The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord

Review:  The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord 

by Anthony Esolen

Ignatius Press, 2019

Anthony Esolen has written numerous books and articles on faith and culture, has translated Dante’s Divine Comedyand other works, and has taught literature and classics for the past three decades, currently at Magdelen College in Warner, New Hampshire.

In The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord, Anthony Esolen offers a masterpiece to draw us back into love with poetry – and with the God who gave man the gifts of language and beauty.  One hundred poems in varied forms unite to create one work of praise, encompassing the Word from Genesis to Revelation.  

In a 40-page introduction, Esolen presents the common reader with a crash course on reading poetry – the best I’ve seen in 35+ years of teaching the subject, and worth the price of the book in itself.  If you think poetry is over your head or too esoteric for ordinary enjoyment, attending to this introduction will allay your fears and open a whole new world of beauty.  

Modern education has left most of us sadly bereft of a tradition of art that leads to accessible yet deep and complex beauty that moves the heart, and Esolen calls The Hundredfold, which is solidly based on that tradition, “a first salvo in the Christian reclamation of the land of imagination and song.”  He wishes to suggest by it “what might be done by people with greater skill,” characterizing himself as “a battered old soldier on bad knees, who knows the hill must be charged . . . crying out instructions that he himself has not the strength to fulfill . . . .”

Having known Tony and his work for many years now, I know he is sincere in his self-assessment, hoping that more talented others will “charge past [him] in blood and triumph.”  They will, however, have to be very talented and work very hard to do so.  I have taught much, and read much more, of the world’s greatest literature, and have rarely been so stunned with gratitude at an excellence of craft and content.  Just the first 10-line poem has held me for a dozen readings, and I’m sure I haven’t yet plumbed its depths.  Not because it is hard to read or understand – enough to move the heart is readily available on a merely attentive first reading – but because, like all the greatest literature, it contains layer after layer of thought, new connections and allusions that the reader finds in each visit.  It is based on the Scripture “He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”

     God breathed, and man became a living soul;

     And still His gift is every breath I take.

     Each pulse of time is hastening to its goal;

     He sends His Spirit, and waves of being break

     On the shoals of a barren world; the flower

     Springs in the day, and birds and beasts awake,

     Blessed with a spray of life one glorious hour

     Till petals fall, and the heart rests in death.

     The Eternal grants to man a farther power:

     To live not only by but for His Breath.

The 67 lyric poems are meditations on lines from Scripture, ranging from 10-line curtal sonnets such as the one just quoted to a 100-line poem that concludes the collection.  Some are Esolen’s personal responses to the Word, such as one based on “How wonderful is thy name in all the earth,” which he begins with “I love Thy works, O Lord, and always will,” offering us the sun “shining forth in brash delight,” then “blushing gently in his evening fall,” and finally the “deeps of night . . . / A sea powdered with stars,” and ending “so from above / Glimmers a world of glory manifold, / And my return is gratitude and love.” 

Many explore the depths of a verse, others connect various characters or concepts (such as several that bring together Eve and Mary, Balaam and Saul, and so on), and still others explicitly tie the Scripture to our modern world.  One of these last, based on “You shall not make your children pass through fire,” laments the choice of barrenness so many people make today: “The man wishes he had no seed to cast / In the warm spring upon the ready earth; / The woman, that her womb were bolted fast – / Death they may fear, but birth / Is perfect terror.” It is a numbness of the modern age “to the pulse of both the night and day” that leads to a refusal to be open to life.  They do not need to “haunt where Moloch’s flames appall, / Because they would not bear a child at all.”

In a number of articles, Esolen has lamented the dearth of excellent new hymns, as well as the overuse of shallow praise ditties and performance music difficult for common parishioners to sing.  In The Hundredfold, we find 21 new hymns set to 21 traditional tunes with lyrics easy to understand but deeply resonant with Scriptural truth.  One example can’t show the breadth of style Esolen employs, but at least suggests the beauty contained; here is the last stanza from #XVI (to the tune Peel Castle):

     Except a grain fall to the earth and die,

     Alone and barren it must ever lie;

     Thou broken grain, bread for the wayward, be

     Thy fruit our own, that we may live with Thee.

The 12 dramatic narratives are inevitably my favorite. Robert Browning developed and perfected the form, and until now I had never read any that approach his skill; Esolen’s have me feeling that I am in back in Brit Lit immersing myself in the master’s work.  It is not that Esolen imitates Browning; it is that he has mastered the form (much as one might master the sonnet or the villanelle) and offers it to us in brilliant new subjects.  His speakers include Mary the Mother of Jesus contemplating her sleeping Son, the Apostle Paul trying to persuade Gamaliel that Jesus is the awaited Messiah, the boy with the five loaves and two fish, blind Bartimaeus, St. Peter on his failure of courage, an adulterous centurion, a skeptical blacksmith, and more.  Each one reveals a character striving toward understanding, struggling perhaps with doubt or sin, celebrating the Christ and longing for His victory in the lives of His created ones.  

An old man tells his grandsons of following Christ about the countryside and then, one day, a miracle:  “It was the one good thing I did in life,” he urges them to remember.  Loving his wife, children, grandchildren – “It was all there that one day on the hill:  / I brought him two fish and five loaves of bread. / Do that, my boys, and never mind the rest.”

St. Peter cries out, “I have beheld your eyes / And that has ruined my sins forever, that / Has ruined my life”; and later, “I am / A sinful man, do not depart from me, / Never abandon me to be myself.”

“We must choose,” St. Paul writes to his teacher, who has ever counseled waiting to see if this Jesus could be Messiah, “Whether the season pleases us or  not, / We must, Gamaliel; let the pupil once / Instruct the teacher, let the fiery soul / Inflame the patient and the temperate. / Come with us, taste the goodness of the Lord! / In this sole hope I wait for your reply.”

Poems, Esolen says, “should bring to mind the human things, pure, corrupt, clear, confused; they should say things that matter, simply because we are human.”  Of this particular effort, his hope is that “wherever you find yourself in the Christian pilgrimage, and however the skies may look to you in the land where you are, you will hear something of your heart in the utterances and the cries of these lyrics.”  That hope has been fulfilled in my heart, and it is my prayer that this book will touch the lives of many, beauty showing us the way to praise.

The Squire's Tale

Hunting for something new at McKay's the other day, I ran across a series by Margaret Frazer -- the Dame Frevisse Medieval Mysteries -- in which a nun in a medieval convent solves crimes.  It looked intriguing, and a quick glance showed the writing to be good, so I decided to try it out and bought The Squire's Tale.   

It's a quiet, slow-paced novel, allowing the reader to get a sense of character, setting, and context without leaping into the criminal action.  In fact, the murders to be solved don't even occur until nearly 3/4 of the way through.  Yet I didn't find myself wondering when we would get to that point; I felt that the development warranted it and merely kept wondering which character it would be, given the dynamics among them.

Dame Frevisse interests me very much.  She is a woman of faith, who loves God and the worship of God, who gives willing obedience to her superior in the convent, who goes about her tasks with a generally willing and cheerful spirit.  When her tasks are not to her liking, she takes herself in hand, bites back uncharitable words and thoughts, and gets on with it.  When a matter is none of her business, she curbs her curiosity and turns her mind elsewhere.  At the same time, she notices all that goes on around her and remembers it when she needs it.

