Mom enjoyed our visit. Asked if she knew who I was, she smiled and said, "He's my friend."
For our Christmas dinner, she seemed very happy until suddenly she said, "Let's get out of here." I suspect that the chatter at the table had been too much about her without involving her. Will make mental note of that.
She comes from a background of literalist Sunday school teachers and college professors for whom any inconsistency in Scripture must be explained away, lest the whole faith be vulnerable to scientific attack.
I replied that the difference she'd noticed could show that the community that revered Moses had developed new understanding with experience. The simplest explanation for inconsistencies in the scriptures is that the Bible is a scrapbook collected and edited over 1000 years. "So we're reading more than the story of God's people," I said. "We're also seeing the story of the story, as the idea of what it means to be the people of God changed over the centuries."
She brightened. "And we're still living it!" I told her that she can now forego the other three - and - a - half years of the program, ha ha.
An Episcopal Priest named Joseph Yoo wrote about the same idea in the introduction to his book When the Saints Go Flying In (Precocity Press, 2023):
Stories are powerful tools. LIves can be transformed when stories are shared. THe most effective way to transform someone's mind isn't to bombard them with facts and figures but to tell them a story. Jesus absolutely knew this. It's why he told stories. He connected things that were familiar, things that were ordinary, to God's truth. People listened and were transformed. We still listen and lives are still being transformed because these stories aren't just about what happened centuries ago. They are still happening to you and me today. - Joseph Yoo
Subtitled Stories About Faith, Life, and Everything in between, the book is the story of Yoo's path from Methodist boyhood to Episcopal priesthood wrapped around the stories of numerous saints. In that one paragraph about stories, he pretty much sums up what we do in EfM, where we put our own experiences into dialogue with our studies of scripture, 3000 years of Judeo-Christian history, and theology.
With both of these encounters in my head this past week, I've been trying to remember the source of a rhymed couplet equating faith with living a story. Then I remembered: it's from my own self-portrait as an introverted writer inside his own shell:
We love, we hurt, we forgive, and we're forgiven.
My faith's not just a creed; it's a story I live in.
(from Interview with Box Turtle)
[Photo: Print of my alter ego purchased by my friend Susan at Marietta Square's annual arts fair, for a gift. It's been up on my kitchen wall ever since.]
These past several months, I've felt swamped by the competing narratives of dire consequences if the other political party wins. Now that the election's over, I feel, not happy, but relieved. I've turned the radio to classical music programming, I've quit scrolling the news feed on my phone, and I've concentrated on the story of God's people. I've re-read Joseph Yoo's book, and yesterday I bought poems from Mary Oliver's long career selected in a best seller called Devotions. I feel much calmer about the national story, financial anxieties, and my own aging when I remember God's story wrapping around all of it.
Of related interest:
Having read her piece, I myself walked my dog in a parking lot where we repeatedly encountered a homeless woman named Brenda. Three Sunday mornings in a row, she had politely rebuffed offers to buy her sandals, coffee, food -- but she brightened up considerably on Mothers Day when I asked if she was a mother. She wanted to tell me about her children and grand-children.
The writer struggles with Matthew 7.18, "Everyone who asks receives." How does that sound to families in the youth hospice where she was chaplain? She thinks, "There is not a one-to-one correspondence between what we ask in prayer and what we receive." (That, I'd say, would be magic -- harnessing God's power to do our will.) Pray specific prayers, anyway, she says, to make yourself aware of God's presence. "The victims are in our thoughts and prayers" has come to mean "We're not going to do anything," but she admits prayers at least prepare us for action and open us to God's will.
She "gets worked up" over public figures who won't deal with important issues. Responding to Psalm 37.7 ("Be still ... wait patiently for the Lord") she admits that getting worked up "is unhelpful at best, and at most, leads to evil." Besides, as Jesus asked in Mt. 6.27, "Can anyone by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?"
Public figures who disgust her need prayers more than anyone, she admits, and she needs to be the one to pray for them. She gets "likes" for snide comments about those leaders, but she hasn't "built up" anyone or anything by writing insults (Ephesians 4.29 "Let no evil come out of your mouth, but only what is useful for building up.")
There's humor and joy in some of her observations. Jesus is like a stand-up comic when he points out, "when John and his disciples ate nothing, the Pharisees said he had a demon in him, but when I and my disciples have dinner, they say we're drunkards and gluttons." The great line about "Leviathan that God made for the sport of it" (Psalms 104.27) reminds her how we know more about outer space than about the oceans that occupy most of our planet, and how much more there is to "the strangeness and untouchability of God."
In Beyer's stories, the Holy Spirit manifests as a Holy Irritant.
