The Shack: Don’t Get Your Hopes Up

The Shack was a terrible book, badly written, offering shallow comfort and questionable theology. I’m not optimistic that the movie (premiering March 3) will be able to transcend these immediate problems unless it totally abandons any commitment to its source material and engages a screenwriter who can make us forgive the stereotypes and articulate a coherent spiritual response to the unrelenting grief of a bereaved parent.

Protagonist Mack receives a mysterious invitation to revisit a shack where his young daughter was abducted and murdered. He finds Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu waiting for him—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and Mack challenges them with his questions and doubts about his battered faith. They cover theodicy, of course—reconciling the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent benevolent God; but they also discuss Trinitarianism, the incarnation, Hell, predestination, original sin, and forgiveness.

Author William P. Young tries for a fresh characterization of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but falls back on stereotypes and predictability. Papa is a jolly Black mother-figure who bakes pies and whips up four-course meals. Sarayu is a mystical, Asian-influenced, pan-dimensional being. And Jesus, of course, is a rugged but gentle Middle Eastern handyman with a big nose. Mack “knew instantly that he liked [him].”

The Shack strays from orthodoxy with vaguely universalist theology, and along the way it fails to provide any deep or satisfying answers to the problem of pain.

The plot revolves around Mack’s suffering over his daughter’s horrifying death. When Mack talks to Jesus about this, seeking understanding and peace, Jesus tells him that his daughter was never alone because the Holy Spirit was with her; they talked and she was comforted; “she was more worried about you and the other kids, knowing that you couldn’t find her. She prayed for you, for your peace,” Jesus tells Mack. “She was so brave!”

This flaccid response to grief and suffering offers the shallow comfort of make-believe. The key question of the book—How do I cope and find comfort in the deepest grief?—gets a cursory treatment in the form of a dialogue with no universal truth or wisdom.

Mack’s conversation with Jesus is fiction, of course—but even in fiction the reader seeks truth and wisdom that transcend the page and translate to real life. Author Young shows Jesus attempting to “fix” Mack’s grief with bromidic assurances. Even if it’s true that the Holy Spirit is with us—and I believe it is—these words don’t bring relief from grief and suffering. They don’t reverse the bad thing that has happened.

We live in a world that still suffers the consequences of sin. Christians sometimes get confused about the promises of the Kingdom.  We are not promised that we will be protected from these consequences. We do experience new life in some ways and at some times—yet clearly not in other ways or times. We cannot “claim” the blessings of comfort and peace right now, on our own timelines, in spite of the vapid affirmations of popular health and wealth preachers.

Even Jesus experienced this already and not-yet paradox of the kingdom. In the garden of Gethsemane, Matthew tells us that Jesus was “very sad and troubled…He fell to the ground” and cried out to God: “My Father, if it is possible, do not give me this cup of suffering.” Luke writes that Jesus was “full of pain” and that “his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” But His Father did not answer this prayer. Jesus continued to suffer, to the point of death on the cross.

Through his resurrection, Jesus conquered death—but still people die. Aidan died.

In my journey through the valley of the shadow of death, there were no grief-erasing Bible verses, no magic conversations with Jesus, no portion of my faith that instantly turned my sorrow into peace and comfort. That’s not how the blessings of the kingdom work this side of eternity. There is still grief. God has not yet wiped every tear from our eyes.

In real life there are no words that can bring comfort to a grieving parent. It is not only feckless to try to take away a person’s sorrow, it is manipulative and insulting. There are no words, no faith, no message, that take away grief.

What the real Jesus would have said to Mack, what he would say to me, is, “I hate this. I hate the evil that took your child away from you. It’s wrong, and horrible, and no parent should have to endure it. I wish I could take away your pain.”

It’s called empathy. God the Father endured the loss of his own Son. Jesus is “not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but…one who was tempted in every way.” At Aidan’s funeral, the pastor said “Jesus does not come to death with a gracious invitation. Death is, for Jesus, the Last Enemy, and to death he comes with a sword. To death Jesus comes with his robe dipped in blood.”

