Let's Have a Little Compassion

 

This week I gave a hand to help Abdul Yaftali, an Afghani man.  He arrived in Albuquerque with his family, his wife Fawiza, five-year-old son Sayed and baby Dau about three months ago.   Sayed, quite small for his age, has severe dental problems and I gave them a ride to a dental appointment.  Abdul showed me the inside of the boy's mouth and I cringed to see badly decayed baby teeth.  Abdul told me about the dire circumstances of his father and brothers back in Afghanistan – his father, a retired police officer from the former government, is denied a pension and not allowed to work by the Taliban government. Abdul had worked for a Non-Governmental Organization in Afghanistan that focused on the needs of women, but the Taliban had made it impossible to continue their program and he lost his job.

 Abdul, who speaks passable English, has a part time job in a restaurant and takes an occasional extra job cleaning someone’s house.  He gets around town mostly on his bicycle but sometimes has to take Uber – quite a drain on his meager income.  BUT he has an offer of a full-time job at Amazon with good pay but can't take it without having a car. Amazon is way out of town.  

I told Bill and Karen our good friends and neighbors about Abdul and his circumstances.  I knew Bill has had to stop driving recently.  At the age of 93 he is getting frail and has some physical limitations.  Bill has a small car and says he would sell it to Abdul.

So, I brought Abdul to Bill and Karen's house where he test drove the car and was very excited and hopeful.  Then we sat down to talk, and Bill told Abdul he would give him a good deal.  Abdul was excited but quite anxious because he only has a little savings - maybe able to put together a thousand dollars.  That would mean he would have very little to go on for living expenses. 

Bill told him he would sell Abdul the car for $250.  Abdul stared at him smiling, but since his English is not totally fluent, he asked Bill to say that again.  Bill repeated and went on to explain that there would be a delay as they have lost the Title doc and would have to get that replaced.  Meanwhile, Abdul seems a bit perplexed and writes on his phone for me, "he mean 250?"  I nodded, and we went on listening to Bill.  

Soon Karen stopped Bill and said "esta llorando!" – (her first language is Spanish).  I looked at Abdul. He had his face buried in his hands, and yes, he was crying - sobbing in fact.  He couldn't believe it and was overwhelmed with the generosity being shown him.  He quickly regained composure but was unable to say anything more than "thank you" over and over - other words failed him.

Later taking him back to his apartment he told me he has only one relative in the US, a cousin in California and he had asked him to help him buy a car.  He knows he has money, but he refused to help.  Abdul said, "and these people are helping me and don't even know me"

This Sunday the sermon focused on the word compassion and where the Scripture says, “and Jesus had compassion on the crowd”.  Compassion literally means "suffering with" – it has all to do with empathy and love. Passion refers to the sufferings of Christ between the night of the last supper and his death. 

The words passion and compassion are used in various ways in our normal discourse, like in what we are passionate about, or strong emotional reaction or intense sexual love. Indeed, political passions are running hot and heavy in our country right now. How we long to hear more rational and calmer words of compassion – expressions of feeling with and reaching out to the needs of others.  

I thought of this this encounter with Abdul, Bill and Karen this week and how I had seen their compassion demonstrated right before my eyes. 

 

 

 

Stories From the ‘60s in America and the War in Vietnam.

 

On a recent extended road trip, we occupied many hours listening to two books that brought back vivid memories of the 1960s and feelings about our experiences with and in Vietnam (1966-68) during what is referred to by Americans as the Vietnam war and by Vietnamese as the American war in their country. The first was the current best-selling novel, The Women by Kristen Hannah.  The other was Dust Child by Vietnamese author, Nguyen Phan Que Mai.

After reading a book, I read reviews online, usually looking at the Goodreads site.  An indication of the popularity of The Women is that it currently has over 60,000 reviews, and over 70% are fives, on a five-star scale.  I read only a sample, and I wished I would have found a review by a woman who actually had an experience as a nurse in operating rooms in a Military hospital in Vietnam during the war- but didn’t see one. 

