The Sunday Salon: Patchwork

My reading over the past few days has been something of a crazy quilt -a bit of this, another bit of that. After reading a book with the scope and style of The Orchardist, it's difficult for me to settle into something else. One of the things I'm really enjoying about my new local library are the daily bins of used books. Their trade paperbacks are only 50 cents, and I've already picked up several things to add to my library. Earlier this week I found a copy of Dakota, A Spiritual Geography, by Kathleen Norris. This was one of the first creative nonfiction books I ever read, (back in the mid-1990's) and it helped me fall in love with the genre. So I was happy to grab it up, especially at that price.

So I've been poking around in it this week, and today I opened to these words:

If there's anything worth calling theology, it is listening to people's stories, listening to them and cherishing them.

This quote, from Mary Pellauer, a feminist author and scholar, heads a chapter entitled The Holy Use of Gossip, in which Norris writes about the role of  gossip which seems pervasive in small town life. "Gossip done well," she contends, "strengthens communal bonds."

Norris' definition of gossip is different than the way most of us have come to think of it - the whispered rumors of a marriage on the rocks or a husband's out-of-control drinking, even the titillating headlines on celebrity magazines we peek at while on line at the checkout counter. The word "gossip" actually derives from the words that mean God and sibling, and originally meant "akin to God." In fact, a "gossip" was used to describe someone who acted as a sponsor at a person's baptism, someone who "helped give a name" to another. Antecedents of the word are "gospel," "godspell," and "sabha" (a village community). Gossip then (if used correctly) can be a way of sharing our human story, of giving a name to the things that define us. And these stories, by Pellauer's definition, can be called part of the wisdom and study of God's precepts in the real world.

Notice also that Pellauer talks about not only listening to people's stories, but cherishing them. I talk a lot about the importance of story - our individual stories, and our collective story as a nation, a gender, a vocational group. I read memoir upon memoir as a way of hearing all kinds of stories, and cherish each one for the impression it leaves in my mind and heart.

But I think cherishing one another's stories has a real life application as well, beyond the effect of words on a page. Norris talks about this so well in Dakota, how the folks in her small town of Lemmon, South Dakota, express their solidarity through gossip or shared story. The plight of a young family with a seriously ill child spreads quickly - but so does the response of people bringing food, sitting with the other children in the family, gathering in prayer circles. The stories of the town drunk who either undergoes a miraculous conversion OR loses everything are equally morally instructive. "Gossip - or Story - is theology translated into experience."

In the patchwork of stories that make up the crazy quilt of our lives, there is something almost sacred about the tales we share with one another and take into our hearts.

A Perfect Day

I love it when someone asks me to describe my perfect day - Even though I'm pretty sure my answer might disappoint them. You see, my perfect days are so perfectly simple and uncomplicated and...well, boring...that it seems almost silly to fantasize about them.

Perfect days for me are a lot like yesterday, and the day before that. I've been lucky enough to have a string of nearly perfect days going on here this week.

So because Angie asked, and described her own idea of the perfect day so perfectly, I'll tell you mine.

I come awake to the sound of Chopin on my radio, come down the stairway and turn on the kitchen lights (the undercabinet ones that make such a nice warm glow). While the coffee brews, I empty the dishwasher, and then take my cup to couch were I snuggle in the corner and read in perfect silence for an hour. Pretty soon, I hear the husband and fur babies stirring upstairs. I take coffee up for Jim, throw on some clothes and take the pups outside for their morning ablutions.

Then it's a brisk 30 minutes of exercise for me, followed by breakfast (Great Harvest bakery honey whole wheat toast with peanut butter and a banana). Then it's the looooong dog walk, made better if I can cajole my husband into joining us, after which I hit the desk and write for a couple of hours. Then it's lunch - maybe with a friend, maybe all on my own at the sunny kitchen counter, while I check in with social media.

For the afternoon, since we're talking about perfect days here, I would insert something that's technically impossible. My perfect perfect day would include spending the afternoon with my grandson, watching him roll his cars across the floor, pushing him on the park swing, reading him stories.

Yes, that would make it all perfect.

But since I can't have that, I'll settle for second best in the real world of imaginary perfection.

An afternoon playing music somewhere with my friends. Love doing that.

By late afternoon I'm back in my kitchen, preparing something for dinner while soft music plays on the stereo. When Jim gets home, we plate up the food and settle in to watch a program on our DVR while we eat. After clean up, we might take a walk if weather permits, or if not I might settle in my reading chair for a while with a warm puppy beside me. Usually we'll catch another hour of TV before I head upstairs for a long soak in the garden tub.

See? I told you it was boring.

But after 57 years on the planet, I don't apologize for boring. What might seem mundane on the surface is really comforting and peaceful. And I like that.

In fact, I find it perfect.

TLC Book Tour: The Orchardist

The Orchardist is such a rare and beautiful specimen of a book, I barely know where to begin in my praise of it. Should I write about the sweeping breadth of the Washington landscape that becomes as important as another character?

Should I tell you of the achingly beautiful prose that describes every event in the most perfectly chosen details?

Should I warn you that there are moments so painful your breath will catch, so haunting your eyes will not close in sleep?

Perhaps I should write of Talmadge, the quiet and introspective Orchardist for whom the book is named, and the way he cares with such deep intensity for his land, his product, and the people he loves. The way he sees so clearly into the soul of everything and everyone - except perhaps himself.

Or maybe you'd like to know about Jane and Della, two frightened young girls, heavy with child, who appear at the outskirts of Talmdige's orchard, fleeing an unspeakable evil,  and work their way bit by bit into his heart, stirring within him every ounce of protectiveness he can muster.

And I must not forget Angelene, Jane's daughter, whom Talmadge raises and instills with a feminine version of his unique quiet intelligence and intensity.

