Do we have to believe that we’re bad to the bone?

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The third in the latest “Take and Read” series — a book analysis, discussion, and dessert group led by Paul Doerksen of MBCI — happens this evening and the book we’ll be talking about is Original Sin: A Cultural History by Alan Jacobs, professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois.

Jacobs’ book is not a theological study of original sin (by which is meant “sin that’s already inside us, already dwelling in us at our origin, at our very conception”), but rather, as the subtitle suggests, the story of how this doctrine has worked itself out through (Western) history. Nor is the fact that humans do wrong under debate. That seems obvious enough. Anyone with self-awareness or knowledge of others, or with even a rudimentary sense of the 20th century knows how unloving and selfish, how truly cruel, we human beings can be. 

“Where does this wrongdoing come from?” asks Jacob. “What is its wellspring, the source of its ongoing prevalence and power?” In contemporary culture, scholars like Steven Pinker emphasize the biological determinants of human behaviour, but even they can’t explain “why selfish and violent are pejorative terms for us.” It’s time to re-consider peccatum originalis,  Jacobs says, “the belief that we arrive in this world predisposed to wrongdoing.” Continue reading →

On cards and other gestures

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For more than 25 years, H. and I have been observing an almost daily ritual. We get up at six and drink maté, a Paraguayan tea.* During the half hour we’re imbibing our caffeine, I wake up (as a morning person, H. is already wide awake), we usually read Rejoice!, and we cross-check our schedules for the day. Then we get on with it.

Weekends, it may all take a little longer, and may include reading the paper and listening to music.

The past weeks we’ve added something else to our maté routine. We’ve been re-reading — three or four of them a day — the sympathy cards we received after my father’s death in December. We think about the senders and what they and the cards have said, and we include them with gratitude in our morning prayers.

I hope it won’t hurt anyone’s feelings to say that most of these cards then land in the recycling bin. The point I want to make is how much the cards have meant to us. Sometimes a person forgets the power of the small gesture — and how large small can be — until one is on the receiving end of one after another after another.

Some cards came from people we would not have expected to send one, and the surprise of that touched us. Some people who knew Dad took the time to share their memories – memories that enlarged our own memories of him. Some added a poem or reflected on similar experiences. Each card was unique, each one was appreciated.

We were the recipients of many other gestures-for-times-of-loss as well, such as emails and phone calls of condolence. Last week, we got the list of people who had donated money in honour of our father to the charity we’d chosen. Again, it was a humbling and touching experience, to see the names and think of what these gifts meant about Dad and us and these givers, and for the recipient mission agency.

Some gestures took the givers significant time. One friend spent the day baking cookies for us because she knew we were having a lot of out-of-town company. Several friends and a neighbour brought meals, including some of the most spectacular soups I’ve tasted in a long time. The church deacons came to visit, bearing  a fruit basket.

These are traditional ways of caring; they’re gestures and rituals we bring out for certain times. But like any ritual, whether it’s a daily one like our morning tea, or something practiced for specific circumstances, they build and maintain community. And what a wonderful thing it is to be part of community.

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*Drunk alternately as an infusion of hot water over yerba tea leaves in a container called a guampa and sipped through a metal sieve-straw called a bombilla. (Yerba leaves and paraphernalia pictured left.) Let’s just say it grows on you.

Short stories: to read, and to write

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The latest issue of the Center for Mennonite Writing’s online journal is up: this one devoted to “new fiction.” Editor Ervin Beck says the issue is intended “to encourage the writing of fiction in the Mennonite community.” Periodicals favour poetry, he notes. “Fiction requires more space from the publisher and more patience and commitment from the readers.”

For your patience and commitment then, seven new stories or novel excerpts, including the story “Chopsticks” by yours truly, in which the first person narrator weaves a tale of piano lessons, a train ride, her brother, and her father.

One of the goals I set myself several years ago was to put together a collection of short stories, containing some previously published stories as well as new work. I have eight published pieces from which I might draw, and about half that many others more or less completed or in progress. The publication of such a collection is by no means a given, of course; it may take as many years to find a publisher, especially in these uncertain times, as to write the stories themselves!

But in the meanwhile, I need to get back on track with the project itself. I lost momentum when I returned to the MB Herald last year as interim editor, and have had trouble getting it back, though my desire to continue remains strong. There’s just something about this kind of writing — perhaps because it’s a relatively new genre for me — that provokes all manner of self-doubt, fear, and procrastination. Each time I sit down to it, it’s like jumping into water over my head and knowing I still can’t swim. What’s the right technique again, for legs and arms, for breathing? Help!

Well, enough confession. Flannery O’Connor said, “The only way, I think, to learn to write short stories is to write them, and then to try to discover what you have done. The time to think of technique is when you’ve actually got the story in front of you.” So I’ve gone and declared myself here, and I’ve got the prod of my writers’ group’s monthly meeting on Monday, for which I must have something ready to read. The file of the story-in-progress is open. I’m jumping in. Again.