved her egg money and ordered volumes of books…

“Mama,” he laughed, looking up from [Gulliver’s Travels] “did you know there are people who start wars over whether you should cut your egg at the top end or the bottom end?”

“Yes, Ashley, I did know,” she smiled.

When he was twelve it The Scottish Chiefs. When he was thirteen and beginning to ask difficult questions about intangible things, she bestowed a copy of Les Miserables.

“Mum,” he said with a voice that was leaving childhood behind, “d’you think there are actually people who hate just for the sake of hating?”

“Yes. I do. I’ve met them. But the point is, Ashley, they don’t realize it. They think they’re improving the world.”

“I find that kind of hard to believe.”

“You will meet many such people in your life. They are sad and tragic. You would do well to avoid them at all costs.”

Stephen [the man] looked up from his old Irish poetry book and said, “There’s another way.”

“What way?” said the boy and the woman in unison.

“Treat them with mercy, but never let them have any power over your heart.”

~from Strangers and Sojourners, by Michael O’Brien, Part 2, Chapter 2

Have a Brick

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“It’s a brick!” my friendly land-lord said to me today when he saw the book I was reading outside on the steps. His wife joined us: “I can see that you like to read!”

Yes, I said. I’m always reading.

Usually I have several going simultaneously, but recently when I was reading Michael O’Brien’s books, nothing else could distract me. I finished Strangers and Sojourners today, and my next books are going to be Michner’s autobiography, also a brick, and The Wheel on the School which is so delightful I wish I could read it aloud to someone.

If you want rich, deep, human stories, run–don’t walk–to your nearest book source to find Sophia House and Strangers and Soujourners. They hardly deserve the flippant name of ‘novels’ because they’re so deep and accurately portray the psyche of intensely human characters. There is nothing cheesy or schmaltzy here.

Beyond the rich stories, I enjoyed the incredibly crafted sentences. Some were so delicious I had to re-read them and give them the attention they deserved. O’Brien makes every word count, weighting the phrases with stark, earthy, pungent nouns and verbs.

Sophia House is set in Warsaw during WWII. The tone of the book reminded me very much of Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev. They share the same kind of heaviness, darkness, and intensity. The flyleaf says “This is a novel about small choices that shift the balance of the world.”

I connected most with Strangers and Sojourners maybe because the main character is a woman, though I think the real hero was her Irish husband. The story follows Anne’s emigration from England to Canada, and her constant pursuit of home and identity. It’s a long story, and characters reappear in unexpected places, as well as ideas and words, ingeniously giving significance to each of the saga’s details.

I like how Anne and Stephen, the main characters, are often referred to as ‘the man’ or ‘the woman.’ It makes them seem plain and ordinary. The entire story is quite serious and sober, but I laughed toward the end of the book when I met the eccentric genius writer, Fran. I like when a writer writes about another writer, and O’Brien does it brilliantly several times in these books.

I’ve seen that sometimes novelists use dreams to reveal how their character changes, and I don’t know how to write a novel, but it seems to me that this method is a kind of cheap, easy way for the character to learn something that will influence him. Bring in the surreal, and anything can happen, and you can manipulate any character to think what you need him to think. O’Brien does this frequently in both books, but I forgive him for it because the rest of his writing more than makes up for it.

The stories search out the deep truths of peace, forgiveness, love, redemption, and what is really real. If you’re up to reading some bricks, you’ll like these.

In the next few days, I plan to post some particularly meaningful, powerful paragraphs and dialogues, because they’re too good to keep to myself.

Today’s Thanks

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We talked long as we ate black currents from her bushes, my friend and I, soaking up the sun.

She told me of her friend: “She was older when she married, and their marriage is ok, but she’s not happy. She doesn’t like to be with my children, and she never comes to visit us. She wanted to have children, so maybe it hurts too much to be around them. She loves to give gifts, but says she hates to receive them. I don’t know how I can help her. She’s so alone, and has always been. What do I have that can help her? What’s the best way I can show her I love her–make her donuts every week? What do you think I should do? I wish you could talk with her. I wish she could read your book.”

I wanted to weep because I could be that lady except for God’s scandalous grace and my choices.

I said, “I’d love to talk with her–someday when I learn Polish better. But the thing she needs most is to give thanks now. You and I both know that both of us have a wonderful life, but there are still things we cry about. We’ll always have imperfections to deal with no matter where we live or who we’re married to or what dream has come true.

The one thing God asks is that we thank Him. Just this last Saturday, He told me very clearly You must thank me for this season of aloneness, these responsibilities, this experience. It doesn’t mean that I’m always dancing and laughing. I can be honest with God. David often did that. But always the rant must end in trust, rest, and thanks, even if we have to take ourselves by the scruff of the neck to say it.”

It’s good for me to hear myself say these things, otherwise sometimes I’d forget them.

