In the next room, which doubles as guest bedroom and my official home office , sit stacks of books that have reproduced like rabbits since the last time I cleaned off the desk. Next week we will have guests to welcome in that room, so I have vowed to find places to store the books. Soon I can procrastinate no longer!

All of which is to say that Lee Kravitz had his work cut out for him when his publicist sent me a copy of the book that had to compete with all the rest.

But he won the battle.

I read his memoir, Unfinished Business, in a matter of days. As I said in a previous post, his thesis matches one of my most profound motivations for doing this blog.  He knew that he would be a better person, a better father, and a better writer if he took care of the unfinished business in his life. Where I work, we call that desire the power of love and forgiveness. I believe that memoir writing at its best resolves unanswered questions and teaches both the writer and the reader profoundly spiritual lessons.

Lee Kravitz is a name you might recognize. Until a few years ago, he was the editor of the largest circulation magazine in America–Parade. If he had not been fired from that job, we would not have his memoir, his father and his brother would still be estranged from each other, his high school teacher and mentor would not have gotten a thank-you visit, his friend would never have heard from him after his daughter was killed in Iraq, an old debt would still exist in the debit column, a Muslim friend and an Eastern Orthodox bishop would not be in his life, and an old enemy would continue to haunt him. The benefits of these redeemed relationships, will cause every reader to do an inventory of his or her own unfinished business. You may even find yourself hoping to get fired yourself!

The book falls neatly into a preface, ten chapters, and an epilogue. The deceptively simple structure, each the story of a memory or relationship that the author attempted to salvage, makes a satisfying package. But it could have been otherwise. If the author had not found ways to maintain the complexity and individuality of each relationship or had allowed a sentimental stew of good feeling to overflow without a real struggle to understand himself, he would have destroyed the value of the book to anyone outside his immediate family.

So how does the author keep us reading? He begins with aimless depression following the firing and the arrival of ten cardboard boxes of personal momentos that he, as a good workoholic, had stored in his place of work rather than integrate into his home.

As Kravitz goes through the boxes, he finds evidence of parts of himself long repressed–the world travelling adventurer who had been to Israel, Pakistan, and Afghanistan in the 70′s, the puzzled and dutiful son who saved over 1,000 letters from his father full of capital letters, red type, and strange punctuation, a highschool yearbook brought back the fear he felt in the presence of his childhood bully, but also the love he felt for his history teacher and for the boy who had opened his eyes to the possibility of experiencing God. In the box was a recording of an interview he did with his grandmother Shirley. He listened to her voice again with awful guilt–he had skipped her funeral because he had had too much work to do when she died.

In Kravitz’ own words:  “There were signs in these boxes that there had been a better me: a more curious, adventurous, and compassionate individual who had taken risks to do the right thing.” He decides to wait to search for a new job and instead to devote an entire year to “tying up my loose emotional ends.”

The great spiritual traditions offered great support on this journey. Kravitz, a Jew by birth, rediscovers his own tradition as well as explores what Buddhism, Christianity, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Islam have to say about making amends. The book has an ecumenical, inclusive, joyful spirituality running like a current under a stream.

The author does not try to hold us in suspense. We know from the beginning what he is trying to do and that he will succeed in doing it. Yet we keep moving, page after page. Why? My own reason was to discover the nuances of the journey, the how and why of it. The what hardly mattered. Adventure in this book happens in the mind and in the heart not so much in plot devices. His narrative arc is readymade, but his real story has to be chiseled from his unique displays of courage and ingenuity. We follow him, still curious, as he checks one mistake after another off his list, because his approach varies adroitly every time.

Martin Buber, Jewish mystic and spiritual guide to many, provides Kravitz with the language he needs to describe his transformation. Throughout his ten journeys he learns to take time to listen, to recognize the holiness of other human beings, and to treat them as “thou” rather than “it.” Though this new ability to hold the other’s gaze with love and attention may seem like a small thing, it is in fact the beating heart of every spiritual tradition. Discovering how to love in daily life is the spiritual equivalent of scaling the Alps. Kravitz shows us how the smallest act can either slip into our metaphorical boxes of unfinished business or can elevate us to the place Buber talked about in another of his famous books–ecstatic confessions.

Identifying unfinished business may in fact be the route to your own memoir. What aspects of yourself and your story lie buried in boxes, literally or figuratively? I’d love to hear questions and comments about Kravitz’s approach. What thoughts does his story evoke in you?