Not that she is a doormat, not at all.  When the abbess proposes that she wear an expensive cloak (a gift from her cousin which she never wears because of her vow of poverty) on her journey, she points out that the other sister has no such cloak and it would look out of place for one to be richly dressed, the other not; the abbess accepts her assessment.  When the lady of the house she stays in for a time acts the fool, Dame Frevisse rebukes her calmly and firmly and does not give in to her pleas for undeserved pity.  When the men of the household demur at her asking questions, she simply asserts the authority given her by the master of the house and persists.

Perhaps because the murders occur so late in the book, I did find the resolution a little too quick.  It wasn't unprepared for; I had suspected the culprit now and then though without certainty.  But we hadn't been as well prepared for the motive as I would have liked.  (I also felt that one of the principle characters should have done a bit of penance before being rewarded, though the reward is just.)  However, for me these were minor flaws.

Especially refreshing: no foul language; no explicit sex or excessive gore; unashamed discussion of sin, repentance, love of God, right and wrong; characters who struggle with sin and desire to live righteously; a main character who is willing to obey God and man yet without being limply subservient and while upholding the claims of justice.  In other words, I found it realistic without giving in to certain modern sensibilities which I find wearying at best.

I'd put this novel on a par with Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Alleyn series and plan to gather others as I can.  An enjoyable day's read, and, if you like character development and quiet pacing, definitely worthwhile.

"That's what a lady does."

I have discovered Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries on PBS and, despite the lead character's amorality, I love the show.  It takes place in Australia in, I believe, the 1920s.  The lead character is Phryne (pronounced Fry-nee) Fisher, an elegant, wealthy young woman who, among other good deeds, tries to help young street girls to better lives; she has taken Dot on as a lady's maid and has adopted Jane.  And, of course, she is an amateur detective who helps Inspector Jack Robinson to solve murders.  In last night's episode, she is teaching several such girls social graces.  One of them doesn't show to dinner, and they find her on the beach, drowned.  The mystery is rather complex and brilliantly solved by the combined efforts of Phryne and Jack, but another aspect is how the murder changes Phryne's teaching of the girls.

Here is the scene from which the title quote comes:  a day or two after the murder, the girls have gathered to practice dancing.  They are dressed nicely and, scattered about the room as they wait for Phryne, they are trying out graceful dance movements.  Phryne sweeps in wearing an elegant skirt set, looks about, and says, "Gather 'round, girls.  We're doing something different today."  She then demonstrates and sets to teaching them judo moves -- because self-defense will be far more practical for them than the fox-trot.

They are well into it when Inspector Robinson enters.  He seats himself near the door and observes with interest.  When his Detective Constable murmurs, "Miss Fisher knows judo, sir?" with some amazement, Jack merely replies, "Of course she does" -- he is beyond being surprised by her.

One of the girls finally sees the two men and alerts Phryne.  She turns, arches her eyebrows, and waits for Jack to speak.

Jack, deadpan:  "I hope you're not concealing a dangerous weapon under that skirt."

Phryne, archly:  "I'm concealing a lot of things.  That's what a lady does."

Ladies, let's be ladies!

One Thousand Gifts

I have finally begun reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. Last spring a beloved former student first told me about it, and I must have heard the name a dozen times since. I ordered the book, with a large number of others, some time back, and it had been patiently waiting its turn at the bottom of the stack. Then a couple of weeks ago, K. showed me an interview with Voskamp in World Magazine, and the next day my oldest daughter mentioned hearing her at a conference and said I might enjoy her book. I retrieved it from beneath the books left in the stack.

So far I find it encouraging and honest fare. I am having to get used to her writing style, just a little different from the norm and something many readers would likely not notice, but it is growing on me and I think I will find it pleasing long before I reach the final chapter.

She begins by describing her family’s shutting out grace when her baby sister was killed in their driveway, toddling behind a delivery truck after a cat. It is her first memory, “my mother’s witnessing-scream,” “blood [seeping] through that blanket” in which her mother held the dead body. She describes the grave: “They lay her gravestone flat into the earth, a black granite slab engraved with no dates, only the five letters of her name. Aimee. It means ‘loved one.’ How she was. We had loved her. And with the laying of her gravestone, the closing up of her deathbed, so closed our lives. Closed to any notion of grace.”

Voskamp struggled well into her adulthood with believing in and opening herself to grace. I am only two chapters in, but I find her struggle to be written genuinely and I trust her as she describes her journey and reminds us of the lies Satan tells us about what we need – that what we have is not enough, not fair, that God owes us more, keeps back from us what would make us happy – and reminds us against that of what the Scriptures say about joy and gratitude and grace.

She explains her discovery of the meaning of that word we use for the Lord’s Supper, the eucharist, which she finds translated in Luke’s version as “he gave thanks”: in the Greek, it is eucharisteo. Its root is charis, which means grace; but it also contains a derivative of charis – chara, which means joy. “Deep chara joy is found only at the table of the euCHARisteo – the table of thanksgiving. I sit there long . . . wondering . . . is it that simple? Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?” She list the words, savoring, reflecting, wondering: “Charis. Grace. Eucharisteo. Thanksgiving. Chara. Joy. A triplet of stars, a constellation in the black. A threefold cord that might hold a life? Offer a way up into the fullest life?”

She lets us hear her wondering, her meditations, her working to understand, ending with the plight of living and the question we must all someday answer: “The way through is hard. But do I really want to be saved?”

As she is considering these things a friend sends her a sort of dare: can you list one thousand things you love, one thousand things for which you are grateful? And she begins, immediately, with “morning shadows across the old floors” and “jam piled high on the toast” and “cry of blue jay from high in the spruce.” And smiles, finding the exercise of putting the gifts she has into words on paper to be like “unwrapping love.”

She finds beauty and joy and increased gratefulness in recording these small, everyday things – at the same time admitting, sometimes “I do scoff. I yearn for the stuff of saints, the hard language, the fluency of thanksgiving in all, even the ugliest and most heartbreaking. I want the very fullest life. I wonder, even just an inkling – is this but a ridiculous experiment? Some days, ones with laundry and kids and dishes in sink, it is hard to think that the insulting ordinariness of this truly teaches the full mystery of the all most important, eucharisteo. It’s so frustratingly common – it’s offensive.” And adds, “Driving nails into a life always is.”

She reminds us of what C. S. Lewis says about life: “If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.” She begins to see her list as a training ground, practice; one must begin somewhere: “Practice,” she writes, “is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.” Finding herself beginning to be more grateful, finding that others – friends, family – sense a change in her, she writes, “Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant – a seed – this plants the giant miracle. The miracle of eucharisteo, like the Last Supper, is in the eating of crumbs, the swallowing down one mouthful. Do not disdain the small. The whole of the life – even the hard – is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole. [. . .] There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small thing. The moments will add up.”

