My Weekly Reader

A month of so ago I mentioned in one of these weekly posts that perhaps I've reached the "end of the books", thinking that the demands of my law school studies would cut into the reading of books for pleasure. Immediately, and I do mean immediately, a dear friend who is also by profession a book lover (burdened with being the head of a nearby county library system) shot back an email telling me to take another ten years for law school, but keep reading books.

Good advice. So instead of just reading about estoppels and intentional torts (which aren't as sexy as they sound) I'm going to try to read at least one new book a week. Since "Book Reports" have never been my strong suit, I'll refer you to my friend Ted Lehmann's blog http://www.tedlehmann.blogspot.com/ for more thorough reviews of books he's been reading. He talks about books (and not just new ones) that he's enjoyed, and I've found his endorsement is a pretty good one for my own reading.

In addition to Ted's suggestions, there are two books I've just finished which are views of two different worlds, and both were great reads. One of them is "Crashing Through", the true story of a classic overachiever whose can-do approach to life has led him, among other things, to work for the CIA, become an electrical engineer, work in a remote Ghanaian village, develop and market sophisticated electronic equipment, set world-class ski records, and earn a graduate degree in international relations. He "crashed through" all obstacles. Nothing fazed him or slowed him down. The kicker is, he's been blind since a childhood accident.

Now, in mid-life, he's wracked with uncharacteristic indecision as to whether to submit to a unique and potentially risky surgical procedure that might or might not restore his sight. To complicate things, one of the necessary medications in this procedure is carcinogenic. There weren't many options in this decision: continuing the comfortable knowns of a sightless life vs. jumping into the scary unknowns of a sighted life. Perhaps the moral of the story, if a moral it is, is that there just aren't many "no-brainers" this side of the Pearly Gates, and it is in the choosing that the fullest life is known.

Which leads into the second book, Sara Miles' "Take This Bread". Don't let the boring subtitle ("The spiritual memoir of a twenty-first-century Christian") mislead you. It's actually the very non-boring memoirs of a lesbian left-wing atheist journalist and restaurant cook who wound up running one of President Bush's "faith-based charities" (probably to his great surprise). They started distributing free food to anyone who showed up, no questions asked, no ID needed. You won't be surprised to know this good intention gets complicated, but hang in there. This is not the familiar sappy ending, darkness-to-light, pagan-to-piety conversion story, but one that will challenge the religiosity of so many of us churchers. If you're familiar with Anne Lamott, this is Anne Lamott on steroids.

Over the years I've had a fair amount of personal experience with doing "good works", both via a local soup kitchen that a group of us got started and is now a multi-faceted program for the homeless, as well as through my involvement with Habitat For Humanity programs around the country. There's always an inherent problem with efforts like these, and that is the confusion between pity and piety. These good intentions also tend to deal with the symptoms rather than the disease; charity, unfortunately, doesn't effect social change.

I'm happy to report that in her own way, Sara Miles doesn't duck these issues, and it's exciting to see how she and her friends manage to cope with the institutional resistance of the organized Church as well as the societal fears of change. The ending of "Take This Bread" is dynamite, and will stay with me for a long time.

I must also tell you (almost parenthetically) that in reading this book it helps to have a general knowledge of the Episcopal Church, but it isn't essential to appreciate her story, and perhaps it might even get in the way. Sometimes Miles' self-righteousness is as off-putting as that of those she faults, but I happily cut her some slack, and find this very readable book fascinating, and recommend it heartily.

There are other books, but these will do for a start. I tried to read "The Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy", but gave it up. I don't mind the word "fuck", but in every third sentence it gets boring. The author also has an annoying style of alternating the story-teller by chapters, and I didn't have the energy to figure out just who was doing what to whom (if you get my drift).

Oh, and unless things are really slow around your way, skip "Deathly Hallows". Take a walk with the Muggles or something.

Reformers Unanimous?

The big letters on the sign said, ADDICTIONS PROGRAM, while the less conspicuous words were "Reformers Unanimous". The sign itself was a banner that for several months has been hanging outside a Free Will Baptist Church not far from our home, and like thousands of others on this busy street I pass by it several times a day. Obviously it caught my eye.