Dust Child is also well reviewed and liked by reviewers.  It presents a different perspective – taking a look at the often-fraught relationships between Vietnamese women and American soldiers during the war. The novel follows both the perspective of that generation – trying to find a better future – and that of the servicemembers being forced, decades later, to confront their past decisions and betrayals.

We are familiar with both authors, having previously read Nguyen Phan Que Mai’s best-selling novel, The Mountains Sing, a suspenseful and moving saga about a Vietnamese family in North Vietnam torn apart by the various paths its members took during the war and struggling for reconciliation after the war.  I think it’s the best novel I’ve read depicting the war from a Vietnamese perspective, though Le Ly Hayslip’s memoir, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, is equally riveting and based on her real-life experiences during the war and afterward in the US.  We have read several of Hannah’s novels, - notably one of them, The Great Alone, also has echoes of the effects of the Vietnam war on the human psyche, featuring a returned POW who was prone to bouts of anger (PTSD?) and moves his family to a remote part of Alaska.

The Women brings a well-deserved focus to the contributions of women, specifically military nurses, in Vietnam during the war.  The story follows a young woman, 21-year-old Frankie who misses her brother after he heads off to Vietnam with the navy and is challenged by the notion that “women can be heroes, too”.  Her father and mother don’t agree.  She enlists with the Army since that is the only branch that will get her over there quickly.  Part one is full of war and all the chaos and human tragedy that it entails, especially in the operating room where Frankie is assigned to an evac hospital at Pleiku, in the central highlands near much intense combat.

According to a Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation statement, approximately 10,000 American military women were stationed in Vietnam during the war, and we know from experience that numerous other women served as physicians, social workers and medical personnel, including my wife, Judy, a nurse.   The churches in the US sent many nurses to work in the Vietnam Christian Service program with which we worked.  One of them, Gloria Anne Redlin, died from gunshots fired by South Vietnamese soldiers in a dreadful fog of war incident at a checkpoint, an accident of war that should not have happened. (see my blog post August, 2023)

Kristen Hanna has a tendency to be overly dramatic, and not being a nurse herself, got a few aspects of RN training and nursing wrong (according to my nurse wife).  Hannah was born in 1960, so obviously doesn’t have the visceral lived experience of what it was like in the US or in Vietnam during the timeframe of the novel, though she did good research and read a lot of books by people who did.  

The story of Frankie, both in-country as a nurse and during the difficult re-entry back home after two terms of service includes multiple heartbreaking experiences.  Just when you think something good might happen, it doesn’t. The tragedies just keep piling up.  We read many instances of gapping wounds, triage of wounded soldiers, rocket attacks, as well as romantic encounters (she chose badly each time), about wanting her father’s approval (It was hard to listen to her father disrespect her time and time again) and about how cold her mother was. We read about her drunken pill popping over and over – but the point is to show how difficult to was to return to the US and the awful reception veterans got when they came back home many with PTSD. And how hard it was for her (and them) to get the help they needed.

Personal memories contradict some of the authors descriptions.  For example, when Frankie arrives at Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon as a frightened young novice, she sees pedicyclo drivers and children playing in the street as she steps off the plane.  I can assure you that would not have been seen in that heavily guarded fortress like military base.  And she describes flying in and out of locations like Tan Son Nhut, or Pleiku, and other locations– every time with the pop – pop – pop of rifle fire from Vietcong soldiers on the ground.  I flew many times on planes and helicopters out of and into those same towns and cities, even Dak To near the Ho Chi Minh trail, during my stint as program director of Vietnam Christian Service, and never once had that experience.  However, I am sure it was very usual that helicopters were fired on in zones of live combat.  Just no need to dramatize and depict every moment as full of danger.

The ”women” angle of the story has to do with the friendships Frankie made with co-workers Ethel and Barb – supporting relationships to last a lifetime as they each know what the other has lived through.  When she sees the futility of the war and joins the anti-war protests she has these sisters as soul mates.  She tries to look for support elsewhere (VA and others) but she gets turned away for being a woman and not having actually been in combat.  In the end she finds a new purpose and the story takes a somewhat surprising turn toward what she resolves to do and where she ends up living (one of my favorite places).