I came home yesterday to begin Thanksgiving break feeling nearly euphoric. I recognize that much of that feeling stemmed from circumstances – the research essays were graded and didn’t need to come home with me, five blessed days of quiet, maybe even a few minutes within them to grab hold of for writing . . . But it was as well some part genuine simple gratefulness – for the weekend visit of the Young Man, for a loving husband and comforting home to spend these five days with and in, for colleagues who encourage me and allow me to be an encouragement to them, for children and grandchildren, and my mother still well, and friends who love me, and books to read . . . certainly one could go on forever; a thousand gifts is a pittance of all that we have been given.

But I don’t practice gratitude, not really, not regularly. Two chapters into Voskamp’s book, and it’s so lovely and encouraging, and I am almost afraid to keep reading – for what one knows one is responsible to and for. Do I really want to be saved? Do I really want to learn the way of eucharisteo, of giving thanks in all things, of living in grace? Or do I prefer to listen to Satan’s lies and whine and complain and demand more and more of what I never needed? Teresa's little way, the only way life is lived, minute by minute, blessing by blessing . . . do I have the courage to embrace it?

Tracing the Essay

I have just finished reading G. Douglas Atkins’ history and description of the “fourth genre” – Tracing the Essay – and I hardly know where to begin. Certainly I won’t do it justice in this brief review, but I can at least offer you some of the ideas that most excited me. I selected it for a class in creative nonfiction after a quick skim; I knew it would be excellent because of the author.

Doug was the graduate coordinator in the English Department much of the time I was pursuing my M.A. and Ph.D. I never had the privilege of taking classes with him – at the time he mostly taught courses in areas I was not pursuing, such as literary theory. But he was a good advisor and I enjoyed the occasional conversation with him. On one of my return visits to KU, I stopped by his office for a few minutes to catch up, and he mentioned that he was no longer “doing theory” (he had written what I believe was the first “layman’s guide” to deconstruction in English), but had turned his attention to the essay. I knew that attention would be detailed and accurate and worthy.

I did not, however, come across any of his books when I first began teaching creative nonfiction – the essay. I found helpful texts and anthologies, and I loved the form and the class. Then I received the yearly department update last spring, and there was mention of a new book he'd written. I hit the web and found four on the essay, all of which I immediately ordered, two of which I then put on my course list for fall. I am joyfully making my way through them this summer. (Titles: Tracing the Essay: Through Experience to Truth; Reading Essays: An Invitation; On the Familiar Essay: Challenging Academic Orthodoxies; and Literary Paths to Religious Understanding: Essays on Dryden, Pope, Keats, George Eliot, Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and E. B. White.)

I can’t begin to summarize Tracing the Essay, a book which you must read if you love this form. You will learn to value the essay all the more highly as you delve into its origins and its tensions and its potential, all explored and explained with a deep love and respect for the form that does not preclude criticism of its excesses and shortfalls. I fear that my underlining and marginalia are not as helpful as they might be: there is more marked than unmarked. Here is a taste of what Atkins explores about the essay (in a list of its qualities near the book’s end): it is “exploratory, experiential, ‘lay’ [amateur] in texture, un- (and even anti-) dogmatic, modest in approach, conversational in tone (and address), personal and brilliantly artful, deeply reflective and intensely moral, and celebratory of the via media [. . .].”

Atkins makes much of the need for contemplation, reflection – time. Time to observe, time to read, time to reflect, time to write. We live in a culture which prides itself on its efficiency, and we take in that world through sound-bytes and google searches and think we know it – and ourselves. Yet we cannot know without reflection. Against this frenetic pace of “efficiency” the essay works, both in the writing and the reading, because it demands that we slow down, attend, explore, listen. “In providing reflection,” Atkins writes, “essays remind us of the urgency to slow down and savor life, certainly, but also to measure and weigh it, to try it and test it. Understood this way, reflection comprises an essential aspect of our ordinary living, part of the whole rather than addendum or supplement, and an aspect without which our lives are sorely diminished.”

Tension is a byword of the book, and much of it is an exploration of how the tensions Atkins describes are resolved (or not) in many different essays. Neither merely personal nor academic, neither fiction nor philosophy, the essay “hangs between” such “sturdy poles.” Because the essay begins with experience, one danger of it is self-absorption; because it teaches, another is the complete loss of self and experience in abstract theory. The self, Atkins explains, becomes the mediator of experience, not the subject of experience. He most highly values the familiar essay, because it moves farther “away from the perceiving self and toward the perceived world” than today’s more celebrated personal essay. “The familiar form of the essay,” he writes, “edges more than the personal toward the meaning the writer extracts from experience. Because the focus rests ‘on’ books or morality or friendship, self-consciousness is tempered and the temptation toward self-centeredness is challenged.” Elsewhere he says that the essayist “becomes the crucible in which experience is tried and tested and meaning extracted. The essay’s subject is not, then, the self, contrary to popular opinion, although the essay’s soil, or laboratory, is nothing but the self.”

Another byword of the book is incarnation. The essay, Atkins explains, is incarnational in form. It embodies – incarnates – experience in order to offer meaning, and he notes often the connection between incarnation as a universal principle and the Incarnation which is its ultimate example. In the final chapter, he addresses the tension inherent in exploring and celebrating the Ordinary at the risk of idolatry, of beginning to worship the creation, the Ordinary, instead of its Creator. The Christian understands that “the Extraordinary [. . .] appears in the person of Jesus Christ, God become man.” This does not, however, make the Ordinary and the Extraordinary equivalent, he warns us, “[any] more than meaning is identical to (mere) experience. There is an extra dimension to which experience, including experience of the Ordinary, gives us access. The trouble is, essays often do not [. . .] reach for that dimension [. . .]. Essays derive meaning, all right, but it is that meaning that remains on the level of the Ordinary and so does not attain that transcendent level, meaning that, in other words, does not transcend the Ordinary. Meaning is, in such an instance, etiolated and falls short of its potential – it is reduced.” Later, he adds, “Through this world we are – or should be – led upward to God.”

If you love the essay, read this book. If you wonder why the rest of us love it, read this book. If you write the essay, let yourself be challenged by this book in matters of form and subject and purpose.

Scars and Destiny

Criminal Minds impressed me yet again last night. Last season ended with a serial killer who had escaped from prison finding Hotch (the team had put him into prison in the first place) and stabbing him multiple times, but deliberately not killing him, even taking him to the hospital emergency room to be treated in time to live. When they found that he had Hayley's address, his intent became clear: his goal was to destroy Hotch by destroying all that he loved. (Hayley was Hotch's estranged wife, whom he still loved deeply, and who had custody of their young son, Jack.) So Hayley and Jack were sent into protective custody, unable to have any contact with Hotch.

So this season they've been hunting the killer while dealing with other cases, and finally the killer, in the last episode, found Hayley's FBI protection agent, tortured him, got Hayley's phone number from his phone, and left him to die after calling her and telling her that her agent and Hotch were dead, he was her new agent, and she needed to meet him at her old home so he could take her to a new safe house.