These violent images of war convey with Shakespearean vividness that death is the enemy—and that’s what Jesus would have communicated to Mack. He would not have offered unhelpful platitudes that do not bring comfort in the face of such a grievous loss.

So the book failed in its treatment of the universal problem of pain, and the movie will fail too unless it reimagines these conversations and offers a more realistic depiction of what faith can and cannot do for a grieving parent.  

My own recovery from paralyzing grief after the death of my son entailed a long and emotionally grueling process. Time, tears, prayer, therapy and friendship—not to mention wine and anti-depressants—brought me to an experience of grace such that grief is no longer debilitating.

Now I am able, sometimes, to live in the awareness that God is present with me, in the middle of my sorrow. I finally began to discover moments of peace in the presence of God.

It’s paradoxical that peace, shalom, can exist in a world that contains the deepest grief and suffering. It makes no sense—but that is the paradoxical nature of the Kingdom that Jesus offered. Shalom exists, and Jesus walks with us through our grueling times. Jesus somehow, mysteriously, holds on to us.

And unlike the lame message of The Shack, He does not expect us to pretend that death is OK. He never suggests that we can feel better because of some fake spiritual fluffery.

I don’t completely understand it, but the real gospel, the real Jesus, is comfort enough.

-->

The Last Enemy

I wrote about the two grief clubs I belong to, and about our vocabulary of loss, over in the blog Circling the Story.

"This grief [after losing Aidan] feels so completely different from my grief after losing Caitlin that it should have a different name. Just like Arabic has eight different words for “cousin” depending upon the gender of the cousin and the side of the family, perhaps we should have different words for grief depending upon the nature of the loss.

"This time around, it feels like the intensity of grief will never end. Now, two years and three months since Aidan died, I cannot imagine a time when his loss will not still be the most important defining fact of my life. I still cry often, usually for just a few minutes; but grief still has the power to astonish me, to knock me off my feet with its exhausting, inexorable tsunami."

Read more of this post at Circling the Story.

Sorrow is the Sea

Stay strong, my friend said.

You are so strong, another friend said.

I don't know how you do it, they said. I admire your strength.

I know they mean well. But what does being strong have to do with anything? And what does being strong look like? Sometimes it feels like people who tell me I'm strong have failed to see the real me--or that I have successfully hidden the real me from them.

Aidan died. We observed his memorial day, the two-year anniversary of the day he died, on November 11. Since that day two years ago, we have disappeared.  We have tried to relearn how to breathe, battled the demons of PTSD, and grappled every day with the changes that made everything both easier and harder. 

This is the real me.

There have been weeks when I felt I was past the worst that grief could throw at me, and I was finally beginning to be able to do more than just put one foot in front of the other. But in the past few months, I have been reminded that recovery from grief is not linear, and that anniversary reaction is a thing. 

Aidan, C. Peevie and M. Peevie, September 2010

One day on a long car ride several months ago, American Pie came on the radio. Aidan's favorite. I started to cry, and couldn't stop. I cried for three straight hours. 

Does this qualify as strong?

Sometimes still I cry so much that my eyes don't stop being red and puffy all day long. One day I started to cry at church, and cried off and on for three days. On the third day, Mr. Peevie came home and asked me why there was a roll of toilet paper on the couch next to me. 

"Because we're out of tissues," I said. We had started the day with a full box.

Is this staying strong?

I'm a different person now. I used to love parties and gatherings with tons of people. I enjoyed meeting new people, and could always strike up a conversation with a stranger. I would always go for the joke. I loved to make people laugh. I tended to be optimistic and positive. I think I was fun to be around. 

Now I'd mostly rather stay home. Occasionally I'll go out for a quiet dinner with one or two friends. I have little energy or inclination to socialize. I feel like grief is written across my face. It feels like an infection that has the power to suck the joy right out of a room.

In Lament for a Son, Nicholas Wolterstorff wrote 

Sometimes I think that happiness is over for me. I look at photos of the past and immediately comes the thought: that’s when we were still happy. But I can still laugh, so I guess that isn’t quite it. Perhaps what’s over is happiness as the fundamental tone of my existence. Now sorrow is that. 