Of course, this story is told from an American nurse’s experience and perspective, but I would prefer to have had the Vietnamese people humanized and personalized a bit more.  Not one Vietnamese person was given a name, but there is an emotional encounter with an orphan that impacted Frankie. 

In contrast Dust Child tells a story from the point-of-view of three main Vietnamese characters, alternating between two periods in Vietnam: the war years and the present day. In 1969, sisters Trang and Quynh migrate to Saigon from their village and work "bar girls" in Saigon, hoping to earn money to support their poor, ailing parents.

Through the sister’s stories, the novel details how a sex worker industry sprang up around the U.S. military presence, one that easily coaxed young women into its clutches. Jumping to modern-day Vietnam, the novel simultaneously tells the story of Phong, a 40-something Amerasian who is desperate to find his American father in order to give his wife and children a better life in the United States.  He knows he is Amerasian because he is black, but the US embassy will not grant him a visa.

It is estimated that American soldiers left behind more than 20,000 of their children — born to Vietnamese women who lived as laborers or sex workers near military bases. Some veterans came back for their kids, but most did not.   These children, scorned and living on the margins of society are called Amerasians, or worse, cast aside and labeled in Vietnamese "the dust of life."  (Book review By Tom Horgen Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 24, 2023)

These are people whose circumstances have forced them to live and survive from one fragile moment to the next. Thrown into the mix is another protagonist, Dan, a sixtyish white American veteran who's recently traveled back to Vietnam to find out what happened to his lover and their child. 

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai works wonders taking readers deep inside this under covered part of the war's history.

I recommend both books.  I would give The Women four stars and Dust Child five!

Personal Note:

Judy and I experienced the Vietnam war up close and actively participated in the tumultuous sixties.  So, now having lived well into the 21^st century, I am reflecting on how there is a sense in which the volatile and polarized America in which we currently live can find its roots and be tracked back to the conflicted and polarized 1960s.  Issues of race, political violence, abortion, anti-war protests, and inequality are still being worked out today and so much needs to be done. I found inspiration then in the anti-war, civil rights and environmental movements, in young people engaged in service, in the slow progress towards more gender and income equality, in this fragile political system we have in America, and I still feel that hope today, even in this uncertain time.

Losing Keys

 

If you are a member of the human race, you have lost something; an item that it makes no sense that you should have misplaced.  That’s what I tell myself – I just misplaced it!  It happened yesterday.  I misplaced my pickup key, and I needed to find it quickly because Bret was coming within two hours to pick up the truck to get ready for a camping trip.  A couple of weeks ago Judy “misplaced” her coin purse which contained credit cards, driver’s license, insurance card and a bit of money. 

We recently read and discussed Tish Harison Warren’s book, “liturgy of the ordinary: sacred practices in everyday life”.  One of the chapters is about a very ordinary occurrence of losing keys, though the lesson applies to losing anything that makes you temporarily go nuts trying to find it, and what that has to do with the ups and downs of ordinary days and living faithfully.

Tish lists six stages of searching for lost objects:

Stage 1.  Logic.  I retrace steps in my mind. I look in the places that make sense.  I try to remain logical and rational, asking myself, where was the last place and time and I had my keys (or for Judy, her coin purse)

Stage 2.  Self-condemnation.  I begin to criticize myself under my breath – “How stupid!”  “Why am I so forgetful about things anymore?”  Good grief!!

Stage 3.  Vexation.  I get frustrated and panic a bit, starting to think of the consequences – “it will cost me a bunch of money to replace it”.  Or, having lost the credit cards, driver’s license, etc. – we say, “what a bother to replace and cancel”.  

Stage 4. Desperation.  I look everywhere, even the places that don’t make sense to have left them - checking and rechecking pockets!  If credit cards were actually stolen, it might already have been used and we could lose lots of money!  This is getting urgent!

Stage 5.  Last-ditch.  I stop and pray.  (Well maybe), but at least, sit down and breathe.  Calm down.  Tish tells of saying a prayer to St Anthony. 

Stage 6.  Despair – or resignation and accepting that the item is really lost.