The Steppes are the Colour of Sepia: A Mennonite Memoir. By Connie T. Braun. Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2008. Pp. 245. $24.95

More than any other book I have read recently, Connie T. Braun’s The Steppes are the Color of Sepia left me asking questions about the nature of memoir (note the subtitle) and its relation to two other genres it traverses—history and fiction. Braun’s book makes a major contribution to the reconstruction of repressed memory of suffering and survival among the Russian Mennonites, and, coincidentally, but less clearly so, to the burgeoning field of Mennonite memoir.

Braun tells the story of three generations of Mennonites in Russia who struggled for survival on the vast prairies of the Ukraine and Siberia: her grandparents, Jakob and Maria Letkemann; her parents, Peter and Erna Letkemann; and herself. She divides the book into three parts: an introduction called “Promised Land” and Parts I and II titled “Russia: A Pastor’s Record of Repression” and “World War II: A Boy’s Recollection of Survival.” These parts correspond roughly to reconstruction of her grandfather’s memories of Russia and her father’s memories of WWII. Interspersed throughout the book are very helpful maps and evocative photos, both of which the author uses effectively to help establish another of the book’s subjects: place. A trip with her parents and family to Russia and Ukraine in 2005 allowed her to suffuse the book with a poet’s appreciation for landscape, fecundity, and a “promised land” mythology, even as the same setting evoked her father’s memories of cruelties endured under two of the twentieth century’s harshest dictators—Hitler and Stalin.

Braun brings three extraordinary gifts to this tale. The first is passion and love of language. Her preface begins with a description of rivers where her father’s memories flow:  “ along the river bank now and then are stretches of sugar-white beaches, various hollows where willow trees cast deep blue shade over fishing holes, and, further along, near the old quarry, high rocky ledges from where boys whoop as they slice, like blades of pocket-knives, through air and water” (ix). The second is a thorough comprehension of the relevant works of Russian and Canadian Mennonite history combined with literary and philosophical texts on the nature of memory itself (see her fine essay “Silence, Memory and Imagination as Story: Canadian Mennonite Life Writing” at http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/1/3/silence-memory-and-imagination-story/ for evidence of the scholarship that underlies her book.) The third strength lies in conscientious detective work—uncovering deeply repressed and thus scantly recorded memories. She wants the truth, she deeply respects the documents and recorded history she uses, and when she imagines, as she often does, she “shows the work,” to use Julia Kasdorf’s apt phrase.[i]  We trust this author’s voice, both for the narrative she constructs and the silences that remain within it.

As a descendent of Swiss-German Mennonites, I eagerly read this story for both its similarity and difference to my own. One thing that struck me is how inadequate our labels are for various kinds of Mennonites living in Canada and the United States today. Braun says in her preface that although her progenitors lived in Russia for a century, “we are not Russian and not Ukrainian. We are descendents of a migratory people, the Mennonites. We are survivors of dictatorship and war, and are now a Canadian family” (x).

The fields of Mennonite history and literature, at their best, illustrate the power of what Braun calls “peoplehood” to transcend the boundaries of time and space.  They accomplish this feat well when they are the most particular. Braun never conflates the story of her family with that of the Amish or Mennonites in Pennsylvania or Indiana, for example,[ii] but she tells it in such a way that any descendent of the Anabaptists can recognize age-old issues—separation from the world, pacifism, family, community.

The kind of suffering detailed in this book is alien to many Mennonites who, after escaping persecution in Europe, found land and freedom and have never lived under dictatorship. One of the questions history asks of us is, “Do I have the courage of my ancestors not to take up the sword, or not to recant my faith under the threat of death or imprisonment?” The complicated answers to these questions from those who lived with them under communism and national socialism in Russia and survived to tell the story are important contributions to twenty-first century Mennonite identity—not just in Canada and the U.S. but also in places where Mennonites have suffered more recently—Indonesia and Ethiopia, for example.

The book might have benefited from stronger editing. Even though the author’s lyric prose captivates many times, occasional lapses occur. Sometimes the meaning is unclear [“At times, these distinctions of tense become blurred, but essential truths are sharpened” (xiii)]. Sometimes purple prose combined with conjecture seems jarring: “Was this pregnancy a whisper of hope to Jakob and Maria in the depths of winter’s hush?” (56). An occasional cliché — “new life emerges from brokenness and ashes” —in a dramatic place—the end of the preface (xiii) —blunts the effect of a poetic description in the previous sentence.