Hotch is talking to her on the phone (the killer, to further his mental torture of both of them, calls him after getting control of Hayley and Jack), and tells her to be strong, not to let the killer make her beg, and so on, then tells Jack that he needs to "help Daddy with the case," code for hiding in a trunk near Hotch's desk. Hayley holds up her courage to avoid distressing Jack into giving away or leaving his hiding place, and Hotch (along with the rest of the team, patched into his phone) hears the two gunshots that kill her. He arrives in time to save Jack, and Morgan, arriving with the team shortly after him, has to pull him off the killer as he continues to pound his face in fury and in terror -- if he stops, and the killer is not dead, he could still harm Jack.

In this week's episode, the team was called away after Hayley's funeral to a case in Nashville. Before they go, Rossi talks with Hotch about his future: will he continue with the BAU, resign, what? It seems clear that he needs to continue using his gift by "catching the bad guys," as Rossi says, but he is broken and scarred, both literally and figuratively. Rossi, without pressuring him in either direction, says to him, "Scars remind us where we've been; they don't have to dictate where we're going." Later, when Hotch indicates his feeling of helplessness before single fatherhood, Rossi says, "You need to decide what kind of father you want to be, then you'll know what to do."

The episode takes us back and forth between the team's work and Hotch as he moves into a new home, comforts his son, and tries to understand his next step. One especially poignant scene: Jack is lying on the couch watching a video taken on his recent third birthday, a time Hotch couldn't share with them because they were under protection. Hotch enters the room, watches until the video is coming to a close, then says, "Time for pjs." Jack, staring at his mother and himself blowing kisses to his daddy, says sadly, "I want to wait a little longer for Mommy."

Hotch's big decision now is whether to remain in the BAU. Jack needs him, and he needs his work. Hayley's sister has been helping with Jack and the household work, and she tells Hotch that if he chooses to stay with the Bureau, she will care for Jack when he has to be gone. "Please let me do this," she says, ". . . for Hayley." Finally, the Chief -- who has been trying to get rid of Hotch forever because his skill and ambition pose a threat to her own ambitions -- brings him an offer for retirement with full pension and benefits. She is startled when Hotch asks for time to consider instead of accepting it immediately.

When the team returns to D.C., Rossi finds Hotch at Hayley's grave. He asks, nodding to the grave, "Have you told her yet?" "Told her what?" Hotch replies. "That you aren't leaving the BAU?" "Oh, I don't need to tell her that," Hotch says; "she already knows."

The voice-over at the end is from Emerson: "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Scarred and broken people still have the opportunity and the responsibility to live well, to use their gifts in service.

On The End of Suffering

"How I will cherish you then, you grief-torn nights!

Had I only received you, inconsolable sisters,

on more abject knees, only buried myself with more abandon

in your loosened hair. How we waste our afflictions!

We study them, stare out beyond them into bleak continuance,

hoping to glimpse some end. Whereas they’re really

our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one

of the seasons of the clandestine year—; not only

season —: they’re site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode."

This is a passage from a new translation of Rilke’s poetry, which Mike Potemra posted this morning at The Corner at NRO. It reminded me of the last line of Scott Cairns’ meditation The End of Suffering: “May our afflictions be few, but may we learn not to squander them.”

Scott graciously sent me The End of Suffering when he read a post in which I’d quoted one of his poems. I’ve been taking my time reading through it and savoring both the style (a poet writing reflective prose: only the poetry itself can be better) and the thought. For the most part, it didn’t hold a great many new-to-me thoughts about suffering – I’ve filled the margins with names of other writers and thinkers his words bring to mind – but his unique approach and stories challenged me to think deeply again, to revisit the subject thoughtfully, to re-see it and be encouraged to press on in my own trials. The Eastern Orthodox vocabulary and perspective deepened my thinking, and the final chapter offers a discussion of wholeness that fascinates me – that was new.

The title is of course a play on words. Someday our sufferings will end – “every tear shall be dried” – but until then we need to understand the end – the purpose – of suffering. Suffering is inevitable, and Cairns reminds us that one of its immediate purposes is to “drag us – more or less kicking – into a fresh and vivid awareness that we are not in control of our circumstances, that we are not quite whole [. . .] .” This in turn leads (or can lead) to the stripping away of self so that we can have fellowship with God – our purpose as created beings.

Cairns writes of the need to rid ourselves of pride, of that modern curse of “self-esteem,” and how suffering, if we respond wisely to it, helps us to do this by bringing us face-to-face with our own weakness and sin: writing of people he has known for whom this was true when they were diagnosed with a terminal disease, he says, ‘It was as if their imminent deaths freed them from petty, distracted lives and freed them into greater, genuine living [. . .] .”

Suffering, Cairns says, “may also provide to us a glimpse of what actual virtue might require.” He writes of how we are united to the body of Christ, and the sacrifices and blessings of understanding what that unity means as we learn to love one another as He loves us. Drawing on his pilgrimages to Mount Athos, he describes how the monks who live there love each other and God, how they take on each other’s sufferings and pray sacrificially for all of us who are struggling together to play our part in this spiritual body – and this is what we are called to in our various places in life.

He writes of how each of us, by virtue of our own sinful nature and actions, is complicit in all the suffering of the world, including the suffering of the innocents. Because no man is an island, as Donne puts it, each individual’s connection to the rest is “absolute.” If an innocent child suffers, it is because “[e]very choice in our lives that separates us from communion with God, and every decision that clouds our awareness of His presence or erodes our relationships with one another has a profound and expanding effect – as the proverbial ripples in a pool.” The striving for autonomy is great evil, and leads to great evil not only for ourselves but for others. Realizing this – taking responsibility for the evil that happens throughout the world – should humble us into a desire to live righteously, to leave sin behind.

But to begin “fixing” this state, it is not enough to merely decide not to sin. “It is not our finally turning away from sin that frees us from sin’s recurrence,” Cairns writes; “rather it is our turning toward Christ – and the mystery of our continuing to turn into Him – that puts sin behind us.” I kept being reminded of Charles Williams’ Descent into Hell, the message of which is essentially that every choice we makes sets us on either the road to heaven or the road to hell – and enough choices in one direction will eventually make the end of that road our inevitable end. “We acquire our salvation through partaking of that body [of Christ]” – we must be a part of the body, the church, making choices to live as a member of the body. I especially love the story Cairns tells of the monk who answered the question “Is Jesus Christ your personal savior?” with a smile and no hesitation: “No, I like to share him.”

Cairns quotes a Russian priest: “’And when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it’ is said of the Church. If we do not feel this, we are not within the Church.” The life of the body of Christ is essential for us to learn to live well, to understand suffering, to share the suffering of others, to know God’s love in fellowship with Him, to reach out to a suffering world. It is only here that we can understand suffering as purposeful – that it is “remedial”; it is “grace.”

And so in one sense we are being saved continually. Cairns writes, “I want to be saved from what passes for myself. This is because what passes for myself does not always feel quite like the self that is framed in the image of God and is thus united with those around me and is, allegedly, growing with them into His likeness.” Amen to that.