The Orchardist is stunning, almost Biblical in the epic span of its story about determination and loneliness and loyalty and hope. It takes the reader into a far-away place - the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the century - a time when a man's land governed his life and his choices, when people worked hard from dawn until dark because their very living depended on it. A time when distractions were less, and simple pleasures enjoyed more.

But still there was darkness...there was evil and loss and destruction. Talmadge is no stranger to it, even before Jane and Della with their heavy baby-laden bellies, arrive. His father has died in a mining accident, his mother has died a few years later, leaving he and his younger sister- neither of them barely more than children -alone to run the orchard. And then his sister Elspeth disappeared one day, goes out to gather herbs and never returns. Talmadge is nearly crushed by this loss. Forty years later, it fuels his obsession with Jane and Della, and his desire to protect them from the evil they have fled.

Readers and writers alike will savor The Orchardist, for its story, its characters, its maturity of style and prose. A novel eight years in the writing, begun when its young author was only 24 years old, The Orchardist is an amazing tour de force and should become part of the canon of modern American literature.

Link to the author's website and Facebook page.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the privilege of reading this book.

Write On Wednesday: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

Andi Cumbo first crossed my path in cyberspace about five years ago when I began writing Bookstack, and she then participated regularly in my Write On Wednesday blog meme. So it's fitting today's Write On Wednesday post should honor a major step in the achievement of Andi's long-held writing dream. Last fall, Andi purchased a farm in the hills of Virginia. She named it "God's Whisper," and then wrote a book describing her vision of the community she hoped to grow. Today (thanks to Mindy Koenig!) Andi's friends have come together online to help launch this book into the wider world. The God's Whisper Manifesto is a lovely and thoughtful little book. It starts out as Andi's vision for her home, the God's Whisper farm, where she dreams of a community of artists who will come together under the ten guiding principles set forward in this volume. Yet as you read, you become aware that the God's Whisper Manifesto is much more than just one woman's dream for her ideal community. It's really a set of principles which could govern the world, each set forth in gently beautiful prose. Andi's writing style is easy and true, and she makes the reader feel the practicality and necessity of each of these precepts.

"Here at God's Whisper we practice 'Do unto others' by figuring out how the 'other' is like us. We love people first and hard. Every day. All day." At God's Whisper, the work of the artist is valued as much as the work of the lawyer or plumber or teacher. Play is "good," at God's Whisper, and rest is "treasured." Rolling down grassy hills is "wildly encouraged." You can lay on blankets and do nothing for hours if you want.

But service and work have their place, the earth is honored, food is simple and shared with love. And story - well, story is paramount at God's Whisper. "We know that our stories are our very lives. That we thrive and grow and fight and love because of the stories we know, the ones we live, and the ones we want to create."

The God's Whisper Manifesto will both calm and excite your spirit. Yes, you think with a deep satisfied sigh. This life is the stuff that dreams are made of. And you will want to be part of it, to make it come true in your world as well as on the God's Whisper farm.

In honor of today's book re-launch for The God's Whisper Manifesto, I am giving away a copy of Andi's book. For an opportunity to win, simply share this blog post via Facebook or Twitter, and leave a comment here telling me you've done so. The winner will be chosen at random on Friday, March 22, 2013. 

For Twitter folks, join us tonight, 8:30 p.m.,  at the Twitter party (#godswhisper) where Andi will join us in discussing her  vision for the God's Whisper community.

This Year, What I Will Do

The other day my friend Angie sent me an e-mail, and I always love getting e-mails from Angie. She has great ideas, for one thing. And when I read her writing, I can hear her soft South Carolina accent in every word. It never fails to make me smile.

Anyway. Back to the e-mail. Here's part of what she wrote:

I believe we are bound by the universal nature of our personal stories. ​By sharing them, we inspire, we entertain, we connect. We learn, we grow. We realize that our flaws and our screw ups make us more normal than we thought. Our secret hopes and dreams suddenly seem possible.

She writes about a friend and fellow blogger who invited her to answer five questions - and while she plans to answer them one by one on her blog this week, she has sent the invitation out into the world as well. "I saw it as an opportunity to try something here that I've wanted to try for a long time," she writes.  "And that's build a community of shared stories."

"A community of shared stories." Bloggers do that so well, I think. We share our stories, our beliefs, our hopes and dreams with the wide world. And in doing so, we definitely learn and grow, are comforted and encouraged, supported and inspired. Even though Angie and I are a generation apart in age we share the same vision about the importance of personal stories.

But I'm going to tell you a truth here...when I read today's question, I heaved a big sigh. Here's the question -

What is one thing you’d like to accomplish (professionally or personally) in the next year?

If I'm honest today (and since we're telling our personal stories I'm going to be brutally honest)...I'm tired of trying to accomplish things.

I'm also tired of thinking about trying to accomplish things.

This year I want to simply LIVE.

I want to soak up every minute of sunshine that God allows me to feel.

I want to savor every word of every book I read.

I want to kiss my Grandson's silky smooth cheek nine hundred million times.

I want to sit on the back step and watch my little dog come racing up the yard with his tail flying like a banner in the breeze.

I want to listen to my mother tell me stories about growing up with all her cousins and the games they used to play in the blue Kentucky grass.

This year I want the soundtrack of my life to be simple folk songs with singable melodies, not three-part inventions or finger twisting toccata's.

This year I want the epigram of my life to be a Mary Oliver poem, not a Tolstoy novel.

This year I want to just BE.

Happy. Yes.

Alive. Yes.

True to myself.

Yes.

Let's see if I can accomplish that.

How about you? What's your story? To join in Angie's initiative to create a community of shared stories, go here and add your link to the chain.