These are small matters. But I am left with one larger regret. Ironically, it is the same regret the author has in relation to her grandfather’s telling of his tale in writing:  “Unfortunately, Jakob did not reveal much of his interior life” (xi). I wanted more of the interior life of the author.  We catch glimpses of her riding her bicycle in the suburbs. We can tell that she has scholarly training. But how have these stories affected her life? Her presence is strongly felt, but more in her imagination concerning the silences of others than in the impact of their stories on her.  I expected more of Connie Braun’s story. Her mother Erna and grandmother Maria’s voices were effaced by circumstance. Connie’s should ring out. Readers don’t even know if she is writing from the perspective of someone who claims the name Mennonite for herself. The author description uses the phrase “of Mennonite heritage,” which suggests, but does not confirm, that her location now is not inside a Mennonite community. She has a right to this story whether or not she claims the faith as her own, but she should claim her location now. Memoir promises insight and intimacy. It stirs curiosity in the reader that cannot be satisfied by biography of ancestry alone.

Finally, we know from a few details in the story (her father’s Italian leather shoes, allusions to business success in Canada) that his life and his family’s life changed drastically after immigration. The story of a “Mennonite memoir” should not end, like an old high school text history text, with WWII, but should, at least in epilogue form, “show the work” that takes the present into the past as well as bringing the past into the present.

[ii] Keeping the categories of different narratives and nationalities clear while also showing what all Mennonites have in common is a complicated task. Braun’s diligent treatment of this subject stands in contrast to the recent humorous memoir of  Rhoda Janzen. See my review of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: http://www.100memoirs.com/2009/11/mennonite-in-a-little-black-dress-an-old-mennonite-review/

One of the things I like most about this book is that it owes its origins, in part, at least, to a course taught by Jeff Gundy at Bluffton University when Lee Snyder was president. You can find the syllabus for Jeff’s class here and imagine deeply engaged class conversations as Jeff and the students, including Lee, read books by Anne Lamott, Thomas Merton, Dinty Moore, Annie Dillard, Kathleen Norris, and Cynthia Yoder. The topics included the finding of vocation, since all these texts have a spiritual dimension, and the course was developed as part of a larger, Lilly Endowment-funded, emphasis on vocation in liberal arts colleges and universities.

 Spiritual memoirs have their own tradition, and, according to some, it is a gendered tradition.  Those who have studied the history of the form usually begin with Augustine’s Confessions  and also recognize the important contributions of cloistered, powerful, medieval women, such as Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, and Marjorie Kempe.  Jill Ker Conway, herself both a former college president and a scholar of memoir, has observed, “There are archetypal life scripts for man and for women which show remarkable persistence over time. For men, the overarching pattern for life comes from adaptations of the story of the epic hero in classical antiquity. Life is an odyssey, a journey through many trials and tests, which the hero must surmount alone through courage, endurance, cunning and moral strength.” Conway notes that St. Augustine, in the prototypical memoir, Confessions,  assumes strong authorial agency through hundreds of pages and then, even when he surrenders to God, “he makes us believe that his inner struggle is of vast and world-shaping significance”    (When Memory Speaks, 7, see first chapter here).

The first women memoirists were, like Augustine, religious figures. But unlike him, they told their stories not as heroes but as meditators on the nature of God and as ones who experienced direct revelation of divine illumination. They did not focus on the will or the intellect, and thus were not heroic action figures but receivers of revelation. Conway traces this archetypal pattern of female surrender and service, which may include ecstatic visions but does not include what she calls “agency.” Women, even spiritual leaders, frequently do not think of themselves as actors on the world stage but as players called by God to partake in the divine and to give witness to it. Conway goes on to trace the evolution of this archetype from spiritual to secular in the 18th and 19th centuries, when finding the ideal mate and acquiring domestic security replace the surrender to God in women’s narratives.

Why this historical analysis as background for reviewing the memoir of a Mennonite woman college president? It’s a bit of a side question, but I wonder whether Mennonites, with their emphasis on community, peace, and servant-leadership follow this gender division in their autobiographical writing or whether both men and women adopt more of Julian’s position toward God rather than Augustine’s. I’ll take up this question when I review Rudy Wiebe’s of this earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, a Canadian bestseller, and winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award.