Sorrow is no longer the islands but the sea.

Every second of every minute of every hour of every day I feel the loss, the absence, of Aidan. It never, ever goes away.  

This is not being strong. This is surviving.

November is the worst month for anniversary reaction. We have many significant family dates, each with its own unique sorrow. M. Peevie's birthday is a time for celebration--but at the same time, it's a reminder that she is growing up, and Aidan didn't get the chance to do that. She turned fourteen this year--the same age as Aidan when he died.

November 11 is the day we will always remember as the day Aidan died--his memorial day. A week later we observe Mr. Peevie's birthday, which also happens to be the day we buried Aidan. Mr. Peevie deserves to be toasted and celebrated, with festivities and presents and badly-decorated cake. But now his birthday is inexorably tied to the second worst day of his life. It's a terrible incongruity. 

Aidan's birthday comes next. Every year I wonder what he would have looked like as he grew into adulthood. On every birthday, I mourn the passing of another year in which our celebrations, vacations, and new memories don't include him. On Thanksgiving, the family gathers around the table, and there is a gaping hole, the glaring, excruciating absence of a goofy-grinned, crazy-haired boy.

I am changed, weak, broken, sad, feeble, distracted, fearful, untrusting, and unproductive. I keep searching for evidence that I am doing this grief thing right. That I'm not crazy or unstable. That though I'm broken and messed up, I won't feel this bad forever. 

I keep getting up in the morning. I keep doing what I need to do--although some days it's just the bare minimum. 

Is that what they mean by strong?

"Why is it so important to act strong?" Wolterstorff asked. 

I have been graced with the strength to endure. But I have been assaulted, and in the assault, wounded. Am I to pretend otherwise? Wounds are ugly, I know. They repel. But must they always be swathed?

I cling to faith because of what I know about Jesus. I can't not believe. I hold the hope of the Resurrection close, and I don't "grieve as others do who have no hope."* But I struggle to participate in the communal, emotional aspects of worship. I can barely sing at church, unless the song depicts the "not-yet" part of the "already/not-yet" equation that represents the work of the gospel. I cry during communion, because I remember how seriously Aidan took the purpose and promise of the shared symbolic meal.  

We're well into the new year. I used to love New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. I loved the feeling of the clean slate, the opportunity to start over, to set goals and imagine a new world and a new me. Even though I knew that resolutions were made to be broken, I still felt optimistic and hopeful. I might not be able to make all the changes I hoped for, but I would be able to change some things some of the time. I could learn to do new things, make different choices, travel an untrodden path.

I think there is a still a tiny kernel of my original sanguine nature buried deep inside me; but the new me, the Aidan-less me, is so different now that the seed is dormant. Hope is covered with a permanent shadow of sadness. The heavy weight of this grievous loss dilutes my optimism.

Sorrow is no longer the islands, but the sea.

I will go to bed tonight thinking of Aidan. Tomorrow I'll get up again, and my first waking thought will be about Aidan. And maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, or next week or next month, the scale will tip slightly over to hope, or peace, or joy.

*I Thessalonians 4:13

E. Peevie's Not-To-Be Missed Book Recommendations from 2014.

Some of the books I read in 2014 were AMAZING. In case you're looking for ideas for what to read in 2015, here are the highlights, annotated:

One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories 

by B.J. Novak

You know B.J. Novak as that guy from The Office who always looks a little fatigued, but who also looks like he could be Hugh Grant's younger brother. But if you read this book of short and very short stories, you will think of him as That Guy Who Can Really Write and Who Also Happens to Be On A TV Show. Because these stories! They amaze.

Novak's stories start somewhere familiar and end up knocking you off your chair with their originality. They deliver unexpected humor and on-point parody; they are clever and poignant and smart. Here's a great interview with Novak about the book and other stuff, in case you're interested.

Gone Girl

by Gillian Flynn

This suspenseful novel has more twists than a bag of fusilli. If you're like me, you'll need to take a swig of Mylanta every few chapters; or maybe take a break from reading to have a pot of Darjeeling and remind yourself that--thank God--mostly you can avoid dealing with sociopaths except in fiction and the occasional outlying relative. (Unless you can't, of course, in which case: sympathies.)