The idea of an "addiction program" touched a nerve, since for the past 25 years I've been an active and not very anonymous member of another addiction recovery program known euphemistically as "a well known Twelve Step program", but trust me: we don't meet in Free Will Baptist Churches. In this part of the country they're not exactly hot spots for recovering addicts of any stripe, and appear to endorse free will about as much as endorsing Harry Potter. The oxymoronic FWB churches are, as we used to say, "hard shell Baptist." That sign on the lawn appeared to be as incongruous there as a "Saturday nite bingo" banner.

Obviously, nosey me just had to find out more about Reformers Unanimous! So it was that last Friday evening, a few minutes before the advertised 7:00 hour, I drove into the church's parking lot. It seemed to be the better part of wisdom to back the car into a remote parking space so that the hospital clergy sticker on the rear bumper might not be quite so obvious.

About 12 or 15 people were there, mostly men, visiting and chatting, several of whom came over to graciously welcome me and invite me into the sanctuary, where the program began. I discovered that there were three components of the nearly two hour session:

- a 20 minute DVD by the founder of this national program, basically a 20 minute rapid-fire Bible study of out-of-context passages,
- followed by a 30 minute session with a "counselor" talking non-stop to the three of us who were new, giving his "testimony" of Jesus' freeing him from his addiction to alcohol and drugs, than a break for refreshments,
- and finally a 30 minute "preaching" by the minister, another lickety-split Bible study with a fill-in-the-blanks lesson booklet.

All in all, it was a completely undisguised evening of fundamentalist Christian theology. Its relationship to addiction and recovery was remote, to be generous. During one of the breaks, the "counselor" inquired as to what had brought me there, and I told him honestly that I had seen the sign outside, and that I was curious about RU. I added that I'd been in a recovery program for many years, and was also a committed Christian who felt no contradiction between these two parts of my life. Other requests for information, such as where I lived and where I went to church, I ducked. The "counselor" moved on to more fertile ground.

There was, unfortunately to my mind, no talk of any recovery process (once you were saved you were recovered), and they rejected the more familiar program of Alcoholics Anonymous on the grounds first, that AA refers to the need of a self-defined Higher Power instead of RU's specific dependence on being "saved" through Jesus as the key to overcoming addiction, and second, that AA members always and forever identify themselves as "alcoholics" whereas these folks believe Jesus has delivered them from that condition and they were no longer alcoholics. They were now, they claimed, "addicted to Jesus".

We had one more break for refreshments, popcorn and caffeine-free sodas (no coffee), and I was encouraged to visit the RU table where they had a variety of books, pamphlets, CDs, DVDs, t-shirts, ball caps and other memorabilia for sale, (the ball point pens were free) and several members directly asked where I went to church and would I join them on Sunday. I demurred, nor did I buy a ball cap or two.

They certainly were pleasant folks, and obviously deeply believing Christians of a particular variety, but as soon as possible I eased my way out the door, walked briskly across the parking lot, and drove off, clergy sticker shining in the reflected light of the church.

57th?

There must have been some mistake. Earlier this week I got a note in the mail inviting me to my high school class reunion. The number they used was "57th".

That couldn't be right. There must be some mistake. 57? Good grief! That's how many varieties of food Mr. Heinz says he makes, or the street Bruce Springsteen sings about. But number of years since I graduated from South Charleston High School? 57? Get serious. So I did the math: 2007 take away 1950 equals...yep, 57. It's still hard to believe.

South Charleston High School, home of the world famous Black Eagles, is the only high school in a West Virginia river town which was, to me those 57 years ago, a great place to be a teenager. Never mind the chemical plant smells and the surrounding poverty; they were just accepted as part of life. And the biggest part of that life, for me, centered around dear old SCHS, pictured above. (This is a recent picture of the building, now a Middle School, and you had better believe that back then we didn't have air conditioners sticking out the windows. In winter we walked ten miles through the snow, too. With shoes, though.)