But now to Snyder’s memoir itself. First, a few minor criticisms. The title At Powerline and Diamond Hill: Unexpected Intersections of Life and Work and the hard-to-decipher cover art do not serve the author or publisher  (Cascadia Publishing House) as well as they might. Also, I could not uncover the logic in the organization of the book with its six parts, an introduction, and three epilogues. If I did not know and admire the author, I might have gotten confused by the loose thematic structure which sometimes jumps decades between paragraphs. Non-linear structures can be excellent 21st-century forms, but they work best with strong thematic focus. This book celebrates both calling and challenge and the ordinariness of everyday life–life and work flowing together and apart over almost 70 years. It works well as a series of pearls strung on one thread, or stacks of laundry neatly folded. It does not have the tightness of construction of Karen Armstrong’s  The Spiral Staircase, reviewed here.

I’m looking right now at the cover of Kathleen Norris’ Dakota, one of the books Snyder read in Jeff Gundy’s class. I own the hardcover edition, which is evidently no longer in print, and love the cover of this edition.  The image starts with blue sky, cumulus clouds, and ends with flat stretches of red land and black hills running along the bottom of the cover. The simplicity of the word Dakota with the subtitle A Spiritual Geography floating in the sky and clouds draws the reader into the work in a way that one might covet for this book, which is so much like Kathleen Norris’ (down to the way weather is discussed in both books). I can picture Oregon: A Mennonite Woman’s Journey with Mt. Hood on the cover and strong themes of what Oregon means as the place of birth and childhood but also the place, physically, spiritually, intellectually, and psychologically, to which Snyder keeps returning throughout her life.

In any case, Oregon does figure prominently in this book, and Snyder opens with an introduction that lays out her purpose beautifully, placing herself squarely in the women’s spiritual autobiography tradition of accidental leader following a spiritual path. “Growing up in a Mennonite family,” she says, “I did not know women who had career goals. I never had any.” Sometimes statements like that sound disengenuous coming from leaders who have a need to deny their power, and Jeff Gundy, who writes the foreword, challenges a similar one where Snyder says, “While I never actually rebelled against the community’s strict expectations, rituals, and beliefs, I gradually began to see that the sharp lines of separation and supposedly clear boundaries were much murkier than anyone wanted to admit.”  He is right to question her, even with tongue in cheek, because Lee Snyder’s career trajectory is amazing–from farm girl with only a year of college to young wife and mother, years of voluntary service during the Biafran war in Nigeria, administrative assistant at Eastern Mennonite University, assistant dean, academic dean, president of Bluffton University, and denominational head for several years during a decade of presidential leadership. Along the way, while working and mothering, she somehow finished three degrees, concluding with a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Oregon with a dissertation centered on Joan Didion.

“Why do you want to go to college?” asked her father before she set off across the country with her high school sweetheart for one year of college before they married. “Will you have a good man to work for?” came from her mother when she took the position of academic dean at Eastern Mennonite University, and “Why would you want to do this?” asked a board member’s wife when she interviewed at Bluffton. All three questions indicate how radical her path was when judged by traditional Mennonite standards for women. How did she resolve them? By her thorough knowledge of the Bible and its narratives of unusual people called by God to do particular work in the world, by her careful reading of great writers, by her loving relationship with Del, her supportive husband, and by her daily practices of contemplation, some of which included traditional tasks like folding laundry. When she gets a particularly nasty letter in her work as academic dean, she goes home and scrubs the toilets!

What I find most amazing about this book is exactly what I find most wonderful about Lee Snyder in real life. Just barely five feet tall, soft-spoken, and self-effacing, she never commands with her presence. I think about a poetic line describing Emily Dickinson– “demure as dynamite”– when I look at her. Like the frangipani blooms that perfumed her days in Africa, she permeates a place with a spirit of love and power combined. This memoir,written out of gratitude to those who have loved and taught her, comes out of a place of genuine humility. Desiring to serve, she was called to lead.

Let me conclude with just one final observation. Snyder’s story could be told as a tale of rebellion, will, heroic struggle against the odds, and even sexual abuse (she briefly and somewhat enigmatically describes an incident with a construction worker when she was seven years old). In our feminist age we might want to see more criticism of all the people and structures that held her back. That would be the tale of “agency” that Conway seems to desire for women.

But this story is not about the individual hero. It celebrates God’s surprising mercies, forgiveness (even to the man who molested her), learning, and above all, the community of faith that formed her in the beginning in that special place in the Willamette Valley of Oregon and has continued to draw out her many gifts over a lifetime.

“Is life’s purpose something you create or discover?” asks an unnamed professor in this book, probably Snyder herself. Lee Snyder would never claim to have created her life, but she has not been the passive recipient of it, either. Somewhere between the Oregon sawdust trail of her youth and the president’s corner office, she discovered harmony, a peace that passes understanding, something larger than the mere resolution of the contradictions and conflicts in her life. Her story is not a testimony to striving, or “agency;” instead, it testifies to the possibility that the still small voice inside, when rooted in faith, love, and a physical home in the world, can lead both to great adventures and to a larger spiritual home that we carry with us always.