Gone Girl combines Stephen King-esque suspense with an insidious unreliable narrator a la Zoe Heller's Notes on a Scandal. I couldn't put it down.

River of Heaven: A Novel

by Lee Martin

Sam Brady leads a quiet, private life with his dog, Stump, until he decides to build a doghouse that looks like a ship. The doghouse attracts attention, which like the first domino, sets off a chain reaction. Sam's past begins to catch up to him. Martin presents Sam and his neighbor Arthur, his brother Cal, and other characters with vivid complexity. His storytelling reminds us that the small things matter. 

Lee Martin's quiet, observant, lyrical and surprising storytelling in this little novel has made him one of my new favorite authors. I will definitely be seeking out Martin's other titles in 2015.

The Remains of the Day

by Kazuo Ishiguro

This book has no right to be as fascinating, funny, beautiful, and compelling as it was. Nothing much happens--and yet by the time you get to the end, you feel like you've had a Literary Experience and you will never be the same.

I'm happy that Mr. Ishiguro has a new novel coming out in March, his first in ten years.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

by Jonathan Safran Foer

Foer's groundbreaking literary style would normally not be my cup of tea. It's borderline stream-of-consciousness, and my undiagnosed ADD gives me enough trouble tracking the characters and settings in a traditional novel, let alone one that has multiple POVs. And yet this story sucked me in and pulled me along. Foer captures the voice of his young male protagonist perfectly; it's poignant and funny.

Man's Search for Meaning
by Viktor Frankl

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

In telling the story of his time in the concentration camps during WWII, Viktor Frankl asserts that we have the power to find meaning, hope, and purpose in the middle of our inevitable suffering. This book is an enduring and accessible classic.

Cutting for Stone 
By Abraham Verghese

It says a lot about this book that John Irving (another of my favorite authors) reviewed Cutting on Amazon: "This is a first-person narration where the first-person voice appears to disappear, but never entirely; only in the beginning are we aware that the voice addressing us is speaking from the womb!" 

I'll be reading this one again.

The Hot Kid
By Elmore Leonard

I picked this up because I binge-watched all the seasons of Justified (based on an Elmore Leonard novella, Fire in the Hole) this year, and wow. Elmore Leonard's tight, packed sentences sucked me in from the first page, and I don't even know how he manages to write such vivid characters with so few words. I will definitely read more Elmore Leonard in 2015.

The Seven Storey Mountain
by Thomas Merton

Started this one a couple of years ago; put it down for a long time; and finally picked it up and read it all the way through this year. There is nothing like a good conversion story to inspire your new year.

As the child of fundamentalist, Dispensationalist parents, I learned early on to mistrust any form of Christianity that was not exactly like my own. Catholics, to me, were not "real" Christians; in fact, most Christians were quotation-mark "Christians." I'm not proud of this. But as Kathleen Norris wrote in Amazing Grace (see below), “In order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.” 

And Merton delivers a great pay-off, with great writing on philosophy and theology. He inspires me to love God more, and to examine my faith and practice more rigorously. 

Amazing Grace
by Kathleen Norris

This was a re-read from several years ago. I picked it up again as part of my preparation for a class I taught at church. It's definitely worth re-reading. In her writing, Kathleen Norris often calls upon the writings of the early church mothers and fathers to illuminate contemporary life and faith. No one else does this like she does; she's like the modern day Thomas Merton.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
by J.K. Rowling

I read the first four Harry Potters when I was on bedrest in the hospital, pregnant with M. Peevie. M. Peevie, you might recall, just turned fourteen, and when I told her I had not read the last three books, she was shocked and horrified. 

"Mom! You have to read them!" she ordered.

I told her I didn't really remember the first four, but she suggested I just re-read them. "It won't take you very long!" she predicted. She was right. They were great the second time around; and now I've started the fifth book, H. P. and the Order of the Phoenix.

