writing in the dust

In Adam’s Fall: A Meditation on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin by Ian McFarland was probably the most stimulating theology book I read this year. McFarland, following Barth, stresses the retrospective character of the doctrine of original sin: in light of Christ’s redemption, we see how far we’ve fallen. (And I would probably pay full price just for some of his throwaway lines about Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, on how to preach such a contentious doctrine in “a world come of age.”)

Another excellent book of theology I read was The Trinity: An Introduction to Catholic Doctrine on the Triune God by Gilles Emery. Anyone who’s looking for a basic grasp of the biblical, creedal, and liturgical roots of the doctrine of the Trinity couldn’t do better than to read this.

Every Riven Thing by Christian Wiman is a collection of poems loosely centered around the themes of illness and the faith that is tested by it. Wiman was diagnosed with a rare cancer several years ago, and these poems, as stark and boldly beautiful as a bare tree in a winter sky, tell the story of that diagnosis and his enduring Christian faith. (One of the poems from this book — possibly my favorite — is here.)

I read several graphic novels this year, but Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel and Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware were the ones that have stayed with me the most. Bechdel’s book is a memoir about her relationship with her gay father. It also tells her own coming out story. And Ware’s book has a similar theme. Jimmy Corrigan, a thirty-something single man under his mother’s thumb, meets his estranged father for the first time in years.

Some of the best reading experiences I had this year came from following blogs. Near the top of my list is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ over at The Atlantic’s site. It was great fun to see TNC blogging his way through ideas that eventually took final form in his essay, just published a few weeks ago, “Why Do So Few Black People Study the Civil War?” For a writer trying to hone his craft, I think there’s huge educational value (if that doesn’t sound too trite) in following the germ of an idea from a sharp, interesting person like TNC all the way to its culmination in a published piece.

Along with his blog, I read TNC’s memoir The Beautiful Struggle. This book tells the story of his amazingly wonderful relationship with his dad, a Vietnam vet and a friend of the Blank Panthers, and his growing up in a Baltimore neighborhood.

In a different vein, I’m doing a lot of reading these days about friendship for a follow-up to Washed and Waiting that I’d like to write, and from that reading two novels stand out: The Folded Leaf by William Maxwell and Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner.  The first was written in the 1940s and tells the story of two boys who grow up together in Chicago in the ’20s and end up going to the same college. The second, the Stegner novel, follows the intertwined lives of two couples, shifting between Wisconsin and Vermont, from the 1930s to the ’70s. Both have a kind of quiet melancholy tone, and the characters walk right off the pages, they’re so vivid.

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace was also one of my favorite novels from this year. It’s strange and unsatisfying in some ways, but it exudes compassion and empathy for its characters. Jamie Smith nailed it when he said that what emerges from DFW’s fiction is “a sensitivity and understanding for the messed up worlds of his characters that might just be love.” In other words, DFW loved not just his readers but the people he was writing about.

Finally, I’ll mention three books that I think of together, though others might find that to be an odd fit. Sexual Authenticity: An Intimate Reflection on Homosexuality and Catholicism by Melinda Selmys is what Stanley Hauerwas might call a “theological memoir” that dips into queer theory and ends up as a resounding reaffirmation of traditional Catholic sexual ethics, written from the perspective of a lesbian who became Catholic, got married, and now has several children. The final chapter on beauty — about how Selmys’ “Yes” to God and God’s “Yes” to her eclipses all sacrifice and self-denial — is something I’ll reread again and again.

Along with Selmys’ book, I think of We the Animals by Justin Torres. It’s a semiautobiographical novel in which Torres tells the story of a boy who grows up with a Puerto Rican father and a white mother and two rowdy brothers — whom he loves deeply, painfully — in upstate New York. The final chapters tell his protagonist’s coming out story, and it ends with the most heartrending scene of his father giving him a bath. It’s a baptismal scene, and with so many stories like this ending with the father’s rejection of the son, this one is all the more affecting. Marilynne Robinson writes, ”In language brilliant, poised and pure, We the Animals tells about family love as it is felt when it is frustrated or betrayed or made to stand in the place of too many other needed things, about how precious it becomes in these extremes, about the terrible sense of loss when it fails under duress, and the joy and dread of realizing that there really is no end to it.”

And finally, together with Selmys and Torres’ books, I find myself thinking of If You Knew Then What I Know Now by Ryan Van Meter, a collection of autobiographical essays about growing up gay in rural Missouri, going to church youth group, navigating the hardships of high school, and looking for love. It’s disarming in how unadorned and unaffected it is. And as Van Meter narrates his departure from the church he was raised in, I found myself recalling Selmys’ book and wondering why and how some people, despite all the pain, return to the church and others like Van Meter leave. In either case, for those of us who remain in the church and want to love and welcome all to come and meet the living Christ there, we’d do well to listen to stories like Van Meter’s. And we should ask ourselves, in the words of Karl Barth, “are you willing now to deal with humanity as it is? Humanity in this [twenty-first] century with all its passions, sufferings, errors, and so on? Do you like them, these people? Not only the good Christians, but do you like people as they are? People in their weakness? Do you like them, do you love them?” I’m thankful for the people I met through their books this year. It was a really good year for reading.