He sums up what he sees as a universal response, coming from all people, when they hear jazz or listen to a story or poem–”I see the hurt and the pain, but I also see the joy and celebration.”

Black writers have given us some of the first and best American memoirs–from slave narratives to The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Richard Wrights’s Black Boy.  Mary Karr’s included all three of these in her list of Top Ten Memoirs previously described here.

Blackness as an idea includes many spiritual traditions. Christianity has been a major influence in black community in this country, but today Islam and Buddhism have become important spiritual influences also as the American idea of blackness expands to include the whole world.

Miller’s voice reminds me of Langston Hughes’ smile, which he celebrates as being Buddha-like. One of Miller’s more interesting ideas is that “there should be people that you know are poets by their behavior.” Below you can see a living example of the idea of universal blackness as you watch the short video of Lucille Clifton reading her poem, “won’t you celebrate with me.” This reading is bittersweet because Clifton died last Saturday, Feb. 13, 2010. You can read more about her here.

Wonderful resources–John Coltrane, Langston Hughes, Charles Johnson, music playlist, video, etc.– on the Speakingoffaith.org website can be found here.

I have not read Miller’s own memoir, pictured above, so I would love to hear from those who have. And I will be reviewing a number of African-American memoirs in the weeks and months ahead. Black memoirists, like black poets, musicians, dancers, and visual artists have evolved a combination of truth and beauty that appeals to all people and will last forever. We need to celebrate the beauty of blackness not just this month but every month!

Here are the four most relevant paragraphs to our concerns as we seek to understand the power of memoir to go beyond the telling of the events of a single life:

I loved this book. Because it covers the entire life of 90-year-old Smith, the label on the cover is autobiography rather than memoir. But that distinction is one that I am more than willing to overlook as I add it to the collection of 100 memoirs we are building here. As I see it, most autobiographies are memoirs even though not all memoirs are autobiographies. (If you want more precise definitions, you might appreciate this previous post.)

The Huston Smith story focuses on love. First, Smith is a beloved child of missionary parents in China whose memories of China and of life as a missionary kid are overwhelmingly positive. They also set the pattern for his lifelong curiousity about new cultures and new lands as well as the desire to practice whatever he studied.  As a child, he began the day with prayer and Bible reading–in Chinese. At age 86, he followed this morning ritual:

“And it is as a body, a mind, and a spirit that I begin each day. First upon waking I do physical exercise for my body. I favor India’s hatha yoga, a sequence of asanas, or postures, that culiminate in the headstand. . . .For my mind I slowly read a few pages from the Bible or a bible (the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, the Qur’an, the Sufi poems of Rumi, and so on). Now more mentally alert, I come to the spirit. For the spirit, I pray. I pray for those I know who are in trouble of one sort or another. Having prayed for others, I now pray for myself, which involves introspection–am I happy, sad, or anxious?–so I know what to pray for. Then I empty my mind of all thoughts and dwell in the luminous consciousness that underlies thinking. I conclude by repeating three times the Jesus Prayer of Eastern Orthodoxy for mercy: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

The love of travel, religion, and culture began in childhood and sustained him all his life. He memorized Rudyard Kipling’s “The Explorer” at age 14 and then made that poem the theme of his life. Here are words he selected from the poem in the prologue of his memoir:

Something hidden, go and find it;

Go and look behind the ranges.

Something lost behind the ranges;

Lost and waiting for you–go!

He also fell in love with Kendra Weiman, daughter of his major professor at the University of Chicago. She is the muse, the partner, the major actor in his life, and one feels her presence on every page of the book. In fact, she gives him the title for his book and a poem on which to base it, a gift she may have given to more than one book in his long list of publications. Here’s the Robert Penn Warren poem from which the memoir’s title comes:

Tell me a story.

In this century, and moment, of mania,

Tell me a story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

The name of the story will be Time,

But you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

No matter what other subject Smith takes up in this story almost a century long, the subtext is delight. Does that mean that he denies or represses the shadows in his life?  No. In fact, this book may contain the best short marriage memoir ever written. In a chapter called “Family: The Operetta,” Smith describes four phases of his marriage. The third stage was the hardest. Here’s his honesty and pain in the raw: “only one time have I been both scared and afraid. It was the night that Kendra said, ‘You know, I am thinking of leaving you.’ I did know, but in order to keep going, I had had to suppress it. I sobbed myself to sleep that night.  It is painful, even now, to admit Kenra had reasons for leaving. I am a workaholic. I can hardly wait for breakfast to be over–eating, what a waste of time–that can be better spent getting down to work. And then, too, when I was unhappy at MIT, I traveled extensively, lecturing at other colleges. There are worse kinds of infidelities than the sexual. . . Fortunately, she did not leave; I attempted to make amends and began of all difficult challenges perhaps the most difficult–to actually change.”