The book’s final chapter is one I need to mull over a great deal. It is about becoming whole, the reuniting of nous and kardia – what most of our translations render as mind and heart, but Cairns explains is so much more. I’m not going to pretend to “get” this yet; the phrase he quotes from another writer – “the intellective aptitude of the heart” – intrigues me, but I shall leave it for now simply saying that we must watch and pray, we must suffer in the garden with our suffering Lord, in the journey to wholeness. Perhaps I’ll be able to revisit the concept of wholeness as Cairns develops it here after I’ve had time to begin integrating it into my own thinking.

For my literary friends -- Cairns discusses art earlier in the book and its potentially redemptive purpose for its maker and its receiver, a discussion you will find encouraging and profitable.

Scott sent me this book because I had revealed some of the suffering I happened to be seeing and living. The book has certainly been a strong encouragement to keep going, to remain vulnerable, to embrace the purpose of suffering, for which I am grateful. The act of giving, accompanied with his prayers offered up for this complete stranger, has in itself been a reminder of the purpose of the body to be united in loving each other. He wrote on the title page, “for my sister along the way.” May we all remember that we are brothers and sisters along the way and exercise grace and love, lifting each other up in prayer and practical helps as we seek to learn the lessons of suffering.

Ghost Stories by Russell Kirk

Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales by Russell Kirk

The final piece in this anthology is an essay by Kirk, “A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale.” He writes that his tales are “experiments in the moral imagination,” which will include “elements of parable and fable.” “The good ghost story,” he says, “must have for its kernel some clear premise about the character of human existence – some theological premise, if you will.” He reminds us that “all important literature has some ethical end; and the tale of the preternatural [. . .] can be an instrument for the recovery of moral order.”

One reason this is so is because the best of such stories “are underlain by a healthy concept of the character of evil” – but also by the knowledge that evil powers “do not rule the universe; by bell, book, and candle, symbolically at least, we can push them down under.” He is clear that he believes in the supernatural, that he refuses merely material, scientific explanations (or hallucination) for the glimpses of it that people sometimes have, and he also tells us that these glimpses must be fleshed out, by the imagination, to create a good tale.

The ghostly tale can be “a means for expressing truth enchantingly,” he writes, but not at the expense of exercising “didactic moralism” nor by losing real fear of real evil – the “shapes and voices half-glimpsed and half-heard are [not] symbols merely.” He takes note of the materialistic nature of his culture (born in 1918, he lived through most of the 20th century), and remarks on his hope that “as the rising generation regains the awareness that ‘nature’ is something more than more fleshly sensation, and that something may lie above human nature, and something below it – why, the divine and the diabolical [may] rise up again in serious literature.”

The tales are fascinating and well-told. Occasionally a character from one story reappears in another, and – while each story is complete in itself – it is helpful to know the earlier tale, so I recommend reading them in order. It’s hard to reveal much about them, as the element of mystery and suspense is necessary for full enjoyment. There are tales of retribution and of beneficent help from beyond the grave, of possession and attempted possession, of heroics in the face of monstrous supernatural evil, of pride and humility, set around the world in city and country, musty old mansions and ancient cathedrals.

Kirk’s tales remind me often of Charles Williams’ novels (and Kirk was familiar with these). I don’t find the stories didactic; they are simply fascinating tales, well-told. Of course, I share Kirk’s Christian worldview, which allows for the actual existence of clearly distinct good and evil – and for good to have ultimate power over evil. His narrative style is easy to read, self-effacing – his skillful craftsmanship ensures that the reader’s attention is given to the story itself. Each story shows evil as evil, and unashamedly shows us good ascendant over it. Characters have choices, and, much as in Williams’ work, the choices lead them toward heaven or hell. Choices are sometimes offered in that murky world between living and dying, past and present, too; the shadowland where time is no longer in play.

“I present [these tales] to you unabashed,” Kirk writes. “They may impart some arcane truths about good and evil: as Chesterton put it, all life is an allegory, and we can understand it only in parable.” Certainly he has succeeded in his goal, perhaps beyond his expectations, and I shall read these stories many times, gladly obeying his final injunction: “Pray for us scribbling sinners now and at the hour of our death.” God rest us all in His eternal goodness.

Russell Kirk is an icon of the conservative movement, right up there with William F. Buckley, and has written on politics, culture, and economics (he even wrote an economics text for high school which my son greatly benefited from).

The Day of the Jackal

Murder mysteries are my usual "light reading" choice. Spy thrillers are not my cup of tea; too much political intrigue as a rule to keep my interest. But when we went to McKay's at the beginning of spring break a couple of weeks ago, I picked up Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal, thinking I ought to give it a try since it is such a well-regarded classic of the genre. I began reading just a chapter a day when I could get to it, enjoying it much more than I'd thought I would . . . then yesterday, with about the last half to go, I couldn't put it down till I finished. It's a truly excellent work.

Perhaps "spy" is a bit of a misnomer; it's about an assassin who is hired by resistance forces to kill Charles deGaulle, and the hunt for him when the plot is discovered. But Forsyth skillfully weaves in the political background of the story and the rationale of the rebels, remaining true to history as he creates his own characters and plot to place within its bounds. No one knows who the Jackal is, except that he is a tall, blonde Englishman who has never been connected with any name or any crime. Forsyth first introduces us to the rebels and their decision to hire a foreign assassin after their sixth attempt to kill deGaulle goes astray and one of their leaders is executed; then he follows the Jackal's meticulous planning, including the various disguises he prepares (along with passports and papers for each), leaving us no doubt of his cool and merciless character. Finally, the government forces discover the plot and the hunt is on -- Commissaire Ledel versus the Jackal in a battle of wits, the stakes literally life or death.

Forsyth kept my attention with every* word. He writes with much detail, but every* detail essential. His style is not mannered in any way; it is an excellent example of realist writing which keeps the writer out of the text through any obvious mannerisms or commentary. The structure is perfect as he moves back and forth between simultaneous events without losing the thread of the narrative, neither giving away too much too soon nor holding back needed information to follow the complex plot. We never learn who the Jackal is, and he is portrayed as a mysterious and unknowable man with no conscience but a taste for the good life, which he plans to live after completing this last job for enough money to "retire" on. Many of the other characters are well-rounded, not overly stereotyped (some of the more minor ones are, of course; one can't have such a huge cast as he does without some shorthand characterization); he is particularly good at creating the tensions of conversation in which there are competing personal and professional interests.

Ironies of all sorts abound, and the hypocrisies and ambitions of the politicians (and the hubris of deGaulle) are interestingly contrasted with Ledel's single-minded pursuit of criminals who would destroy the peace. When the government men following the investigation complain of his contacting heads of police in other states, Ledel says mildly, "all countries, whatever their political outlook, are opposed to crime. So we are not involved in the same rivalries as the more political branches of international relations." They needn't worry about the discretion of police in other countries, he assures them: "The political assassin is the world's outlaw." After receiving the assignment, the narrator tells us that Ledel might have been thinking of the immense power given him or the honors that might come if he succeeded or the repercussions of failure -- but "[b]ecause he was what he was, he thought of none of these things. He was puzzling as to how he would explain over the phone to Amelie [his wife] that he was not coming home until further notice."