We have another key for the pickup so I drove across town (in my car) to find a locksmith, to see if a duplicate can be quickly made.  It can but will cost $100 – which includes $50 for “reprograming” the key (not just an old-fashioned grinding one on a metal stem).  But “you have to bring the pickup to do that”.  So, back home to get the pickup (time is running short!), and when I got home, I made one last sweep through pockets and logical locations.  And Eurika!  I found the key in an illogical place, a drawer where I never put keys – How did it get there? 

In Judy’s case, we had cancelled and replaced all the cards and she obtained a new driver’s license.   Friends had mentioned the old adage “when you have done all the replacements, it is then that you will find it”, and lo and behold, yesterday afternoon, Judy happened to open a drawer where she never puts her purse, and Eurika! – there it was.  The lesson? Look in every drawer.  

I guess the last stage is one of relief and joy.  Though it does not always work out that we find the lost item, loss can teach lessons, whether we find the item or not. 

There were three parables told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke about losing something valuable – the lost (prodigal) son, the lost sheep and the lost coin.  In each story four things happen - something is lost, there is a search, the lost is found and there is much joy.  Each story of loss ends with celebration.  The parable of the prodigal son is actually a story of two lost sons – the younger who squandered away his inheritance and the elder son who was resentful that the father received the younger son back and threw a party on his return.  Certainly, there is a lesson about reconciliation here as we consider any losses of relationships and lost opportunities in our lives.  There is redemption in the chance to accept and reconcile with those from whom we have distanced ourselves or who have lost their way. 

Several years ago, I lost something of great sentimental value – due to my own fault and lack of attention – a gold handled cane that had been passed down to me from my great grandfather, my grandfather and father to me.  Truly a family heirloom!  I never found it and have felt guilty about that ever since.  I did not have the opportunity to apologize and ask forgiveness from my father, grandfather or great grandfather – they are all gone.  I did tell my siblings I was sorry, and they do not hold any ill will toward me for my blunder.  Some relief there.

I am happy for having found these relatively insignificant items this week, and in the bigger scheme, that I have not lost the most important things in life – love of and from family, ability to appreciate nature, my health, and my faith.  My recent reading of the parables about lost things has reminded me again that I need to keep watchful of what is most important in life.   

What have you lost in your life?  Have you ever lost something that you would go to any lengths to find? 

 

 

 

 

Confirmation Class

 

 

For generations, actually for centuries, Lutheran churches have followed the practice of providing confirmation classes for young people in the church, often studying with the pastor for two years – beginning at age twelve and ending with the rite of confirmation at about age 14.  In my youth I joined a class with Reverand Thorson for a two-hour session on Saturday mornings over the course of two school years.   My dad’s generation called it ‘reading for the minister’.  We studied Luther’s small catechism and were expected to have a thorough knowledge of the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s prayer – along with Luther’s explanations for each part of these, memorizing the answers to his famous question, “what does this mean?”. 

At the conclusion of this catechetical instruction, young people traditionally make a profession of their faith in a public ceremony called Confirmation – a rite for Lutherans but a sacrament in the Roman Catholic Church.  The “public examination” portion of this rite was definitely nail-biting time.  We were supposed to be prepared to answer any question thrown at us, like, “what is the sixth commandment and what does it mean?”.  In truth, pastor Thorson usually assigned a particular question, i.e. “this might be the question I ask you, Jerry”. 

We arrived at the service fearing that we would forget what we had spent so much time memorizing when the moment of truth come upon us.  Ours was a fairly large class, I think about twelve, the girls dressed in white “confirmation dresses” and the boys in suits and ties – my first suit, charcoal gray, in vogue at that time, all of us with a white corsage pinned to the lapel.  Indeed, it was quite nerve wracking on that hot-humid June Sunday morning as the pastor moved down the line from one to the next and the whole congregation listened intently.   Two of the boys, including my good friend Jimmy Flom, fainted and crumbled to the floor in front of the alter rail.  They must have revived by the time the pastor got to them with their question and the process proceeded on. 