The pharisees seem to have irritated Jesus. Their demand for a sign reminds Beyer of a sign he received during a morning run when he was feeling low. The voice of a cardinal caught his attention, then the bird suddenly appeared, lifting Beyer's spirits. He asks us if we've had such an experience.
Indeed: Riding my bike on the Silver Comet trail, I approached a couple from behind as they walked side by side. The woman was talking, gesturing, re-enacting some big confrontation. At something she said, the man turned his head towards her so quickly that his dred locks shook, and I saw his eyes open wide on her, his broad smile, his admiration and delight. I caught that spirit of love vicariously and I carry it with me to this day, as often as I recall that moment.
Beyer's experience in Haiti after the earthquake could be a parable. Beyers despaired of finding building materials for the parish church, but the priest didn't seem to be doing anything about that. As they toured the parish, the priest just hugged people and smiled and listened to their problems. Again, Beyers was irritated. But the next day, people showed up with materials enough to rebuild.
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| Scott Smoot on his bike in the Red Sea, virtually. Of course, Moses is going north, and I'm going south. |
On my virtual bike tour of the world, I pause for a selfie wherever I have lived or have felt a connection. God's parting the Red Sea for the Hebrews' escape from slavery is certainly a great story, but I struggled to find a personal connection.
When I studied the photo of the iconic scene from the film The Ten Commandments, suddenly it resonated with the most recent period of my life. Those last years of teaching seemed so relentless, a couple of classes were so contentious, and the pandemic upended so much of what I had relied on for 39 years of my teaching career, that retirement is very much like what we see in Cecille B. DeMille's film. Oh, I do feel a clearing of my path to my end.
Enough said.
Miles YTD 1931 || 2nd World Tour Total 18,549 miles since June 2020 || Next Stop: TBA
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There's Jimmy Quinn, wealthiest man in the county and most hated. He's already food for catfish in the Alabaster River when the novel begins, but we get to know him by how he bent his family's lives to his. There's also Jack Creasy, a man like used motor oil: "If you tried to get a grip on him, he slipped through your fingers, leaving you with the feel of grit and dirt and a desire to wash yourself clean" (214). Creasy whips up the town with his theory that Quinn's killer was Noah Bluestone, because Quinn recently fired him, and because Bluestone is "an uppity Indian."
Bluestone is admirable and fascinating. He lives away from town with Kyoko, the wife he brought home from the war in Japan. Before the war, he had played football with many of the other characters, including Sheriff Brody. He admits to a confrontation with Quinn just before the murder took place. "He was a big man," Noah tells Brody, "but he had a small spirit. He fired me instead" (95). We wonder why Bluestone won't say a word in his own defense, even when Sheriff Brody Dern arrests him for circumstantial evidence.
Brody lives with his dog Hector in quarters above the jail, where a print of Hopper's Night Hawks is his only decoration. Though the investigation takes Brody to dark places, there's a romantic comedy current to his story: while he continues to see his first love, married to his brother, he's growing to appreciate Angie Madison, proprietor of the diner next door. Around her, he's shy as a middle-school boy.
Angie's 14-year-old son Scott is an especially appealing character. He delivers meals to the jail for Brody and anyone in the jail. Born with a hole in his heart, Scott can't be as active as he would like to be. Scott has no father -- his mother's back-story makes an engrossing novelette-within-the-novel -- but in Brody, Scott finds a surrogate. If he can understand Brody, he thinks "maybe, even with a hole in his heart, he might feel like he was finally a man complete" (192).
All the currents of the story run through a a scene in the jail. Bluestone is being held for murder. His accuser Creasy is there, jailed for disorderly conduct. It's a week after Scott risked his own life to rescue a girl drowning in rapids of the Alabaster River. Now he has brought dinner to the jail. At Bluestone's request, Scott has also brought a branch from a cottonwood tree. Bluestone asks for the branch, then asks Sheriff Brody for a sharp knife.
Brody considered the request, the man who’d made it, and the boy. He said, “Step away from the cell, Scott.”
The boy took a step back. Brody reached into his pocket and brought out a folded barlow knife. He handed it to Bluestone through the bars. Creasy gave a snort of disbelief but said nothing. Bluestone drew out the blade and carefully cut the thin cottonwood branch in two. He folded the blade and handed the knife back to Brody.
“Take a look at this,” Bluestone said. He turned the cut end of the branch toward the boy. “See the star?”
There it was, inside the branch, dead center. A dark, five-pointed star. Brody could see it, too.
Scott’s eyes grew large with wonder.
Bluestone says that his people say that stars are born in earth, are absorbed into the roots of the cottonwood, and are all waiting for the time when the Great Spirit will release them by wind that shakes the branches.
"They fly up and settle in the heavens, where they shine and sparkle and become the luminous creations they were always meant to be.” Bluestone looked seriously at the boy. “Do you know why I wanted to tell you this story?”Scott said, “No.”