The contrast of the small, henpecked detective with the confident, handsome, physically strong Jackal works excellently. The Jackal knows his job and pursues it single-mindedly, certain of his success because certain of his own abilities, and driven by his selfish desires. But the detective, whose appearance works against him in the government briefing room, is no less single-minded and at least as brilliant. He, however, places his confidence in his method and his colleagues, not in his personal brilliance, and is driven by his ideal of justice. And Forsyth develops their battle in a novel I highly recommend.

*My one caveat: I did feel that the few scenes of sexual intimacy were overdone and gratuitous; one doesn't need the detail there either to follow the plot or to understand the characters. These are not frequent, but I found them disturbing.

Exiles

I got books this last week, and immediately devoured Exiles by Ron Hansen. It is a fictionalized account of Gerard Manley Hopkins' life paralleled with the lives of the five nuns who died in the shipwreck of the Deutschland, about which Hopkins wrote one of his most compelling poems.

The book's title reflects the fact that both Hopkins and the five nuns were in some sense exiles. The nuns were sailing from Germany to England and then to the U.S. at least in part because their religion and work was being suppressed by the Falk Laws against Roman Catholicism in Germany. Hopkins made himself an exile in one sense by converting to Roman Catholicism in an England which still despised and to some degree discriminated against Catholics (university degrees were not available to Catholics, for example, except from Catholic institutions); his conversion also cost him at least some fellowship with his family, although they did not disown him. His constant moving about by command of the Jesuit order which he entered was another form of exile, especially when his final move took him away from his beloved England to Ireland, where he died. In addition, Hansen suggests that he was in some sense exiled from his natural gift for poetry because of his vocational choice.

Hopkins was tremendously moved by the accounts he read of the wreck of the Deutschland, and especially by the deaths of the five nuns, one of whom was said to have cried out "O Christ, come quickly!" as passenger after passenger succumbed in various ways to the cold weather and the icy water. His poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, imagines both the terror of the wreck, with many details gleaned from his reading, and the faith and hope of the nuns lost in it, as well as containing the story of his own faith. It is a magnificent poem, and it is especially important because it is the first complete effort in his experimental sprung rhythm -- which is quite likely the reason it was refused publication.

The book works very well at some levels. Hansen uses many of Hopkins' own words, from his poetry, his journals, and his letters; he does this explicitly but often simply merges them into the text, creating a stab of unexpected delight when the reader recognizes some loved phrase. He tells the two stories alternately within each chapter. The first couple of times he switched I found startling, but grew used to it quickly. The part of Hopkins' story that he tells, he tells well. There is a good deal of information about Hopkins available, and he stays true to this, making the scenes he creates ring true to what we know of the man already.

Next to nothing is actually known about the five nuns besides their names, so Hansen has pretty much free play here, and he creates five intriguing characters with very different lifestories, personalities, and motivations. He doesn't sugarcoat them -- they have their flaws -- but at the same time he shows a realistic commitment to their vocation.

However, when I finished the book I was left with a sense of incompleteness. It is true that Hopkins was a melancholic man who suffered from severe depression much of his adult life. The "terrible sonnets" reveal this to us as well as his journal, his letters, and second-party sources. Yet this was not the whole of the man, and Hansen only alludes to the hope and joy that his work also shows us. Yes, he gives some scenes and descriptions of Hopkins the genial colleague and friend, and Hopkins' dying words -- "I am so happy!" But the emphasis in the second half of the book is so much on the darkness that one could easily believe that Hopkins was simply a miserable person who had missed his true calling -- a suggestion at least hinted at in a long paragraph interlude speculating on how his life might have been so much better (and longer) had he not become a priest.

I do not believe that the body of Hopkins' work supports this idea, nor do I think it is our place to suggest that he should have led an easier life and given us more poetry. Perhaps, in fact, he could not have given us the remarkable work that he did had he lived an easier life. In any case, it seems to have been Hopkins' own very clear sense that he was living as he had been called to live, that God -- though at times He seemed far away and even uncaring -- was at all times his Friend and Father and Lord, and that disappointments and adversities were simply part of the refining process required of all of us. I wish that Hansen had shown this; I wish that he had emphasized the Hopkins that we see in the "sonnets of consolation" which Hansen barely mentions as having been written after the "terrible sonnets."

This same sense of darkness seems to permeate the story of the five nuns. Although he presents them as women of faith, true to their vocation, with prayer and meditation as an integral part of their lives, still they come across somehow as not particularly hopeful, meeting death stoically perhaps, but not especially with Christ in mind or a joy to meet Him. I don't know if Hansen was afraid to create plaster saints -- always a danger in writing about faith -- but in avoiding that danger it seems to me he has struck the opposite, offering us a stoicism that could be seen in many who do not have the hope of Christ at all.

Still and all, I will seriously consider assigning this book the next time I teach a course in Hopkins. It's reasonably well-written, and offers a perspective to be considered alongside Hopkins' own work and factual biographies of him. It might also be an interesting book to use in a creative writing course, given the two different sets of information and how Hansen uses and transforms each of them into fictional biography.

Waterwalk

I've just read Steven Faulkner's Waterwalk, a memoir of his canoe journey from the upper North to St. Louis to "discover" the Mississippi with his son Justin, following the route of Marquet and Joliet. It's a good book -- Faulkner is a good descriptive writer, and his meditations on his relationship with his son are honest and thoughtful. There are days of lovely solitude, of excitement and near-disaster, of back-breaking boredom. There's history as he weaves the two journeys together. I found his discussions of environmental and technological issues a bit heavy-handed; even though I agee with quite a bit of what he says, it felt more like being preached at than reflective musing, which is what the rest of the book seems to call for. But despite that particular flaw (to me; others won't mind it), the book is well worth reading to encourage one to think again about the need to slow down, to see what's around us, to reflect, to try to connect with mind and heart instead of cell phone and Facebook. And, in the end, to remember that we can only know so much of any other created being, that we are mysteries even to ourselves, that wisdom can be passed on but must also be learned, each of us in his own unique journey. We may travel together for a time, but even together we may be in very different places; finally, we can only love and pray.

“The Parthenon and the Optative”

C. S. Lewis opens his essay by the above title (which I found in his collection On Stories) with a remark from “a grim old classical scholar” as he was marking college entrance exams: “The trouble with these boys is that the masters have been talking to them about the Parthenon when they should have been talking about the Optative.”

Lewis then explains what is meant by the two terms as symbols of two types of education: “The [Optative] begins with hard, dry things like grammar, and dates, and prosody; and it has at least the chance of ending in a real appreciation which is equally hard and firm though not equally dry. The [Parthenon] begins in ‘Appreciation’ and ends in gush. When the first fails it has, at the very least, taught the boy what knowledge is like. He may decide that he doesn't care for knowledge; but he knows he doesn't care for it, and he knows he hasn't got it. But the other kind fails most disastrously when it most succeeds. It teaches a man to feel vaguely cultured while he remains in fact a dunce. It makes him think he is enjoying poems he can't construe. It qualifies him to review books he does not understand, and to be intellectual without intellect. It plays havoc with the very distinction between truth and error."