To Be Near Unto God
by Abraham Kuyper

"...[w]hen clouds gather over your head, when adversity, loss and grief inflict wound upon wound in your heart, when the fig tree does not blossom, and the vine will yield not fruit, then with Habakkuk rejoice in God, because his blessed nearness is enjoyed more in sorrow than in gladness...". I am working on this. 


A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good, by Miroslav Volf: File this one under "Mostly Over My Head"--but still well worth the time and effort to consume it. 

Volf responded to Bonhoeffer's assertion that the church facing the Nazi regime was experiencing a passage through a foreign land, suggesting that outside of this context, "serious problems arise" from this perspective:

The fundamental theological problem with such an external view of Christian presence in the world is a mistaken understanding of the earthly habitats of Christian communities. It presupposes that the culture in which they live is a foreign country, pure and simple, a land bereft of God, rather than a world that God created and pronounced good.

...[I]t would contradict major Christian convictions to think that the world outside Christian communities is bereft of God's active presence. The God who gives "new birth" is ... also the creator and sustainer of the world with all its cultural diversity...Cultures are not foreign countries for the followers of Christ, but rather their own homelands...Christian communities should not seek to leave their home cultures and establish settlements outside or live as islands within them. Instead, they should remain in them and change them--subvert the power of the foreign force and seek to bring the culture into closer alignment with God and God's purposes.

This is all well and good, but I'm not sure what that looks like operationalized. And that is a whole other blog post.

Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint, by Nadia Bolz-Weber: See Merton, above.

This is our God. Not a distant judge, nor a sadist, but a God who weeps. A God who suffers, not only for us, but with us. Nowhere is the presence of God amidst suffering more salient than on the cross. Therefore, what can I do but confess that this is not a God who causes suffering. This is a God who bears suffering. I need to believe that God does not initiate suffering. God transforms it.

Driftless, by David Rhodes: Many beautiful sentences in this one.

Jacob lay on his back. The stars looked back at him from ten million years ago, their light just now arriving. He wondered if there were other places in the universe where the rules of the living did not require feeding on each other--where wonder could be discovered without horror and learning the truth did not entail losing one's faith.

The Complete Stories, by Flannery O'Connor: You could teach a class based solely on the metaphors and similes O'Connor uses to talk about the sun and sky:

The sun was a huge red ball like an elevated Host, drenched in blood and when it sank out of sight it left a line in the sky like a red clay road hanging over the trees.

The sun was like a furious white blister in the sky.

The cows were grazing on two pale green pastures across the road and behind them, fencing them in was a black wall of trees with a sharp sawtooth edge that held off the indifferent sky.

The sky was bone-white and the slick highway stretched before them like a piece of the earth's exposed nerve.

OK, this post is already too long, so here are some honorary mentions from my 2014 reading list, with tiny reviews and/or quotations.

Faith Unraveled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions
by Rachel Held Evans: Exactly.

Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad: "I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work,--the chance to find yourself."

Jewel, by Brett Lott: Sprawling. Well-drawn characters.

A Clash of Kings: A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin: Loving this series.

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov: Beautiful writing; disturbing story.

Divergent, by Veronica Roth: The four categories were such a smart story hook, but honestly, it reads a little like a YA harlequin romance, especially once the kissing starts. This SNL spoof The Group Hopper was hilarious.

I Always Knew I Would Make It (And Other Entrepreneurial Fallacies), by Kate Koziol. This author is smart, funny, brave, and resourceful. And good at puzzling.

The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard: Finally making my way through the best books on writing. This is a classic.

Whose Body, by Dorothy Sayers: Can't believe it took me this long to read Sayers.

When You are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris: Funny. Duh.

Bleak House, by Charles Dickens: Bleak, long. Very Dickensian, if you know what I mean.

That's it. What are you recommending from your 2014 reads?

No Other Prayer

To Be Near Unto God by Abraham Kuyper is a series of devotional reflections on Psalm 73. Today I read number ten, "Seek Ye My Face," in which Kuyper meditates on the various ways and depths of experience of knowing God. He distinguishes between knowing God in a doctrinal and in a mystical way.