Many relatives were in attendance at this service and attended the big dinner that followed at our house.  The traditional gift for confirmation was a watch, also my first, given to me by my parents, and in addition there were cards with a couple of dollars in each envelope from assorted aunts, uncles and neighbors.   

I don’t remember catechism class as an intellectual exploration of the Christian faith.  It was mostly the pastor talking. We memorized the week's assignment, but there was not much time for asking questions.  I think in the years since that time long ago, pastors have tried to engage young people in more discussion and debate.  This is most certainly true in the church we now attend.

The author, John Updike, who grew up in a Lutheran home, was influenced by his early experience in Church, though his Christianity as an adult was anything but orthodox.  I know little about Updike from his writing, only some from what I have read about him and a couple of his short stories.  He seemed to have been obsessed with three things - writing, sex and religious faith.   

Updike writes about a fictional boy named David in a short story titled Pigeon Feathers,

“Catechetical instruction consisted of reading aloud from a work booklet, answers to problems prepared during the week, problems like, “I am the __, the___, and the___, saith the Lord”.  Then there was a question period in which no one ever asked any questions.  Today’s theme was the last third of the Apostles’ Creed.  When the time came for questions, David blushed and asked, ‘About the resurrection of the body - are we conscious between the time we die and the day of judgement?’

(Pastor) Dobson blinked, and his fine little mouth pursed, suggesting that David was making a difficult thing more difficult”.

I don’t remember asking any such questions of Pastor Thorson.  I wonder what he would have said to that question – though, in fact, that question has never occurred to me.  Actually, thinking about and asking deeper questions regarding life and faith didn’t happen for me until later when I was in college and when I traveled and lived for a year in Europe.

In a 1999 essay, “The Future of Faith,” Updike recalled what it was like to be in church with his father:

I remember . . . taking collection with my father at Wednesday-night Lenten services, as a scattering of the especially dutiful occupied the creaking Lutheran pews.  I was fourteen or so, newly (and uncomfortably) confirmed.  I felt tall with my father as we walked together down the aisle to receive the collection plates.  Although my head at the time brimmed with worldly concerns (girls, cartoons, baseball), it was nice, I thought, of this church . . . to cast the two of us in this responsible, even exalted role.

That memory of doing a serious thing with his dad was a reservoir of fuel that kept a flame of faith burning in Updike. Later he tried to stoke the fire by reading Barth and Kierkegaard, but he knew that faith distilled into ideas would not have remained without the memory of those early church services. He wrote in that same essay, “It is difficult to imagine anyone shouldering the implausible complications of Christian doctrine . . . without some inheritance of positive prior involvement.” [i]

Without some positive prior involvement, indeed.  That positive early involvement for me was Sunday school, weekly worship and confirmation classes.  But I had to move beyond the unquestioning juvenile faith of my youth to a more mature and sustainable faith in order to find meaning in life and a genuine faith in Jesus as my savior for the rest of my life.  I came to love the church, even with its blemishes and sins, and now I believe it is practically impossible for one to be a Christian outside of the church.

I am reminded of what St. Paul wrote:

. . . work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God at work in you enabling you to will and to work for his good pleasure. Philippians 2:12-13

To me this means a continuing effort to live faithfully, even as I constantly stumble and miss the mark.  It does not mean that I depend on good works for salvation, thank God!

I have seen many for whom their early faith formation experience did not stick.  They get stuck in the juvenile stage that did not serve them well in adulthood.  It is very common for young people to slowly or quickly withdraw from the church after confirmation.  They give it up and don’t move on to a life-long involvement and commitment.

Yet, in the juvenile stage of faith development it is important to be involved and feel, as Updike said, cast into a responsible, even exalted role.  I have observed this recently in my nine-year-old grandson, Colin, as he takes on the role of reader or acolyte in worship services.  He exalts in the responsibility and involvement and feels good about the positive feedback he gets.

I do not know what happened to all of my confirmation contemporaries after I left home post high school.  I have a hunch that their involvement with the church was a mixed bag – I know some became life-long members, some were lukewarm – maybe twicers, attending at Christmas and Easter, and some left entirely. 