Last night a friend and her son dropped in at school just to see if I was ok, or if I was too lonely. I’d have talked longer with her but another friend was coming to my house, who ended up staying til midnight. Life is very good. A long bike ride, eating berries in the sun, watching children play in water, drinking tea, a rich, absorbing book, a non-English-speaking friend who gave me a ride and was most gracious with my stumbling Polish.

My Thanks Journal is still the best discipline in my life. Tonight the list will be long.

To My Long-Ago Friend

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Dear Shasta,

Happy birthday! You’re one of the rare friends who was born in the same month I was. I can’t keep track of most of my friends’ and relatives’ birthdays, but somehow I can always remember yours. I wonder how you’re being celebrated today. I wonder if you, like me, denied at first that you’re in your late thirties?! I wonder if your life is full and beautiful,
and if you feel weary or excited about living another year.

I wonder where you are, what you’re doing. It’s been 20 years, you know, since those last letters. We lived in separate states and somehow drifted apart after being best friends. But I still miss you and wonder where you are.

I wonder if you became a hotel manager, and if that got you onto cruise ships like you wanted. I wonder if you went on to study other languages after you aced Spanish in high school. I wonder if you married the young man you last told me about. I wonder if you still play on a volleyball team.

The first time I met you was when you were enrolling at the school where my dad was teaching. My family had just moved to Michigan. You and I were both new to the school, we were both the same age, and we became instant friends. You told me your dad wasn’t there that evening and I asked if he was at a meeting. In my world, if the dad wasn’t with the family, he was at a meeting. But you said your parents divorced, and you didn’t know where your dad was. I didn’t care; I had no prejudice or emotion, I just knew that you and I were friends.

Remember the fun, carbon copies we laboriously filled out in our spare time in school, playing we were secretaries taking phone orders? We felt so grown up, and you were completely accepting of my naive, country-bumpkin ways. You were opinionated but always soft-spoken, graceful and elegant with your long blond hair. I was perfectly comfortable with you, but still always felt a little in awe of you. Probably because you came from such a different world from mine, I thought you knew so much more than I.

When my family left Michigan, we exchanged photos, and you wrote on mine: “Thanks for being the kind of friend I could tell things to. I hope we always stay this way.” We were twelve, and what do twelve year olds know about how life changes? Nothing. But what makes me sad is that there was a kinship that was real and I think we could find it again.

But I don’t know where you are. You must be like me in that you don’t seem to have a Facebook account. And because of confidentiality issues, I don’t want to expose your surname or your mom and sister’s names on this world-wide invasive web. We’re both pretty much grown up by now and I’d be so happy if we could find each other and share our stories.

It would probably be my best birthday gift ever.

love to you, my long-ago friend,
Anita

PS–If anyone out there knows where Shasta is, please let me know!

If There Were No Changes

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Three years ago this month, my doctor nervously pulled her curls as she called the hospital to order emergency x-rays for “A woman with palpable abdominal masses.”

I haven’t been the same since.

The x-rays were inconclusive that day, so I waited another week for an ultrasound appointment. In that week, I pretty much shut down. I did manual work on auto-pilot and slept alot. You hear ‘abdominal masses’ and you don’t know how to respond. Except to pray and sleep.

The diagnosis: multiple large fibroid tumors (benign growths attached to the uterus). Many women have them, but I had roughly twice the amount that is ‘normal.’ I was ushered into the foreign system of appointments, waiting rooms, poking and prodding and tests and questions that I couldn’t/didn’t want to answer.

I blogged about those days back then when I was more in the middle of it. Looking back at it now, I’m glad for some perspective. Not that I can see all the ins and outs of it now, but probably the most apparent thing to me is the changes it made in me. And although I’d never have asked for these yucky things to happen, I am, in a humbled, awed way, thankful for the experience.

I have more sympathy for people in physical pain than I used to. I hope I’m more patient and understanding than I used to be. I know that I am more confident in God’s care. I think I enjoy mornings more than I used to, revel in simple things more. Pain can change you. I think one reason is because when you don’t hurt anymore, everything in the world is 500% better.

It feels like I’ve had a look at how it is to be seriously ill without having to actually BE really ill. So I was in the hospital for 2 nights (and it was really awful), on pain medication for half a year and I still am limited in some physical activity. It’s a lot less than many people have to live with.

It still catches me off-guard when people ask, “So how are you physically?” because I don’t like to dwell on it even though it was–and still is–a big part of my life. And I hesitate blogging about it because it’s like so much navel-gazing. I want to get on with life, and not think about yucky things.

But I do think that sharing our stories is part of walking with each other in this life trip and not going it alone. And anniversaries are points along the way that give a good opportunity to take stock and regroup. I need to hear people’s stories–both the sad and the glad ones. I learn from their responses to their own stories, I take heart or make decisions because of how someone is living their story, and I can’t do that if we all keep our stories to ourselves.