The reunion invitation also served as an invitation to pull out the dusty 1950 Class Yearbook, and sure enough, there on page 14, pictured between Pat Reel and Mae Owens (apparently we didn't put much stock in alphabetizing), was photographic proof:

Slowly a few of the other names and faces began to come back to me, drifting out of the 57 year old mist. My neighbor and friend George Telford, who raised rabbits and helped (occasionally) with my paper route. Bob Turley, another close friend who taught me to master the flippers on pinball machines. Patsy Hughes, who always seemed to be everywhere and always seemed to be smiling. Ginger Schramm, the clown that every class seems to have. Another neighbor, Betty Richards, who was, I think, my first "girlfriend". And who can forget the otherwise anonymous "Cheese", so named because of his ever-present halitosis.

The yearbook helped recall the teachers, too. One I remember still was our music teacher, Miss Lucy Jackson, who inspired us not only to sing but to enjoy singing. Then there was Mr. Beverly, the patient gym teacher who tried in vain to teach me to somersault. And our adviser for the school newspaper, Mr. Keys, who first instilled in me a life-long love of words. And don't, for heaven's sake, forget Miss Clara Smith, who must have taught Moses when he was a boy, and who had us memorizing poetry before we understood what it meant:

"To every man there openeth
A way and ways and a way;
And the high soul treads the high way,
And the low soul gropes the low;
And in between on the misty flats
The rest drift to and fro;
But to every man there openeth
A high way and a low,
And every man decideth
The way his soul shall go."

(See? 57 years and I still remember it!)

There were neighboring high schools back then: the effete Charleston and Stonewall Jackson over in the "big city", St. Albans and Nitro out in the sticks, and our arch-rival Dunbar across the river. They were all public schools, of course. There weren't enough Catholics, I suspect, to qualify for a parochial school, and private schools were those things across the mountains in Virginia that were simply off our radar screen. None of them could have compared to SCHS.

There were close to 200 of us back then in the Class of '50, though Lord only knows how many are still with us. I dunno: maybe I'll go to the 57th reunion to find out how many of them, in between on the misty flats, I've outlived!

Our Feng Shui

Phew, what a week it's been! A good week, please understand, and a full one, full even to the point of overflowing. So here it is Friday morning and I'm just getting started on the weekly blog, reminiscent of the old days of writing sermons on Saturday night. However, I really do want to hold myself, law school studies and busy week notwithstanding, to the discipline of this weekly journal. (Partly, of course, because I'm obsessive compulsive about these things, and partly because I really do believe that on some level, the discipline is good for my soul.)

As I reread last week's comments about our back yard garden I realized that in describing it I'd left out one of its more important attributes, which is why we enjoy that space so much. So like a Hollywood movie, this will be Son of Back Yard .

I'm talking here about the feng shui of our back yard. If news of feng shui has not reached your desert island, I should explain that it is the ancient Chinese practice (literally "wind and water") describing the placement and arrangement of space to achieve harmony with the environment, but has now become part of the New Age hocus pocus that supposedly has an effect on our health, wealth, and probably our sex life as well. It's the Ouiji board of household planning. The eastern version of The Secret which has something to do with the steam over uncooked rice. Seriously. You can look it up. But I digress, so let's return to the back yard.

Why do we enjoy it? For one thing there's the slow but inexorable changes in the colorful flowers as they bud, bloom, and then fade away. Fortunately they don't all do that at the same time, so we have a continual spring and summer display. A major part of that is the serendipitous display of the sunflowers that spring up untouched by us, growing from the seeds dropped from the feeders by the birds.

Another source of daily enjoyment for us is the continual gurgling of the small water fountain which we picked up at a street fair a couple of years ago. The sound brings back memories of our RV travels, for we always tried to find a camping spot as close as possible to creeks and streams, so Ann (a.k.a. "Creek Freak") could dip her toes in the cold water. Those 35 years traveling in the motorhomes represents a significant part of our lives, and it's good to have that memory refreshed.

Then there are the birds. Watching their passive-aggressive behavior around the feeding spots is always good for a laugh or three. The toughest ones, of course, are the tiny ones, the nuthatches and finches, who look so fragile and docile until a jay or a woodpecker tries to squeeze into their turf, and then those cute little things become serious bad-asses, real tough guys.

Most of all, however, it's just the wonderful peace and quiet that we seem to derive from the back yard. Sometimes it's interrupted by the "beep-beep-beep" of a construction truck backing up or the steady roar of a Delta jet arriving from Atlanta, but the calm always returns and bathes us with its serenity.

Dare I say it's the feng shui of the back yard garden?