Attending confirmation classes and worship as a young person does not guarantee an ongoing faith life or Christian identity. But it is an important place to start.  A theme I have pondered for a long time is why so many of the generations that came after me left the church, and seemingly, rejected the Christian faith.  I have yet to come up with a good answer to that question.  But we must never give up.  Confirmation class is still a good and worthy custom to continue. 

 

 

 

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[i][i] Quote from a Public Discourse article by Gerald McDermott, March, 2015 “A Rather Antinomian Christianity: John Updike’s Religion”

 

 

She Hath Done What She Could

 

Recently, as I was meditating on a familiar story from the Gospel of Mark, the one about a woman anointing the head of Jesus with expensive ointment, I read these familiar words which is the title of this blog post - She Hath Done What She Could (King James version).  The words were familiar from another context though, not from the Biblical story in Mark 14:3-9.  I just had not taken note of this phrase before in the gospel story.  Here is the story: 

And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the Leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, "why was the ointment wasted like that?  For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor." And they scolded her.  But Jesus said, "Leave her alone.  Why do you trouble her?  She has done a beautiful thing to me.  For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them.  But you will not always have me.  She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial.  And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her."

In my recent book, “Interesting Experiences: Stories from the Seasons of My Life”, I wrote about one of my ancestors who is buried in the cemetery surrounding my home church, Holden Lutheran, near Kenyon, Minnesota.  Her name is Sister Anna Huseth.    Here is her story:

Anna was born in 1892, only about 2 miles from the farm where I grew up in rural Kenyon. She graduated from Kenyon High School, attended St Olaf College for three years and later enrolled at Lutheran Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing in Chicago, graduating in 1917.  After serving as a nurse at St Olaf College during the influenza epidemic in 1918 she was consecrated as a deaconess, and in 1919 sent to Teller, Alaska, where she assumed the duties of matron at the orphanage for Inupiaq children at the Brevig Memorial Mission.  Next, she responded to a call from the Eskimo village of Igloo where her services were sorely needed.  The nearest doctor was 100 miles away to the south.

Sister Anna became the village doctor and nurse, and in that role, did much traveling by dog sled. During the first two winters she traveled more than a thousand miles in this manner, often alone.

There were serious emergencies for the doctor-nurse-missionary.   Sister Anna helped bring many babies into the world.  There were epidemics of influenza which laid a whole village low. This deaconess sister moved from village to village and cabin to cabin, alleviating pain and bringing comfort to the suffering.

After four years in that remote area, she was placed in charge of the orphanage at Teller.  Here she was stationed when Roald Amundsen, the famed explorer, landed the dirigible Norge after his trans-polar flight. Amundsen was so impressed with her work that he later spoke of her as the “Heroine of the North”.

Sister Anna’s next objective was the establishment of a mission station at Shismaref, a settlement far to the North. She returned to Chicago in 1928 to raise support for this work and was planning her return to Alaska when she was stricken with a heart ailment and died in April 1929 at age 37.  She is buried in Holden Cemetery, in the community where she was born, her grave amidst many others of the Aaker family. 

Now, when we visit the graves of my ancestors in the cemetery we always pass by Anna’s grave and read the inscription on her gravestone, almost illegible after all these years. 

That old headstone has these words:

Sister Anna Huseth – 1892 - 1929

And then these interesting and poignant words:

“She Hath Done What She Could”

Did she do all she aspired to do with her life? No, but she did what she could with the time she had. And she served well, which is the calling of a deaconess.

Have you ever thought about what you would like to have etched on your gravestone?  Indeed, that would be a good summary statement about a well lived life, a life of service.  Anna’s was a life in service to others in the name of Jesus.  I didn’t personally know Anna Huseth, of course, but I have been inspired by her story. 

I have long wondered where those words came from, and now I know. 

 

Interesting Experiences: Stories from the Seasons of My Life

 

Recently I published a short book with this title.  I have not tried to advertise it nor do much marketing.  Mostly the book is for my family and friends, and I have given out quite a number of free copies, and several people have commented on and said they enjoyed reading it.  Mostly I haven’t gotten much feedback.  I thought it might be time to put some information about the book on this blog, so here is the introduction to the book.  It is available on Amazon, but also from me at a much cheaper cost – in fact pretty much at no cost.