This is part of my story. There are sad AND glad parts, but mostly glad. Because I believe that if there were no changes, there would be no butterflies.

Jesus Said It Works That Way

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Today I finished Larry Crabb’s Connecting after several months of taking small bites of it in order to digest it slowly. The last chapters are the most exciting and practical, but the first chapters are necessary to create the framework to understand what comes later.

His premise is that too often Christians with problems are given into the care of ‘professionals’ who can ‘counsel’ them and have the problem taken care of outside the church. But God actually calls the church to care for each other. Crabb says that living and speaking Gospel–not trained psychologists’ formulas–has the power to change lives. I know he’s right. Below are some excerpts from the last chapter. Try to stick with it even if it looks long!

When we can’t handle truth, [tragedy, difficulty, sin] when what is most terribly true is too disturbing to face, we run to facts surrounding the truth and hide behind them. It gives us something to do, something to think about that we can manage…There is of course some functional value in this tendency.

However, when we shift battles from responding to physical disease or circumstantial difficulties to fight for someone’s soul, things are exactly reversed.

Suppose instead we allow ourselves to be devastated by the truth, to be overwhelmed with the sadness and pain it creates. We will soon sense our inadequacy to change what needs to be changed, we will face the truth that a troubled, hardened, foolish heart needs to be impacted and that only the Spirit of God can make that happen.

At that point we will have only two choices: Yield to despair or find God. If we begin looking for God, we will then enter a whole new battle. We will be thrown onto God, we will long to see His face, we will wrestle with our fears and doubts in His presence, we will seek Him with all our hearts.

Because He promised to let us find Him when we seek him with a stronger passion than we seek anything else (such as solutions or relief), we will find Him. We will find Him in His word. After a long fall through darkness, we will land on the truth of his eternal, almighty, and loving character, and we will believe He is always up to something good. And we will find Him within us in the form of holy urges and good appetites and wise inclinations that reflect the character of Christ.

In more familiar language, the energy of Christ is released most fully when we most completely come to an end of ourselves…

…But without Christ’s energy flowing through us, we are not adequate to restore a soul to godly functioning.

The route to power [heart-deep change, healing] lies in embracing disturbing truth and moving beneath it to discover the exhilarating truth of God.

Nothing matters more than releasing the energy of Christ as we speak with people we love, especially when those people are in the midst of trouble.

Facing the truth of what is going on in people’s lives, no matter how ugly or sad, is a necessary path to discovering what is deepest within us. That truth then prompts us to nourish the life we find, to sanctify ourselves for the sake of others. (John 17:19) And then we’re freed to speak genuinely rather than skillfully…

Crabb is a visionary, but he is realistic. I know it’s possible to have a church community where people care for each other with the motivation that comes from having known the Redeemer. Where nothing is too bad or ugly or sad to talk gently about with another fellow pilgrim. Where we fight for each other’s souls instead of only toying with peripheral matters.

I have seen glimpses of this where I come from and where I am, and it gives me great hope. Because God’s love is the most powerful force in the world, and we can change our world by loving well. Our love and care for each other–not tidy formulas and answers– change our own lives, plus it says more to others than we can verbalize. A long time ago, Jesus said it would work this way. And He was right.

Initialisms

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If you’re a teacher, you plan a lesson, and you think it should work, but you never really know if it will fly until it flies. There are no guarantees. At least, I haven’t found them.

But yesterday’s lesson on initialisms was a smashing success with my teen girls. I wrote initialisms like LOL, FHI, TMI, IMHO on the board, asked if they’ve seen it and where, and explained how we use it. We also discussed terms like “ego surfing” and the “five-second rule” and then keyboard pictures of frowns, smiles, and hearts.

These girls are at school all day, and they come here because their parents want them to learn English so I hate to do anything that looks like school work with books because they really don’t want to do it and then it’s no fun for any of us and we leave feeling like we endured something. (An English teacher should be able to do better than that run-on sentence but there you are.) Fun has to be a component of the lesson, because if it’s a miserable time, they won’t learn anything except that studying English is hard and boring.

I wanted to cheer when the girls asked for paper to write what the initialisms mean. They NEVER ask to write. They would rather talk all the time, and they do well at that, but write? Never. So we wrote on our papers and laughed about using LOL as a spoken word vs. written and I explained what XXOO means when your mom writes it on a note. Then we took turns answering questions like:

What shortcuts do you use in your own language?
Do you think initialisms should be included in dictionaries?
Have you heard of the five-second rule before? Do you agree with it?
Do you think older people are confused by initialisms?

I don’t think new dictionaries should include initialisms as words. I think electronic, condensed messages don’t use words as they’re meant to be used. But it’s a great way to have an English class for teens!