In looking at the language that we use to speak about knowing God or knowing another person, Kuyper says, “The face, the countenance speaks; speaks by its entire expression, but especially through and by the eye. The eye is as a window of the body through which we look into another’s soul, and through which he comes out of his soul, to see us, scan, and address us.” It follows, he suggests, that the “face of God” is a prominent image in our seeking Him and his seeking us: “…our walk with God could not be illustrated otherwise than by the privilege of being permitted to meet God face to face.”

In the sweaty, selfish, rude world that I inhabit, a world of physical realities like dirty dishes and sore knees and the smell of urine on the bathroom floor, I have to bring myself to a full internal mental stop before I can change gears and find meaning in metaphorical and anthropomorphic language about God. God does not look like George Burns. I get that. “The imagery which here must lend support remains wrapped in mystical dimness,” Kuyper wrote. “A visible face exhibits what is corporeal, and God is spirit.” We are merely using the image of a face.

Kuyper urges us to employ this image to put ourselves in the way of being close to God, close enough to see His “face”—so that “he looks at us and we at him”:

“The main thing is that we no longer satisfy ourselves with a conception of God, a scientific knowledge of God, or a speaking about God, but that we have come in touch with God himself; that we have met Him, that in and by our way through life He has discovered us to ourselves, and that a personal relation has sprung up between the Living God and our soul.”

In my reading and in my prayer, in my spiritual life, in every aspect of my life at this point, I am all-consumed with grief. I mostly cannot care deeply about anything else but about how much I miss Aidan. I find moments of delight with M. Peevie and Mr. Peevie, and rarer ones with C. Peevie because he’s not at home and often out of touch. But those moments are fleeting, and the minutes and hours in between are filled with either longing for Aidan and missing him, or intentionally trying to push that ache to the background so I can concentrate on something else. Trying to push the grief away is like trying not to notice that Benedict Cumberbatch just walked into the room. It's just not going to happen.

So when I read Kuyper, and remember that God is here, God is All, God is personal, and God offers me a relationship with Himself—I think to myself, I should try to act like I believe this, instead of behaving like a practical atheist. If I take this heavy burden to God in prayer, if I seek God’s face, maybe I will find some comfort there.

My prayers are so selfish and self-centered. Really, pretty much 98 percent of my thoughts, actions and words are selfish and self-centered. I’m just trying to get through the day without breaking up into a million Aidan-missing pieces.

Kuyper concludes this meditation with these words: 

“There is a moment in the life of the child of God when he feels the stress of the inability to rest, until he finds God; until after he has found Him, he has placed himself before Him, and standing before Him, seeks His face; and he cannot cease that search until he has met God’s eye, and in that meeting has obtained the touching realization that God has looked into his soul and he has looked God in the eye of Grace. And only when it has come to this the mystery of grace discloses itself.”

This makes me wonder, and hope, that perhaps if there is a God, He is somehow available to me, and that I might actually find comfort and relief by seeking His face. It does not make sense to my troubled, messed-up mind, which only wants Aidan and misses him and cannot fathom the egregious wrong of his sudden, traumatic, and premature death. It does not make sense that anything but Aidan can salve this wound—but I do believe, or at least I want to believe, that this is what God wants to do for me, and can do for me.

Maybe these words can be my prayer, because I have no other.

Hashtag FFWgr, Part Two: The Reading List

In case you missed part one, you can read it here.

I promised to put together a reading list based upon the books and authors I heard cited at the Festival of Faith and Writing 2014. I've organized the list list into four categories: books about writing, works of fiction, books about faith, other non-fiction, and poetry and poets.  The list that follows is only partially annotated because there were SERIOUSLY a LOT of books and authors mentioned. I got tired of annotating and linking. Sorry.

Books about writing

Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction
--This is a college textbook. Interestingly, Amazon only offers an option to rent the book for a semester; it's not available for purchase new. You can buy a used copy on Amazon for $43.98, or on EBay for $52.89.

Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change; A Grammar of Motives.
--the latter work offers the dramatistic pentad, a model for analyzing narratives to understand human motivations and predict behavior. The five rhetorical elements include act, scene, agent, agency (or method or means), and purpose (or motive). 