Introduction to the book

When I was in (about) the fourth grade in Dovre Country School in rural Kenyon, Minnesota, my teacher, Miss Hjermstad, gave me an assignment to interview someone in my family.  This was a pretty common grade school exercise; one that gives a young student a chance to write their first story.  Her instruction was to ask about interesting experiences.

Years later I found this poorly written “manuscript’ penned in the same pitiable hand writing I have had my whole life.  I was glad I had kept this paper, but it is sort of embarrassing to look at now.  I guess you have to start somewhere.

It brings pleasant images to mind of my grandparents.  I can picture this conversation in their retirement home in Kenyon; grandpa sitting in his rocking chair and grandma nearby, quietly chuckling and nodding affirmatively as he responded to my questions.    Alas, I should have also asked her about her interesting experiences.

I doubt my grandparents would have thought of their lives as interesting, but given the rare opportunity to have a grandchild show some interest, he reminisced, and recalled some events from his life that I would not have known except that I asked a few leading questions.  I now have many more questions I wish I could ask, but my grandparents are long gone.  

When oral historian Donna Grey approached pioneer ranch women in Montana asking for interviews to record their stories, she wrote:

 “Almost every one of them protested that she had ‘nothing to tell’, that her life had been unremarkable…. but in the end, their stories all proved worthy of telling.” [1]

When I stretch my memory and imagination to recall some of the interesting people and experiences in my life, writing about them revives to some degree the feelings, relationships and lessons of life I learned through those experiences and from those people.

The accounts in this short volume vary widely, starting from childhood to reminiscences in old age.  Included are several fictional stories drawn from memories and based on true events.  As an Irish priest once told me, “All stories are true, and some of them actually happened.” 

Both joyful and challenging experiences make up the substance of our lives, many of which we might not think of as particularly interesting at the time. There was a time when my future was more interesting to me then my past.  Now it is somewhat the opposite; I suspect my past is more interesting than my future will be.  In these stories I am looking back at the past, but you never know, there may well be more interesting experiences ahead.  I remain hopeful.  My mantra in old age is, as it has been for many years, to stay active and alive in mind, body and spirit.

I have a great nostalgia for the community and church where I grew up and an appreciation for the simple values transmitted to me and my generation by family, church and community.  Later, in all the stages of adult life, I was privileged to have interesting experiences with people and communities in many countries and cultures, having lived in eight different countries and worked in more than three dozen over the course of my forty-year career. 

I have been a nomad most of my life, but perhaps paradoxically, also one who cherishes the stability and happiness that arises out of my roots.  As I learned from people around the world, the values forged in family, community, faith and vocation are the foundational pillars that give meaning to life. 

 

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[1] Donna Gray, Nothing to Tell, TWODOT Book, Helena, Mt, 2012

 

 

Septology: A Norwegian’s take on Art, God and the Meaning of Life

 

When my son Bret told me he was reading a book by the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, who won last year’s Nobel prize for literature, I was intrigued.  He was reading “Septology”, one of many works by Fosse, (pronounced Fossah in Norwegian), who has written many plays, poems and other books that are especially popular in Europe.  Maybe I should read it, I thought.  Bret warned me that it contains seven parts in three volumes of about 700 pages.  What’s more there are no periods in the whole book, making it one very long sentence.  One reviewer says it has 5 or 6 sentences.   Whatever!  Many of the reviewers say they have never read a book like it.  That’s true for me, too.

The last Norwegian to win the Nobel for literature was Sigrid Undset in 1928, for her body of work - the best known was “Kristin Lavransdatter”, a trilogy about life in Norway in the middle-ages. Judy read all three of those books several years ago and I read one of them, also long books.  Undset is a very good writer about day-to-day life, social conventions, and political and religious undercurrents of the period. 