The straightforward, humble, grateful voice of Huston Smith rings out from every page of this memoir. Go with him to every world religion–not through the mind only, but also with heart and body. He guides you like a docent through a gallery of pictures, not only of himself and his family at every stage of life but also of his mentors and guides.

What a hero. What a journey. Even in a nursing home, he reaches out–to share his tales of wonder.

Do you think it matters what age you are when you write a memoir? Do you have a bias for joy or for sorrow in writing?

Forrest Church is former Idaho Senator Frank Church’s son. He chose ministry over politics in order to become his own person. Church begins the book by telling us that love and death have been the subjects of almost all his sermons at All Souls Unitarian Church–even before he got cancer. When he was 19, his closest friend at Stanford died, leaving him bereft and changed forever.  This death taught him that “We cannot protect love from death. But by giving away our hearts, we can protect our lives from the death of love.”

When the doctor gave Church his recent cancer diagnosis, what surprised him most was the immediate acceptance he felt facing death.  He had no unfinished business.  I hope you can listen and watch him on a Religion and Ethics Newsweekly broadcast last October as he talks to Bob Abernethy about both his own acceptance and his wife and family’s rejection of that acceptance.

Church’s themes are repeated in this book many times. They illustrate the genius of simplicity, the kind that lies on the far side of complexity, and his approaching death seems to have boiled down even that simplicity into the most exquisite sauce. Like a fine chef’s reduction, each chapter of this book returns to what Church calls his mantra:

• love what we have
• do what we can
• be who we are

Church is a Christian Universalist and therefore uses the life and teachings of Jesus as a framework for his theology.  As a Mennonite, I appreciate this emphasis, which helps me to see the universal truths of my own tradition.

Forrest Church has come into my own life through an interesting set of “coincidences.”

• Our family spent Christmas eve of 2007 in New York and chose to attend the All Souls Christmas Eve Service before any of us had we ever heard of Forrest Church.  We heard him give the now-famous closing prayer (read it here) of the service, which is included in this memoir as the last chapter.
• Our son Anthony was with us and also heard the prayer.
• A few weeks later, he was searching on Match.com and noticed a young woman who was an active member of All Souls
• On Sept. 12 of this year, almost two years later, he and Chelsea will marry–at All Souls
• I ordered Church’s memoir because of Chelsea’s admiration of her minister and my appreciation for her as we welcome her into our family

Anthony and Chelsea

None of us, including Forrest Church, know the time when death will come.  But all of us can learn from him how to prepare–by loving what we have, doing what we can, and being who we are. Only the love we gave away will remain behind.  The motto on the wall of my childhood farmhouse home said it in a more Mennonite way:  “Only one life, ’twill soon be past.  Only what’s done for Christ will last.”

Next Sunday, May 31, 2009, I hope to hear Forrest Church deliver the sermon at All Souls, something he has not done in a long time.  Anthony and Chelsea will be celebrating their engagement that weekend with friends and family and have invited all of us to attend church with them. Our daughter Kate and her own fiance’ Nik will be there also. Love has already enveloped us this year, and for that we can only respond with gratitude.  What better place to do that than church?

Kate and Nik engagement photo

Chelsea tells us we will need to arrive early in order to be sure to have a seat. Apparently, love attracts a crowd.

Forrest Church does not know that his story has woven itself into a Mennonite family from the midwest. But he already knows that love is the greatest force in the universe.  He has lived this truth all his life–and, having looked into the jaws of death–is living it even more!

This book contains an equal measure of travelogue, mystery story, medical diary, and cultural history.  Underneath the excitement of the courtroom drama, murder trial, and many escapades in a new culture, lies the story of how one man’s spirit grew, first in his own country and his own faith and then in a new country with a different faith.  Welcome to spiritual autobiography as only a Mennonite medical missionary could write it.

The number 100 plays a significant role in Dr. Miller’s story because it is an important number in both Muslim religion and Somali culture. A crucial piece of information, explaining the title, is that the blood price for a murdered male in this culture in 1972 was one hundred camels.