He goes on to discuss the purpose of examinations: “to find out whether the boy had read his books. It was the reading, not the being examined, which was expected to do him good.” They are not to determine if his soul has been touched, if he sufficiently appreciates literature and is moved by it. These things cannot be tested – but if the student does the reading well, then “[a]t best he may have learned [. . .] to enjoy a great poem. At second best he has done an honest work and exercised his memory and reason. At worst, we have done him no harm [. . .].”

His final paragraph addresses the laments of people who claim they would have loved poetry if they’d never had to take exams over it. “It is theoretically possible,” Lewis muses. “Perhaps they would by now have been saints if no one had ever examined them in Scripture. Perhaps they would have been strategists or heroes if they had never been put into the school OTC. It may be so: but why should we believe that it is. We have only their word for it; and how do they know?”

I think I shall have to place this essay before my students . . .

My favorite line, though, is this: “I am not sure that the best way to make a boy love the English poets might not be to forbid him to read them and then make sure that he had plenty of opportunities to disobey you.” Definitely a man who knew human nature!

Under the Mercy

So I got two novels by Charles Williams last week -- War In Heaven and Descent into Hell -- and inhaled them both over the weekend. (Really, they are pretty short, I swear.) I've been finding in the past couple of years that I much prefer to just take in a novel wholesale and then, if it has spoken to me, go back and re-read it, perhaps many times, at a slower pace to figure out why I fell in love with it. I shall revisit both these novels, and the other two Williams novels I have , over the summer, not to mention adding to my collection till I have them all . . .

War in Heaven is a grail story, superbly done in Williams' inimitable style, bringing together the most unlikely group to save the holy object. Williams suggests through the story also the most unlikely -- from our human perspective -- possibilities for individual salvation, reminding me of Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, who also make much of our human frailties and God's mercy.

But Descent into Hell is the one that had me barely breathing Sunday evening. Williams takes the understanding that self-absorption is hell and shows the temptations to it, the ways out of it, and the consequences of choosing both rightly and wrongly. It is horrifying in its picture of Lawrence Wentworth's fall, and there is nothing simplistic about Pauline Anstruther's salvation from the same fate. It is a true book . . .

Rambling notes:
There are doppelgangers, suicide, ghosts walking, visions of heaven and of hell, the temptress Lilith (whose story I really must become more familiar with; so many of my favorite writers make use of it), the doctrine of substitution applied in our lives in a more compelling way than I've ever seen it, and again the constant suggestion that the slightest choice that is not evil could serve to put us on the way of salvation . . .

Early on, one of the characters says to poet Peter Stanhope, whose latest play they are going to produce, that "nature is so terribly good."

He agrees, but taking her literally: "it comes from doing so much writing, but when I say 'terribly' I think I mean 'full of terror'. A dreadful goodness."

She replies resentfully, "If things are good they're not terrifying, are they?"

Pauline, who confronts daily her own personal terror, interjects at this point the question, "And if things are terrifying, can they be good?'

Stanhope: "Yes, surely. Are our tremors to measure the Omnipotence?"

At the end, "Under the Mercy," Stanhope tells Pauline. "Go in peace, under the Mercy."

Where the Roots Reach for Water

from Jeffrey Smith's Where the Roots Reach for Water:

It was back, and it was nearly the longest day of the year; at our northern latitude the light would blanch the sky until past ten that evening. The idea of abiding that light for ten more hours exhausted me. Maybe, I thought, [. . .] maybe I can stand up and walk away from it. [. . .]

I leaned back against a cottonwood tree on the riverbank. Shining clear light fell in sheets down the sky. In the breeze the lime-colored cottonwood trees were all atremble; they shimmered the light in every direction, like some radiant version of glory revealed. I noticed, but I did not see; in my eyes all that sparkle and sinew had gone to blunt and shear, a blare of light.

There was no mistaking it now. I knew well enough: it is arrived. [. . .] No external event of weather or circumstance could account for its coming. All I knew was that it came that day rising, as it always did, not falling as if from elsewhere but rising as if it came from within, as inexorable as it was unbidden. I slogged on home and in my dark and damp basement room I crawled into bed.

I read only the first chapter of Smith's book last night and I could hardly force myself to put it down to finish the class prep I needed to do before going to bed. He had, at the time described above, suffered from depressive episodes for a couple of years. No medications had worked until one, which gave him the illusion for several months that he'd found a cure -- until depression came back and caused him to make serious plans for suicide.

The book is about what he learned from his decision to stop using medication, not because he thinks one never should, but because it obviously wasn't going to help him -- and in fact placed him in physical danger as doctors kept giving him higher dosages and placing him on more than one at a time. (He gives a frightening description of the paralysis he suffered which finally led to this decision.) Instead of attempting suicide, however, he decided to taper off the medications and stop taking them. He ends the first chapter with the question he finally posed himself: "Without anti-depressants to vanquish it, could a person have a life with depression?"

The book is highly recommended by Joshua Wolf Shenk (Lincoln's Melancholy), who says, "Smith is driven to map the landscape of melancholy. He finds it stretched deep through history, literature, medicine, and myth. [The book] doesn't discount the value of modern medicine, but it does soundly challenge its inviolability." He calls it "engrossing and persuasive."

Yes, some of my books have come, and this is the one that said to me, Read me now! (before my own next episode, perhaps?)

Islands

I have been reading my poor allergy-prone eyes into blindness every evening this summer, but it's been well worth it. This week one of the books I've read is Anne Rivers Siddons' Islands. This was my first read of Siddons' work, and I will definitely be looking for more, hoping not to be disappointed. (Note to self: put this name near the top of the list for the next used bookstore visit.)

Islands is literary fiction, so it's slow-moving and character-oriented, both of which traits I love. It follows the lives of a group of childhood friends from Charleston who have remained close, buying a beach house together where they and their families spend much time on weekends and in the summers. Of course there are tensions and conflicts and, as they are getting older, deaths. The novel is really about the ways we react to disappointment, tragedy, and betrayal, and does a good job of showing these quite realistically, ending on a note of hopefulness that is rare for the modern novel of this type.

Siddons is a good writer, too. I wouldn't put her in the top tier, but she brings Charleston to life quite well and especially the beach scenes, which are not cliche but help one to see, hear, taste, and feel the setting. She also sets the story up extremely well with the prologue, a dream of the main character. Anything more would be a spoiler.

I think what I like most is how true to life the characters seem. I didn't feel at any particular point that anyone was behaving out of character, and even her rather off-the-wall folk rang mostly true. This tells me Siddons is a good observer of human nature and willing to tell it as truly as she can, rather than trying to propagandize us into some ideological agenda.

On Brideshead Revisited

A couple of weekends ago, as a reward for grading research essays, I allowed myself to begin Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh). The one chapter per graded essay quickly turned into two, three, four, and I inhaled the novel over the course of two days. (Yes, I finished grading the essays, too; it did take two days instead of one.) I am now re-reading it, a little more slowly, and will laze my way through it with pen in hand this summer. It is worthy of many readings, and I only regret it has taken me this long to discover Waugh.