Septology reminds me a bit of Marilynne Robinson's “Housekeeping” and Virginia Woolf's “To the Lighthouse”.   These are the kind of stories where at times you wonder ‘where the heck is this going?’, trying to imagine how it will ever end – you might even get a bit boughed down in the repetitious details at times.  Robinson’s novel treats the subject of housekeeping, not only in the domestic sense of cleaning, but in the larger sense of keeping a spiritual home for oneself and family in the face of loss.  There is a lot about loss, the traumas of ordinary life, and the spiritual journey in Septology.  Woolf’s book is mostly written as thoughts and observations, and that is certainly true in Fosse’s writing - lots of thoughts of the main character, Asle.  The words, “I think” are repeated hundreds of times within a stream of consciousness about his present and past life.  Perhaps these words are a substitute for a period.

The narrator, Asle, says things like, "all my thoughts are sort of jumbled together, it's like they don't exist in any order but sort of all at the same time" (p.569).  Sound familiar? I go through most days with many thoughts and wonderings going through my mind, some of which are comforting and some a great distraction.  

Christian faith, especially the Catholic version, pervades the book like a ghost.  The book is considered to be quite autobiographical, as the main character, Asle, experiences a conversion to Catholicism in this story, as did Fosse earlier in his life.  The writing captures both the essence of Roman Catholic spiritual practices and the challenges belief poses to the adherent.  Devotion and doubt are woven into Asle’s thinking throughout the few days when the story takes place during Advent, leading to its culmination on Christmas eve.

One reviewer describes Septology like this: “For over 700 pages, Asle meditates on his life as he drives back and forth between the town of Bjørgvin (that seems to be the city of Bergen), and his home in the countryside, near the village of Dylgja.  Sometimes he visits Bjørgvin hoping to check in on another Asle, whom he refers to as his “namesake” and whom he has recently helped check in to a rehab facility. (this Asle had a much more tortured life of drinking and failures).  Other times he visits Bjørgvin to deliver his paintings to a local art gallery for an upcoming show. During these trips, Asle looks back on his life’s relationships and his journey to become a successful painter, but his story is often messily intertwined with his namesake’s, so much so that sometimes it becomes almost impossible to distinguish between the two men. This confusion is by Fosse’s design, as the series attempts to explore themes of personhood, individuality, love, art, and religion all through the lens of sameness”.   Quoted from Spectrum Culture by Miyako-Pleines. 

The two Asle doppelgangers bring to mind what if questions, like “what if life had gone this way rather this that way because of choices along the way?  There are also two women in the story, both named Guro; or is it really just one person? 

Asle is quite successful in selling his pictures, and he does much thinking about them, especially one with two simple lines crossing each other, which his only friend and neighbor, Asleik, calls the St Andrews Cross.  Asle talks of the “inner pictures” inside himself that he must get out onto a canvas. Through his meandering thoughts he tries to work out what he thinks about art, God and life and death.  The other Asle is also an artist, but his destiny ends up much differently. 

He prays at the end of each of the seven parts of the book, using the rosary to say the Lord’s prayer, Ave Maria and other prayers in Latin and Norwegian (translated of course to English). His favorite mystic is Meister Eckhart, and there are several quotes in German I wished I was able to read and understand.   

He thinks about God a lot and tries to put in words what is unsayable, like this quote,

“God is so far away that no one can say anything about him and that’s why all ideas about God are wrong, and at the same time he is so close that we almost can’t notice him, because he is the foundation in a person, or the abyss, you can call it whatever you want,”

Asle sometimes falls into a kind of contemplative silence such as that which I have read about as described by an anonymous mystic of the Middle Ages in “The Cloud of Unknowing”.  But Asle’s active mind, with constant thinking and remembering, seems to be a distraction from pure silence – not an uncommon occurrence for those of us who have tried to practice contemplative prayer.

I don’t think I would recommend this book to everybody, unless your interest is piqued by some of what I tried to describe here or in reading other reviews.  I read the first book and listened to the audio of the second and third.  It can be downloaded on Libby, and if you have the time to listen, the reader Kyle Snyder is excellent as is the English translations by Damion Searls.  I kept thinking it must take tremendous perseverance and patience to translate 700 pages of this kind of narrative.  There are many reviews online, and most are overwhelmingly positive.