Walking the Wall

I have been waiting for Solstice Wood to come out in paperback for awhile now and was thrilled to see it at Barnes & Nobles the other day. It was worth the wait and lived up to Patricia McKillip’s incredible writing reputation. There are two writers that I will read anything they wrote simple because they wrote them–Charles de Lint, and Patricia McKillip. I think that McKillip is one of the most gorgeous writers I have ever read, her use of language, imagery, and symbols makes every book a delight. Solstice Wood was a little different than most of her pieces, being set in the more modern world, but the fey were still there in all their mystery. This is a book about binding and unravelings, about the power of story to lock our minds down or open them up, about the danger of thinking we know the truth about something and so going stagnant instead of continuing to live and explore and learn.

"What did you see in the wood?"
"Trees," I said. "Mostly." The wood that humans saw held a lot of words. But what they didn’t see was an entire, ancient realm. Oh, they knew a few words, enough to say in their old tales and songs that it was there. But they had shut their eyes long ago; they didn’t see anymore what was real. Now they only saw the words for it.

I had picked up The Crucible by Arthur Miller this summer at a library sale, and it is well worth the .50 cents I paid for it and then some. The introduction itself, written by Christopher Bigsby, was almost as interesting as the play, the first line reads, "In 1692 nineteen men and women and two dogs were convicted and hanged for witchcraft…" Many, many more had their lives ruined by accusations, forced confessions, and the general insanity of the time. He wrote, "The question is not the reality of witches but the power of authority to define the nature of the real, and the desire, on the part of individuals and the state, to identify those whose purging will relieve a sense of anxiety and guilt" (xi). Another place: "The purity of one’s religious principles is confirmed by collaborating, at least by proxy, in the punishment of those who reject them" (xvii). Very interesting reading this account of the trials in 1692 and think about them in terms of the McCarthyism period it was written about of the 1950s–and has much to teach about issues even in the year 2006. People always have a need to make someone else the "other" in order to try and bolster their self image and sometimes the effects can be terrifying.

I will say as preface that I came to this book with a great deal of skepticism. I don’t always have the best opinion of the Christian religion, especially in the form of the more traditional, fundamental Baptist aspect as that is where my exposure has been from. I have, fortunately, some friends/family who are more compassionate, open-minded examples of Christianity, so I do know it exists. My failing is that I often cannot (or will not)  really see those examples for the log in my eye, to use a biblical metaphor. I often see spirituality on a spectrum of narrow minded Christianity on one end, and open minded, compassionate non Christianity on the other end. Either or, black and white–and isn’t that just the type of thinking I have worked hard to walk away from? It is.

Over the last couple years I have for a couple of reasons, regained a respect for certain aspects of Christian spirituality (and I use spirituality over religion on purpose).

• Ironically, a mythology class I took started the easing from stomach clenching distrust to seeing the beauty of the faith, the greater Truths found in the stories, and an appreciation for those greater mysteries.
• Open minded Christian friends, and especially a growing relationship with one in particular (thank you Rachel) willing and eager to explore things upside down and inside out before making judgments, a willingness to see both sides and follow her instincts, and a delight in having crazy "what if" discussions has shown me another side.
• My brother, a missionary to Mongolia, coming home for the summer and having long and respectful conversations that showed a tremendous change in thinking from the narrow minded rigid mindset he left with (and I know he’d agree with that description). Discussing Buddhism with him in a rational way and him agreeing that there isn’t much he would disagree with in the core tenets of Buddhist belief showed a willingness to listen and learn that surprised me–and his ability to disagree without rancor.
• Reading Revelations of Love by Julian of Norwich, a Catholic Anchoress in the 14th century astounded me by this woman’s strength of voice in expounding on a very different vision of God, a different viewpoint on suffering, sin, and hell–even questioning accepted viewpoints on the gendering of God–and expressing it in a time which could have found her burned at the stake was inspiring.
• Then, ironically again, in studying the Buddhist principles, I was challenged by two Buddhists, the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, to not completely abandon our spiritual roots–that there were truths to be found there and that the language and connections of a person’s cultural religion are important. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote again and again that Buddha said that his teachings were not concrete but simply a finger pointing you in the right direction and you are expected to test knowledge and either set it aside or incorporate it into your own pathway. And that is what I am looking for, my own pathway independent of labels.
• Finally, in religious discussion gone heated with a loved one, they pointed out that I am willing to study and see the various sides of nearly every religion EXCEPT for Christianity because I only saw it through the more extreme lens of my upbringing.