“When you saved that girl, I told you that you’d received a gift. The gift is like this star at the center of the cottonwood. It’s inside you now. Someday, when you need it, it will come out, like the stars when the wind shakes the cottonwood trees, and it will shine for you, well and truly.”
The boy seemed to think about that.
“What a load of horseshit,” Creasy said.
The story moves on to an action-packed conclusion. Before it's over, Scott has had cause to be ashamed of himself, and an opportunity for redemption. All the characters' stories have their own finish apart from the denoument of the mystery.
Links to all of my responses to William Kent Krueger's novels, including his Cork O'Connor series, are listed with short descriptions at my Crime Fiction page.
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| Scott Smoot at Petra, virtually, holding Susan's Kodak print |
In the land now called Jordan, Petra is what remains of an ancient city that was carved into sandstone cliffs. Wikipedia says Petra's heyday was 2000 years ago, but I know nothing more than that. It lies on the line that I'm tracing on a map of the world, mile by mile, as I ride bike trails around Atlanta. My rule for this virtual world tour is to aim for places to which I have strong connections.
My connection to Petra is the snapshot I'm holding in my virtual photo. My friend Susan took that snapshot in March of 1999 during a tour of the Holy Land. Susan actually enjoys touring extraordinary places to see extraordinary things in person.
For me, these virtual visits are enough. I prefer my round of visits to the store, to the church, to Susan's house, to the restaurant we visit each week, to my sister's home, to my Mom's room, to the bike trail. "Same old same old" sounds to me like a good thing.
Besides, there's room for the extraordinary in that routine. For my recent birthday, Susan treated me to our annual dinner at Spring, a restaurant we can walk to from her house, where each course is a special experience. Dessert this year was the apotheosis of humble rice pudding, a mix of textures and flavors I'll not forget.
She also presented me with her painting of my dog Brandy that captures the eyes alive with interest, the ears cocked in curiosity, and a single white hair that rises from the tip of Brandy's copper-brown tail.
In an ordinary week, we'll cover an extraordinary range of topics in conversation over take-out dinners and homemade pizza and walks with the dog.
So let my visit to Petra be dedicated to Susan in gratitude for her extraordinary friendship.
Miles YTD 1543 || 2nd World Tour Total 18,161 miles since June 2020 || Next Stop: The Red Sea
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| Scott Smoot joins a bike tour of Jerusalem, virtually. |
As I've pedaled 17,987 miles on trails around Atlanta these past four years, I've traced those miles on the globe, making virtual stops at "places I've lived or loved." My goal this year was to reach Jerusalem on my 65th birthday. A thunderstorm nixed that, so it's one day later.
Though I've never actually been to Jerusalem, it's a place I've lived or loved because I've been there in my mind before sunrise every day for at least 10 years. The morning service of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer opens with a choice of Psalm 95 or 100, which both tell us to enter Jerusalem's gates with thanksgiving. Then the BCP assigns readings in other Psalms, the prophets, and New Testament scriptures. Then I read the day's meditation from the quarterly Forward Day by Day.
Just last week, Jerusalem was subject of a meditation in Forward. The writer, Rev. Erin Morey, commented on God's instructions in Exodus for building a worship space. The Tabernacle is modeled on the future Jerusalem temple. Minute details include the patterns on curtains. Morey reminds us, "Those texts were compiled during the period of exile in Babylon. [The editors] far from home, were describing a physical space that no longer existed in this world." So, "the words became a worship space for God's people" [italics mine].
That's the Jerusalem I enter every morning. If it's not a story of Jesus or a prophet in Jerusalem, then it's one of the psalms. In some of those, Jerusalem sounds a lot like middle school, with judges at the gates, the bullies from the "popular" clique, and former friends spreading rumors behind your back.
But I love the Jerusalem of God's promises, where nations will stream to your light, where the gates will always be open. See my blogpost about the inspiring vision of Jerusalem in Isaiah, and how it in turn underlies America's origin story, City on a Hill: Vision for America (06/2018).
One of my favorite lines about Jerusalem comes at the end of Psalm 87. It tells how people from all over the world will want to claim Jerusalem as their birthplace, concluding, the singers and the dancers will say [to Jerusalem], "All my fresh springs are in you." The editor of the Oxford Study Bible speculates that a line may be missing, but the verse makes complete sense to me, as I've practiced arts all my life. The psalm says that the city has the drama, the beauty, the lamentations, and the promise of glory, to make Jerusalem an endless inspiration.
Miles YTD 1369 || 2nd World Tour Total 17,987 miles since June 2020 || Next Stop: TBA
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Use the arrows to follow the entire tour from the start.
