wonderful exchange

This might be the novel we’ve been waiting for (when Catherine Fox and Susan Howatch have been too often read and we are out of mysteries). The first pages are of a heaven-in-ordinary sort of vision, and then we meet Amos, a son of the Brethren manse in rural America who grows up to love Tillich. The first glimpse of Amos is of him tossing and turning in bed, failing to meet his own standards of discipline:

A single thing gnawed at him at night, an idea he had no name for, although if anyone asked him he could have written a book, as they say, on the subject. Perhas he was even called to write it, but he was vexed by the how and the why. Amos knew as well as anyone what went into writing a book, having written a master’s thesis, and he considered the process to be akin to having one’s nerves stripped with a curry comb. A ghastly experience, not to be endured. He imatined the tower of reference books clotting his study, and the botecards he would use to try to keep
his thoughts straight, and the inevitable architectural work that would need to be employed, and the hours spend in the overstuffed chari facing Plum Street, lost in thought and picking at the threads in the upholstry; and most of all, the way writing a book makes a person feel the’d rather be anywhere than inside his own skin. He’d rather be on Plum Street, that’s for sure, kicking along in a tangle of leaves or stopping to pet one of the litter of mountain cur pups born next door (beautiful little dogs that would be feral in the blink of an eye — he knew he should pet them quickly, before he had lost his chance). But if he were on Plum Street his mind would be drawn to his own study window, and he would think with longing of the work he could be doing and how work is the only thing that saves the soul, the only thing that makes a man a man, as he remembered Emerson saying, or something like it. Writing a book brings a single irreducible truth right out to the edges of a person: there is no place to be, there is no place in this world, it is impossible to be happy.

Haven Kimmel,
The Solace of Leaving Early

The next pages offer the excitements and frustrations of a theology seminar and the challenges of ministering to the deer hunters when you grew up next door to the opera house.

The sense of hope is delighfully unbearable…

not yet

3 February, 20093 February, 2009 wonderfulexchange8 Comments

Today marked another assembly-that-wasn’t (the last being Epiphany, with the ‘Three Kings and a Pink Iguana sermon’ which the congregation got instead).

I had planned to speak about friendship — about how important it is to stick with the people who intrigue you, the ones you are willing to be hurt by, and those who can make you laugh. This in light of the spate of studies about how unhappy British children are, and how much worse it is for those with messed up family situations.

Well, a scheduling error meant that none of that happened. Then later in the day I spoke with the year head, who invited me (among other things) to the ‘planning for the future’ day that Year 2 will have in a few weeks. This is a day for the kids to think about what they are going to do with their lives — to choose the courses they need, to drop the ones that are deemed ‘inappropriate’ or ‘unnecessary’, and to begin seeking work-experience.

I know that this is good and right and proper, and that for many a clear sense of ‘needing to get a job’ will be all that keeps them from falling off life’s edge. But they are 14. It is too soon.

I so want to say to them, ‘look, forget about what’s useful– what excites you?’ I want to tell them to ignore exams and read a book or perfect a drawing or have a really good conversation with someone about something out of the ordinary.

I want to tell them to stop pretending there doing ‘nothing’ when they get caught up with friends and are late home for tea. It’s the ‘wasting-time’ conversations that give space for dreams. What could be more important when you’re fourteen?