On Writing and Bookclubs

So I've joined a local book club. Last month we read Jonathan Safran Foer's second novel, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close". And that was the reason I joined it. I liked Safran Foer. I wanted to read his second book.

So I joined this book club. Nervous and anxious about this as I was I made bad jokes about bringing my shawl. I pointed out my lack of manhood when it became clear that a dinner party we were invited to the same night as book club wasn't going to happen because one of the invitees had a hockey game to play in. Yeah. Well. I had book club. But I had book club. I went to book club. I liked book club. So I'm going back this week.

"Cry, The Beloved Country" is the book for this month. It's about South Africa. I didn't know that. Having been there, anything about South Africa stirs up intense nationalism in me. I watched Invictus. It sucked from being a bad film. From not quite understanding the country completely. But I knew that story so well. It was one of the first stories I heard in South Africa. The only story I heard repeated over and over everywhere we went.

I watched the World Cup this year with that same nationalism ricocheting in my breast. They had just received news that they were getting the World Cup when I was there in 2000. They were ecstatic. Exultant. Prideful. I played soccer everywhere I went. A little cricket and saw a rugby match, but I played soccer everywhere I went.

Three years ago I wrote a creative non-fiction piece about that summer mission trip to South Africa. I read it this morning, after reading "Cry, The Beloved Country". So far I have been rejected from two schools of my seven for graduate school for an MFA in fiction. But I read my piece on South Africa. It's not perfect, but it is good. Now I can see the flaws, the places where the narrative suffers. But I can see the heart of what I was writing about. I can feel it. And though I wrote the ending, I was utterly moved by the ending. Is that vain? To think I'm a good writer? Or even a better writer now? I've been silently rejected by two schools (neither my top choice). My confidence is waning -- writers are a sensitive bunch. But I read something I wrote and I really liked it. Even if it was hard to read because it was all about how I failed that summer.

So I'm in this book club and we're reading this book. So I've been in this country where the book takes place. So I've written a story about being in this country where the book I'm reading takes place. And I'm thinking I've always been a part of some story. And maybe I'm only in the middle of one right now, not at the end.

I've got five more schools still to hear from.

An Old Song, An Old Verse, A New Experience

So tonight my devotions led me to what is probably my favorite lyrical passage in the Bible. Romans 8:31-39. Anytime I think of Romans I think of the final verses of this passage. How absolutely grand in scope and idea it is, how poetic and exacting it was (for the Jewish people of the time especially), and how it first overwhelmed me.

I first heard about this verse through a song (Cue: 90s Christian Alt/Rock in the background). One of my earliest encounters with music that differed from my parents was The Kry, introduced to me by a man who helped shape me spiritually during my formative years, Bob Underwood. Himself a recovered alcoholic with a startling and inspiring testimony, Bob was a music lover, having been formed himself by rock bands of the 70s and 80s. So upon his conversion, he became an aficionado of all things Christian music -- especially along the Metal and Heavy Rock side of the niche industry (at that time; now Christian music is out of control -- I heard a lyric the other day that talked about giving "God a fist bump"? Really? Not that it's any worse than the drivel on any other radio station though. But this is another issue entirely.).

Back to Bob. So Bob, as our instructor in church doctrines, he also versed us in the music arena. Everything from White Heart and White Cross to other bands I can't even remember now. He gave us tapes of all kinds of bands.  Issues of HM Magazine (Heaven's Metal Magazine). Most I never could get into. Heavy Rock and Metal is really not my thing. But the Kry I could get into. More stripped down Rock, or fossilized Rock. Rock music that sounded old and tired. But I liked their lyrics. I liked their melodies. In particular I liked two songs off their self-titled album from '94. "Take My Hand" (which I wrote about here once) and "I Believe in You". At the end of the latter song a child's voice drifts in as the rock chorus/guitar solo/orchestra fades dramatically. The child reads the verse from Romans. And that verse has stuck with me ever since.

Tonight I read the verse. I listened to the song again. Sure enough, it doesn't really hold up musically. Quite dated. Even lyrically it's not at all to my tastes these days. But something resonated anyway. I still knew all the words. Instantly. From the first overture of the melody in the :30 prelude of the song I was singing the words. And just as eagerly as I listened 17 years ago I listened again tonight. And I was still awestruck by the reciting voice at the end. Still simple. Still powerful.

This idea of being inseparable...stretching the neck on it a little. Humming the tune, the words, the scriptures in my head. Moments that mold us we can't ever seem to separate ourselves from. It's the microcosm of the idea Paul had in mind. That we are always connected. Always. Not only not able to be separated, but always connected. To those individual spiritual experiences, those individual life experiences that impact us in a moment, impact us billions of moments later.

And also this: That Love itself is a great thing to be unable to be separated from.