That last point brought me up short because they were right. That didn’t mean I was going to run back to church and pull out a hymnal, but I ought to be able to look at what was going on in the religion today and see if I could learn from that to see Christianity with a less harsh eye. Immediately I thought of the Velvet Elvis as Rachel, her sister, and my brother had all read it and been challenged by it and the discussions we had had on it led me to believe it was a fresh voice I wouldn’t mind hearing.

All that to bring me to the book itself–I was very much impressed and left with a great deal to chew over. The author’s style is very relaxed, very conversational, but with a deep level of knowledge and understanding beneath the surface. He uses a lot of humor to bring relief after weightier insights, I particularly laughed out loud when he wrote "But sometimes when I hear people quote the Bible, I just want to throw up. Can I just say that? Can I get that off my chest?" He was talking about people grabbing a verse and making it say whatever you wanted without looking at context and cultural/time period implications.

I’m still mulling it all over and will likely have to read it again, but it addressed some important issues to me, one is the idea of looking at the Bible as a text that existed in a specific place and a specific time. He recognizes that we can find timeless truths present in the Bible but to be careful of just taking it at surface level:

    "To take statements made in a letter from one person living in a real place at a moment in history writing to another person living in a real place out of their context and apply them to today without first understanding their original context sucks the life right out of them. They aren’t isolated statements that float, unattached, out in space." More importantly, "The writers of the Bible are communicating in language their world will understand. They are using the symbols and pictures and images of the culture they are speaking to." This gets to the heart of the matter for me and I don’t think that it belittles the Bible to see it in this context, to the contrary, I think it opens it up.

I could go on and on, but here are some random things that come to mind:

• Speaking of when Moses finds he is standing on holy ground: "Has the ground been holy the whole time and Moses is just becoming aware of it for the first time? Do you and I walk on holy ground all the time, but we are moving so fast and returning so many calls and writing so many emails and having such long lists to get done that we miss it?"  This ties in with one of my favorite concepts that every where we are is sacred and every moment is an eternity.
• He talks about testing everything and holding on to the good and about learning from all kinds of sources, "truth is bigger than any religion" and earlier talked about how people use doctrines like bricks to wall themselves in and wall other people out: "God is bigger than any wall. God is bigger than any religion. God is bigger than any worldview. God is bigger than the Christian faith."
• "The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we
  are no longer dealing with God. We are dealing with somebody we made
  up."
• He addresses one of my pet peeves, that people spend their lives waiting for the final prize, the mansion in heaven, freedom from the burden, eyes on the goal–an in the process never actually live today.
• He addresses another of my pet peeves, the "worm of the earth" syndrome and writes: "The beginning premise seemed that we are bad and don’t do enough, and if we are made to feel guilty enough about it, then we will change our behavior. I don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind." The point isn’t "sin management," as he calls it, but in being who we really are now.
• Another concept that is dear to me is the idea of the Hindu namaste, the greeting of people that recognizes the divine in the person we are meeting. This resonated with a passage he writes, "To treat people differently based on who believes what is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone." And he goes to great lengths to discuss the idea of God being in everything and everyone regardless of race or religion.

All in all, I found the book very insightful and very zen in its language (a fact that puts him on the cutting block for many of his religious critics) and it gave me a much broader perspective on things. I’d love to see a discussion between Bell and Thich Nhat Hanh–I think they would greatly enjoy each other. In the end, I think the world would be a better place if there were no religious labels at all and we all walked our path and focused on fostering compassion–and I don’t think he would disagree with me on that score–he was all for ditching the bricks and using trampoline springs instead.

As I wrote before, I think the best quote of the book is on page 5:

My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.

For Margaret, the truth was sacred and she wanted nothing but truth in her own life and from Vida if she wanted her to write her biography. I think in the end, both personally and professionally, she realized that sometimes truth is much more heavier to bear than a story.

It is also a story about connections, which is a favorite theme of mine, and I liked this passage:

    When I came to myself Dr. Clifton was there. He put an arm around me. "I know," he said. "I know.
    He didn’t know, of course. Not really. And yet that was what he said, and I was soothed to hear it. For I knew what he meant. We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all. "I know," he said, because he was human, and therefore in a way, he did (389).

It was an altogether enjoyable book, Setterfield has a wonderful voice and cadence and the characters came to life, lived and breathed, and made you care what happened to them.