It is a framed narrative; the first-person narrator opens with a scene from his Army days in which he finds that his unit is being billeted at Brideshead, a family estate where he spent much time with his friend Sebastian as a young man and where he fell in love with Sebastian's sister Julia. This makes the novel one of my favorite types -- he goes back in time to his first visit to Brideshead and narrates the story chronologically from there, but comments on it from the later perspective as he does so.

The writing is of course superb. The story is poignant and breathtaking. It reminds me of Graham Greene and perhaps others I've read. They are Catholic writers exploring the place of Catholicism in the lives of their characters, and doing so without glibness or falsity. We are a fallen race, and this they show clearly. We fail, often spectacularly; we are frail, often beyond hope of improvement; but we cannot escape, if we are honest, our need for something beyond ourselves. And the fact that God is, that He is the Heavenly Hound seeking us, seeking us, that we cannot finally escape Him, that His grace is greater than our frailty . . . this informs the narratives in such a compelling manner that any thinking reader must be drawn to consider whether this be truth.

I have read some spectacularly good novels by Protestant evangelical writers. However, for the most part, novels from that perspective tend to present faith as the end of the matter. Like a Harlequin romance, but with the lover being Jesus, everyone lives happily ever after once they have "gotten saved." I suppose this is fine as far as it goes -- but for me that is not far enough. It leaves one with the idea that faith is about me and its object is to make me happy. Oh, and it automatically makes me good, of course.

But faith is about its object -- the triune God of the universe. And this God is not just a sentimental lover who wants us to be happy. He is a just and righteous God who wants us to be like Him. And this is what the Catholic characters in Greene's novels, and those in Brideshead Revisited, struggle with. They know they have a responsibility to God, they are well aware of what that responsibility entails, which is often a painful decision that does not necessarily make them happy -- and they cannot just throw it off and live as they wish.

And yet, when they accept that responsibility, whether it brings them some kind of temporal happiness or not, whether it looks like what others expect it to or meets the approval of others, there is a sense of "rightness" in their lives that confirms that acceptance. I am not saying this well, I'm afraid, but what I see again and again in these books is that the end of faith is not righteousness in itself (though of course we should strive to be righteous) but rather is desire for the God who is righteous.

I have heard many criticisms about placing too much emphasis on obedience, and I have seen crippling guilt and fear in people who do so. However, I am also sceptical about a total emphasis on grace, in the sense of "you don't have to worry about anything; God is gracious." Well, yes, He is, but He is also righteous and just, and the believer is not exempt from His discipline -- which means that He notices and cares when we are disobedient. So there must be a balance. Some guilt is a good thing: it makes us desire to do better. Understanding His grace is freeing; it allows us to fail without believing we are unloved.

What I love about Greene and now Waugh is that they do not gloss over this tension, nor present glib responses to the complexity of human nature in relation to the One who created us and loves us despite our fallen choices. They make me think, and they make me desire to be compassionate instead of judgmental and at the same time demanding instead of complacent. They make me want to be more like the God that glimmers through the pages of their texts.

Review part 3: "Criminal Minds"

All art invites the viewer to consider values and ideas. However, Criminal Minds does this more explicitly than most television shows or films through a voice-over at the show's beginning and/or end of a quotation from a philosopher or writer that suggests the episode's theme and perhaps how we are to think about it. Sadly, I haven't been able to locate a website that gives these quotations, so I rarely manage to keep them accurately. At least the gist often stays with me, though, as they frame my response.

One example: A woman who was horribly abused becomes a serial killer, taking out her bitterness by hurting others as she was hurt. The team identifies her as the killer -- instead of a male suspect -- when they learn about her past. But the quotations at beginning and end are about how suffering can make one great, thus reminding the viewers that the victim of suffering has choices -- there is nothing inevitable about bitterness, about repaying evil for evil.

In this week's episode, the voice-over was about the dark oppression of secrets -- and in the course of the show, Morgan is forced to reveal the secret of the sexual abuse he endured as a boy and had told no one. But when he finally speaks out, it is to save another boy and end the abuser's exploitation. "[Not telling] was my mistake," he tells the boy. "You don't have to make the same one, and I've got your back -- forever." The episode also deepens Morgan's character by showing him interacting with his widowed mother and sisters, revealing some of his past, and showing us why he is especially enraged by crimes against children. "You are responsible for who I am," he tells the abuser; "I became an FBI agent to put b**s like you away."

The characters also often reflect on and discuss the nature of their job, inviting us to consider with them the values we hold, our assumptions about good and evil, right and wrong, the sanctity of life. At the end of one case, for example, Hotch muses to Gideon, "What makes people do such evil things? Is it the parents' fault? Society's? Neither?" Rather than merely driving us to a single conclusion, we are invited to think about it ourselves, and the show's actions leave it open for interpretation even while critiquing various policies and positions having to do with crime and punishment.

In an episode where the team finds a vigilante who has been killing people guilty of criminal acts but who have not been convicted because their actions were blamed on parents or society, we find that Hotch still second-guesses himself about the first case he and Gideon worked together. They had identified a man who had abused and killed two young boys. They had confronted him, armed and desperate, and Hotch had "talked him down," preventing him from killing himself or forcing them to do so. Then he was found not guilty on the basis of his wife's perjury -- and was only sent to prison after he killed again.

"You did the right thing," Gideon tells Hotch, and Hotch agrees -- but we are invited to think long and hard about our justice system and whether it might ever be right to at least not prevent the death of a known killer.

Yet the show does always come down on the side of life: one never, under any circumstances, kills except to save the life of a victim or fellow law enforcer. It is not the law enforcement officer's job to execute justice in any but a desperate situation, no matter how flawed the courts may be. And thus the horror of the team members to realize that Elle has taken justice into her own hands, has killed with pre-meditation an unarmed man. The sick rapes he has committed are no excuse for her own lawless act.

In another episode, a brilliant high school boy approaches Reid, implying that he might be the serial killer that is terrorizing D.C. prostitutes. They find he is not the killer, but he is obsessed with death and crying out for help. Gideon does a psych evaluation and tells Reid afterwards, "It's not a matter of if he kills; it's a matter of when he kills." Later, the boy tells Reid that he has realized that the only way to keep from killing someone else is to kill himself.

Yet his mother puts off hospitalizing him. Finally, he comes by to tell Reid he is going into the hospital the next day. "You know I'll never get out," he says, and Reid -- who "knows what it means to be afraid of your own mind" -- tries to encourage him to be hopeful. A few hours later he receives a phone call: the boy has solicited a prostitute, fantasizing murder, but he doesn't try to kill her. Instead, he lays Reid's business card on the table and slits his own wrists. Reid and Garcia race to the apartment to try to help him. Later, as the ambulance drives away, Gideon tells Reid, clearly as a compliment and encouragement, "You saved his life." Reid answers, "And what about the lives he takes someday?" Gideon: "Profiles can be wrong. But if this one's not, then . . . you'll bring him in."

The unspoken message: you must always presume on the side of life and hope, never except in the direst circumstances taking into your own hands the decision that someone else must die.

Before and after this episode, Gray Gubler voices over quotations from T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men":

"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow.

[. . .]

"Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow."

And we are invited to consider what the Shadow is, if it can be fought, if idea and conception can be brought to birth without destructive distortion.