But the number 100 plays another, more subtle, role. Somali prayer necklaces contain thirty-three beads that are fingered three times each during which time the ninety-nine names of Allah are uttered.  One name for Allah exists, not in the mind of human beings but in the mind of another creature, a nearly sacred animal in Somalia-the camel.  The camel contemplates what humans cannot know-the one hundredth, unmentionable, name for God.

Throughout this book the careful reader can find many clues about the mysterious nature of God as the young, humble, resourceful Midwestern American doctor attempts to share his faith in action.  Curiosity is one of his gifts.  Even though he has an incredible number of medical and language challenges, he does not focus just on work.  In his youth Dr. Miller thought he would become a veterinarian.  He grew up on a small farm and continues to be fascinated by animals.  Africa opened great opportunities to explore the animal kingdom, and he shares this amazing world with the reader. He is alert to the signs of the holy, connecting all of nature to its Creator and recognizes the central role of the resilient desert animal, the camel.

Because Dr. Miller deeply respects the Muslim culture in which he finds himself as an emergency replacement on a one-year assignment, he does not question either the ninety-nine names for God or the unknown hundredth one.  Having asked God at the very beginning of the time in Somalia for help “that we might show through our actions Jesus’ love,” Dr. Miller’s prayer is answered. He sees God in other people.

These people have names like Martha, Pauline, Elsie, Chester, Catherine, Harold, Barbara, Neil, Margaret, Velma, Anna, Mary, Shari, Marlis, Stephen, Perry, and Lucille.  They also have names such as Hussein Sadad Hassan, Fatuma Abdulle Mohamed, Hassen Nur, Mariam Mohammed Hassen, Lul Abdurahman Hussein, Mohamed Aden, Omar, Ibrahim, Uglo, Akim,Hawa, Lul,and Abdi.

He sees God in the Southern Cross constellation in the night sky and goes to sleep to the “circular beat” of drums.  He sees God in the “bright orange flowers of the flamboyant trees” and the “fragrance of white frangipani blossoms.” He sees God in all the presenting problems of his patients-cataracts (he teaches himself how to do surgeries and provides sight to scores of people), worms, wounds, Rabies, leprosy.  If the patient needs his rare blood type, he gives his own.  If a baby loses his mother in childbirth, he brings the child into his own home. He recognizes the wisdom in the ancient proverbs he hears and incorporates many more into the written version of his story more than thirty years later.

Because he looks for God, finding new names for God in a Muslim, African, country, Dr. Miller is prepared to pass his greatest test:  trial for murder.  What is most amazing to me about this story is not how big a role it played in his life, but how small.  When one lives within a community in which Jesus and his willingness to suffer for the sake of love is one’s true north-or Southern Cross-false accusations with potential felony, or even capital, consequences lose their ability to shake the ground upon which one walks.

Dr. Miller tells us that a chance encounter on an airplane prompted him to think about writing his story.  We can imagine that an unmentionable name for God passed between these two men sitting side-by-side.  And we can imagine a camel lumbering along in Jamama, Somalia, smiling.

Christ, My Companion is not a memoir, though it includes fascinating glimpses of the author’s life story.  Illuminating the prayer, one small piece at a time, Marilyn guides us from beginning to end.

Here is the famous “breastplate prayer” of St. Patrick:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, and in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre loves the play of language.  Her gorgeous book of poems about Vincent Van Gogh’s famous last paintings, The Color of Light, celebrates the paintings’ transformation of solid objects into forces of energy–or as she puts it, nouns into into verbs.

In Christ, My Companion, Marilyn employs the same grammatical logic she demonstrates in her poetry to the contemplation of another part of speech–the lowly preposition.  Each section of the 13-part prayer gets its own chapter.  Prepositions–with, within, behind, before, beside, to, beneath, above, in–change in each chapter, even if no other words change.  The result is a prism or finely-cut diamond in each case with Christ at the head of the sentence and the personal pronoun “me” at the end.

What connects Christ and me?  McEntyre shows us the ways by exploring angle, point of view, and position of the all-encompassing spirit of God.  When Christ is above, we catch a memoir glimpse of the author hustled out of doors when she was depressed:  “I went outside and looked up, through the branches of high trees, to the light that suddenly seemed like a constant stream of blessing.  I began to sit in my window seat evenings and watch the stars come out.”  The divine energy from above is not just a tonic to depression, however.  Within this chapter lie reflections on modern physics, hymn texts, the Nicene Creed, and Denise Levertov’s “Ascension.”

