God in pursuit

Posted on February 26, 2011 by doradueck

In the late 90s, I went on something of a Graham Greene reading spree — because his books are good, but also in sympathy with our son, who had to read ten books by one author for a high school class and had chosen Greene. Recently, I’ve had the yen to re-read some of those books, and when two writers mentioned The End of the Affair in a Valentine’s poll of “Romantic readings”, I decided now was the time, for one at least, and that’s the one I returned to.

I had forgotten most of it, I confess, since my first reading in 1998, except for a lingering sense of the dark, rainy, brooding Common in London upon which the story opens in 1946. But, gradually it came back, and all the wonder and surprise of it too, for if it’s “one of the best novels ever written about love,” in Pasha Malla’s words, it’s probably also one of the most unconventional. Maurice Bendrix has had an affair with the married Sarah Miles, which she ends abruptly and without explanation. Turns out that the rival, whom the embittered Bendrix wishes to find out and ruin if he can, is [Spoiler Alert] none other than God.

Narrator Bendrix insists from the beginning that this is a story of hatred, though he doesn’t do much better at hatred than love. (He’s got a lame leg, which reminds of Jacob, another compromised fighter-of-God.) This is a book that explores the great passions of life, which include love, hatred, and jealousy, but also fear and faith. It’s such a pleasure, though the word feels too sweet for what I mean, to wrestle with faith along with writers like Greene and Flannery O’Connor, who let it in, full tilt, always at the service of their marvellous style, but never simplistically or unambiguously.

There’s a strange mystical turn to things in The End of the Affair, but I better not give anything else away, except for one fragment that caught at me, from a letter Sarah Miles writes the lover she’s left (though never stopped loving).

But what’s the good, Maurice? [Sarah wrote] I believe there’s a God — I believe the whole bag of tricks, there’s nothing I don’t believe, they could subdivide the Trinity into a dozen parts and I’d believe. They could dig up records that proved Christ had been invented by Pilate to get himself promoted and I’d believe just the same. I’ve caught belief like a disease. I’ve fallen into belief like I fell into love…[because of something unexpected that happened]… I fought belief for longer than I fought love, but I haven’t any fight left.

This might not pass as a testimony of faith in many of our churches (too irrational), but she’s getting at a truth we might pause to remember, and that’s the strength of God’s pursuit of us: relentless, faithful, and not always welcome either. We need to remember this when we begin to think it’s all about us reaching Godward to touch and worship, as I suppose many of us will Sunday (tomorrow) morning. In fact, we’re just as often wrestlers or runners-away, keeping company with Jacob, Hagar, and Paul (and Sarah Miles and Maurice Bendrix), and we just may be — finally wearied — undone or outrun.

Tipping towards the bigger and the whole

Posted on February 22, 2011 by doradueck

How happy I was Saturday morning to wake to the headline of the Winnipeg Free Press, “Justice for Candace,” and to read that the jury, late the previous evening had returned a verdict of guilty. I’ve mentioned the trial here, and I won’t say more, as all the details are in the news and the rest belongs to the family and closest friends, our part now to share in their gladness of arrival and to honor their pledge “to love, to forgive, and to live”…

But I want to say that I was quite taken with the trial’s final day — yes, with the drama of it, and the contrasting styles of the two lawyers, for the defense and for the prosecution, but most particularly with the judge’s instructions to the jury. Newly appointed Manitoba chief justice Glenn Joyal’s reading of his charge took about three hours. I had no idea what such instructions might entail, but it was a thorough review of how the jurors should proceed to reach a (unanimous) decision, the relevant law for this case, and the evidence they had heard from the opposing sides. He talked, for example, about the meaning of “beyond a reasonable doubt”; how they might go about assessing witnesses and their testimony, their honesty, etc.; how they must make their decision based only on the evidence, which included the submitted exhibits and the things witnesses had said; how they must not speculate but could infer. (He explained the difference between speculation and inference.) He reminded that the accused’s silence could not be used against him and told them that how much they relied on “expert opinion” was entirely up to them. It was the “cumulative effect of all the evidence” that was important, not any individual item. Continue reading →

A surfeit of stimulation

Posted on February 17, 2011 by doradueck

Some weeks offer such a surfeit of stimulation, no single matter will settle down for sustained reflection. Or for writing a blog post about.

There was the fine Brian McLaren lecture at Canadian Mennonite University, on “perplexity.” There was a wonderful evening as guest of a book club, discussing This Hidden Thing. There were three fascinating, draining days with friends at the trial of Mark Edward Grant, charged with the murder of Candace Derksen. Then a wrenching play, “The December Man,” at Prairie Theatre Exchange. The next night it was Saint Augustine’s Confessions at the “Take and Read” series. And Egypt, running as a stream of hopes and fears throughout all of these days — in addition to the usual work of the household, my current writing project, and my mother’s move.

So the point of listing these? Not to impress, I hope, as if my life is particularly busy or varied or interesting. Not necessarily as an excuse, either, though that might be closer to the point. The question I’m mulling, as I’m trying to honor the regular discipline of this blog, and struggling to focus is: how do we give what we experience its due? When there’s so much? When everything swarms and nothing stops? How do we integrate one day or event with the next? How do we choose, we who are eager for experience but too small in mind and heart and time to process everything well? Is it enough to be in the moment, as they say, and leave it at that?

While drying my hair Sunday morning, I read the day’s lectionary texts, one each from Deuteronomy, Psalms, Matthew and I Corinthians, and they too, each one rich on its own, gave way to the next. And then at the end, they sat there, jostling as it were, and they wouldn’t come together either as something that might be called “a word for the day.”

I don’t want my experiences, whether at a play, in a book, in a courtroom, or in the news, to be simply a series of curiosities, of “entertainments.” But, for now, the past days are lined up, like the Lectionary texts, gone through once but insufficiently probed. For now I acknowledge them gratefully. I’m asking the Spirit to pull forward and merge what’s required. And I’m hoping that the next week will be a little duller.