A]ny complete statement about motives will offer some kind of answer to these five questions: what was done (act), when or where it was done (scene), who did it (agent), how he did it (agency), and why (purpose)." -Kenneth Burke

Annie Dillard*
--Mr. Peevie presciently gave me The Writing Life for Christmas, so I will be starting there.

Sol Stein, On Writing
Just reading the description of On Writing from Stein's own website makes me want to drop everything and read it, and while I'm reading it, start revising my novel-in-progress.

Works of fiction

Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman
--I think I need to read more Margaret Atwood.

Raymond Carver*, Cathedral Stories,*, especially the short story A Small Good Thing; What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
--Carver's name was invoked at least three times during FFW.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
--I'm embarrassed that I have not read this yet, and I just downloaded it to my Kindle for zero dollars and zero cents.

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
--If it took Harold Bloom three times to make it all the way through Blood Meridian, I don't hold much hope for my own ability to do so any time in the next century. But it's on the list anyway, because Bloom says McCarthy "has attained genius with that book."

Flannery O'Connor*, the short stories Good Country People and Revelation
--I have the complete short stories downloaded to my Kindle and ready for my summer beach reading; and I just read Good Country People for free here. Read Revelation for free here.

William Faulkner, Barn Burning, A Rose for Emily
Read Barn Burning for free here. Read A Rose for Emily for free here.

Ernest Hemingway, The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber

Khaleid Hosseini, The Mountains Echoed

Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
--Here's a switch: instead of reading it, listen to it!

Barbara Kingsolver

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Guy de Maupassant, The Necklace
--You probably read this one in high school, but in case you want to refresh your memory, you can read it online here.

John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums

Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

Mark Twain

Anne Tyler, The Beginner's Goodbye

Books about faith

Walter Brueggemann
--There are 68 publications listed on his Wikipedia page; where is a beginner to begin? That's not a rhetorical question, Internet.

George Herbert


--You can (sort of) read The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations online--but you may need a stronger prescription in your glasses when you're done. It might be worth it. 


Julian of Norwich
--Read the complete Revelations of Divine Love online here, as well as excerpts from the Revelations.

Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism
--From the Amazon book description: Turner "argues that the distinctiveness and contemporary relevance of medieval mysticism lies precisely in its rejection of 'mystical experience,' and locates the mystical firmly within the grasp of the ordinary and the everyday." A quick look tells me I'll need to read it with my dictionary at hand.



Karth Barth

Frederic Buechner

Andrew Krivak, A Long Retreat

C. S. Lewis*, The Screwtape Letters

Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

Walker Percy*, The Second Coming

Eugene Peterson

Jan Richardson

Teresa of Avila

Other non-fiction

Henry David Thoreau
--I read Thoreau's essay The Last Days of John Brown because FFW speaker James McBride's new book, National Book Award Winner The Good Lord Bird tells John Brown's story from a brand-new perspective. I was delighted to see Thoreau refer to his neighbors as pachydermatous--which he used in reference to the thickness of their heads, not their skin. Awesome.

Mary Karr, Lit, The Liar's Club
--Stephen King wrote this about Mary Karr's writing: "I was stunned by Mary Karr's memoir, The Liar's Club. Not just by its ferocity, its beauty, and by her delightful grasp of the vernacular, but by its totality--she is a woman who remembers everything about her early years."

Verlyn Klinkenborg, The Rural Life
--Interesting. The Rural Life is a weekly column in the New York Times about life on a farm and boots getting stuck in mud and stuff. Some people think it's a little pretentious and condescending.

Michael Perry

Poetry and Poets

Maya Angelou

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Mary Oliver

Ron Padgett, Center of Gravity 

Lucy Shaw, The Crime of Living Cautiously

...

So now we have a reading list for the next two years--until FFW 2016 gives us another one.

Which of these books and authors have you already read? Which are you going to look for the next time you head to Myopic? (Shout out to M. Peevie--that's her favorite bookstore.)

I'm starting with Flannery O'Connor.