Marilyn brings us down to earth like a parachutist, then rises again with these words:  “Relinquishment is the cost of lifting up our hearts.  Only letting go, at least momentarily consenting to leave behind the things that bind us to this sticky, earthy life, will lighten us enough to be lifted up into a new plane of encounter with God, awareness of the life of the Spirit, fellowship with the communion of saints, hope of heaven.”

Even though this book is not a memoir, it offers testimony to a life immersed in spirit and word.  Only someone with the rhythm of King James English in her blood, a prayer book in her hand, and a heap o’ livin’ in her own life could have crafted sentence upon sentence of such shimmering praise-filled prose.

Each of the six chapters in this book reveals important turning points in the life of the author.  In Chapter I we learn that in his youth Parker took guidance from external heroes and tried to live up to their moral and ethical genius rather than listening to the voice calling his own soul into being.

In Chapter II the author shares the introduction to letters to his granddaughter with this inscription: “Perhaps these notes will help you do sooner something your grandfather did only later: remember who you were when you first arrived and reclaim the gift of true self.”  This chapter also contains some of the most insightful reflections on the author’s own childhood.  He wanted to be a pilot and ad man when he grew up.  Instead of just scoffing at these early dreams, Parker shows how his calling to be a writer and a teacher actually grew out of them.

Chapter III shares the wisdom Parker learned from a Quaker mentor Ruth.  Vocational guidance can come from doors that close behind us even more than from paths that open before us.  We learn that Parker was fired as a graduate student on a project at Berkeley in the 1960′s.  And, in one of my favorite stories, he discovers in a clearness committee meeting (a Quaker practice for listening to the voice with the help of others) that the main reason he was attracted to a job offer to be president of a small educational institution was to see his picture in the paper with “president” underneath it.

Chapter IV comes at the apex of the book’s structure and tells the story of the dark night of the soul, Parker’s walk with depression–what helped, what didn’t–and the blessings wrestled from the experiences.  The image of his friend Bill coming by to visit, taking off Parker’s shoes and socks and massaging his feet–the only part of his body that still had feeling–lends radiance to a period filled with darkness.

Chapter V focuses on leadership in a way that few other treatises on this subject do.  Leading from within requires knowledge of both shadow and light in the soul of the leader.  The goal of the wise leader is service to the community.  Parker uses his experience in Outward Bound when he learned to lean back into the empty space, rappelling down a cliff.  The advice the frightened climber got–”if you can’t get out of it, get into it!”–makes a great mantra for leadership.

Parker concludes this small book with a tall subject:  the four seasons.  Treating each season as a metaphor, he weaves together the gifts received throughout the other chapters in the book.  The doors that closed behind him become the Autumn revery on the hidden wholeness in all things. He describes personal losses, and the clarity gained by them, in the winter season.  Spring brings with it “humus,” decayed vegetable matter, that he likens to the humiliations earlier shared with the reader. He ends the book with a meditation on the abundance of summer.

I decided, upon this re-reading, that Parker Palmer is to literature what Vivaldi is to music.  Each season perfects the last one and prepares for the next.  Only a Midwesterner could have probed the pleasures and pains so deeply of autumn, winter, spring, and summer–in that order. Only a citizen of the world could tell the stories in so universal a way.

I fear this capsule summary violates the spirit of the book, which should be read slowly, lectio divina style, biting off small amounts and chewing them.  Each page is bathed in silence, and the reader will do well to reflect in silence about her or his own life, not only at the end, but throughout the book.

I selected autobiographical tidbits from the book in part so that I can end this review with questions.  In a clearness committee meeting, no one gives advice.  No one asks rhetorical questions.  Each person asks some question to the wild animal soul of the other person.  The person poses the question, often about a vocational choice.  Three or four other people hold the spirit of the questioner in the light, to use a Quaker saying.

If Parker were to consider the vocational choice of writing a memoir, here are a few questions I might ask.  As it turns out, they are questions any memoir writer could use, and that is why I call this book a memoir writer’s memoir:

• Who were you when you first arrived?  What were the signs of the shape of your soul?
• What did you aspire to?
• How did you choose your mentors?
• What contributions did your father, mother, siblings make to your life?
• What did teachers and parents praise you for?
• What did they disapprove?
• Were you a golden child, class clown, outcast, other?
• What gifts from your childhood do you want to give to your granddaughter?  To yourself? To others?

These are just the questions for Volume I, Parker.  So you just might have to live another 70 years to get to Volume VI!